Festive greetings to you all! I’d like you to meet Archie, a Jack Russell terrier from my new novel The Family Shadow. Archie has been busy making a snowman but he’s also been helping Fiona Foley solve a Victorian mystery and dig up long-buried family secrets.

2020 has been an unforgettable year for all of us. As Charles Dickens says: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.” (A Tale of Two Cities) Imagine looking at the newspaper headlines we are bombarded with now and turning back the clock one year. We simply would not have believed what we are going through.

But 2020 wasn’t all bad. I am lucky to live in the country and have animals and a garden. I have to tell you that our normally unruly garden here has never looked so tidy. Even the lawns have neat edges now! And I’ve had plenty of time to write without distractions.

We finally got away from home for a brief two day holiday on a boat on Lough Erne in County Fermanagh. We explored the lower lake which is dotted with wooded islands. One of the largest islands is Devenish, a monastic settlement for over one thousand years from the sixth to sixteenth century. The name in Irish is Daimh Inis meaning ‘Ox Island’.

My garden has certainly got a lot more love this year and has provided a relief in these strange, unusual months. Our county is one of three in Ireland to have just gone back into a sort of lockdown - not as severe as the first country-wide one from mid-March to the beginning of June in Ireland but we’re not allowed to travel out of our county for the next two weeks unless it’s for vital reasons.

Cluedo - Online app of the classic mystery board game

Miss Scarlett in the dining room with the candlestick? Did you ever play Cluedo, the classic mystery board game? This is our family's old set. We hadn't played for years until we recently discovered the online Cluedo app by Marmalade Games.

I'm dreaming of the sea now that we are on Day 3 of the lockdown in Ireland due to the Covid-19 virus. We live in the midlands and are only allowed to travel 2 km from our home so the sea is a faraway memory at the moment. I took this photo in Arthurstown, which is a quiet village on the Wexford peninsula. If you look closely, you'll see a tall ship in the distance.

A happy St Patrick’s Day to you all across the world. The Covid-19 pandemic is affecting each and every one of us and I hope that you will stay safe wherever you live.

We are having an unusual St Patrick’s Day celebration here in our little corner of the world where our pubs and restaurants are closed because the Irish Government has advised us to stay at home. We are bracing ourselves for an increase in infection cases over the next couple of weeks that will put enormous strain on our health system but everyone is working hard to save lives.

This is the sort of photo I use to give me ideas. If you were out for a walk and came across this, would you go in?

What would you find in here? A biscuit tin with an old diary inside? Old love letters from people long dead? A sack of stolen trinkets? Or perhaps a pile of bones? I know if this was a scene from a murder mystery on television, some innocent person would be walking a dog; the dog would go into here and a body would be discovered. It’s a classic.