Years ago, I took an adult education class in forensic psychology. We watched a video that showed three teenagers who all confessed to a murder that none of them committed. The charges were eventually thrown out, and the confessions deemed coerced. That resulted in the concept of “false confessions,” and changed the way police were allowed to interrogate. They had the teens all in separate rooms, lied to them, interrogated them for hours with no bathroom breaks, food or water until they got the confessions they wanted.
That stayed with me, and I always knew that I’d the idea of false confessions into a story some day. In my current mystery novel, Trust, the heroine, Lauren, is a few weeks away from getting married for the first time. She’s a high school teacher, and it seems like everything in her life is finally going in the right direction. She’s madly in love with David, a former minor-league pitcher turned stock broker, and brother of her teacher friend, Amy, who introduced them. While Lauren is at her final wedding dress fitting, there’s a news flash that one of her students has been reported missing. When his body is found a few days later, Lauren’s perfect world collapses when she becomes a person of interest in the investigation. She had been spending time after school with Eric, the murdered student and nasty rumors swirl that there may have been more to the relationship.
Things go from bad to worse, when Lauren’s fiancé David learns
that there are things she never told him about her past, such as the fact she
once confessed to murder when she was a teenager. The charges were dropped as
that confession was deemed coerced, but the cloud of suspicion hanging over
Lauren grows. David wants to believe Lauren as he’s never had any reason not to
trust her. It does raise the question though of how well do you really know
someone? And should you trust in that person unconditionally? Even when they
may be charged with murder? Trust
follows David’s journey to find the truth about what happened to Eric and to hopefully
clear Lauren’s name. He’s assisted by his grandfather, who is a retired town
sheriff and David’s best friend Jack, the current deputy sheriff.
Coming up next is a spinoff of Trust, called Motive, and features Jane Cho, David’s cousin, who escapes to Waverly after almost getting killed on the job as a legal investigator with a special gift for computers. Her intention was to quit that high pressure, dangerous job and to follow a safer passion, cooking comfort food, by running a little shop called Comfort and Joy. But when she meets Jack, the deputy sheriff, and he learns about her abilities, he tempts her in more ways than one. Motive will be out by early April. Cover reveal below….
Thanks
to Pamela for giving the inside scoop behind her novel and for revealing the
cover of her next book. She is offering
an eBook copy of Trust, so
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Hi Pamela, sounds like a good read. False confessions were called 'Verbals' here in Australia. A thing of the past here also.
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