Writer Glenda Young reveals plot of her third Scarborough-set cosy crime series - don't miss her book signing in the town

Called Foul Play, it features a team of crazy golfers whose members book into the Seaview ahead of a tournament.

"For the book, I created a fictional nine-hole course on the harbour and every hole has a model of a Scarborough landmark including the Stephen Joseph Theatre, the Spa, the lighthouse and the windmill,” said Glenda.

"The team take crazy golf very seriously: they come dressed in the same outfits, they have training and to them crazy golf should be an Olympian sport.”

She and husband Barry are crazy golfers, have completed, among others, the courses in Scarborough, Filey and Bridlington, and write a blog about the courses they complete. “Only two or three times a year,” said Glenda, “we’re not obsessive.” She also drew inspiration from Tilting at Windmills: How I Tried to Stop Worrying and Love Sport by Andy Miller.

In Foul Play, the captain of the rival team also books into the Seaview, is murdered and Helen is drawn into solving the mystery.

A key scene is set at the Central Tramway in Marine Parade. Glenda’s heroine is riding up from the seafront and as the car passes the carriage coming down from Marine Parade, she fleetingly sees the murderer.

"She shouts ‘Stop the funicular’. I really wanted that scene,” said Glenda.

For authenticity in what can be seen in the moment the carriages pass, she and Barry enacted the scene. Then staff, who saw Glenda with her notebook, asked what she was doing and stopped the tram halfway for her.

"It was amazing they did that for me,” she said.

Glenda loves funiculars and said: “If I could afford it and if someone commissioned it I would go round the world and write about every single funicular.”

Foul Play follows Murder at the Seaview Hotel and Curtain Call at the Seaview Hotel and is out later this year.

Glenda, who lives near Sunderland, loves Scarborough and sometimes rents an apartment at The Sands where she writes. She and Barry married at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.

Her Seaview books led to a nomination in the Dead Good Reads category at last year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival held in Harrogate. She was up against Val McDermid and the winner Richard Osman.

She is now in early talks to turn the books into a TV series.

Glenda also writes sagas and is now working on a trilogy set in the north-east during the First World War. It features three friends who work in a toffee factory.

Her research has taken her to Halifax, home of Quality Street, and the University of York to look at the Rowntree archives.

She will be signing copies of her books – both sagas and cosy crime series – at Mrs Lofthouse's Book Emporium, Queen Street, Scarborough, on Thursday January 12 at 3pm.