Riveting mystery

A former Bahrain resident is set to release his latest crime fiction novel Out of Darkness and it should be hitting the bookshop shelves next month.

Retired aircraft maintenance engineer Glen R Stansfield lived in Bahrain with his wife, Jess, a retired pre-school teacher, from January 2014 until August 2023, and his detective thrillers and other works have riveted readers all around the globe.

The latest offering is part of the 66-year-old’s Invidia Syndicate crime series, revolving around Detective Chief Inspector Helene Mackay tasked with spearheading a new crime-fighting initiative.

The group is a government-sponsored, black operations unit. With in-house departments capable of supporting a fast-moving investigation, they operate on the fringes of the law and sometimes beyond.

“The discovery of a shallow grave containing nine young Far-Eastern females creates the first case for Invidia,” revealed Glen, who now lives happily in the sunshine of the Bocas del Toro region of Panama.

“Although not yet fully operational, Helene must pull her team together before they are ready to track down what she suspects is a major human trafficking operation. The trail takes them to Hong Kong to find the source of the trafficking and ultimately leads to a shocking discovery in the UK,” he added.

The novel is the second in the series, the first being the 272-page Harry released in 2016.

“Although the stories are sequential, they are also stand-alone, so it isn’t necessary to have read Harry,” he added.

“The story is not inspired by the kingdom, but Harry has a Bahraini father and is fluent in Gulf Arabic, which I have put to good use in both the books,” he added.

Originally, from Lancashire, the aircraft engineer worked as part of a Search and Rescue helicopter team in the South of England before moving to Bahrain.

Glen’s previous work also includes a fiction title called Fishing for Stones released in 2015.

In 2018, he came out with a popular paperback cookbook titled Around The World in Eighty Dishes, inspired by Around the World in Eighty Days, an adventure novel by the French writer Jules Verne, first published in French in 1872. Glen’s cookbook features recipes from all over the globe.

The author continues to be an active member of the Bahrain Writers’ Circle, a growing community of scribes on the island. In the past, he has led the group’s monthly creative workshops from February 2021 until October 2022 and even gave a talk about being a writer to students at the Canadian School in Bahrain.

Most of his titles are available in paperback and on Kindle from Amazon.