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Tom Palmer

August 14, 2009

I’m just back from a week in Ghana, home of the footballer Michael Essien. I was there to research my third Football Detective book, Off Side, which features African football, and comes out a month before the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
 
It was an amazing trip. I got to see an under 15s  football tournament in Accra and the national team’s under 20s training, as well as a Ghana Premier League match. And, away from the football, I was shown round a cocoa farm in the north of Ghana by the people who make Dubble bars.
I also got to see a part Africa I had never been to before. Villages a long way from cities, fields being burned off after harvest, pot holed roads leading into the middle of the bush. It was a real privilege.
 
I needed to see all the above to help me write Off Side. If I set a book in a certain place I like to go there. To see it for real.
 
The second Football Detective – Dead Ball – is out now. Some of that book is set in Russia. I went to Russia twice to research that. The best bits of those trips were a tour of the Luzhiniki stadium, where Man U won the 2008 Champions League final. And watching a billionaire’s private army in action in a Moscow hotel. The villain in Dead Ball is a football-loving Russian billionaire. So that helped hugely.

 

 
As I said, I like to see a place if I’m writing about it. That is why, as well as Ghana and Russia, Burnley has been so important to me.
 
My Football Academy series is about a Premier League under-twelve football academy. I wanted to get that right too. I’d never been to an academy. So I asked Burnley FC – newly promoted to the Premier League, and ten miles from where I live – if I could go and visit them. They were great. I talked to coaches, players and parents. And I watched lots of training.

 

 
I know I am really lucky to have this job. I get to write about things I love, as well as travel to places I would never otherwise be able to go to. It’s a dream come true for me.

The problem now is that I have to worry about where to set my next books.
 
Where do you think?

 

The Caribbean?
New York?
Milan?
 
If you have any good ideas you can email me via my website www.tompalmer.co.uk

Tom Palmer

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