Stephen King has a lot to answer for. Maine has been the setting for most of his novels thereby fostering a spooky, supernatural view that does not entirely reflect the most forested state in America. Author Paul Doiron is seeking to change that perception with his riveting series of literary crime novels featuring Maine game warden Mike Bowditch.

     The first The Poacher’s Son has been brought out by Constable & Robinson in the UK with novels two Trespasser and three Bad Little Falls following before the year 2013 is out. Paul was kind enough to take time out from his busy schedule as a writer and journalist to chat with me via Skype from his Maine home about his Edgar nominated creation.

     Matthew: Were the Maine game wardens wary about you when you first started researching for The Poacher’s Son?

     Paul: “They were a little bit wary. I am strictly a civilian, but I am a registered Maine guide. The state licences people to take anyone who wants to go out fishing, hunting or camping into the wilderness. You have to pass a series of tests, which are actually administered by the Maine Warden Service who are our state’s off-road police force. That’s how I’ve gotten to know a lot of those guys and that’s why I write about them.

     “Whenever you deal with law enforcement, they are aware of the fact that their jobs are interesting to the public and obliged, in some ways, to take me on a ride along if I want to go on patrol. I am also a journalist, which adds another element to it. Everyone is suspicious of journalists!

     “My fourth book Massacre Pond is about to come out in the States and I was invited to the Warden Service’s annual meeting and award banquet. That was great because I had wardens that I didn’t even know coming up to me and telling me what big fans they are of my books, which was a great compliment.

     “I do my best to get their job right, because it is a very unusual job. I had to do a lot of research in terms of the specific police procedural aspect of it. Years ago I managed to get hold of a volume, which I’m not sure is meant for the public, which is the Warden Service’s manual that they give to new wardens. It’s about 1,000 pages long and everything from how long their sideburns can be onwards. It is very detailed and it helped me get certain details right. Hearing the jargon that they use, that sort of thing.”

     Were you consciously aiming for a crime fiction novel out of the gate or did it evolve into one once you had set the character of Mike and his world in motion?

     “I started my writing life as a literary writer. I went to Yale and I have a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing. My inspirations were always Hemingway, Fitzgerald and all the modernists, but then about 10 years ago my wife gave me my first PD James novel. I read it and thought this is literature.

     “I always had a long interest in crime fiction and one of my favourite series of all were the Sherlock Holmes books. I began to read more and more crime novels and I discovered that there were many books that were being written that were extremely well done and as good as any books that I was reading in other genres. Things came together when I was spending more time outdoors and I realised that the Maine game wardens are involved in every aspect of crime in the state.

     “Everything from what we usually think game wardens would deal with like catching poachers to things like apprehending people who are growing marijuana in the woods, to finding lost children, snowmobile accidents and dealing with drowned bodies in lakes. They are partnered with every law enforcement agency, so I thought this is great and the perfect job for a crime series. It’s unique to Maine.

     “Game wardens’ job responsibilities vary across the States. In the state of Maine, a game warden is essentially the equivalent to a city cop or a state trooper. They go to the main criminal justice academy and then they go to their own school. They have full investigative and arrest powers, so they can pull you over for drunk driving or investigate rape and murder.”

     Mike Bowditch is an intriguing main protagonist. He does not fit the tired, clichéd mould that we see so often in crime fiction. How did you come up with him?

     “I was pleased with how people reacted to Mike in the first book. I was very nervous about it frankly. Typically in crime fiction you meet the protagonist in a series when he or she has already established themselves in their profession and found their personality. When you meet Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, he is already Philip Marlowe.

     “I was interested in the idea about how someone becomes a hero. How does a younger protagonist, who is a flawed, damaged and very green rookie, turn into a character that you would think of as being more conventional and heroic. I wanted readers to try and cut Mike a little bit of slack because he is very impetuous and headstrong from his upbringing. The book is about and his relationship with his father - a criminal, larger than life man’s man.”

     How important then is it to have two characters in Charley Stevens and Kathy Frost that act as father and mother figures in the series?

     “Mike’s very much discovering the father that he wished he had had in the retired game warden Charley. He had an emotionally abusive distant father that always made him feel less of a man, who he admired nevertheless because of his woodsmanship and bravado. Charley is equally woods wise, but always wise in the ways of a human being. He’s also funny and sharper than he looks. Mike’s sergeant Kathy is a profane, wise cracking person, who I thought Mike needed in his life to challenge him and call him to task for a lot of his self-involvement and youthful over enthusiasm. It felt important to me to have characters like that to serve to some degree as surrogates for the reader.”

