Jane Clifton

hold up scorecards, and at the end of the night, the person with the highest score either gets a bottle of wine or $20 or gets an international tour to writers' festivals.

You know, that sort of thing.

The bottle of wine, of course, every time.

As a poet, I just wanted to throw in the, do they all have to rhyme?

Well, I can start with my favorite crime author, actually, is Walter Mosley.

I'm just really enjoying all of his books, The Yellow Dog.

Yeah, he's got an amazing character, Easy Rollins, who works as a janitor in a small town, but he's got a side hustle as an investigator of local crime.

crime and all African-American communities in the South in the 1950s and 60s as well.

Walter Mosley is an incredible contributor to the crime genre and one of the few African-American contributors to the genre, so definitely that's my go-to.

And Hiroki Murakami as well.

Absolutely stunning.

You know, just the transformation of worlds and that seems so familiar and yet the cat speaks, you know, or whatever.

I'd say those are the two top ones on my list.

Yeah, sure.

So we're set in present-day time, so there's references to iPhones and iPads, and we're sitting in Trinidad.

And we are amongst an Indian community in Trinidad, so it's interesting to start thinking around what is the definition of a Trinidadian.

But Miss Betty is there in a very difficult marriage, and she has to try and figure out a way out, and very early on in the book she does.

So I'm not sure if I should reveal how she gets out of this marriage, but it does lead to a massive rift with her son.

Her son's five years old.

Yeah, he grows up without his father and kind of resents what his mother's done to his father.