Exclusive: Peter James reveals TV detective Roy Grace’s “missing” wife to get her own novel

The mystery baffled millions of readers of the hugely popular Brighton-based Roy Grace detective novels which began in 2004 with Dead Simple.

The mystery has also started to baffle those discovering the Roy Grace series in its new ITV incarnation which was the top-viewed programme on successive Sunday nights last autumn.

Now, for the first time, Peter is to tell Sandy’s story – a mystery which has helped bind his books so tightly together.

“Writing about her disappearance from her perspective is something I had long been planning to do,” Peter said. “Roy always idolised her, but I’ve given a few clues throughout the Grace novels that she wasn’t perhaps the perfect wife he had always imagined, and (he was) always seeing her through rose-tinted spectacles. Here we get to find out what she was really like and the secrets she held back from him!”

The Sandy novel will be published in May 2024: “And the plan is for it to become a special but linked to the Grace TV series.”

It’s all a measure of just how far the whole Grace concept has gone beyond Peter’s wildest dreams in the past couple of decades: “Initially I had a two-book contract and I thought ‘Well, I'll write the first one. I'll set up the mystery of Roy's missing wife Sandy and then in book two I'll provide the solution and that will be the end of it… and here I am currently writing the 20th. And I'm also writing this stand-alone. I haven't announced this to anybody. I'm three quarters of the way through a stand-alone which has the working title Sandy's Story. It's from the day she disappeared and why she really left Roy.”

It all comes at an exciting time for Roy Grace fans. Episodes six, seven and eight of the ITV series were filmed in Brighton and the surrounding area last autumn, and a screening date is expected shortly. Meanwhile Picture You Dead, the 18th Grace book, hit the book shelves on September 29 last year, and another one is expected this autumn.

The latest episodes to be screened will be Dead Like You, Dead Man’s Grip and Not Dead Yet, with filming finishing last December, the episodes being made successively. Returning to the series are John Simm as Roy Grace, Richie Campbell as DS Glenn Branson, Craig Parkinson as DS Norman Potting and Zoe Tapper as Grace’s love interest Cleo. There will even be another little cameo for Peter who last year appeared as a policeman on the beach. This time he's going to be a detective in the detective room.

Peter was delighted with the viewing figures: “They were absolutely fantastic. The series had the highest Sunday ratings across all the ratings for every episode, even beating Peaky Blinders.

" But the point is that you never know. I've had adaptations of my work in the past which were not of the same quality and the numbers were disappointing so you just never know, to be honest, what to expect. But the quality with this is fantastic and people really like the cast.”