Revealing more about the flawed and rugged Portsmouth detective, DI Andy Horton

There was a slightly unusual question posed by a member of the audience at a talk I gave about my flawed and rugged fictional detective DI Andy Horton who appears in fourteen crime novels, the latest to be published 18 October 2018, DEAD PASSAGE, and that was "How can DI Andy Horton fund his lifestyle, living on a boat in a marina?"

All is revealed below

A detective inspector might not earn a fortune but Andy manages OK. He lives on a very small sailing boat, bought second hand, and in a small marina in Portsmouth (Southsea Marina). So aside from marina fees he doesn't have any rates or rent to pay and a small boat doesn't cost much to heat and maintain or to sail, after all the wind is free!

Horton rides a Harley Davidson, cheaper than a car to run and he is not materialistic. He doesn't even own a TV set..

His ex wife, Catherine, lives in his former marital home. Catherine has a very good job, as Marketing Director of her father's marine manufacturing company, and she is very materialistic! Of course he pays maintenance for his daughter whom he loves deeply and is desperate not to lose contact with despite Catherine's best efforts to prevent him from seeing her. He'd like to pay Emma (his daughter's) private school fees but his father-in-law insists on paying them and Andy is determined to try and stop him, without much success however.

Andy doesn't drink, not since his suspension when he was falsely accused of rape, a charge that was dropped when the girl admitted it was fabricated in the course of an investigation to get him off the case. But that accusation changed Horton's life. He was suspended, then overlooked for promotion and it led to the breakdown of his marriage. But in TIDE OF DEATH, the first in the DI Andy Horton series, Horton is back in Portsmouth CID and determined to prove his worth.

Horton is a bit of a loner, his world is his work, his passion is to catch criminals, his desire is to belong in a world that he has always found himself outside of. Illegitimate, with no knowledge of who his father was, raised in children's homes and with foster parents since the age of ten when his mother abandoned him, Horton discovers in the third novel in the series, THE SUFFOCATING SEA, that what he has been told about his mother's disappearance, that she ran off with a lover and she didn't want a kid in tow, is simply not true. From then onward he is determined to get to the truth of her disappearance.

So there you have it, a little flavour of the enigmatic sailing detective. Why not get to know DI Andy Horton better in the series of mysteries, set on the South Coast of England.

The latest in the DI Andy Horton series DEAD PASSAGE (no. 14) is published on 18 October 2018 in paperback as an ebook and Amazon Kindle.

Here are the DI Andy Horton crime novels in order

TIDE OF DEATH (1)
DEADLY WATERS (2)
THE SUFFOCATING SEA (3)
DEAD MAN'S WHARF (4)
BLOOD ON THE SAND (5)
FOOTSTEPS ON THE SHORE (6)
A KILLING COAST (7)
DEATH LIES BENEATH (8)
UNDERCURRENT (9)
DEATH SURGE (10)
SHROUD OF EVIL (11)
FATAL CATCH (12)
LETHAL WAVES (13)
DEAD PASSAGE (14)

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Also available as an ebook and on Amazon Kindle, Kobo and for loan from UK, USA, Irish and Commonwealth libraries

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Visit my website at www.rowmark.co.uk for details of all my crime novels