COMP CLOSED | Book Giveaway | The Raffles Affair

A classic whodunnit gets a modern makeover

• Set in Singapore’s iconic Raffles Hotel, The Raffles Affair follows the adventures of MI6 agent Victoria West as she looks to solve a series of murders.
• The story blends together the familiar fun and glamour of the old Golden Age detective novel, epitomised by Agatha Christie, with a new twist.
• The Raffles Affair is the first novel in the Victoria West series. Each book will be set in a new, exotic location – from Raffles Hotel in Singapore to the ancient city of Petra in Jordan to a Michelin starred truffle restaurant in the South of France. Perfect escapism at a time when travel is restricted!
• Vicki Virtue is a New Zealand travel writer and second Writer-in-Residence in the Writer’s Residency programme, following Pico Iyer.
• The Residency was established to give writers are given the opportunity to stay at Raffles for up to four weeks to be inspired to create new literary works.
• Vicki will take up her residency in August to work on her second Victoria West novel.
• Raffles has just offered Vicki a residency at their new Udaipur Hotel in India and she will travel there from Singapore.

Having travelled to more than fifty countries, Vicki has long been fascinated by the mystique of Raffles Hotel, with its rich literary heritage as a meeting point for global travellers. With her love of travel and adventure, it was Vicki’s admiration for great literature and storytellers who have stayed with Raffles Singapore, including Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham, that led her to write.

The idea of writing this novel was conceived aboard a glorious dahabiya on the River Nile.
As Vicki lounged on the deck, with a cool lemon drink in one hand and Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile in the other, a fortuitous sign sailed past – the SS Sudan, the exact same vessel that Agatha had sailed on in 1933. Those were the days of dressing for dinner and travelling in the utmost style and comfort. Each book in the series will be set in a new and exotic location.

Born in New Zealand, Vicki Virtue always dreamed about travelling the world and writing about her adventures. If she wasn’t poring over her world map on her parents’ living room floor, then you can bet she’d be tucked up in bed devouring Jane Austen, Wilkie Collins and Agatha Christie classics.

Although never setting out to be a writer – she did win first place (and an ice-cream sundae) for a children’s story she penned for Jabberwocky Magazine at the age of thirteen. The Two Mouseketeers was hardly an illustrious beginning – but great things were yet to come.

At nineteen, Vicki set off to Africa on a solo expedition. She fell in love with Africa and the freedom of travel, and yearned to explore even more far-flung places.

Vicki’s advertising career helped power her wanderlust even further, taking her to the concrete jungles of London, Dubai and Singapore. Travel writing soon followed as she chronicled her adventures of more than fifty countries that she had by now visited – from ancient souks in Yemen, to the glaciers of Greenland.

An introduction to the New Zealand Herald, many years later, set her on a more professional trajectory, as well as discovering the joys and pains of writing – having slogged through ten drafts of her first travel story before it was fit for publication, she vowed to give up on such a frustrating pastime. But the hard labour was quickly forgotten when she logged onto the NZ Herald’s website, via a shaky satellite connection in the Bwindi Impenetrable forest in Uganda. The moment she saw her carefully crafted words in print, she immediately began to draft her next story.

When she’s not writing in the library of her Auckland city apartment with an ancient world map on the ceiling or travelling the world, Vicki and her husband escape on their boat. She finds being at sea very relaxing, so it’s the perfect place for her to reflect on what she’s written in the week prior and to ponder what she’ll in the week ahead.

Terms and conditions

1. 1. You must be a GrownUps member and receive our newsletter to be eligible to win.
   2. Competition closes on the 23rd August 2022, winners will be notified via email by 25th August 2022.
   3. It is your responsibility to ensure you correctly enter a New Zealand postal address where the prize can be sent. GrownUps will not take responsibility for prizes sent to incorrect addresses.
   4. Winners are drawn at random by the GrownUps administration team.
   5. GrownUps employees and family are not eligible to enter.
   6. By entering the giveaway, you approve for GrownUps to use your name on social media as winner of the competition.
   7. One entry per person.
   8. Prize is non transferrable.
   9. You must reside in New Zealand – the prize will only be posted within New Zealand.
   10. You must be over 50 years of age to enter, check your details are correct in your membership dashboard.