I’VE BEEN IN LOCKDOWN FOR YEARS says one of the Costa Del Sol’s finest authors

Our lives are beings shaped by coronavirus. It’s controlling everything we do thanks to the current lockdown.
And self-isolation can affect people in different ways. Writers like me are used to sitting for hours alone at a computer so isolation isn’t such a problem. (And when lockdown’s over, there’ll undoubtedly be a flurry of new books on the market due to the enforced confinement.)

Coincidentally, my just-published thriller, “No Safe Place” (could just as easily have been called “Lockdown”) concerns isolation or lockdown not from a virus but – spoiler alert – something else!

This novel was started over a year ago before any hint of coronavirus and lockdown (my books usually take a year from research, first draft all the way through to final version and publication). And the isolation it depicts doesn’t arise from health and safety concerns, but for quite different reasons. Something that’s puzzled and intrigued me for decades and I needed to explore in this latest book.

And, yes, you guessed, the reasons concern a criminal act. Crime fiction, after all, is my passion. Triggered initially by the study of criminal law for a J.D. (Juris Doctor) law degree decades ago in Los Angeles (winning the Moot Court Prize – a surreal Perry Mason-type experience) where I lived for a number of eventful years. One morning shortly after Finals, for example, a tax law Professor was shot dead right in front of me! I never did discover if he’d upset some former client or just a student with poor grades…

And this latest thriller? DI Barbara Forster returns home for the first time since a local tragedy shattered her small Lake District village. Tragedy strikes again when her goddaughter Katya vanishes under circumstances that mirror the disappearance of Barbara’s teenage friend ten years earlier during a charity fun run on bonfire night – still an unsolved case. Convinced there is a link, Barbara is determined to find the missing girl and answers to the past and…

Stay safe – and happy reading!

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Returning to Cumbria, DI Barbara Forster discovers her goddaughter has vanished in a case mirroring that of her teenage friend 10 years earlier.
Barbara risks her life searching for the truth and justice for the victims confronting a famous movie actor – a quest with unexpected and shocking revelations.
The tension builds up with inexorable detail to an astonishing climax in this compulsively readable, action-packed thriller filled with twists and turns, intrigue and danger, where suspense is ratcheted up cruelly right until the final pages.
Murder and mystery, drugs and sex, celebrity and secrecy, all unfolding against a background of small-town ambitions and big-time egos. 
“No Safe Place” has you hooked from the very first chapter with its realistic characters, can’t-put-it-down pacing and gripping plot. Highly recommended for anyone who likes mystery/crime/psychological thrillers.

Nora Johnson’s psychological crime thrillers ‘No Safe Place’, ‘Betrayal’, ‘The Girl in the Woods’, ‘The Girl in the Red Dress’, ‘No Way Back’, ‘Landscape of Lies’, ‘Retribution’, ‘Soul Stealer’, ‘The De Clerambault Code’ (www.nora-johnson.net) available online as E-book (€0.99;£0.99), I-book, paperback & audiobook. All profits to Costa del Sol Cudeca cancer charity