HARROGATE author Alice Clark-Platts, a former United Nations human rights lawyer, will discuss her latest thriller, The Flower Girls, at Waterstones, in Coney Street, York, on Wednesday, when she will sign copies at the end of the evening.
Invested with Alice’s experiences in the legal field, the novel is built around Laurel and Primrose, the Flower Girls of the title, one convicted of murder, the other given a new identity. Now, 19 years later, another child has gone missing, and the Flower Girls are about to hit the headlines all over again.
The story opens with the murder of a toddler in Grassington and goes on to ask: At what age are you culpable? Where is the line between justice and forgiveness? What is the role of nature and nurture?
Alice, who now lives in Singapore, has Harrogate roots: her family, grandparents and cousins lived in the North Yorkshire spa town when she was a child, so it became a second home to her and still is.
The book jacket for Alice Clark-Platts's new novel, The Flower Girls
In her career as a human rights lawyer, she worked at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal in connection with the Rwandan genocide and on cases involving Winnie Mandela and Snoop Dogg. As a writer, she was shortlisted for the Impress Award 2013 and she is the author of the police procedurals Bitter Fruits and The Taken, a book shortlisted for the Best Police Procedural in the 2017 Dead Good Reader Awards. Her work was included in Deadlier: 100 Of The Best Crime Stories Written By Women, selected by Sophie Hannah.
The Flower Girls was published by Raven Books/Bloomsbury on January 24; the audiobook version, read by Emilia Fox, was released on the same day. The novel has attracted more than 100 four and five-star reader reviews on Amazon already, one saying Clark-Platts “really gets the reader thinking about collective responsibility, rehabilitation, the justice system and social media as a weapon”.
Alice will be joined at the 7pm discussion and book-signing session by fellow author Lucy Foley, who will talk about her new book The Hunting Party, published by HarperCollins.
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