Jean G Goodhind Collection

Jean G Goodhind writes the Honey Driver series, a success in Germany before it came out in digital and paperback in the UK.

This series is based on the time when she was ‘Honey Driver’, owning and running a nine bedroomed guest house three miles from the centre of Bath where not all the guests were invited and some that trod the creaking floorboards had been dead for years! It was that kind of place. Unlike Honey Driver, she does not collect antique underwear.

There really was a Bath Hotels and Restaurants Association of which she was an inaugural member. With the onset of the internet it became defunct, but it was useful and fun, not least because they used to have get togethers once a month and sometimes local wine merchants would grace these events with both their presence and their merchandise.

In the series, Bath hotelier Honey Driver and her police opposite number, Doherty, frequent the Zodiac Club, a below ground nightclub/bar where publicans, hoteliers and like shake a leg in the wee hours after their customers have fallen out of the door or are safely tucked up in bed. It did exist and still does under another name on the corner of North Parade. Jean can still smell the smoke from grilled steaks sizzling on iron platters. Lovely! Peruse a Honey Driver book and you might smell it too.