This image is the cover for the book Secrets in the Attic

Secrets in the Attic

Dame Henrietta Copeland in her new role as private investigator finds herself outsmarted by thieves at the local garage sale, when she attends incognito, is wrapped up in a curtain and delivered to a cliff edge, left to perish. And while it seems like a wild goose chase, she is stalked by an associate of a suspected murdered/suicide victim, who seems to be getting hot under the collar with Henrietta’s enquiries. She is constantly reprimanded by the magistrate for overstepping the boundaries of the law, while solving cases. Her devoted family are appalled to find she is befriending an ex-prisoner, the very person who forced her to sell her beloved paddle wheeler after being disgraced for wildlife poaching on the Mighty River Murray. Undeterred by adversity Henrietta travels to Perth in Western Australia, to assist her prisoned nephew and unwittingly discovers a diamond heist and to Mount Gambier in the Southeast of South Australia seeking a stolen herbal rose formula and inadvertently while sipping tea on her way back to Goolwa, through the Coorong, uncovers a love nest, the cause of an infidelity which she had refused to uncover at the beginning of her new career. There is personal tragedy when news breaks out of the sinking of the paddle wheeler Beatrice Lonsdale, formerly Laurel Wreath which had been moored at Pier 15 on the Goolwa wharf. There are surprises and disappointments as Henrietta strives to make a living keeping secrets in the attic.

Rosemary Ayles

Since publishing The Sleuth Down-Under Rosemary and her husband Don have moved to the beachside town Normanville, where she named the cottage ‘THE WRITE PLACE’ encouraging novelists to gather regularly to read a chapter of work in progress. Rosemary steps out at sunrise each day to walk to the Normanville jetty or clamber over the rocky terrain at Carrickalinga where she sits in a cave and watches the ebbing tide. She is a regular visitor to a shrine, in the next town, where in 2002 it is believed there was an apparition of a lady dressed in white, known as Our Lady of Yankalilla.

Austin Macauley Publishers