This novel is dedicated with love to my children Kathryn and Luke who, thankfully, are still too young to know what fine people they are.
There was no doubt in my mind about what happened to Jon Shannow when he rode into the mountains, wounded and alone. He was dying. And Jerusalem beckoned.
Yet once the novel was published reader reaction was immediate. How long to the next Shannow story? In those days reader’s letters did not arrive in bulging post bags and I was able to answer all of them. The answer was simple: Thank you for your letter, and I am glad you enjoyed Jon Shannow’s tale, but he is dead. There will be no more adventures.
I sent just such a response to a fan in Liverpool. He knew better and wrote back immediately. ‘No he’s not! No way!’
It was a real shock – as if he knew something I didn’t. I showed the letter to one of my test readers. Her amused response was ‘Hey, maybe he’s right. You don’t know everything, Dave. You’re only the author.’
From that moment I started wondering about Shannow. Could there have been some miracle on the mountain?
At around the same time I received a number of reviews for Wolf In Shadow. Some were very good, some were indifferent, but one was downright vile. One of the lines in it struck me particularly. I dread to think of people who look up to men like Jon Shannow. The writer was named Broome.
