Pirongia's Secret

Who murdered the boy on Pirongia Mountain?Who else knows a dangerous secret?And what remains when innocence is gone forever?A sleepy rural settlement sits in the crook of a mountain, trapped in a time warp of indifference. But someone there is a killer. They walk the streets and eat in the local cafe. And they murdered a boy.Four teenage friends bide their time until they can escape the town, dreaming of a life together in the city. They cling to each other for security, creating their own fragile family in a hostile world. But two of them have a secret and somebody else knows.As alibis crumble and fingers point too close to home, Deleilah Dereham must find out who killed her classmate. She needs to. She has her own secret to hide. The first time K T Bowes won a writing competition she was six and the sound of the applause as she went up on stage stayed with her for at least half an hour. Then when they presented her with a Jaffa biscuit as a prize the shine wore off and she palmed it off on her baby sister after school. She wrote in her teenage years because the local paper paid money to kids for stories and she subsidised her role as sales assistant in a chip shop with her writing. Married with four children, her work history includes a variety of roles from law enforcement officer to chief pot and bottle washer in a hospital. She gained a drawer full of diplomas and certificates over the years for her numerous jobs but the most unused one was an honours degree in English.Eleven years ago after getting on a plane with a rucksack, a suitcase and a one way ticket to New Zealand with her family, K T Bowes dusted off her degree certificate and began to write again.Seven years later and she'd produced three novels which were published first on the book site which must not be named here. A few years on and she's an international best seller with nineteen books published under the Hakarimata Press label and available in most online retailers.K T Bowes is still in New Zealand and still married, but the four children she crossed the world with have all grown up and started doing incredible things of their own. Now in their twenties, they all seem to be stuck in the tertiary system as eternal students but one day they might find their way out - although they aren't currently looking for the exit. She visits them there regularly and sends food parcels and money.She used to horse ride but kept falling off and breaking bones so now stays almost safely on the treadmill - almost safely because she has fallen off that too. Her constant writing companion is a ginger cat called Nahla who sleeps in her desk drawer and follows her everywhere, begging for her picture to go on Twitter. A tiny town nestles at the foot of Mount Pirongia, visited by tourists and maintained by its locals. Its name means 'The end of the road,' but nobody can say the Maori version so they don't call it anything. Nothing much has changed in over a century and it's grown sleepy and lazy.To some it's a safe haven and to others, a trap. It will always feel like a trap to Deleilah Dereham. Even when she escapes, something just keeps bringing her back.