The Price of Dormice

Waiting to cross the road in Wolvercote, Mick is almost run down by Oxford's influential and perpetually angry chief planner Conrad. The near-miss and ensuing violence awaken Mick's sense of justice. Meanwhile Conrad's wife Kimberley demands a divorce, having had enough of her husband's abuse, and gets closer to Mick.

Conrad is colluding with venerable St Mark's College in their sale of a 650-acre farm for development. Strategically located in the OxCam Growth Arc, the development will involve bulldozing a nature reserve and its dormice. Mick joins other ordinary people in protest. Kimberley extends a helping hand to Mick, but tragedy strikes and Mick becomes prime suspect in a murder case.

Unable to prove his innocence, he realises truth hardly matters in this game of privileged versus powerless. The privileged set the rules, forcing Mick and friends to resort to French farmer tactics and blackmail. Romance blooms amid murders, while the fate of the dormice hangs in the balance.

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The Bikers’ Café

A bikers’ café plays a part in The Price of Dormice story.

It’s fictional, even though it’s located somewhere very similar to Oxfordshire’s well-known bikers’ haunt, H Café, on the Oxford-Reading road, near the northern-most Dorchester turn.

The café in the book is a dingy underworld sort of place.

The H Café is a lovely welcoming spot that does fine traditional food, proper tea and excellent coffee. It greets all-comers as warmly as bikers. Worth a visit! (see photo)

Other Organisations and People

All the people in The Price of Dormice are fictitious.

Most of the organisations in the story are fictitious too: including Murdoch Alleyn, Solicitors; Simms & Denby, Accountants; Ballator Construction; St Mark’s College; the Live and Let Live; Harry’s Hash House.

The story is set in Oxfordshire and cannot be told without mentioning certain institutions and job-titles, for example Oxford City Council and its planners; Thames Valley Police, its Commissioner, Chief Constable, officers and civilian staff; Oxford University; etc. All that the story contains about these is fiction.

To be completely clear, The Price of Dormice is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely co-incidental. And of course, no-one would imagine that the real institutions mentioned, or their agents, would act as portrayed here.