Monday, June 11, 2012

An Unfamiliar Murder ★ ★★ ★- Jane Isaac

The DNA of Murder 

            You know it is going to be a page-turner when in the first chapter a strange body turns up in the home of the protagonist, Anna Cottrell, who is not a spy but just your average school teacher. 
            After the police accept Anna is not the murderer and release her, she then discovers that she and the murder victim are linked and that perhaps her past is not exactly as she was led to believe.  What is even more frightening is that those past secrets could quite possibly place her and her boyfriend Ross in extreme danger.  When he goes missing Anna determines she must uncover those secrets or she may never see Ross again.

            “I am fascinated by what happens when extraordinary things happen to ordinary people,’’ says Author Jane Isaac.  “Apart from the odd parking fine or speeding ticket, most of our lives are untouched by law enforcement. For ‘An Unfamiliar Murder’, I played with the idea of a perfectly normal person finding themselves out of the realms of normality.  I wondered how Anna would feel and react to finding a dead body in her flat and spending a night in a cell.”
            Also attempting to unravel the secrets is investigating officer, DCI Helen Lavery, an ambitious woman who juggles her very demanding job life with that of a single Mom to teenage sons.  When Anna Cottrell’s murder case lands on her desk, she soon realizes it is far more complicated than she first expected.  After DNA evidence leads her on a chase through Anna’s family tree, she begins to fear that if she cannot find the killer soon there will be more victims.
            Readers are certainly taken on a merry chase following DCI Lavery as she solves the murder. Isaac felt that very early on in the writing of her debut novel she could do a lot more with Lavery’s character and is currently working on a sequel to ‘An Unfamiliar Murder’, and there are also plans for a third book in the series. It would seem that for the new found fans of Helen Lavery, she will become very familiar to readers in the next few years.

About Jane




Jane Isaac lives in rural Northamptonshire, UK with her husband, daughter and dog, Bollo. Jane studied creative writing, and later specialist fiction with the London School of Journalism.
Jane blogs about her writing experience, 'Diary of a Newbie Novelist' at www.newbiewriters.com. She is also co-author at the Pyjama Club.
Two of Jane's short stories, Duplicity and Perilous Truths, will appear in Crime Anthologies released in 2012 by Rainstorm Press and Bridge House Publishing. An Unfamiliar Murder is her first novel.

An Unfamiliar Murder is available from

Paperback US: An Unfamiliar Murder

Kindle US:         Kindle Version only $3.99





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