An author who hails from Oulton Broad is launching her latest mystery crime novel in Lowestoft next month.

Jayne-Marie Barker, 31, is launching her second novel, Distant Shadows, at a public event at Waterstones on October 11 from 7pm and will also be signing copies of it between 11am and 2pm at the same building in the town centre on October 13.

Distant Shadows is the second instalment of her Inspector Allen mysteries and, like the first book Beneath the Daisies, features police trying to solve 'cold cases'.

Miss Barker, who went to school at Dell Primary School, Elm Tree Middle School and Kirkley High School, uses a series of different timelines in her novels with chapters switching from the present day to when the crimes were committed much earlier.

Her latest novel is about a man who shoots his victim in 1935 and sees officers investigate the case more than 70 years later.

And there is a touch of Lowestoft in both Distant Shadows and its predecessor as Miss Barker has created the fictional communities of Atwood and Milton based on her experiences of growing up in the town, which she left when she was 18.

Miss Barker lives in Letchworth, Hertfordshire, where she works for a tyre retailer as a personal assistant but comes back to Lowestoft once a month to see her father Carl Barker and step-mother Lorraine.

She also has two sisters Claire and Sarah.

She told The Journal: 'My books are mystery thrillers. They are about cold cases and have dual timelines so one chapter is set in the past and the next is set in the modern day.

'I have always liked classic mysteries, such as Agatha Christie, as I find them fascinating.'

Her third novel in the series, the Dancer's Ghost, is due to released next year.