TRUE CRIME
With a past as a probation officer and a partner who is an ex-murder detective, there is no question that Mari Hannah’s crime fiction bears the stamp of authenticity. But it also involves the kind of emotion you would expect in an epic romance. In her new novel, Without a Trace, her central character DCI Kate Daniels is involved in investigating a public crime that is also a personal tragedy when the love of her life, Jo, is on a flight from London to New York that disappears.
‘Kate is out of her depth, forcing her way into an investigation,’ says Mari. ‘I piled the pressure on her. But it’s about love and loss and never giving up.’
Readers of Without A Trace will be caught up as much in the heartstringjerking relationship between the two women as they are by the thrilling developments of the unfolding crime investigation. ‘People will forget what you’ve said, people will forget what you did, but people will not forget how you made them feel,’ says Mari. ‘There is no substitute for emotion if you want people to be involved with the book. I’m very happy if I’ve tugged at my readers’ hearts.’
Multi-award-winning, bestselling author Mari says she deals in universal emotions: ‘Love, loss, grief. That’s the whole point of writing, isn’t it, to get people feeling emotional? I think crime fiction has to have heart. It has to have
