Bichard, Marlise

Marlise Bichard is a high school teacher, and the wife of Miles Bichard, the head of the police force on Guernsey. The couple are usually very polite when people point out the similarity between their names, but have heard it enough times over the years for it to have become quite tiresome.

She first appears in book 1, Dead in the Water, when she accompanies Miles to the combined services dinner and dance at Castle Cornet. She’s rather do something that wasn’t connected to her husband’s job as head of the island police force, but he’s so often working late that she’ll take whatever she’s offered.

She doesn’t approve of his car racing on the beach at Chouet, but he was doing that before they even met and as it seems such an integral part of who she is she doesn’t feel she can object too strongly. Besides, he makes up for it with a long walk and dinner once a month.

Although there does seem to be some kind of ‘spark’ between her husband and Christine Le Page, she trusts him when he says that nothing has happened between them (or ever would) and she therefore accepts Christine as a friend, rather than treating her as a competitor.

Jones, Ruby

Ruby Jones is The Sarnian‘s PR manager, handling all incoming requests for quotes and images from external news and media organisations. It’s a strange position in which she has to balance the needs of promoting The Sarnian with the financial consideration of selling its assets. Any images and content available for licensing, such as shots of news stories or web content are therefore forwarded on to a dedicated licensing team, and she is left with short quotes and pictures of the people providing them. She’s also the first point of contact for anyone looking to run promotions in partnership with the paper or its web site.

She reports to Freya Carlisle, The Sarnian’s editor, but works alongside colleagues from all departments and at all levels within the organisation.

She first appears in book 1, Dead in the Water, as the person to whom Ollie Carey sends a lot of the incoming emails he received after the discovery of Richelle Ibbott‘s body in Marble Bay so that she can decide how it should be handled while he gets on with chasing the story.

Stella

Sella works in the Environment department of the States of Guernsey. That position gives her access to planning applications and details of who owns particular parcels of land on the island.

She is a good friend of Simon Langlois and they sometimes go out for a drink together, usually on the balcony overlooking the Town Church. They don’t do this as often as they’d like, though, and Stella uses the fact that she hears Simon on the radio almost every day as the reason for forgetting how long it is since they last met.

Bonus fact: Stella first appears in The Sarnian book 2, but she wasn’t originally called Stella — she was Sheila. She isn’t the only character whose name changed during the writing process. Ross Ferbrache underwent a name change, too.

Media contact

Nik Rawlinson
hello@thesarnian.com

Review copies

Review samples are available for publications, blogs and broadcast outlets. If you'd like a copy of book 1, send an email to hello@thesarnian.com stating the name of the publication, blog or broadcaster that will be carrying the review.

Competition copies

If you would like to give away a copy or copies of The Sarnian, this is also possible. Drop us a line using the address above outlining your idea.

Social media

If you want to contact (or link to) The Sarnian using social media, please use the following:

Twitter: twitter.com/thesarnian
Facebook: facebook.com/thesarnian
Instagram: instagram.com/thesarnian

The Author

The Sarnian series is written by Nik Rawlinson, who was born in Guernsey and, although he doesn't currently live there, returns regularly. He is a journalist, author and broadcaster working for a wide range of lifestyle titles in the UK and beyond. Find out more at nikrawlinson.com.

The name

The name The Sarnian has two distinct meanings. It's up to the reader to decide which they prefer:

  1. It's the name of the newspaper for which Ollie works
  2. The Latin name for Guernsey was Sarnia. Thus, Ollie could be considered to be the Sarnian of the series title

Get in touch

hello@thesarnian.com

Social

twitter.com/thesarnian
facebook.com/thesarnian
instagram.com/thesarnian

Media resources

Press room

Blog

The Sarnian blog

About Guernsey

Guernsey miscellany

The Sarnian series of books is published by Ovingo Limited. Ovingo Limited is a private limited company, registered in England and Wales, number 7468217. Registered office: 16 The Maltings, Roydon Road, Stanstead Abbotts, Hertfordshire, SG12 8UU.

For the avoidance of doubt

All of the characters, organisations, publications and narrative of the Sarnian series, any related publications, products and web sites are fictitious. Characters, events, organisations and publications are not intended to refer to actual entities or events and any similarity is unintentional and entirely coincidental.

What's this all about?

This web site, and its contents, are here to support The Sarnian, a series of books set on and around the Channel Islands, and Guernsey in particular. It started as a means of keeping track of each character so that their features, loves, desires, abilities, looks and so on didn't change from book to book and has grown to become a complete encyclopedia of the series. Unless otherwise stated, the images included on this site were taken by The Sarnian author, Nik Rawlinson, who is also the author of the content.

Copyright

Rights to the contents of this website and the Sarnian series are retained by Nik Rawlinson. ©2014 - 2024 Nik Rawlinson. All Rights Reserved.

See the FAQ pages for answers to other common questions.