ABOUT ME

The atmospheric streets of Bergamo's Città
Alta make a perfect setting for a crime novel

These days I divide my time between writing crime novels and short stories and writing about Italy, while doing some freelance communications work for long standing clients.

I was a journalist for more than 35 years, working in newspapers, television, and PR.

About ten years ago I began writing about Italy as a freelance travel writer. I combined my interest in Italy with my fascination for detective fiction by writing my first two crime novels, Death in the High City (2014) and The Shooting in Sorrento (2017), which are both Butler and Bartorelli mysteries set in different parts of Italy.

To mark the tenth anniversary of the publication of Death in the High City in 2024, the novel was reissued with a picture of the historic Via Colleoni on the front cover, The street is an historic thoroughfare in Bergamo’s upper town that is a key location in the novel.

I chose to set my third novel, The Body Parts in the Library, in a village in South Yorkshire. The novel introduces the Library Ladies, Sallie Parker and Jo Pudsey. I know Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire very well. I was born in Nottingham and my first job in journalism was as a reporter on the Nottingham Evening Post. I later spent some happy years working on a newspaper in Sheffield, the Morning Telegraph, which was where I met my husband, Jon Culley, who went on to be a national newspaper sports writer.

We now live in Leicestershire and have two grown up children. I like to spend as much time in Italy as possible, but when I am at home I make do with cooking Italian food, eating Italian food, reading about Italy and writing about Italy.

I am a holder of the Institute of Linguists Diploma in Italian and for more than 30 years I have been a member of the Dante Alighieri Society, a society for promoting the Italian culture and language abroad.

After moving to Leicestershire, I had a part time job in a library for a few years. I have always been a big supporter of libraries and I am now a champion of the role of the Library Assistant, which I hope comes across in my latest novel, The Body Parts in the Library, published in September 2020.

-- Val Culley

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