A Case of Conviction

Gifted young lawyer Chloe Nightingale has departed London for the Hampshire countryside, determined to forget the sadness in her past and start a new life without a man. Vain and self-absorbed, she is devoted to her work, but when she meets funny, easygoing freelance journalist Joe Jackson at the Law Society Ball, her defences begin to slip as she tries to quell ghosts from the past.

After one of Chloe’s clients is acquitted of murder by the jury, not only the velvet-fisted judge Annabelle Bramwell fears that justice has not been served. And when Joe is summoned by senior detective Colin Hunt after a body is found hanging from a cross at the Devil’s Drop, Chloe grows ever more troubled by the killings that threaten to blight her existence.

As Chloe struggles to defend a clutch of homicide defendants in an incandescent Crown Court, she begins to fear ...

Debut novel by Ally Preece

Revision of the manuscript is complete and I am seeking a London literary agent to represent me in my bid to publish my debut novel, A Case of Conviction. It is both a crime novel and a romance, thus cutting across genres. It will be interesting to see whether I can find an agent attracted by that challenge.

And if the path of traditional publishing fails? I’ve decided: who’s afraid of another steep learning curve? Learning to self-publish will simply be the next massive challenge along my path. A Case of Conviction will be published in tantalizing episodes, just like in the old days when writers such as Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson published their novels month by month.