A spy in old York

CANDACE Robb is still smiling when we meet. This is a tribute to the American author's stoicism. So far her tour of Britain has been hit by rail chaos, hurricanes and a landslide. Now she has arrived in flooded York.

When she touched down at Heathrow, leaving her Seattle home far behind, Candace was buffeted by storm force winds. In Manchester, Britain's wet weather capital, she was blessed by beautiful sunshine. Ditto Glasgow.

Then her train journey to Edinburgh was disrupted by a landslide on the line. And the journey to York took an hour longer than expected.

Finally she arrived, in pouring rain with the floodwater lapping all around. She is fretting that her riverside hotel will soon be underwater.

More timid writers might be nervous wrecks. But Candace is made of sterner stuff. She's survived worse than this.

"In Seattle, we do have heavy windstorms and power cuts," she explains over a cappuccino in Harker's Bar, St Helen's Square. "And a lot of heavy rain.

"We have had bridges come down at this time of year. Seattlelites are rather stoic about it. This is what happens. In the summer it's cool, dry and sunny.

"It's quite often people have Thanksgiving when you can't roast anything because you have no power."

But Candace is not here to talk about life in storm-torn Seattle, or York's floods. The best-selling novelist has just had two more books published, after all.

York fans will be particularly delighted by the publication of the seventh Owen Archer mystery A Spy For The Redeemer in paperback. This is the latest of her detective stories set in medieval York, with Archer using his one eye to spy for his employer Archbishop Thoresby.

Candace does about three months of research before writing. Some useful information about 14th century Britain can be found on the Internet. But she also relies on e-mails from eminent York historians.

She thinks that Owen Archer would see enough in the modern city to recognise it as his home.

"The Minster was here. It didn't look quite the same as it does now. Many of the churches he would recognise. They may have changed - a lot were redone in the Victorian era. He would recognise St Helen's Square. Some of the structures were still the same. There was the Guildhall, although that would look quite different."

And he would recognise Shambles - it may not have been around in his time, but streets like it certainly were.

Candace says many of her readers are drawn to York from elsewhere in the world after reading her adventures. Sometimes they e-mail her to say they have been following the map of old York in the book to discover Owen Archer's haunts.

Interestingly, Owen's wife, Lucie, is an independent businesswoman - an apothecary - and mother. Is that historically accurate?

"If you look at the poll tax rolls you see that a lot of women were businesswomen in the city," Candace says.

"If you were in the merchant class you had much better odds as a woman in having a career and being more independent.

"I wanted to show that women did partake in business and, when they were good at it, they could be quite independent."

Candace now alternates writing Owen Archer mysteries with another series. Set in Edinburgh in 1297, A Trust Betrayed is the first to star her female detective Margaret Kerr. The book chronicles her quest to catch her husband's killers.

Candace is back working on the next Archer novel, tentatively titled The Cross Legged Knight. She is very keen to keep the series going.

"There's a moment in history around 1381 I would really like to reach - because quite a lot was happening politically in York at that time. I am only in 1371 in the present book."

It looks like being an action packed ten years. Perhaps Owen might even suffer a flood or two...

A Spy For The Redeemer by Candace Robb is published by Arrow, price £5.99. A Trust Betrayed is published by Heinemann price £16.99