Best selling crime novelist Carla to hold book signing and Q&A at library - The Redditch Standard

Best selling crime novelist Carla to hold book signing and Q&A at library

Redditch Editorial 25th Aug, 2018   0

A BEST-SELLING Redditch author is holding a book signing in the town library next Saturday, September 1.

Carla Buckley has enjoyed worldwide success with her books, topping Amazon’s crime-writing charts across the world from Canada and the US to Australia. In fact it’s only in the UK that her novels have found it hard to break into the Top 10.

However, all that is about to change with the official launch of ‘Her Final Hour’, published by Bookouture, a branch Hachette UK. It’s the second instalment of a trilogy featuring the tough Detective Inspector Gina Harte which began with ‘The Next Girl’.

DI Harte is stationed in the fictional town of ‘Cleevesford’ “somewhere between Studley and Stratford,” said Carla, who writes under the name Carla Kovach.




“Gina has come from a troubled background which has built her determination to help others in those sort of situations,” she explains. The book opens on Unicorn Hill and people will recognise some of the landmarks – and The Eagle pub is mentioned too.

Carla, a product of Church Hill Middle School and Arrow Vale High, admits she’s always been drawn to the seamier side of crime and horror.


“While most of my friends at school were fighting over ‘Sweet Valley High’ I’d be choosing somethng a bit more mysterious like Charles Dickens’s ‘The Signalman’,” she said.

“I’m also a big fan of horror films and crime drama – I suppose I like the more gruesome side of things.”

After school she worked in accounts, but dabbled in writing before auditioning – and getting – a part in an All and Sundry production of ‘Allo ‘Allo.

That not only led her to meet her husband, Nigel, now of Redditch-based Big Frog Films, but also got her into writing dramas and screen plays, including the script for the Big Frog short ‘Penny for the Guy’ which has been picked up by a major American company.

“About six years ago I challenged myself to write a novel – I only submitted it to three or four publishers – got fed up and self-published it instead,” said Carla.

She hasn’t stopped writing since, drawn by the pull of ‘what if….’.

“It’s playing on people’s vulnerabilities, if you’re walking home alone, as I sometimes am, it’s asking what might happen and developing those little fears,” she explains.

n ‘Her Final Hour’ is available to order, priced around £7.99, from WH Smiths and Waterstones, or buy a signed copy from the author herself at Redditch Library at 2.30pm next Saturday where Carla will also be holding a question-and-answer session.

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