By-election fever has gripped the constituency of Bradfield, and the national media circus has descended on the town - or so it seems to Laura Ackroyd, the reporter from the local newspaper who knows the town and its politics a great deal better than the self-styled experts hot off the train from London. Laura Ackroyd is not only assigned to cover Richard Thurston and his campaign, but is also expected to follow up other news: such as the police investigation into the discovery of an unidentified body on the moors; the student campaign to 'out' various public figures; and the hints of some dirty dealings in the corridors of the town hall. As Laura peels away the veneer of each story, she discovers a tangle of old and new indiscretions, emotional blackmail and a disturbing amount of violence, and when the latter is turned against herself, she becomes aware that there is a common thread to all these matters which leads to the main players taking a murderous road to Westminster. In an intriguing mystery, which is as much whydunnit as whodunnit, the spotlight of publicity turns out to be a curtain-raiser on a scandal which proves physically and politically fatal to the villain and victim."
Patricia Hall remembers telling stories to her little sisters when she was six years old, and by the time she was in her early teens she was sure that she was going to be a writer one day. She gained a a degree in English before becoming a journalist and working for The Guardian and the BBC in London, amongst others.
On 1991 her first crime novel, The Poison Pool, was published in London and New York and this was followed by a book a year. Most feature her feisty heroine, reporter Laura Ackroyd and her on-off lover DCI Michael Thackeray. They are set in the decaying industrial towns of West Yorkshire and the nearby countryside of the Yorkshire Dales. In 2011 she launched a new series with Dead Beat, casting a sceptical eye on "Swinging London" in the 1960s. The sequel, Death Trap, will be published in 2012.
Patricia is married and now lives in Oxford. She has two grown up sons and a grand-daughter.
Visit Patricia's web-site at www.patriciahall.co.uk