     The novel started to stray into literary crime for me when Mike goes back to Charley’s home and sees firsthand the retired life he leads with wife Ora. Those types of scenes peppered throughout the book elevated it into James Lee Burke territory for me.

     “It was something that I had allowed myself to write and there were a number of chapters in the book that are flashbacks too. There’s a scene earlier in the book where Mike is nine years old and he goes out on a trapping expedition with his father that is pretty disastrous, for example. If your expectation from a crime novel is that it hits the ground running and then keeps moving forward at this fast pace, it could seem a little disconcerting to have these chapters where they are very much about relationship building and are quieter too.

     “I was quite nervous about writing those parts, after the fact. While I was writing them I felt that they were right, but I was fully expecting that when the time came for me to find an agent and publishers that those were going to be troublesome areas. Instead what I found was that everybody seemed to have the reaction that you had, which was that those elements of the book took it out of one territory and put it into another which is what I had intended. My philosophy is that if I am not surprised reading the book, then the reader probably isn’t going to be surprised reading it.”

     Let’s move onto one of the most fascinating characters that I have read in crime fiction for a while, Brenda Jean aka BJ. How did you capture the mindset of a fiery, damaged, manipulative young woman with a sting in her tail so well?

     “Brenda Jean is a character who comes into this very remote north woods world as a little girl and grows up at a sporting camp. Maine is actually the most forested state in the US and there are parts of it that are very, very remote. This American Indian girl has been put in one such place where her mother has died and her father has an alcohol problem, while whoever is staying at this lodge for the most part is a man. What does that do to her in terms of shaping her? She is attractive, so she learns a lot about men in terms of how to manipulate them but you can also see she is a very troubled person in terms of her unusual upbringing. It’s hard to read her in terms of how much is she a femme fatale and how innocent she is.”

     How hard was it for you writing the second, third and fourth in the series after the critical success of The Poacher’s Son and the inevitable pressure of publisher deadlines?

     “The advantage that I had with Trespasser was that the publication of The Poacher’s Son was delayed by a year. I had sold it as part of a three-book contract, so I actually knew I was going to have three books to tell what was going to be the beginning of Mike’s story. However, I had this two-year window when my US publisher decided that they thought it was going to be a breakthrough book and wanted to give it a long, lead time to unroll it.

     “What that meant for me in terms of the second novel was that I had to fly on my own without a sense of what the reaction was going to be to the first one. Now I am on a book a year schedule, it does change the way you go at these things but what makes it easier now is that I am working with characters that I know a lot better. If Charley or Kathy reappears I know what they are likely to say, but I still try and leave myself room for things.”

     An Edgar nomination for your first book helped get momentum behind you. How pleasing was it to get affirmation from such a prestigious body so early in your career?

     “The Edgar nomination was amazing. What was even more amazing to me before that was that the early reviews for The Poacher’s Son were all so positive. I kept waiting for the shoe to drop and it never did with that particular book until the Edgars came along. It was a tremendous, affirmative experience for me and it gave me lots of confidence going forward.”

     How did you want to portray your beloved home state Maine to the outside world?

     “Warts and all, definitely. Stephen King has certainly introduced Maine to a worldwide audience but in a way that people think of as being supernaturally focused. One of my motivations is to render the state of Maine as vividly as possible to people who have never been here before. I live in a special and unique place. Like anywhere in the world it has its flaws and dark corners, but the incredible beauty of the nature here is something that I want to get across. It’s something that I respond to in really good fiction and crime fiction.

     “I am open in my admiration for James Lee Burke, who I think is masterful at portraying southern Louisiana especially. He is most associated with the Cajun country. You read those books and you can smell the night blooming flowers. You can hear the thunderstorms rolling in across the Gulf of Mexico. It gives me something to aspire to in my own books.”

     Do you think a rising backlash in the face of western society’s obsession with urbanisation and technology has played into your hands with readers?

     “The world in general is becoming much more urbanised and as that process takes place people become more disconnected from aspects of country living whether it is something as simple as agriculture. People don’t know where their meat is coming from. They think a steak comes from the store, so I have an audience that is not as familiar with what it is that I am trying to describe. I want to try and educate as well as entertain.

