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The UK's first ever statue of the great author, Charles Dickens, is to be created next year to mark the bicentenary of his birth and it will be in Dicken's birthplace and my DI Andy Horton marine mystery country the City of Portsmouth, where I was brought up. Designed by sculptor Martin Jennings, who also did the bronzes of John Betjeman in St Pancras and of Philip Larkin in Hull, the statue will be placed in Guildhall Square in Portsmouth. Dickens will be seated in a chair next to a pile of books in the statue.  The statue is the project of the Dickens Fellowship's Portsmouth branch, which is currently working to raise the £100,000 necessary for its completion, and has the support of Dickens's great great grandson, Ian Dickens. Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England in 1812. The house miraculously survived the bombing in the Second World War and the developers and is now preserved as a museum furnished in the style of 1809 which is when...

My fictional detective, Inspector Andy Horton's home patch of Portsmouth, England has reached the finals of the bid for the UK's City of Culture 2013. The neighbouring cities of Chichester and Southampton are also on the list of 14 final hopefuls, which is great news because the heroes in my stand alone crime thriller novels, In Cold Daylight and In For the Kill also visit those cities.  My novels are set on the South Coast of England. Portsmouth is my home town.  It is where I was raised and the primary setting for my contemporary marine mystery crime novels so I'm obviously going to be biased in rooting for it.  I am often asked why set my crime novels here?  Why not?  There is a belief in some publishing circles that only novels set in London are acceptable or will sell worldwide, but that is nonsense as many crime fiction fans know. Many are set in Yorkshire, Scotland, the Cotswolds and the West Country along with crime novels ...