Dangerous Liaison
Keir Starmer gets gently grilled... and I have some news!
“Five, four, three, two, one…” Meg Hillier, chair of Parliament’s Liaison Committee, likes to count down to the start of sessions, like NASA Mission Control, or someone preparing to launch a missile at Tehran. Opposite her sat Keir Starmer, braced for 90 minutes of explaining that the proper processes need to be followed.
The subject was foreign affairs. Is there much going on? Liam Byrne asked what the government “central planning scenario” was for the Hormuz Straits blockade. How long would it last? “It’s hard to answer that question, if I’m honest,” Starmer sighed. We are at the mercy of a crazed autocracy that might prefer apocalypse to defeat. And the Iranians aren’t much better.
Also online: my review of How To Make A Killing, the remake of Kind Hearts And Coronets. It’s not terrible, but it plays things safe when there was an obvious way to be interesting.
And now, some personal news. I’m pleased be able to reveal details of my next book, currently titled Extraordinary Correspondence. It’s fiction, it’s out in the summer of 2027 from Macmillan, and it’s the start of a new crime series. Here’s the blurb:
“For 100 years, the London & Bombay Bank has stood at 210-230 Baker Street. And for all that time, letters have arrived there addressed to Sherlock Holmes. It is the job of Sycamore Bell, obsessive fan of the world’s greatest (fictional) detective, to write back and explain politely that Mr Holmes has retired.
“But when a young girl writes from Texas begging Sherlock Holmes to save her father from death row, Sycamore is convinced he can help. He knows all of his hero’s techniques, and now he has a chance to put them to the test. When the case (inevitably) goes disastrously wrong, his new flatmate, James Watson, faces a dilemma: is it really his job to rescue Sycamore, solve the murder and generally save the day?”
I will have more, much more, to say about this over the coming months…