Oxblood was not a swift or easy book to write. It swallowed almost eight years of my life. I am grateful it found a sympathetic, clear-sighted and super-suasory literary agent in Isobel Dixon. Cheers, also, to my editor, Allegra Le Fanu, whose bravery and quality of attention further strengthened the book and its chances of finding a few readers. Thanks to Sarah Ruddick, Charlotte Norman and Elisabeth Denison for their patience and diligence, and everyone else at Bloomsbury, especially Greg Heinimann and Terry Lee.
Cheers to my missus, Alex Ivey, for everything; our daughter; and my Mancunian mates and family, particularly my parents for supply-ing me with stories and their proud mongrel blood. A special thanks must go to Oxblood’s earliest readers – especially Georgie Codd, Laura Joyce, Tom Avery and Andrew Cowan – for their encourage-ment; my Norwich mates and colleagues, especially Nathan Ashman and Henry Sutton; Arts Council England, for awarding me a grant in support of Oxblood; and the student cohorts on the UEA Crime Fiction MA, who gamely suffered more than half a decade of annual pub readings from an ‘Oxblood-in-progress’.
In loving memory of Edna Benn of Wythenshawe, and her third son, Ronald.