Richard Forster Author

About

I was born at home in Deddington, Oxfordshire, in the late 1950s. Never good at school and just scraping through university, I graduated in 1980. I then became a Registered Mental Nurse and met many interesting personalities. Then, unable to purchase a house, I stepped into the heady world of Information Technology. Finally, I was kicked out of that and left to fend for myself. The prospect of long, suffocating days of inactivity lay before me. I had to find something to do. My first novel started out as a disjointed array of doodles about people I have known. Grammar is not primarily important to an IT consultant, and I had to wrestle and win the battle against the invidious sentence. Be Still as the Tear Drops is my first novel. Please enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. Two others are on the way.

Be Still as the Tear Drops

Be Still as the Tear Drops is a novel about people and how they adapt to their condition. It centres on Tobias Geraghty and his wife, Kate, a young, happily married couple living in the London suburbs of Waltham Forest. Tobias is a large man, a police officer who is well-respected by his colleagues, although he is a little too compassionate. Kate adores him and would defend him fiercely. Everything begins to unravel when their son is diagnosed with eye cancer, something he has inherited from his father. Tobias struggles to come to terms with his guilt and prefers the pub to his own home. Kate is left to care for their son alone. Things worsen, and ultimately, Tobias is accused of murdering a close associate of his wife. He goes into hiding, leaving her bereft. There are others: a police detective, a girl who has no home and doesn’t know her surname, a gentleman street person, and a young man who abuses his mother. Each plays a part in the tale, tied together in the fabric of life. The question is, where do they belong?

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This Year

Tobias is released from prison only to discover that life at home isn’t as he expected. Kate has moved on, and Liam has grown into an active six-year-old attending school. Nothing feels the same at home. Tobias is confined to sleeping in the spare room and feels more like a guest than a husband and father. Unemployment adds to his struggles, and Tobias yearns for a sense of purpose. What’s next? A child goes missing, and there is a death by a Waltham Forest river. Tobias is asked to help, and finally, the light breaks through his darkness; he has found a new purpose.

Next Year

The Little Owl Sings explores the value and beauty of life, love, and dance. You can imagine the scent of chestnuts roasting as a girl swirls the Pizzica at her sixteenth birthday. It’s a story about discretion in the sordid world of crime and the transcendent wonder of classical music. There is an explosion in the London suburbs, and a family is lost to us, and a child goes missing. Tobias, already renowned for his investigative success, is asked to find him. Meanwhile, a lady hiding from the Puglia mafia is running a clothing boutique from a hotel in Truro.

Contact

Hi – thank you for visiting my site. If you’d like to get in touch, even if it’s just to say hello or discuss my books, please feel free to do so, and I will do my best to get back to you.

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