Karen Bastable is a woman longing for more excitement in her life, and illicit group meetings in a local forest have added plenty of spark and pleasure recently. That is until one night she meets a man in search of a more sinister kind of gratification. When her abandoned car is discovered days later, the case becomes a race against time and it is up to DCI Michael Thackeray to find her alive, that is, if he isn't too late. Meanwhile, Thackeray's girlfriend, Laura Ackroyd is struggling with the burden of keeping her unexpected pregnancy a secret from him. As she barely copes with her demanding workload as a journalist, Laura is then dealt the troublesome task of profiling Sir David Murgatroyd, a wealthy venture capitalist with plans to take over a local school. Yet while his tragic family history is widely acknowledged, he alternatively remains a mystery. So what has he to hide?
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
