my grandfather the film-maker

The character of the dashing and glamorous Victor St-Remy in the book is based partly on my grandfather, Robert Masson, who was the heir to a fortune and a cameraman working with Pathe Films in Paris in the 1930s.

At top he is at the shoot of Melo, a 1932 film he worked on. He's the guy on the far right, with a moustache!

And at bottom he is with his grandmother, on whom Madame St-Remy is based, and their lovely Voisin car, in 1930.

The Case of the Diamond Shadow is a fun mystery novel set in England in the glamorous 1930's. Its main characters are Daisy Miller and George Dale, two young people whose lives are irrevocably changed when a rich, mysterious Australian woman, Mrs Peabody, puts an ad in their local newspaper. Soon they are whisked off into a whirl of high adventure, high society, the exploits of a daring jewel thief who calls himself the Diamond Shadow and the casebook of the famous dashing detective, Philip Woodley-Foxe! When the Diamond Shadow threatens the most famous gem in the world, the Blue Moon Diamond, given to film star Olivia Marlow by her lover, the Prince of Luxenstein, the ingenuity of our friends is stretched to the absolute max, with clues contained in all sorts of things, including an enigmatic comic strip in Young Reporter true-crime magazine..

The Case of the Diamond Shadow is coming out with ABC Books in July 2008.