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Kristen Houghton Become a fan
Author of “FOR I HAVE SINNED A Cate Harlow Private Investigation
“What’s in the news is a fascinating story unto itself simply because it is true,” said a grad school writing professor of mine. He was right. True stories make for interesting reading and writers have found that combining raw truth in a fictional tale enhances a good book.
For over two years, my new novel For I Have Sinned was a work in progress, a story inside my head that wanted to be told. I wanted to take the ongoing publicly told scandal of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church coupled with the fictitious cold case of a boy gone missing ten years ago, to weave a story that would become a thriller with several twists and unexpected turns.There was truth and fiction, neatly combined.
The fiction part was easy; a missing person cold case concerning a boy who simply disappeared years ago without a trace. A private detective digging into the missing boy’s past unexpectedly finds a bizarre connection between her own case and the recent grisly murder of a priest in New York City. The murder details are eerily similar to an unsolved murder investigation she worked on less than a year ago.So far so good.
I had already created the main character, a savvy and determined private detective named Cate Harlow who goes by a strong gut instinct when confronting obstacles. She’s smart, relentless, and tough when it comes to solving her cases. But I also wanted to make her a very human and compassionate person; one who, without vanity, reassuringly tells her clients, “I’m very good at what I do. Trust me.”
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