Emeritus Fellow Malcolm Mackley publishes second thriller "Super Salcombe"

Super Salcombe follows two life-changing inventions discovered in an idyllic waterside town.

Adam Ranworth becomes involved with three business units at Headland House on a Devon farming estate owned by the Sandon sisters.

In one business unit, a potentially world-changing energy invention, Super H, is discovered that turns water into hydrogen at a very low cost. In a second unit, a French couple discover Super Skin, which makes Beryl, a Salcombe local, look twenty years younger. The third unit named ‘Devon Data’ turns out to be a clandestine spying operation.

Headland House causes major disruption to the normally idyllic Salcombe lifestyle, with lifeboat rescues and personal conflicts all part of the dramatic developing events.

Super Salcombe is a gripping contemporary novel about important global inventions that take place in a very unlikely setting.

Malcolm Mackley studied Physics at Leicester and Bristol Universities, then later moved to Chemical Engineering at Cambridge University where he devoted thirty years to teaching and research. He lectured on his specialist subjects throughout the world as a Fellow of Robinson College, a Professor of Process Innovation and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He now lives in Devon with his wife Margaret, where he has been drawn into many aspects of Devon life on the land and the water.

Malcolm explains: “This book is the culmination of fifty years’ experience at a number of different UK universities and a further fifteen years at Salcombe, in beautiful Devon.

Choosing Salcombe as the basis for the book was easy. The estuary is an amazing place and all those who live or sail nearby will know it is an intensely beautiful and very special part of the world. Salcombe itself is a fascinating small town that is full of interesting people, most of whom have a strong ‘bond’ with estuary.

Super Salcombe and Robinson College

For Thirty years of my life, I was deeply involved with Robinson College at Cambridge and since my retirement in 2011 my wife, Margaret and I have lived at Salcombe in beautiful Devon. I look back and discover that being part of a new College at Cambridge for such a long time was a huge privilege. Normally undergraduates and postgraduates can expect to be at Cambridge for 3-5 years and so spending thirty years during the early stages of the College’s development was an incredible opportunity and experience.

Professor Jack Lewis, who during my time at Cambridge later became Sir Jack Lewis and then Lord Lewis was an outstanding leader and the first Warden of the College. He had an uncanny knack of ‘making things happen’ but at the same time he was able to engage with everyone in building up the College. He had a very big influence on me and in particular, he pioneered in Cambridge the recognition that Colleges needed to be inclusive not only to Fellows and students, but to all College staff, partners and spouses of College Fellows.

Robinson and the University, allowed me to develop my own way of ‘being innovative’ in devising products and processes. My fiction story, Super Salcombe is very much about innovation in what admittedly, is an unusual location. Salcombe, like Cambridge, is a very beautiful location, but unlike Cambridge, it is a place where inventions and change are not necessarily expected or welcomed.

Super Salcombe has emerged as a fiction story where my experiences at Cambridge, Salcombe and elsewhere have inspired me to write. I do hope that others will find Super Salcombe an exciting read.
Super Salcombe is out on general release on 28 October published by Troubador Publishing.

https://troubador.co.uk/bookshop/contemporary/super-salcombe