I have enjoyed writing about wine, and diplomacy. But one night, when I was on duty in the Executive Secretariat of the State Department,I wondered why there had been no diplomatic sleuths. Career diplomats see so many sources of information, that the connection of diplomacy and crime solving seemed natural. And so, on retiring after service at five diplomatic missions abroad, and a number of Washington assignments, I created a new mystery genre, the “diplomatic mystery.”


There are now four novels in the series, with Robbie Cutler, a career diplomat, as the protagonist. In “Vintage Murder,” set in Bordeaux, leaders of the Basque terrorist group ETA attempt to blackmail the great Bordeaux wine estates, as Robbie Cutler, assigned to the Bordeaux Consulate General, and his girlfriend Sylvie Marceau, race against time to uncover the terrorist plot. In “Murder On The Danube,” Robbie Cutler is transferred to our Embassy in Budapest, where an old crime, treachery during the 1956 Revolution, is the motive for current murders. In “Murder In Dordogne,” Robbie and Sylvie are on their honeymoon – while murderers attempt to crash the festivities. And now in “The Saladin Affair,” Robbie Cutler is Special Assistant to the Secretary of State, whose initial trip to European gives rise to an Al Qaeda murder plot. And that Elizabethan desk in the residence of our Ambassador in Dublin – can it really contain documents hidden since the time of Shakespeare?