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Occasionally – and usually unexpectedly – you get days when everything seems to go right, and yesterday was one of those.  First I met my “map man”, and things are moving on, albeit in an unhurried fashion.  He has agreed that it would be best to have a small, simplified map for each book, noting the key locations for that story, and then a grand, more detailed London map for all of them, for conversion into a PDF which will be downloadable from this website.  I have left it to him to decide which to tackle first.

Second, I decided to pursue another bookshop that has been on my radar for some time and, to cut a long story short, Daunt Books in Cheapside has agreed to take eight books – two of each title – on a sale-or-return basis.  Long-time blog readers will remember that I did manage to winkle one copy of “Fatal Forgery” into the original Daunts in Marylebone, but nothing came of it.  To be fair, they did warn me that their stock was heavily travel biased.  Their Cheapside outpost, however, has more of a balance between travel and – crucially – fiction, and I have managed to persuade the manager that his City clientele will appreciate the financial crime angle.  (Plus, of course, Sam’s dear friend Edward Freame has his banking house on Cheapside, almost opposite Daunt Books.)  I’m doing my inaugural (I hope) delivery run next week.

And third, I had a belter of an afternoon plotting for “Plank 5”.  I have decided on two deaths already – one natural, one not – and on the main twist of the story.  To tantalise you, I have been reading about Wesleyan missionaries in Jamaica, and the history of Kew Gardens…