Meet Bella Wallis, sassy society woman, part-time author and part-time crimesolver extraordinaire. If you like your crime cosy, funny, intelligent and with a strong female touch look no further.

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The Bella Wallis series

The Sailor’s Ransom: Westland comes to Bella with a problem: his best friend Kennett is smitten by the heiress Miss Mary Skillane. But Mary’s father, Sir William is ‘an old fraud with a beautiful daughter’ and she has been promised to Robert Judd, a vulgar treasure seeker. Mary is due to inherit the Skillane pearls, currently residing in a red lacquer box in a Cornish bank vault. But the pearls it seems were ill-gotten, and as Bella and her band uncover more of the strange business, a new Henry Ellis Margam novel looks set to be written, if Bella can first side-step her own affairs of the heart, and evade a brutal threat to her life…

The Widow’s Secret: Bella Wallis is a respectable society woman with a secret identity: in an office buried deep within the seedy backstreets of London, she writes sensationalist novels exposing the scoundrels that litter high society under the pen name Henry Ellis Margam. So when a crested cigar case is found near the body of a murered prostitute, Bella and her friends are determined to trace the murderer and write a mystery that will avenge the poor girl’s untimely death. But the owner of the cigar case is a dangerous - and rich - man who has already destroyed the lives of others who have crossed him. Will Bella see justice done, or will she meet the same fate as so many of her characters…?

or at any rate in what are called the small hours. Philip and I  walked home from dinner in Chelsea, hand in hand like children. The mist that rose 0from the river  was as thick as milk and we navigated by street lights , their glow as huge as lollipops. At the bottom of Northumberland Avenue we were challenged by a policeman who fell  in step with us , a magnificently amiable giant. We parted in Trafalgar Square, Constable Crouch  having advised me to bathe the feet daily in a bowl of  porter and mustard seed.  There was in his opinion nothing better  for what he called a perker-upper before pulling on a boot. He accepted a cheroot  from Philip but crushed it to fill his pipe  and walked off in a wreath of pale blue smoke. I blush to add that the evening continued  just as magically when we got home.

has married Mary Skillane and in place of a honeymoon in Rome or Florence plans to take his new bride to America. We dined at Chiswick last night and the house was filled with maps and  itineraries.
Kennett has invented a hat that will also serve as a washbasin, a thing he considers essential to their plans to rough it through the more barren  parts of the trail west. After dinner, Mary was pressed to model another of his inventions , his anti- horsefly necklace. It resembled nothing so much as a handful of pickled onions strung together on a bootlace. I shall never forget her wonderful eyes  begging me not to utter a word about this monstrous collar, nor the liquid it leaked . The evening ended with  a deliriously happy William playing tunes on a banjo, wearing his washbasin hat. They sail from Liverpool on Saturday . I shall miss them both terribly.

Quigley has narrowly escaped death! He happened to be at a church garden fete in Gravesend – and we may well ask how he ever came to be invited – where a balloon ascent was scheduled to take place. The noted pilot  M. Grasse was attempting a channel crossing. Quigley made some facetious attempt to assist in the untethering of the balloon, the upshot of which was that he was trapped by a rope about his ankle and sailed off  down the Thames Estuary , upside down and screaming blue murder . Grasse was in a quandary. If he did not gain height quickly, the balloon and its contents would be  smashed against the walls of the naval dockyard. To the amazement  of the onlookers , the balloon shot up  like a rocket and set off for the open sea  at a very brik lick. But Grasse had his wits about him and coming low over the Channel dumped the indignant Captain into the briny – but within sight of land . He was picked up by a herring boat , minus his trousers and one boot. The Mayor of Margate opened a small fund for him and the intrepid Captain ( and notorious chancer ) is richer by eight guineas.

…his friend O’Hanlon , who was present at the Duke of Wellington’s funeral . Every regiment of the army contributed a private to the cortege and O’Hanlon, of the 12th Foot, came down from Bury St Edmunds accordingly . He is a dapper and very alert sort of chap: Quigley drinks with him once a week at The Coal Hole. Few teeth left and a bit deaf but still soldierly ( as if I really knew what that means). He has many stories of that day , the best of which is that when the bronze carriage containing the Duke’s coffin set off down the Mall, drawn by twelve enormous dray horses , it very quickly sank into a pothole , overburdened by its ridiculous weight ( eighteen tons ). Sixty policemen were drafted in to help draw it clear . I told him how my father bought a cone from a wreath that fell off the Car , as it was called . I went with him to Box Hill, where we buried the sacred relic in the hope it would become a tree. Before I parted from this old soldier, I asked him if he had ever served under the Iron Duke. ‘Only on this one occasion,’ he replied gravely .

…and found Dora Venn in a mood to gossip. It turns out that she is no Londoner at all but was brought up from Sussex to enter service with Lady Billingham. She met her Charlie walking out in Green Park and took pity on him for his lack of inches and incurable ability to look on the bright side of every question . When she asked him what he was doing in the Park , his irresistible answer was ‘ looking for you .’ She was seventeen and, as she put it , a bit on the bony side , as well as being as innocent as a daffodil . But it was love at first sight ,etc. ‘ Well of course we don’t have love at first sight in our class of people but I did go home very thoughtful . When we was married , a full twelvemonth later , and he saw me naked for the first time , the dear boy near enough fainted away .Nothing in the Gospel had prepared him for the shock of that .’ I asked if it had been a happy marriage. ‘Better than I deserved,’ Dora said , blinking back the tears . We toasted his memory in sherry that would otherwise have gone into Philip’s Sunday afternoon trifle.

… as far as the Army and Navy Co-operative store in Victoria, in company with Captain Sturgeon , who is a ticket holder . Billy Sturgeon is a gallant old cock with probably the worst-fitting wig in Europe , made from gypsy hair gathered ( or harvested ) in Spain. He is a gentleman usher of some kind at Windsor and has some very scandalous stories about the Queen’s incurable stinginess – visitors to the Castle lavatories are met with squares of newsprint cut from the Times, etc,etc.

The Army and Navy very crowded, especially the food hall , where I was astonished to find tinned sausages , counted a great delicacy in the more far flung parts of the Empire . Went from there to Rochester Row where Captain Sturgeon’s sister has a house . Every single person in it was drunk. Lydia Sturgeon groped her way about the room, patting people on the head , including the befuddled journalist Morton Stanley , who is of course not American at all, but Welsh. Why everyone should have been so elevated escapes me. Billy Sturgeon greatly shocked.