Alan Peck

'The Scammer' was published in August, 2022. It is a tale of an old boy who receives an email telling him he has £87,000 in a bitcoin account which needs moving to his current account. Naively he provides all his bank details but amazingly the promised money does get deposited. Despite all his friends tell him it has to be a scam he uses some of the money to buy a new car. Then more money gets credited to him and then yet more. Will there be a sting in the tail or has he got incredibly lucky?

'The Wilful Florist' was published in May, 2021. It is a novel set in a florist shop in Cambridge. Bella is an ambitious young florist working in a busy shop in Cambridge. She greatly admires the lifestyle of her boss Hannah and Bella has a plan. She will firstly take over the shop and then Hannah's husband and finally her house. She wants Hannah's whole life.

This is a story of what can be achieved through sheer ruthlessness but also the perils of riding roughshod over everyone who gets in the way.

'The Watcher's Vengeance' was published in March, 2021. It is the sequel to 'The Watchers', published in July, 2020. I wrote both of these books during the COVID19 lockdown period. Both are thrillers, set in Felixstowe, about a collision between between a container ship and a yacht. In 'The Watchers' two witnesses to the tragedy disagree over quite what they have seen and it subsequently leads to a web of deceit, blackmail and murder.

In 'The Watcher's Vengeance' the two main characters pursue a vendetta. Whilst one wants to build a new life for herself, the other wants only justice and revenge. It is a tale of deceit, infidelity, money laundering and fraud which shakes the seaside town of Felixstowe to its core.

Having served in the Royal Navy as a hydrographic surveyor I then joined IBM and embarked on a long career in the IT industry. Having progressed to director level at a large American computer manufacturer I tired of all the travel and stress and wanted a different way of life. My first wife Liz was a florist and had a florist shop in Kent. We decided to buy a bigger business in Cambridge which I could also work in. I had no floristry skills but could look after all the admin and IT and help out with deliveries. The business thrived and we took on more staff so we could spend more time playing golf and going on holidays. We thought we'd found the ideal semi-retired life but then illness struck and I quickly lost Liz to pancreatic cancer.

I sold the business and was at a loss for something to do. I had previously written textbooks for IT staff and also wrote for various IT and business magazines and newspapers. It struck me that there was very little guidance for florists wanting to learn about the business aspects of their trade and so I wrote a book entitled 'Buying and Running a Florist Shop'. I was amazed that this was enormously successful and it was reprinted over and over again. It became the biggest selling book ever on the business aspects of floristry.

Life moved on and I got remarried to the lovely Olly and moved to Ipswich.

In 2017 I teamed up with Jenny Sheppard - a talented florist and Chelsea gold medallist - to write 'The Business Side of UK Floristry'. It was the successor to the first floristry book and still sells well today.