King Solomo's Carpet - 1991 -* Gold Dagger Award

Jarvis lives in a crumbling house with a view of the Jubilee Line: he loves the tube with all its secrets - its hidden tunnels, its mysterious "ghost" stations, its incidents and accidents, which he records. He lives in a house which was once a school, but now he lets out rooms. There are: Tom, hawk trainer Jed, Jasper and the truant boys, and Alice, who has abandoned her baby.


 

Asta's Book, Anna's Book- 1993

In 1905, Asta and Ramus have come to Hackney from Denmark with their two little boys. While Ramus travels abroad on business, Asta keeps her loneliness and isolation at bay by writing her diary in this strange house in a strange land. These diaries, published over seventy years later, will, uncover the truth of an unsolved crime and much else besides. As Asta's granddaughter reads the diaries they reveal to her the unknown facets of the woman she thought she knew. Passing reference is made to a Mrs. Roper, who lived near Asta in east London. Coincidentally, a documentary film is underway about an unsolved murder from the turn of the century - that of Lizzie Roper - and the subsequent disappearance of her daughter. Will this fragmentary evidence throw light on one of the century's most notorious trials and even solve another puzzle: who was Asta's daughter Swanny and what was the mystery of her background