about me

I am a writer, poet and painter, and administer two charities, one of which has supported the conservation of Captain Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans. Born in Doncaster, I was educated in Germany, and at Doncaster Grammar School and at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where I studied German, French and Linguistics. Much-travelled, I have lived in Germany, the US, and in Norway from 2002 to 2006, and speak English, German, Norwegian and French. I now live in Suffolk with my Norwegian wife, Marianne, and our four children, surrounded by thousands of books, a collection of epees, a cat, and a 1966 Triumph Spitfire. I'm also captain of my village cricket club, a school governor, and support the campaign to save my local library.

"The story of Captain Scott gets under your skin... Fascinating." Daily Telegraph

DEAD MEN is "An expertly-told story that captures the detail and spirit of Antarctic exploration, then and now. Not only a compelling novel, but an excellent tribute to Scott and his men." Sir Ranulph Fiennes

"Dead Men is an emotional adventure and an unsettling ghost story. It’s an exploration of those two opposing magnetic forces – the one pulling us onward, and the one pulling us home – and a sympathetic salute to the flawed and foolhardy human spirit." Katie Ward, author of Girl Reading

"A remarkable debut, Dead Men deserves to be read. It’s as simple as that. It will educate and entertain simultaneously, a clever blend of old and new, meticulously morphed to bring together a time forgotten. Told with tenderness and a respect I found touching this is one of my top reads of the year so far. Loved it." Milo's Rambles

"Dead Men grips in more ways than one. It is a historical puzzle but it is also a polar adventure, a love story, a horror story and a ghostly tale. It challenges the conventions of what one can expect from a historical mystery." For winter nights - a bookish blog


ABOUT DEAD MEN
The discovery of Captain Scott’s body in the Antarctic in November 1912 started a global obsession with him as a man and an explorer. One mystery remains – why did he and his companions spend their last ten days in a tent 11 miles from the relative safety of a large food and fuel depot?

Birdie Bowers, an infamously secretive painter, is a woman with a dead man’s name. Her parents were obsessed by her namesake, Henry ‘Birdie’ Bowers, one of Scott’s companions. Almost a hundred years after his death, she is determined to discover what really happened to him. On her way to view some of the things recovered from Scott’s tent, she collapses, and is rescued by Adam, a bored computer geek, who falls in love with her, to the extent of agreeing to travel to the Antarctic with her to discover the site of Scott’s tent, now under 30 metres of ice.

The original beginning was posted here as Too Far For Dead Men To Walk.

The Kindle preview of DEAD MEN posted here is with kind permission of Duckworth (www.ducknet.co.uk), and comprises only the first chapter and part of the second. I have repeated the chapters in order to make 10k words.

You can reach me at rps (at) tettig (dot) com

favourite books

Ulysses - James Joyce
Possession - A.S. Byatt
The Saint series - Leslie Charteris
Inspector Morse series - Colin Dexter
Der Zauberberg - Thomas Mann

my websites

http://www.tettig.com     http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Men-Richard-Pierce/dp