In The Guernsey Ferry Murders by Pauline Rowson, the houseboats on Ferry Road, Eastney are a key location. DI Andy Horton’s visit to Guernsey is cut short when a smartly dressed, affluent woman is found dead in her cabin on the ferry from Portsmouth to Guernsey. While the circumstances don’t initially seem suspicious, Horton is called in to investigate the death of a vagrant found lying partially covered under a rotting houseboat close to Horton’s boat in the marina. This time, it’s clearly murder and what’s more there could be a disturbing link with the death of the woman in the cabin. Troubled by the many unanswered questions surrounding both deaths, Horton must call upon all his skills and intuition to solve a complex case, uncovering dark secrets of ambition and greed that have led to such lethal waves of destruction. The following extract is quoted here with the kind permission of the author:

“We’ve got a body, male, Caucasian, and as you’re on the spot, so to speak, I thought you’d like to take a look.”

Guilbert had said almost the same yesterday evening.

Warren added, “If it’s a suspicious death then you can get the Big Man out of his nice warm house instead of me.”

Warren meant Detective Superintendent Uckfield, head of the Major Crime Team. Horton was already heading below to fetch his jacket and keys. “Where?”

“By one of the houseboats at the end of Ferry Road.”

“Tell the officers I’m on my way.”

“Already have.”

Horton gave a grim smile and rang off. He grabbed his powerful torch, shrugged into his waterproof sailing jacket and locked up. There was no need to take the Harley – the handful of houseboats were barely half a mile at the end of the road which culminated in Langstone Harbour. They had been there for as long as he could remember.

He turned left out of the marina and broke into a run. The wind was singing through the masts of the boats on both sides of the spit that extended into Langstone Harbour. There were no houses here, just the marine institute building belonging to the University of Portsmouth on his left and the sailing and diving club on his right facing out on to the Solent. To its left was a narrow strip of beach, then the lifeboat station and opposite that the houseboats and the turning circle for the bus which had stopped running this late. Parked in its space was the police car and, inside it, sheltering from the wind and slanting rain, was PC Johnson. In the back PC Seaton sat with a man Horton didn’t recognize, so he had to be the person who had reported the gruesome find. Seaton climbed out. The wind whipped around them and the stinging rain drove into Horton’s face.

“The body is partly wedged under the houseboat,” Seaton said solemnly, leading Horton towards a black-and-white painted wooden structure. It was propped up on stout wooden stilts resting on square concrete blocks which in turn were bedded in the shingle. “By his appearance, I’d say he was a vagrant.” Horton played his torch over the body, swiftly registering the sturdy walking boots, the old and worn trousers that were soaked through, threadbare, patched and dirty, the camel-coloured overcoat tied around the waist with a thin leather belt and the bloody mess around the chest. If he wasn’t mistaken it looked very much like a gunshot wound. There was no question of this death being suicide or natural causes like Evelyn Lyster’s. This clearly was homicide.

Pauline Rowson was born in Fareham, but raised and educated in Portsmouth, where she developed an abiding love of the sea which ultimately led her to set her popular crime novels against its ever-changing backdrop. She is the author of twenty-two crime novels – some featuring the rugged and flawed Portsmouth based detective; four in the mystery thriller series featuring Art Marvik a former Royal Marine Commando who is now an undercover investigator for the UK’s National Intelligence Marine Squad (NIMS); and two standalone thrillers, In For The Kill and the award winning In Cold Daylight (both 2006), voted third in an online poll as the most popular novel for World Book Day 2008. She is also the author of the 1950s mystery series featuring Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Alun Ryga, who is sent out to solve baffling coastal crimes. Her latest novels are Death in the Dunes and Death in the Harbour (both 2020). Perhaps of most interest to Portsmouth readers are Pauline’s Solent Mystery Murders series, featuring D.I. Andy Horton and a host of locations in and around the city. The series of 17 novels includes The Portsmouth Murders The Langstone Harbour Murders and The Farlington Marsh Murders. Pauline is a member of the Crime Writers’ Association and the Society of Authors.

Her crime novels are highly acclaimed in the UK, USA and Commonwealth and have been translated into several languages. Described as multi-layered, fast-paced, and compelling, hailed as ‘The Best of British Crime Fiction’, and commended by The Book Depository for ‘choosing locations and plot lines that are unique to her “marine mysteries” she has set herself apart from the tried and tested formulae within the genre’.

In America, her Portsmouth-based crime novels have been compared in a Booklist review to those ‘in the upper echelons of American procedurals, by Ed McBain and Joseph Wambaugh and their British counterparts, including the work of Peter Robinson and John Harvey’, and commended for introducing ‘many subtle variations on the procedural formula, including very interesting relationships between Andy and a couple of his superiors’.

Many of Pauline’s characters are drawn from her experiences of life in Portsmouth. From a working-class background, with limited access to books, Pauline is a passionate supporter of public libraries and attributes much of her success to having been introduced to a new small library as a child – The Alderman Lacey Library, Tangier Road, Portsmouth (opened 1964) which gave her a lifelong love of reading, fuelled her ambition to study and inspired her to become a writer. Rowson moved to 2, Teignmouth Road, Copnor at the age of 3, and attended Westover Infants School and Langstone Junior Girls School. Rowson failed the 11 plus but passed the 12 plus in the top tier and was offered a place at Southern Grammar School for Girls (now the Priory School), but, to her parents’ amazement turned down opting to attend Milton Secondary Modern Girls School (now a primary school), a small, excellent girls school that had a GCE O-Level stream. Top of the class throughout her time there, Rowson achieved seven O Levels, and three Grade 1 CSEs. She went on to Highbury College for A-levels but dropped out after a year to marry her husband Bob at the tender age of seventeen. Rowson and her husband, moved out of the city when Bob joined the RAF Police and then Hampshire Fire and Rescue as a firefighter. During this time, Rowson studied English and other subjects at night school, returning to Highbury College to achieve a HNC in Business Studies with Marketing, and gained a postgraduate Marketing Diploma at Southampton Solent University.

The Rowsons lived in Stanley Avenue, Copnor for a short time after returning to Portsmouth, and Rowson worked in Portsmouth Jobcentre, Lake Road, and the Professional and Executive Recruitment, Arundel Street, which was part of the Manpower Services Commission (Civil Service) until it was privatised in the 1980s. From 1992 until 2006, Rowson ran her own successful Marketing and PR business with many Portsmouth clients.

When Rowson isn't writing (which isn’t often) she can be found walking the coastal paths on the Isle of Wight and around Langstone and Chichester Harbours looking for a good place to put a (fictional) body.

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