THE ANNEX

When you reach a certain age you start to question one or two of those comfortable fantasies that have sustained you through the dark hours - that fantasy about winning yourself a gorgeous young bride, for instance. Would it really be a breeze? Do you think you'd be up to it, day in, day out - and how do you think the girl is going to react to being with you, old man, day in, day out?

I'd been reading a clutch of those bloodthirsty Jacobean tragedies and among the stock situations we're all familiar with I started thinking about the old man cuckolded by a virile young blood. Our sympathies are always with the fresh young hunk, and we spend most of the play cheering him and the young adulteress on. In the comedies, he gets the girl; in the tragedies, everybody gets a damn sight more than they bargained for. With my tastes, of course, I preferred the tragedies. One evening in the theatre I saw a particularly sexy rendering of Thomas Middleton's prize Jacobean shocker, THE CHANGELING, and I realized that here was a twist on the old plot that would make a great noir story for today.

Now, don't get me wrong: I wasn't writing to impress some college professor - I was sitting down to write a good hot story that folks like you and I would want to read. So I didn't have to follow academic rules. In writing THE ANNEX, I set out by trying to follow the original main plot quite meticulously - and to be honest, this would have produced a splendid story - but I am not the kind of writer who can stick within some other person's tramlines, even if that person is a writer as hot blooded as the 400 year old Thomas Middleton.

So I gave myself the freedom to play around a little, cutting out some of the more old fashioned coincidences, cutting all the speeches, a good deal of the poetry and some of the minor characters, and concentrating instead on the gripping plot and the three main characters (middle aged husband, his young bride, and their wicked servant). Naturally I threw into the brew the saucy maid, the rival boyfriend and the awful secret - all from the original - and this left me with a plot any author would give his favorite whisky for. From the original play I kept the blood, the sex and above all Middleton's outrageous sexual premise and I did my best to serve it up at the same pounding speed as in the original Jacobean play. The result, I hope, is just the thing to pep up one of your sultry summer evenings.

You'll probably have to order the book, rather than stumble across it on the shelves of your local book shop. They may like to know that the publisher is Five Star Mysteries, and the ISBN is 0-7862-3931-X
In the States, the 800 number for ordering is 1-800-223-1244
But you can also order from Borders or Amazon