The Winter Visitor the explosive new thriller set in the badlands of Essex

<P><B>Longlisted for the New Angle Prize for Literature 2025</B><br><br>Essex, February, 1991. The weather is biting cold. Everyone would rather be somewhere warmer, which is why it's a big surprise when a wanted drug smuggler, Bruce Hopkins, risks a return to his old haunts in Colchester after a decade long exile on the Costa del Sol. Lured back by a letter from the wife Hopkins left behind, no one is more surprised than him when he finds himself abducted and stripped bare only to be sent to a watery grave in the boot of a stolen Ford Sierra. The police wonder if it could be retaliation from a Spanish gang, sending a warning to their English counterparts?<br><br>DS Daniel Kenton is teamed up with the unorthodox DS Brazier to investigate a crime wave which takes in not only the murder of an expat dope smuggler, but a sophisticated arson attack on a Norman church and the unexpected suicide of an ageing florist. Could there possibly be a thread that connects them?<br><br><B>Written with the humour and period detail that have become his trademark, and set in the badlands of his beloved Essex, <I>The Winter Visitor</I> is James Henry at his inimitable best.</B></P>