     “There is a reality TV show called Northwoods Law, which is about Maine game wardens. I did an article about it for my magazine and I asked them how they got fixated on this themselves. They said they started with this question, “What was Alaska before Alaska?” If you go back 100 years, it was the state of Maine. That was what drew them up here.

     “It might feel exotic as it is not a way of life many people are experiencing right now like they used to in previous generations. One of the interesting things for me is to watch where books are being translated and Eastern Europe is covered well. I have sold translation rights to Romania, Czech Republic and Slovenia, and that feels very right for me. I am glad Constable & Robinson are having success with me in the UK too, which is the birthplace of crime fiction. You are the toughest critics!”

Please check out Paul’s website to learn more about him.

     After a couple of months hard work, I have launched my new travel business where you can hire me to take a photography package and write article copy or buy my photos for commercial, editorial and personal use.
     Photography is a huge passion of mine and has kept me sane when I’ve had setbacks in life. Hopefully it will lead to a new profitable chapter in my career, so please feel free to help spread the word for me. Thanks, Matt

     Debut novelists are given big marketing pushes to try and stand out from the crowd and, often, the spotlight is far too bright in relation to the quality of the actual book. Thankfully Norwegian by Night by American writer Derek B. Miller delivers on the publishing hype with its fascinating 82-year-old Jewish American ex-Marine Sheldon Horowitz at the core.
     A meandering novel that straddles the crime and literary fiction genres, it is being promoted hard by Faber with British broadsheet newspapers tipping Derek as one of the writers to watch in 2013.
     I was lucky enough to spend an hour talking with the former Boston native about his intriguing premise, the difficult themes it tackles, and his hopes for this new writing career, which would have to complement his “day job” where he is the Director of The Policy Lab, and a senior fellow with the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. While The Policy Lab is based in Boston, Miller resides in Oslo with his wife and children.
     Matthew: Are you surprised with how enthused the British press are for your book?
     Derek: “It does feel that there is a certain coterie of people who have a strong connection to this book and become very strong advocates for it. Word of mouth amongst the intelligentsia of Britain, so to speak, seems to be getting around. As soon as The Times pegged me as being one of the writers to watch in 2013, it must have had some impact.”
     It stands out in the sense that it meshes two genres successfully. How do you see it?
     “It’s being sold as a crime novel in Britain whereas in half the countries it’s being published, it is not. I don’t really read much crime. The crime came much later than the character - it was a theme driven book. Partly for me to grow as a writer, I needed something that had a more traditional structure than a previous manuscript I had written. Writing in the crime genre forced some discipline on me as a writer, which I need. Ultimately, I really wanted to write about Sheldon.”
     What was the launch pad for the themes that you explore?
     “There are various themes and the question is whether a story could be found in the interrelationship of the themes. I wrote this in 2008 and the birth of my son was one of the major topics. Sheldon was a character from a previous manuscript that wasn’t published and won’t be in the future, even though I am pulling stuff from it.
     “In many ways, I wanted to explore Norway. I knew we were going to move up here. I am less of the view that you should write about what you know than write about what interests you because presumably you’ll learn. It reminds me of an interview with Jerry Seinfeld after his TV show finished. At the end of it there was a Q&A where somebody from the audience said, “Why don’t you do any movies?” I liked his answer which was, “If you go to a bad movie, it’s two hours. If you are in a bad movie, it’s two years.”
     “Writing a book takes a tremendous amount of time. I bore easily so I needed themes that I wanted to stay with. My grandparents’ generation was obviously passing and I was very concerned about how they are going to be remembered. Are they going to be taken seriously or are they going to be caricatured? That generation defined the 20th century and the platform we are building off now.
     “Sheldon was a Jewish American character that I wanted to portray because I hadn’t seen it done enough or perhaps at all, but I had seen these people in life. There was a disconnect between Jewish men from that generation which was partly their own fault, at least in entertainment. That sort of clownish character has no resonance in my generation. There were 500,000 Jewish American soldiers in World War Two and that doesn’t appear in fiction. The Jewish population in the States is about six million so that’s a huge percentage, not to mention the ones that went to Korea and Vietnam. It doesn’t come up in conversation. It is so prevalent, yet so absent.
     “A very particular sense of Jewish identity in the States is connected to that kind of emancipation that took place during the war. Given that so much of the Jewish immigration took place after WWI (though most of my family came earlier), it was during WWII that our “Americanness” was as much forged by American experience as European conduct. I don’t want to sound jingoistic or, tub thumping, but many of the complexities and contradictions that results in Sheldon — who more or less pushed his son into a Vietnam war that he didn’t quite believe in — come from this particular Jewish-American read of the American experience vis-à-vis our experience in Europe. We were given a chance to fight for something bigger than ourselves and we did.”
     Korea is almost the forgotten war, so how interesting was it to research that period?
     “Korea was a weird war, because I think there were only about 30 American journalists fielded over there during the entire war. We often forget from the American perspective that it was a United Nations war. It wasn’t one of ours, though we are still there. We have never stopped being on the Demilitarised Zone between the north and south. I have a PhD in International Relations and an MA in National Security, so I deal with war in my day job. So I had some background and knowledge here to draw upon — though I had to look up plenty of details.
     “The one thing key to me about Korea was how soon it happened after WWII, which is something we forget. It was only five years later. A lot of the young ones who couldn’t fight WWII wanted to fight in Korea. One has to be careful about portraying it as Jewish guilt or Holocaust survivor syndrome, because it’s not. It was more a case of, ‘I wanted to kick ass with my countrymen, but I couldn’t because I was 14.’ It’s an impulse (wise or otherwise) that is inherent to being a guy.”
