Rather To Be Pitied

'You can find out so much more about some people after they're dead than when they were alive. There's nowhere to hide anything, is there, on a slab?' Newly promoted DS Julie Kite has been in sleepy mid-Wales for mere months when she's faced with her second murder case. A body has been found by school kids trekking the Monks' Trod.The trail takes Julie back north to her parents in Manchester and to a housing estate in a Lancashire town. It's not a simple case - a young mother has disappeared, but so has her son and her next door neighbour's wife. And the husband of the landlady of the B&B where the girl was staying. When Julie encounters an ex-serviceman farmhand with PTSD the case gets more complex still.

Jan Newton grew up in Manchester and Derbyshire, spending her formative years on the back of a pony, exploring the hills and moorland around her home. She lived and worked in London and Buckinghamshire for 19 years until moving to Wales in 2005, where she learnt to speak fluent Welsh. Jan has won several writing competitions, including the Allen Raine Short Story competition, the WI Lady Denman Cup, and the Oriel Davies Gallery competition for nature-writing. She has been published in New Welsh Review.