Marta
As an author I’m best known for the Bob Skinner series. As of next week, November 28, to be precise, it will extend to 38 books with the publication of Kill List, a twin-pronged tale set in Edinburgh, Andorra and Spain.
My work is always evolving, and Kill List features a new character, a 30-something detective in the Spanish Policia Nacional named Marta Miller. I hope you will like her, now and down the road.
But is she new? Actually, she isn’t. A younger version made her debut in a series of short stories set around the rebirth of Oz Blackstone, now pulled together and titled, Resurrection Man.
If you’d like to meet her, and find out what really happened to Oz, you’ll find them on Amazon, in paperback and Kindle formats.
From the head down
We are told that today Manchester United will sack another manager. If that happens it will be understandable, but all the available evidence suggests that it will also be pointless. I am not sure of the relevance of straw in modern brick-making, but I do know this: you can’t create a championship side without players of sufficient quality.
The recruitment department built the Man U squad, not the manager. If the current lot resemble men trying to catch a henhouse full of foxes, that isn’t his fault. Blame can and should be laid at the door of the Director of Football, whose qualifications for that role have always been questionable.
But who gave him that job? A man who was hailed not so long ago as a saviour, come to rid the club of the hated Glasers and take us back to the Fergie era.
How has that worked out? Answer, as should have been expected. There are two other clubs in Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos football group. Nice are mid table in France. As for Lausanne, they are flat out last in Switzerland. Seems that Jim isn’t very good at running a football club.
Eh?
For headline’s on this page from BBC News. I don’t understand a single one of them.
The beard stays off
Okay, I have seen all the Christmas ads, and my ranking is as follows:
3. John Lewis. Diana Tavernier doesn’t cut it as Granny.
2. Sainsbury. Great graphics and a nice storyline.
- M&S. By a mile, more than an ad, a trailer for a movie that’s crying out to be made.
BFG
Best Christmas tv ad so far? Sainsbury by a mile.
Coming very soon
He’s back and so is an old mate. Why are Bob Skinner and Andy Martin dining in a Spanish restaurant? What special interest does Sabrina Burdett, Scotland’s new Justice Minister have in an evolving criminal investigation in Glasgow . . . and in Martin himself? What made two retired Scottish expats the victims in an apparently motiveless murder?
Questions posed and answered in Kill List, the 38th novel in the legendary and still evolving Bob Skinner series, published by Headline on November 19.
Can’t wait.
?
I am no fan of Russell Brand. In fact I have always loathed his persona. I have every sympathy with his victims and hope that his sentence is adequate.
That said, my eyes widened when I read the following:
‘More victims are likely to come forward following his conviction, the detective who led the police investigation has said.
Det Supt Andy Furphy, from the Metropolitan Police, said he hoped other women would gain “courage” and “confidence” from the guilty verdicts.’
Isn’t that prejudicial in respect of any future investigation?
Just when you think ..,
Halftime at Old Trafford last night, the Man United support was hurling shit and derision at everyone except Michael Carrick.
An hour later they were ecstatic. Funny old game, eh?
Levels
So Man U lose again, to a team brimming with quality. They did their best but failed in front of goal.
Fifteen years ago Old Trafford was the destination of choice for players like Rogers and Palmer. All due respect to the players there now, but they aren’t in that class.
As the game ended tv focused on the ‘hierarchy’ who signed them. They aren’t the root cause of the decline. That began on the day that the appalling Glaser family were allowed to buy the club with borrowed money, then transfer their debt on to the business, a piece of chicanery that should never have been allowable. They are still there but in the background having sold the football operation to Ineos, and its Monegasque owner. The Three Dumb Monkeys in the stand are his placemen. They have failed and should go. I’m sure if would be cheaper than sacking another managerial team, and shelling out more cash to buy a replacement out of his contract.
Crowing
I’m watching Rooster on HB Max.. Often I will skip the title, but one time I didn’t. Halfway through I said ‘Wait a minute, is that …?’
And it is. Michael Siipe has done hardly anything since REM broke up, but ‘I played the Fool ’ is right up there.
Dare we hope?
Grover
What’s your favourite music video? (Bohemian Rhapsody excepted.)
POTUS
Taking a break from series 4 of The Diplomat, I re-watched the first episode of The West Wing. Aaron Sorkin could never have come up with the present incumbent, not in a million years.
Tentacles
My energy supplier told me last week that it will increase my monthly direct debit by 50% from November 1, even though I have a significant credit balance.
I have told them to piss up a rope, to leave it as it is and let me manage my account myself.
Currently, UK energy companies hold £3 billion of their customers’ money in positive balances. That cash will be earning significant interest. It would be nice to think that all of it goes I into reducing bills, rather than to shareholders, but that would be naive.
Not only but also
As a man in Scotland I feel under attack by our First Minister. Mysandry exists too, all too often in secret because its victims are afraid to speak out.
Broaden your mind, John.
Prophetic?
Having read today’s headlines, I find myself thinking of Lenny Belardo.
Tide turning?
Tiny sample in Holborn & St Pancras but the Tories finished above Reform. And the Lib Dems only just finished fifth. The bell is tolling for Sir Ed Davey.
