A Little Local Affair

Alan Price, Fordhamton Town Councillor and local businessman is killed when his car hits a brewery draw down a narrow lane. Initially it is thought to be a heart attack but a subsequent toxicology report indicates an unknown drug in his blood. Detective Inspector Steve Harley is pleased to be pulled away from his secondment to the murder team investigating a serial killer on a farm but when he asks for an assistant he gets Detective Constable Miles Davis who is thorough but knows no more about Fordhamton than the easy going cockney Harley. Suspicion falls on the last person to be seen with a Price, a blond woman who has since disappeared. The detectives interviews those people in town who were associated with Price and soon finds that although no one liked him no one disliked his enough to kill him. The net grows larger; no one wants an election, the Football Club faces closure, men are out of work, the Bank is seeking possession of whatever remains of Price's estate and those that might have stood to gain money from Price's will face getting nothing including the family, the Football Club and the Town Council. Strange things begin to happed such as green paint sprayed around buildings, Price's factory is burned down and there is chao at the fashion show held at the school. Harley gets his recall to London and leave Davis to clear up the mystery. He takes Harley's advise and sits and watches and a surprising person is arrested for all the crimes. John Barber was born in London at the height of the UK Post War baby boom. The Education Act of 1944 saw great changes in the way the nation was taught; the main one being that all children stayed at school until the age of 15 (later increased to 16). For the first time working class children were able to reach higher levels of academic study and the opportunity to gain further educational qualifications at University.This explosion in education brought forth a new aspirational middle class; others remained true to their working class roots. The author belongs somewhere between the two. Many of the author's main characters have their genesis in this educational revolution. Their dialogue though idiosyncratic can normally be understood but like all working class speech it is liberally sprinkled with strange boyhood phrases and a passing nod to cockney rhyming slang.John Barber's novels are set in fictional English towns where sexual intrigue and political in-fighting is rife beneath a pleasant, small town veneer of respectability.They fall within the cozy, traditional British detective sections of mystery fiction.He has been writing professionally since 1996 when he began to contribute articles to magazines on social and local history. His first published book in 2002 was a non-fiction work entitled The Camden Town Murder which investigated a famous murder mystery of 1907 and names the killer. This is still available in softback and as an ebook, although not available from SmashwordsJohn Barber had careers in Advertising, International Banking and the Wine Industry before becoming Town Centre Manager in his home town of Hertford. He is now retired and lives with his wife and two cats on an island in the middle of Hertford and spends his time between local community projects and writing further novels.