My thanks are due, as ever to the team at Allison & Busby – in particular Susie Dunlop, Sophie Robinson, Kelly Smith, Lesley Crooks, Kathryn Colwell, Simon and Fliss Bage – to my agent David Headley and to David Wardle for another stunning cover illustration.
I am also indebted to John Ll Williams FRCS for his advice on how to sabotage a sailing boat; but, after several glasses of wine, I confess I may have missed some crucial details. I have also added some embellishments of my own. I can therefore offer readers no guarantee that the method as described would actually work, but would be interested to hear, in strict confidence, from anyone who employs it successfully.
I must repeat my apologies to the people of West Wittering for again implying that the village is a hotbed of crime, a home to Mafiosi, drug dealers or (worse still) incompetent sailors. My fictional West Wittering bears increasingly little resemblance to the real one, and my fictional population no similarity at all to its actual inhabitants, who harbour no murderous intentions that I am aware of.
Finally my thanks, gratitude and love to my family for their support – my wife Ann, our son and daughter-in-law, Tom and Rachel, and our daughter Catrin, to whom this latest volume is dedicated.