Oh dear... I first encountered Rebecca Tope's writing in her Cotswold series, but stopped reading those books after becoming too enraged by her main character's selfish and childish behaviour. When I tried reading the Ambleside Alibi, I was pleasantly surprised, and have enjoyed every book since, although I did feel that in the last book, The Staveley Suspect, the series was starting to go downhill. But The Grasmere Grudge is terrible!

Simmy delivers a bouquet to an old lady in Ambleside, and is once again dragged into a murky situation that is dangerous and bewildering. DI Moxon, local police detective, finds himself as concerned for Simmy's safety as he is to find the killer. I blundered accidentally into writing crime fiction, and stillwonder how it happened. It could just as easily have been historical, or sagas or even non-fiction. Indeed, I am currently trying my hand at two of those genres, as a change of pace. And I have large plans for a series of memoirs.

I travel whenever possible, with France and Greece firm favourites. Plus America, Australia, Argentina...places with wide open roads and easy driving.

Rebecca grew up on farms in the 1950s and 60s, and then went to Swansea University, where she did a BA in English and Philosophy. She had poems and short stories published in small magazines from that time on, but it was only after marrying, producing four children and working at a succession of part-time jobs that she got published with her first crime novel, A DIRTY DEATH. This book is based on childhood memories of farming life. The thrill of publication was slightly marred by the fact that the cow on the cover was a Friesian and not a Jersey. Rebecca still worries that people think she can't tell the difference...

The Lake District Series in Order (13 Books)

Three novelisations of Rosemary and Thyme, credited to ITV series creator Brian Eastman, which were published in Britain by Allison and Busby and in Australia by Hardie Grant Books: She currently writes two distinct crime series - set in the Cotswolds, and the Lake District. She also has historicasl fiction available as ebooks only. She founded a small press, Praxis Books, in 1992, which has concentrated almost exclusively on reissuing the works of Sabine Baring-Gould (1834–1924). She has also written and published a definitive biography of Baring-Gould. Someone mentioned about Simmy's deceased baby Edith being mentioned constantly. I guess that these books cover a period of about 10 months, so it would be understandable to mention it at the most once in each book.