     Taking that into consideration, how difficult was it to write the scenes between Sheldon the Korean War veteran and his son Saul, who is fighting the Vietnam War?
     “Emotionally, I sat at my desk and cried when I wrote those parts. It can sound pathetic but, on the other hand, if I am not sincerely touched by what I am creating then I am not achieving what I want. There were two scenes that were the hardest to write that I was putting off for a while, but I knew were going to be central. One was the scene where Sheldon, in his mind, goes on his son’s final journey in Vietnam. I could easily have made it back story and never walked the readers through it. I didn’t know how it was going to play out when I was doing it.
     “The other one was the conversation between father and son when Saul comes back from Vietnam. It was only upon writing and editing it that I was able to go back to earlier parts of the book and make sure the foreshadowing leading up to that scene was balanced. It wasn’t an argument. It was a discussion that had implications. It was everything that Saul was trying to do to be the son that he thought his father wanted him to be while for Sheldon it was to recognise that he didn’t have the words to tell his son not to do it. If the scenes didn’t move me, they didn’t get in.”
     You also focus on another war that often gets lost in the historical mix, that of the recent Balkan conflict. Why that one in particular?
     “This was one I was familiar with from my normal line of work. From a Western viewpoint I think the essence of the story was that as soon as there wasn’t an obvious villain or hero we all turned over the channel. We thought, given the conduct of the Serbs, that supporting the opposition was the obvious thing to do, but we didn’t want to inflame the war. In fact, The KLA also acted atrociously.
     “I made up the actual incidents, but I kept the names of actual villages where such events happened. I got those from newspapers. There is a tremendous amount of hatred there. For those of us who don’t truly understand the Balkans, we don’t realise how drenched in blood that region is.
     “There are a significant number of people from there who are up here in Oslo now. In my novel, virtually everyone is an immigrant. Some have acculturated. Most haven’t. As for Sheldon, Norway doesn’t really have a Jewish history, for example. It’s largely alien to them. There has never been a Jewish history here like in London, or Prague, or Vienna. And this is unusual for Europe.
     “More generally, I wanted to create a set of juxtapositions, because they are fun to use when telling stories. So immigrants — especially hostile ones — against the peaceful blue and sun of Norway was very appealling for a storyteller. Meanwhile, it’s topical too. One of the defining qualities of Norway right now is that it’s punching way above its weight class in terms of international political impact and I think they know it. Last I checked, it was the seventh largest gross contributor to the United Nations which is amazing for a country of around five million people. They have a huge influence on the world in terms of humanitarian and development funding. I’m certain it is well intentioned. But it would benefit by more strategic clarity, policy tools, and coordinated conduct. But now we’re moving into my day-job concerns.”
     How much fun was it to write dialogue for an 82-year-old character?
     “Fun. Big fun. You have to be true to the references, the tone of voice, the humour and the sensibility. If I may make a bold statement, Jews are funny. Maybe it’s because we’ve seen it all. I wanted Sheldon to be a serious character, but I didn’t want him to lose his sense of humour. Sheldon makes fun of the world. He can get away with anything as an old man. As I writer I would really cut loose with it. I think there should be a lot more characters of this age.
     “On a personal note, something that is really fun for me at 42 years old, when life normally begins to narrow and you have to accept who you are and what you do, suddenly somebody threw open a door and said to me that I can go through here too! Behind it is this Wonderland, Narnia almost, populated by people and conversations that I never knew I would have in the literary and publising worlds. Meanwhile, an 82-year-old Jewish man wandering around Scandinavia is suddenly the talk of the town.”
     Was keeping Sheldon’s child companion Paul silent throughout the story a conscious decision from the outset?
     “I never set out to have him silent the entire time - I just went from scene to scene. If you are a traumatised kid to begin with and then you have another traumatic event like he has at seven years old, I just kept asking myself what would he do here. I kept feeling he wouldn’t speak. If he spoke a language, would it be Albanian, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian or Norwegian? I kept not wanting to answer that.
     “The one scene where I decided he wasn’t going to say a word was when they are in the little blue house by the water. He wakes up, sees Sheldon and throws his arms round him. It wasn’t so much a hug of affection; more a drowning victim latching onto something that was floating. I respected what I was witnessing rather than what I wanted to write. If they would have had more direct conversations, it would have made Sheldon’s experiences in the past and present feel diverting.”
     When is the next Derek B. Miller tome rolling onto the presses?
     “You are the first person I have told this to, which is that I have 350 pages of the next book written. It’s a hell of a start. I don’t know how long it will end up, apart from being somewhere between 250 and 500 pages. It’s more of an ensemble piece than a one-man show, as it was with Sheldon. I’d like to have a draft done in the spring. I want to sit on it and see where we are. What I am sure about is that the only way to follow up Sheldon Horowitz is not to complete with him, but create a new world afresh. As a hint, I’ll be taking readers to New England…
     “I am trying to break into an incredibly difficult industry walking the fine line of literary commercial fiction. The American release is coming out in May and other countries during the summer. I’m not depending on this financially. If it does well, that would be a beautiful thing but I am not counting on it. As it is, I’m feeling very lucky to simply be here. A debut novel like this coming out in eight languages and counting? I’m speechless.
     “So anyway, the next one is more of a mystery and family drama than a thriller. There is no chase or shootouts. People won’t be waiting three years for it, though! What I can say is that my inspiration comes more from Safran Foer, Chabon, Franzen, Maxwell, Salter, Auster and Ford than the hard-boiled school of crime. So if that appeals to your readers, please look for me.”

