by L. C. Tyler
Q: A recent press release from your agent says that your ambition is to marry a pole dancer. Is that right?
A: I think that may have been irony. I’ll check Fowler’s Modern English Usage.
Q: What’s the most exciting thing to have happened to you recently?
A: When I went to Egypt I was kidnapped by terrorists. I don’t think it made any of the newspapers here, in spite of our having a journalist with us.
Q: Recently published interviews with you have apparently resulted in death threats from the Mayors of Sunderland and Dunstable and from the Margery Allingham Society. We understand Dan Brown’s next book is to feature a pathetic failed writer named Ethelbert Trossider, who is brutally murdered in the first chapter. Are you planning to be more cautious about what you say in future?
A: Yes. And that’s the truth.
Acknowledgements
This book took shape during a trip on the Nile (where else?) and I would like to thank the captain, crew and passengers of the Misr for making my research so enjoyable. Nobody, I’m pleased to say, was murdered on that voyage, nor were we ever marooned even for a moment on a sandbank, but I have borrowed one or two minor features of the journey.
My debt to Agatha Christie is perhaps too obvious to mention. Those familiar with her work may enjoy spotting the parallels with and references (sometimes deliberately obscure) to Death on the Nile.
Two characters in the book bear the names of real people. One was a fellow passenger on the Misr with whom we shared many pleasant meals and temple visits. The other very generously bid in a charity auction to ‘name a character’ in what was then no more than half of a first draft of a novel. Neither of the fictional characters purports to be a totally accurate portrait of the genuine owners of those names.
I must thank everyone at Pan Macmillan for their help. In particular, I am grateful to my editor Will Atkins and copy-editor Mary Chamberlain – whose suggestions and corrections were, as ever, wise, knowledgeable and always tactful – and to my publicist Philippa McEwan.
My thanks too to the other writers who are, or were originally, published under the Macmillan New Writing imprint for mutual support in good times and bad.
Finally, I would like to thank my family, both two-legged (Ann, Tom and Catrin) and four-legged (Thistle), for putting up with having a writer amongst them.
Also by L. C. Tyler
The Herring Seller’s Apprentice
Ten Little Herrings
The Herring in the Library
A Very Persistent Illusion
First published 2011 by Macmillan
This electronic edition published 2011 by Macmillan
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-0-230-76098-1 EPUB
Copyright © L.C. Tyler, 2011
The right of L.C Tyler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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