Actor Toby Flood arrives in Brighton for the final week of the production of a Joe Orton play. That night he is visited by his estranged wife, Jenny, who is worried that she is being stalked by a strange man. She asks Toby, for old times’ sake, to follow the man and get to the bottom of things.

What he discovers is a legacy of industrial negligence and a sinister connection with Jenny’s new partner, Roger Colborn. Spurred on by a desire to win Jenny back, Toby begins to ask probing questions. Before he fully understands the risks he is running, he finds himself caught up in a mysterious – and dangerous – tangle of family rivalries and murderous intent. The prospects for his survival until the close of the show suddenly start to look very far from good…

As you’ll be well aware by now, most of my novels involve plots that move the action around a good deal both in time and place. Part of the idea behind Play to the End was to shape a story that would be limited to a single place and a short time frame – in this case Brighton and its immediate surroundings during the first week of December 2002.

The experience was interesting, to say the least! It’s not something I’d necessarily want to do again, although, if I did, I’d probably make things even harder for myself by shortening the time frame still further. What made it work in this book was using as a central character an actor, Toby Flood, who is performing in a play at the Theatre Royal. It’s the last week of its less than successful provincial tour. No West End transfer is in prospect and the panto season’s about to brush Toby and his fellow actors aside. The structure of stage-acting is remorseless, however. There are six evening performances and two matinees to be crammed into the week. How this demanding routine conflicts with the mystery Toby finds himself caught up in almost as soon as he arrives in Brighton is a plot strand in its own right.

The mystery concerns some obscure aspects of Brighton’s history, which were fascinating to explore. Although the Palace Pier features on the cover of the original hardback, it’s fair to say seaside jollity doesn’t get much of a look-in. Real weather does, however. You get what the elements genuinely served up in Brighton in the first week of December 2002.

You also get two stories for the price of one, since the play Toby is performing in is a recently discovered (and entirely fictional) Joe Orton piece scripted by me: Lodger in the Throat. If anyone out there wants to put it on, please get in touch. According to Derek Oswin, Toby’s sly manipulator and stubborn admirer in Brighton, it should probably be played as a tragedy rather than a comedy. But he’d probably add that there’s not always that much difference.