AN award-winning author travels back to Victorian Wrexham for his latest mystery.
Blood Among the Threads is the 13th in David Ebsworth's series of historical fiction novels, which include his popular Yale Trilogy, with many scenes also set in Wrexham in the 17th and early 18th centuries.
In this new release, Wrexham has been hit by a series of accidental deaths which increasingly seem more than accidental. But can those deaths truly be linked to the huge coverlet on display at Wrexham's magnificent 1876 Art Treasures Exhibition? And is there, literally, blood among the coverlet's threads?
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Born in Liverpool, David Ebsworth (pen name of writer Dave McCall), has lived in Wrexham since 1981. Formerly a union organiser, he took up writing after he retired in 2009 and now writes every day without fail.
Though he still manages to find time for a regular morning swim, you can find him writing most mornings, in one of Wrexham's independent coffee shops.
His previous novels cover lesser-known episodes from the Spanish Civil War, 6th century Britain, the 1879 Zulu War, the lives of Elihu and Catherine Yale, the 1815 Waterloo Campaign, and from the tale of a Liverpool-Welsh suffragette family during the turmoil of 1911 (The House on Hunter Street). In addition, David has recently published his non-fiction, Wrexham Revealed, a companion for self-guided walking tours of the city's history.
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David Ebsworth was inspired to write his latest novel after researching for the guidebook.
He said: "I was intrigued by all those major events which took place here in Wrexham during 1876. That was the year when the Football Association of Wales was first organised at the Wynnstay.
"And then, from July until November, there was the enormous Art Treasures Exhibition on the ground where Argyle Street currently stands.
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"It attracted tens of thousands of visitors from all over Britain and abroad. After that, the first National Eisteddfod ever to be held in Wrexham - and, as it turned out, a very famous one. And much more besides.
"It seemed to me that it would be neat to bring these things to a wider audience by using all these events as the backdrop for a murder mystery."
• Blood Among the Threads by David Ebsworth is due to be published on November 1.
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