Writing

In 2015 I entered a portion of my work in progress in the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger competition, and was delighted to be one of five writers to make the shortlist that year. I’ve spent the time since reworking the manuscript, through multiple drafts. Now complete at 83,000 words, it’s my first novel.

The Ice Coffin

High up in the Rocky Mountains, climber Tyler Jacobsen stumbles on the body of a long-missing hiker, preserved in the ice of a melting glacier. A backpack filled with strange items is found a few feet away. Several miles below, journalist Claire King has reluctantly returned to her hometown to manage her father’s small local newspaper while he recovers from an accident, and the story of the body in the ice is a welcome distraction.

At first there’s little mystery, a hiker lost on the mountain, a misstep, a fall into a crevasse. Even the hiker’s family seems to have moved on. But as Claire uncovers odd pieces of the puzzle – an anonymous letter, a set of lost map co-ordinates, a bundle of 30-year-old photographs – everything she finds starts pointing closer to home. Soon there’s a second death, with deep connections to the lost hiker, and this one is clearly murder.