The Fire Baby

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Beverley Cousins, my editor, for providing inspiration and advice in perfect measures, Faith Evans, for her determination to elevate the quality of writing in The Fire Baby, and Trevor Horwood, for creative and meticulous copy-editing. This book again centres on the case of a car-accident victim locked in a coma. I am grateful for the welcome extended to me by the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability, Putney, and am happy to point out that donations can be made through its website: www.rhn.org.uk. I would like to thank Donald and Renee Gillies, and Jenny Burgoyne for helping with the text. Darren Fox, of Ely Fire Station, provided technical advice on the properties of fire. The US Air Force let me tour Mildenhall base, a privilege for which I am grateful. The oddities of the East Anglian weather system were expertly explained to me by Weather-quest, the forecasting company at the University of East Anglia. Midge Gillies, my wife, stepped in brilliantly to break the occasional logjam of ideas.

The Landscape of the Fens is, of course, real but topographical and historical details have been occasionally altered for the sake of the plot. All characters are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to real persons is entirely coincidental.