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SPECIAL OFFER – five exclusive and FREE short stories from Joffe authors. Find out what DS Sara Hirst and DC Mike Bowen are doing in Norwich Castle gardens one wintry evening.
Detective Sara Hirst is at a crossroads. Can she take the heat or is she about to burn out?
It’s the hottest summer on record. Norfolk is parched in the heat. Sara and her team are wilting as they investigate a series of fires that are breaking out all over the county. Wildfire or arson?
Then one steaming night an old barn belonging to Wild Thyme Farm is torched. The battle to put out the blaze rages on through the night.
As dawn breaks it becomes clear: there’s a body in the wreckage.
Due out on April 4th 2024
It’s a stormy December morning when seal-watchers find the body on the beach at Winterton-on-Sea. His clothes have been torn to shreds on the rocks. The bright-orange life jacket didn’t save him in the end.
Detective Sara Hirst races to the scene. The washed-up body turns out to be a deckhand who got swept overboard in a storm.
It looks like a tragic accident. Until another body is found on a pleasure boat drifting out at sea. There are bullet holes in the boat’s hull. This was definitely murder.
But Sara will soon have more to worry about than two dead bodies. Someone from her past is back . . .
There are dark dealings going on in this quiet stretch of Norfolk coast. Detective Sara Hirst must catch a killer before anyone else turns up dead.
DS Sara Hirst has dealt with murder before, but nothing so bizarre as this. A dead body forced inside the top of an artwork on the lawn of a remote country manor, with a toy llama carefully balanced on its head. A few days later, the body of a woman is found, tied to a gothic-style chair with her throat slashed. There’s a llama with her too. The two victims were part of the ‘Famous Four’, a group of friends who studied at the University of East Anglia back in the day. Three of them still work there. And now two are dead.
The team’s new DCI, Hayley Hudson, is convinced the prime suspect is Dom Wilkins, a member of the Famous Four and one of the victims’ old flames. And she has a growing suspicion that her boyfriend is keeping something from her. Sara must keep focused if she’s to unmask the killer before they strike again.
DS Sara Hirst has been having an easy-going summer until carnival week in Cromer.
The body of Daisy Shaw, the Carnival Queen, is discovered in a back alley, stretched out on the cobbles, her fingers clutching a sparkly plastic tiara. Suspicion falls on the performers at the pier’s theatre and the carnival crew, especially when it turns out that one of them is Daisy’s boyfriend. The atmosphere in Cromer soon grows nasty. The town turns against the outsiders. The roads are closed. The town descends into chaos. And the murder detectives are right in the thick of it, trying to piece together what happened to Daisy. The close-knit carnival community is all too used to prejudice and none too keen on helping the police. Meanwhile, both Sara’s mother and boyfriend have bombshells to drop. Can Sara solve the case before anyone else gets hurt?
You can listen to the prologue below.
I am delighted to announce a new venture with Hobeck Books. Wayland Babes – Five ghostly tales told across five centuries.
The Wayland Woods in Norfolk – an ancient place where sound and silence, truth and myth, and life and death intertwine. Some say that the babes of the woods still walk the Earth – wandering through the trees, forever lost, holding hands and searching for help. To see them is a terrible omen. As daylight falls, you may hear the wailing – is it the babes, or just the wind in the trees? What could it mean to see the babes, feel their presence, and be lured deeper into the woods? They look so real. They seem so helpless and desperate. Five tales tell of five lives touched over five centuries by the so-called babes in the wood. If they beckon, will you follow?
DS Sara Hirst is back. In the cold and wet of a rainy December, a dog walker finds the body of a young man on heathland near Fakenham. He is wrapped up in a groundsheet and wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. Sara and the Norfolk SCU team investigate how a fifteen-year-old from a care home in a small town in the Norfolk Broads has ended up dumped like garbage. What is his connection to Lisa London, a drugs supremo from the capital and a teacher at the local high school?
Published by Joffe Books on Thursday 18th March 2021 Into Deadly Storms is Sara’s second major investigation into the darker side of rural life.
My debut novel 
Under Violent Skies is published by the wonderful Joffe Books.
Meet DS Sara Hirst. She has moved from London to Norfolk Police’s Serious Crimes Unit. She wants to know the truth about her father, who had connections with the area. Her first morning brings her first call out to a decomposing body discovered in a ditch on a local farm. How does the murder relate to a recent spate of thefts? Who wanted the victim dead?
As Sara searches for her lost father, she embarks on the trail of a ruthless gang. Set under the brooding skies of North Norfolk, she discovers that sometimes great beauty conceals great violence.
The story was shortlisted for the Little Brown UEA Student Writers award in 2019 and longlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger in 2021.
For future releases or news you can keep an eye on this website, or follow me on Facebook at Judi Daykin Author. I would love to hear from you and sincerely hope you will enjoy reading Sara’s adventures or being chilled by my ghosts.
Judi