About

By
Silenced, Willy Lucas 1905
I'll keep this short. I used to be a lawyer and a legal writer/editor. These days I write fiction and self-publish as an Indie author at Smashwords.com.

The Roth series began in 2014 with ROTH. A few years before then I was writing something else and a French cop kept popping up and stealing the show from my main characters.

He hung around at the back of my mind as I researched the exploits of Jean de Sperati, a master forger who specialised in philatelic specimens. His stamp specimens, be they fake or forgery, exist undetected in many collections today. Sperati is the stuff of legend in the philatelic community. That community has many true stories of obsessive collectors who will go to any lengths to acquire a rare or valuable specimen. ROTH is based on one such story.

Victor Roth is a distillation of Sperati and my French cop. He's unusual in the cop mystery/thriller genre because, as an Interpol agent, he's a man without a gun or any arrest powers who must work closely with the French Judicial Police.

In the first book in the series Roth is still a desk bound analyst with a sideline Sperati would have been proud of. He develops in his new role in the field with his boss, Alain Beck and Eric Pryce of the UK's National Crime Authority, who are, at times, powerless to control Roth's reckless approach to getting his man.

The books are set in primarily Paris, the Loire Valley and London. The series continues to grow and follow my interests as I catalogue human folly, obsession and greed and most importantly, current events.

I hope you enjoy the series.



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