The Sally Spencer / Alan Rustage / James García Woods Homepage

Sally Spencer / Alan Rustage / James Garcia Woods

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Here are the latest reviews for Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness and Dangerous Games, both of which are now available in the States.

The characters of this outstanding series are now familiar to regular readers as old friends, and the stories are well written and perfectly plotted. The ending is yet another cliffhanger, but we know that Woodend will overcome every adversity - at least we hope he will.
Library Journal review of Dangerous Games

Well-developed characters, a touch of wry humor, deft writing, and plenty of unexpected twists make Spencer's Charlie Woodend series a top-notch British police procedural that belongs in all mystery collections worth their salt.
Booklist review of Dangerous Games

... the payoff, which piles surprise upon surprise, is well worth the wait.
Kirkus review of Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness

A fine period mystery with a clever plot.
Booklist review of Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness

A few days ago, I received the following email from Stan Ulrich, the editor of the very informative and entertaining mystery site StopYoureKillingMe.com:

Dear Sally/Alan
Your website and book covers in the Blackstone series, as well as the article at Contemporary Authors Online, suggest you are “really” Sally, and that Alan is a pseudonym. (Sorry, Alan)
But most people I've encountered online think the contrary. Fantastic Fiction states directly that Alan is a real person, and Sally the pseudo (although saying as well that 'she' was a teacher).
(No one seems to think that James is “real” - maybe he/she is the brains behind the whole outfit.)
Would you help us out here?
Cheers Stan

I sent Stan an email, confirming that most people he's encountered online are right, and while I was writing it, it occurred to me that other readers might be equally confused. So here's the story.

Some time back in the Old Stone Age, when I first started writing sagas, my agent sent Salt of the Earth to a publisher, and had it returned immediately with a note saying that though the intended market was women readers, the book had obviously been written by a man, as was evidenced by the fact that all the interesting characters were male. My agent disagreed (in language I wouldn't use on this site!), and said the publisher had been unreasonably prejudiced by the name on the title page, so the next time we submitted it, we'd use a woman's name. The book was immediately accepted by the wonderful Rosemary de Courcey at Orion, but once she learned the real gender of the author, Rosie said - quite understandably - that since she'd bought it under a woman's name, she reserved the right to publish it under a woman's name. And so Sally was born.

Later, when I began writing the DCI Woodend books for Severn House, we decided to keep on using the Sally name, since it had already built up a readership. When I wrote the books based on Paco Ruiz, a homicide detective in the Spanish Civil War, I thought I should use another name, and came up with James Garcia Woods, which was almost - but not quite - the name of the owners' son at my favourite bar in Madrid. Finally, when the Blackstone books started to come out, my publisher thought we'd still use the Sally name, so they were published as “Sally Spencer writing as Alan Rustage”, although it would be closer to the truth to say they were by “Alan Rustage writing as Sally Spencer writing as Alan Rustage” .

Book News

Hardbacks

Both Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness and Dangerous Games are now available in the USA. For reviews, please see the top of the page.

Trade paperbacks

Following on from the success of Stone Killer and a A Long Time Dead in trade paperback, Severn House has just published Sins of the Fathers in the same format, and will be publishing the paperback of Dangerous Games in August. These paperbacks are the same size as the hardbacks, though considerably cheaper.
Finally, Allison and Busby are currently reprinting The Salton Killings, the first in the Woodend series, and that should be available soon.

Large Print

Severn House large print books have exactly the same format as the normal hardbacks, though of course they are thicker (yet only a little more expensive!). I would have expected only libraries to be interested in them, but recent sales returns suggest that that some of my readers are buying them, too. With this in mind, it would be remiss of me to fail to point out that Blackstone and the Firebug and Stone Killer are both being published in large print this spring.