Click here to buy Norwegian by Night. Learn more about Derek on his Facebook page.

     I haven’t been brave enough to try out the self-publishing route yet, despite reading up on it and knowing people that have turned a tidy buck through the generous royalty split on offer compared to publishers.
     If you carry out the proper research into your own particular genre, write an enjoyable book (people sometimes forget that part!), find a classy editor to weed out mistakes, use an attention grabbing cover and employ savvy marketing then you will stand a great chance of picking up enough sales through the Kindle, Kobo, Nook and other digital platforms to make it worthwhile.
     One such writer who has blazed a trail, and deservedly so, is Stoke native Mel Sherratt. She has carved out a very rich seam for her gripping books across genres such as mystery, police procedural and psychological suspense - and she shows no sign of stopping much to the delight of her loyal and growing audience worldwide.

    
     Two others writers who are looking to enjoy similar sales success are John Gradwell and E J Mack. John has created an amusing fictional spoof memoir of music hall star Frankie Funnybone who was a character in his Radio 4 sitcom “Are You From The Bugle?” It offers something pleasantly different to the comedy norm and John should be applauded for chancing his arm with his book.
     Meanwhile, EJ has fashioned a superb Italian family saga called “A Silent Shore” that would not look out of place on UK bookshop shelves with the backing of a publisher. It transported me to another place and time hook, line and sinker, the characters delightfully fleshed out and the story imbued with enough moving twists and turns to satisfy even the most hard-hearted reader.
     I urge you to check out all three authors (including following them on Twitter below) and use their experiences to help your own self-publishing adventure whether you want to focus on digital or print off hardbacks and paperbacks into the bargain. It takes great writing, guts, patience and marketing nouse, however there is no time like the present if you have a burning passion.

