A Silent Death

Acknowledgements

Most of my research for A Silent Death was done in situ. I have written my last five books in this part of Spain, where I have an apartment that overlooks the Mediterranean and is eminently suited to winter writing. I owe a debt of gratitude to my many British and Spanish friends who helped me strip away the veneer of beaches, sea and sun that tend to characterise the tourist view of this Andalusian coast to reveal a slightly more disturbing reality in the book. In particular, I owe thanks to the chief of the Policía Local at Manilva, whose name ‘Paco’ I borrowed for my errant Guardia, and to single mother Isabel Reina Gil, who became my invaluable translator, researcher and font of all things Spanish, whose apartment I used for Cristina and whose son was the model for Lucas. Finally, I offer both thanks and sympathy to all those deaf-blind victims whose testimonies in the book Deaf-Blind Reality, edited by Scott M. Stoffel, provided a bleak insight into lives without sight or sound.

Peter May

France 2020