 to work in this kind of environment where the local sergeant at Low Inn called Branigan who's hostile to her from the start and very sexist. So she's up against him, her boss keeps hitting on her, her married boss and she's having trouble with her on-off boyfriend who keeps picking up with her because of her irregular hours. So she has all these tries and tribulations of her own as she tries to investigate the killer of the strand baby. All very plausible and all very in keeping I suppose with the heiress given that a set in 1989 and as the story goes on then she's in Derry some of the investigation leads her into Derry and she she she comes to the attention of the IRA as well as the British Army. So it's it works on a number of different levels in that there's the whole the whole mystery there's the crime to solve and then there's the you know her life as a detective and coming to Donegal and meeting resistance and you know the whole sexism within Gardie and it's so there's a there's different strands to it. Yeah that's right now I chose Donegal because I know Donegal so well my parents grew up there and I spent many summers as you mentioned but I chose 1989 as well because you know the mindset at that time was still you know like the 50s and 60s where women could be vilified for for for becoming pregnant and at one point Frankie asks in the novel you know do we not value pregnancy and birth in this country so it was at that time it's an underlying theme is you know the morality policing that's going on you know. And of course there's gonna be parallels drawn with the real life story of Joanne Hayes. That's right no that's right and while there are echoes of the of the Kerry baby story and this isn't that story and you know initial similarities there are initial similarities but as I said the underlying story that I wanted to tell was how we treated women in the 1980s and you know before that of course as well. You spent a lot of your summers in Ghidoras good memories of the place not just at Port Arthur but in the other beaches and other other parts your your parents were from Ghidor and your grandparents as well is that right? That's right yes and my grandparents and a couple of years ago I started to I tried my hands as a family memoir I was very impressed with the the wise ones and novel of three generations of Chinese women and I thought this would be a wonderful thing to do so I was you know I started to do some research and in fact you know and my grandmother's on my mother's side and you know Mike I can trace my my grandmother right back to before the famine in that night didn't go further back than that but I in the end I parked that project there for the moment but I have a great interest in and when I last June I was up with my in some of my family and we we go back to you know the old places and we discussed them you know the families and so it's so like we're we're we're very embedded in in Ghidor both on my mother's side and my father's side and yeah we used to spend every July and August in Ghidor and just have a great affinity for the place you know and for the people and and you know so many have so many connections there you know and your your grandparents had the connections to am I right not one but two small shops and there was was there a homemade ice cream yet made in one of them that's right yes and that's boner and my mother sister she and she learned ice cream making from an Italian family and when she and fell in Glasgow and Scotland and and she came back and her husband died and in Scotland and she was left a young widow with a young and child and she set up a little ice cream shop in Glasgow then come back to it to bun beg and and open to little shop in bun beg in fact it was a little shop like it set into a gigantic boulder and now it expanded since that time but she it was a tiny place she made her own ice cream and it was wonderfully good as you can imagine I mean it was just it was the talk of the whole town and probably beyond and she was a lovely lovely woman and great business woman very independent and very admirable and and she worked it on and there and and my grandmother also opened a shop in London that's where I spent I was I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and then she's a little shop it wasn't quite as successful as boners and she she also did other things she did cow and had red hens and sold eggs and and you know what kind of a mini farm if you like you know potatoes she and she was also an amazing woman her husband my grandfather spent all of his working life in in Glasgow and and she she came back at one stage and and but the bungalow and in London and and we're six children there so yes wonderful women and and and great connections with Scotland you know I was very very conscious of the the connections and so she yeah she lived in London and that was my mother's idea well and in fact her but there was a brother as well that had a shop and yeah and now there's and now there's an novelist in the family and I know you've written short stories and poems in the past but now this year your first novel novel just to remind listeners there's called limbo and we're going to there's going to be more Kate Francis mysteries and I'm told that's right and they couldn't put that and contacted me and to offer me a publication they they offered me it was a three book contract and and and what they were interested in was it was and you know and more in the same genre which is crime writing and if possible the same character and I hadn't I hadn't actually talked to beyond limbo at that point but once once I got this proposal it seems the the right thing to do and I got very you know I was very excited about it and already I have started on book 2 and and yeah so it's in the pipeline not finished now let me just start it well we'll be able to follow Frankie and find out how she gets on with her next mystery but in the meantime this one is called limbo and described as fiction with an edge which is a great way to describe it more in color her thank you very much for chatting to us thank you very much for having me on the show want unbeatable value from sky here's the deal get sky broadband plus our award-winning sky cue box for the amazing low price of just 39 euro a month super fast super reliable broadband and sky