Murder, mystery, and a connection to the island’s war time past provides the background for a debut novel by a Manx author.
The story is based around Fenella, who lives with her wheelchair-bound grandmother.
She is struggling to hold on to her fading and crumbling guest house, and to keep it out of the hands of a greedy developer, when an unexpected arrival turns everything on its head and unlocks secrets of the past.
A retired librarian, this is Judith’s first full length novel.
She said that it has been many years in the making, and she has been conjuring up the characters in her had ever since she worked at Ramsey library.
‘This book has been about six to eight years in the making, probably even longer than that,’ said Judith.
‘I had the first ideas when I still worked at Ramsey Library, many years ago.
‘I met people there who’d lived through the war years and heard their views on the behaviour of the internees. The book is based on an event at the start of the book that takes place during the times of internment.
‘But it is a family story, set on the Mooragh promenade, in one of the houses that have since been knocked down.
‘Its very much a Manx-set story, rooted in the wartime history of the island, but it’s not based on anybody in particular.
‘It is essentially a murder mystery story, with some history in there too.
‘Fenella, my main character, is in financial difficulty, and the building she owns is pretty shabby and run down.
‘She lives there with her grandmother, who owned it originally, during the wartime.
‘Someone comes to stay with them, who feels guilty about something that happened a long time ago, during the war, in one of the internment camps. That’s the whole crux of the story, and how it develops.’
Judith was inspired by some of the places where she lived and grew up around the island, and she realised that, wherever she went, she was never far from internment areas.
‘I lived in Ramsey when I was small and even after we’d moved, we regularly visited the Mooragh Park on sunny Sundays,’ she said.
‘I can still recall being shown the post holes on the promenade, which can still be seen today, to support the barbed wire of the Mooragh internment camp.
‘When I lived in Douglas, I lived near Hutchinson Square, which is where the Hutchinson Internment camp was situated.
‘My mother had a lot of stories about it when I was growing up. There was always discussions about what went on, and how people were squashed in together.’
This is not Judith’s first work to be published, as she has already had two collections of short stories printed, ‘Rattling to Ramsey’ and ‘Climbing to Cregneash’.
‘ I think there is a great difference between these and my new books, although I think the characters will be the same, or at least very similar,’ she said.
Judith will launch the book at a public event at Henry Bloom Noble Library, on Duke Street, at 7pm, on Thursday, July 14.