Ross Tiffin

Over a lifetime, I’ve had many varied jobs but have always loved writing and have been fortunate that employers have allowed me to indulge my passion. However, creating your own characters is a joy on a completely different level. Some authors start with a fully-drafted plot and allow the characters to embroider it, but I find it easier to invest in the main players and to see how their interactions cope with the twists and turns of the world in which we all live.

In this series of four books featuring DI Paolo Rossi, I set out to create an antihero, largely because life is never black and white and things are rarely what they seem. Somehow, during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a steady stream of positives, with descriptions of people’s inherent generosity and kindness going some way to mitigate against all the tragedy. These are the contrasts of real life.

It’s taken me a lifetime to get to live on the Black Isle, near Inverness, and now that I can walk the dogs on the beach every day, through all the seasons – and sometimes we get all four seasons in a single day – I find elements of the characters in many of the people I meet. Now that the plot has brought DI Rossi and all his contacts up to the Highlands, I hope to bump into him far more often on our walks.