Mel - @writermels / John - @jgradwell / EJ -@EJ_Mack

Recommend highly David Gaughran’s blog and book to learn more about self-publishing

     Visiting cities and places out of their “traditional” season is one of life’s great joys. Not only do you escape the crowds, you get a better sense of how the locals go about their business and unwind thereafter.
     When my wife and I saw an opportunity to escape the January gloom, we decided upon Madrid on the back of recommendations and a desire to visit Spain for the first time together since our wedding last year.

    
     Incredibly, we managed to battle through the snow to Gatwick and lift off with barely an hour’s delay which is testament to the airport’s consistent excellence.
     Tip one for visitors to Madrid airport in search of the Metro. Be prepared for a long walk to reach their underground rail system and look into purchasing a Metrobus pass for the time you spend there.
     Two blissfully easy line changes later, we emerged into the open air at Sevilla and the short walk to our Vincci Centrum hotel located conveniently near the Gran Via. A quick costume switch and our weekend away began.
     Thankfully there are a plethora of bars dotted around Madrid and we decamped straight into one for a cheeky cerveza and vino blanco before strolling past the Teatro Espanol and into a couple of tapas bars. Feeling nosy, we went to the glamorous Westin Hotel to see out the evening with a glass of wine in the splendid bar full of piano music.
     Blessed with sun the next morning, we hopped on the Metro to Opera and came face to face with the imposing Palacio Real. Keen to take advantage of the good weather, we opted on a stroll towards the Plaza de Espana.

    
     What awaited us was breathtaking. An intriguing mix of old New York and Spanish elegance, we saw why several photographers were busily snapping away and I was no different. The light cascading through the trees and across the faces of the statues was perfect for arresting black and white shots with the imposing buildings standing guard.
     A stroll north led us around to the underrated Parque del Oeste and lovely views across the valley before we dove into La Latina with its wonderful array of friendly bars and mouthwatering restaurants. I can think of worse ways to spend an afternoon than sampling local delicacies and silky sherry in places such as Tapasentao, El Viajero and El Tempanillo situated on or around Calle de la Cava Baja.

    
     We had heard Plaza Mayor and Puerta del Sol were very touristy and a quick walk through each backed that assertion up. Sinister street performers and gaudy shops almost seemed like another city altogether and worth avoiding if you can. Instead we opted for a churro and coffee around the Plaza Jacinto Benavente ahead of a rain dodging scamper back to the hotel and much needed nap to recharge the batteries for our second evening out.
     The Metro stop at San Bernardo is as good a place as any to work your way into the vibrant Malasana district peppered with students where lively tapas bars such as Albur, La Isla del Tesoro and Pepe Botella were the pick.
     Heading down Calle de Fuencara, we cut across Calle de Augusto Figueroa to the fun Chueca district where we happened upon a new mini food mall called Mercado de San Anton that was crammed full of trendy locals.
     It’s worth arriving early to grab a stool. We came too late, so walked down Calle Libertad to find a wonderful tapas place called El Bocaito where we wolfed down anchovies and sherry soaked foie gras with a glass of red.
     Still feeling peckish, we managed to grab a table at the respected La Barraca round the corner where we were served up the popular house paella dish that hit the spot and then some before we hit the sack.

    
     With the sun gracing us again on Sunday morning, it was a no-brainer to thread our way through the streets down to El Rastro’s flea market around Plaza de Cascorro and Ribera de Curtidores. We found the antiques shops dotted around far more interesting than the stalls, the atmosphere on the streets making up for the lack of invention on offer from the market holders.
     Desperate to milk the sun while it still shone, we wound our way through the back streets to Parque el Retiro where we joined the cavalcade of people promenading or exercising. A rare red squirrel sighting was the highlight!

    
     We finished up our trip with a visit to the Museo del Prado. If you are a fan of religious imagery and Spanish painter Goya then it will appeal. If not, like us, then delight in the architecture of the building instead.
     After a trouble free journey back to the airport and easyJet flight back, we could reflect on a charming weekend away in a city that often gets lost in the hoopla of Barcelona and cheap thrills of the southern Costas.

     Rough Guide’s guidebook was invaluable for locating bars and restaurants, while the laminated pull out street map in the DK Eyewitness Travel guide was essential.

Check out more travel photos here and start planning your own Madrid trip right now!