Good morning!
 |
| Angela Wren |
This is a Sunday with a difference since I've a just had a very lovely letter pop into my box. The character who wrote it probably got my address from my good friend,
Angela Wren, who was a fellow
Crooked Cat Books author when I was a Crooked Cat. She still is, by the way!
Living in France, Angela knows a fair number of people from the local area. I've had the very great pleasure of being introduced to some of her local 'neighbours', having read a couple of books in her detective series and I've a feeling she knows the person who sent me this missive very well...
I don't often share my personal correspondence but just this one time, I'm itching to share this with you.
Chère Madame
Jardine,
Thank you for taking an interest
in my work. I think you might find that
the work of a private investigator is not as glamorous as everyone thinks, so I
hope you won't be disappointed by my response.
I'm juggling a number of cases at
the moment. That is quite normal for a
PI. My most important case - for the
sake of ease of reference I'll refer to it as the Montbel case - concerns a
disparate family. My client - no names
I'm afraid because client details are confidential - contacted me by letter a
few days ago. My client asked that I
undertake a detailed search for a missing son.
At 18 years of age he walked out of the family home following an
argument and no one has heard from him since.
We get a lot of requests like
this. I have a small team who work with
me and we have a number of websites that we use as well as our own social media
pages and our own website. Maxim, who
handles all of that work, has details of the missing person listed on all the
sites and pages that we use. He also
regularly updates the listings as new information comes to light and he
constantly checks all responses. In
addition he has placed a discreet ad in the local newspaper. So now we wait. There's always a lot of waiting involved for
PI's.
We are also following up on other
possible leads and possible sightings.
So we meticulously check everything very carefully. Not every report of a sighting of the missing
person is accurate. Sometimes it is a
mistake and that can happen for a number of reasons. The individual making the report may have
misremembered what they saw or may have lied because they have their own
agenda. It takes a lot of patience and
careful questioning to get to the truth.
And on the Montbel case, we are not there yet.
As we have a number of live cases
running alongside the Montbel case, and as there are four of us working on
different aspects of the case, we have to make sure that we are all kept up to
speed with new developments. We have a
weekly detailed catch-up meeting and we have daily information exchanges. The weekly meetings are a thorough
examination of where we are on each case.
The daily exchanges are much shorter and relate to one case at a
time. We also have a suite of technology
that is linked across the team. All of
our mobile phones are linked, as are our computers in the office.
We also have a number of other
people - investigators, security experts etc - who will work with us on an ad
hoc basis, as we need them. This means
that we can concentrate on interviewing people with possible useful information
whilst others undertake the time consuming duty of tailing a suspect. A 24-hour tail on a suspect actually requires
3 investigators to be successful.
Where necessary we will use local
archives, newspapers and magazines if we need to. There's a plethora of information available
to us and our job is to bring that all together so that we can further our
case.
I hope this answers all of your
questions.
Yours sincerely,
Jacques Forêt
Principle Investigator, Vaux Investigations, Mende 48017
Nancy says: What a lovely and informative letter, Jaques. It may have clarified some things but it only whets my appetite for reading more. Montbel is sitting waiting on my kindle for me to have lots of spare time for leisure reading. I'll definitely catch up with you soon!
A
clear-cut case?
A
re-examination of a closed police case brings investigator, Jacques Forêt, up
against an old adversary. After the murder of a key witness, Jacques finds
himself, and his team, being pursued.
When
a vital piece of evidence throws a completely different light on Jacques' case,
his adversary becomes more aggressive, and Investigating Magistrate Pelletier
threatens to sequester all of Jacques papers and shut down the investigation.
Can
Jacques find all the answers before Pelletier steps in?
A little bit about Angela Wren
Having followed a career
in Project and Business Change Management, I now work as an Actor and Director
at a local theatre.
I’ve been writing, in a serious way, since 2010. My work in project management has always
involved drafting, so writing, in its various forms, has been a significant
feature throughout my adult life.
I particularly enjoy the challenge of
plotting and planning different genres of work.
My short stories vary between contemporary romance, memoir, mystery and
historical. I also write comic
flash-fiction and have drafted two one-act plays that have been recorded for
local radio. The majority of my stories
are set in France
where I like to spend as much time as possible each year.
Find Angela at the following:
Thank you so much for visiting the blog today, Angela, and to Jaques for writing to me. I've really enjoyed reading your series and look forward to reading my copy of Montbel - which I'm sure will be as entertaining and great to read as your other novels.
Slainthe!
