Meet DI Archie Darling, the main character of the new series. The first one, Death in the Dordogne, is out in August and A Body in Bordeaux follows fast on its heels in January.

So, meet Archie Darling.

Archie is fair haired, thirty nine years old, from County Mayo. He is sharp witted, mischievous, up for a laugh, and popular. At the beginning of the novel he is driving through France, on his way to the Dordogne, on holiday with his Dalmatian dog Juno.

Having spent his childhood in Aghamore, his father brought him and his brother Shane to England when his mother left with another man. Archie has a half-sister he’s never met.

Archie was sharp witted. Cheery. Even as a kid, he’d been bright and cheeky.

If he’d seen how his future would unfold, he’d have been surprised. He was a Detective Inspector now, a good one at that. DI Darling always got the job done. Those days of acting the maggot were long gone.

Archie smiled – he and his brother Shane had been tearaways, little gobshites. Their mother had been houseproud: proud– she had nagged them all the time, saying that they’d give the family a bad name, but in truth, they were just lively kids with too much energy. Archie’s dad would sit in the armchair with the paper and smile.

Of course, Archie was well past the troublesome stage now. He couldn’t say the same about Shane, but that was another story.

They’d been raised in Aghamore, County Mayo. A beautiful place, but remote. He’d loved it there; he’d been bright at school, popular, in the thick of the craic and the shenanigans until he was sixteen. Then his father found a job in Bristol and brought the brothers to England, because his mother had left them for another man.

He studied Social Policy at Bristol, then he went into the Marines, serving in Afghanistan. It made him physically fit, shrewd and self-reliant. On leave in Bristol, he met Kat and they fell in love; she persuaded him to leave. He became a police officer with the Avon and Somerset police and they married.

They had a child, Amelia, and Archie believed he had everything. Until the day his life changed forever.

Amelia, his little girl, and Kat, his wife.

His mind went back to that day, eighteen months ago. Snow had been falling fast over Bristol, silent behind the office window – it never usually snowed in Bristol, but that day was a white-out. He was meant to pick Amelia up from primary school, but work had taken over and Kat had done the school run in her little car. Amelia had been looking forward to her Nativity play performance that evening. She was going to be a shepherd, an Irish one, just like her daddy. She’d been practising the accent.

A lorry had skidded in the snow, not far from the school gates. They’d both been killed instantly.

So Archie became a widower and threw himself headlong into work.

A much-respected DI in Bristol, Archie devotes all his time to helping local kids with issues such as knife crime. When he’s not working, he runs or visits the gym. It keeps him sane. As does Juno, his constant companion

Juno was his running partner now, most mornings and evenings she jogged alongside him, or accompanied him on walks through the woods.

He’d never said it aloud, but she’d been a lifesaver.

His DCI has insisted that he takes leave, so he’s driving through France. He’s hoping to find a bit of himself again, to move forward, to ‘get the old Archie back.’.

He and Juno are going his friend Craig’s wedding in the Dordogne. Craig, a fellow Marine in Afghanistan, is marrying Elodie. Archie hopes that it will be nice to reminisce about old times. But of course, things never turn out how you expect them.

 A wedding guest goes missing; then a body is found. Archie is in the thick of it all, and he knows who the suspects are.

But he needs to solve the crime before the killer gets to him. And time is running out.

Nest week, watch this space for more about his Dalmatian dog and travelling companion, Juno.