While trying out a number of life options, George East scraped a living as a private detective, film and TV extra, club bouncer and DJ, demolition worker, brewer’s drayman, magazine editor, pickled onion manufacturer, snooker club owner, publican, failed rock god, TV and radio presenter, PR and marketing supremo, seamstress and the world’s first and probably only professional bed tester. He gained his knowledge of police procedure and attitudes as a result of a number of arrests for violent behaviour in his extreme youth. In the 1980s, he gained an understanding and liking of plain-clothes policemen while running an inner-city pub which acted as a local (and once as a murder room) for a whole station’s-worth of C.I.D. officers. This is the first Inspector Mowgley Mystery in what his publishers trust will be a series almost as long as the list of the author’s past endeavours to turn a mainly honest crust.