A quick apology to readers who have been looking out for The Concrete Ceiling, the next novel in the Mike Stanhope Mysteries series. It was due out in early 2019, but has been delayed until March. However, it’s nearly ready, and I hope you’ll find it just as engrossing as its predecessors. Watch this space!

If you’re wondering what happened, blame Brexit. I’ve been so absorbed by what’s going on in the UK that everything else seems to have been neglected. I simply can’t believe the massive harm the country is about to inflict on itself. I feel as if our government is wandering blindfolded over a cliff.

I wrote a thriller with a Brexit background a year ago, but what’s happening now is stranger than fiction. To tell you the truth, I’m hoping I’ll wake up one day and find it was all a dream – a bit like the death of Dallas’s Bobby Ewing, if you remember that far back. He was killed off in the series’ 1986 season, then brought back to life two seasons later by popular demand. His death, we were told, had simply been someone’s dream.

In the case of Brexit, it’s more like a nightmare. All the polls now show that if there were a referendum tomorrow, Remain would come out on top. People who were too young to vote last time would overwhelmingly vote Remain, so the balance is unlikely to shift. So why is the UK government doggedly insisting on implementing something that the majority of Brits don’t want, and will probably never want in future? It’s defies all logic.

It’s not too late for campaigners to push through with a second referendum, and that’s what I’m hoping for. Will it happen? We shall see.