Every Friday at 9am is when I feature an Indie author or blogger. I do not add the author’s name in the title, and so you need to watch this space because it could be you! However, just for next Friday it won’t be anybody, as I’ll be busy on the Isle of Wight with my grandchildren and will be having a week off blogging. So… check this page out again on June 9th to see who will be on the next Friday Showcase.

Today I’m featuring author and blogger Janet Gogerty, who writes flash fiction on her blog ‘Times and Tides of a Beachwriter‘ and who also has several novels to her name. Her first novel is a ‘faction’ book, ‘Quarter Acre Block‘, published in 2012 and based on her family’s emigration to Australia as ‘Ten Pound Poms’ back in the 1960s. Below is a link to her latest compilation of short stories on the theme of missing persons ‘At the Seaside Nobody Hears you Scream‘:

Review by Carol Balawyder:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mystery Filled with Suspense, Romance and Psychology

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on 10 December 2020

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Toby Channing, a young psychologist, is on a mission. His girlfriend Anna has gone missing. The problem is that he was the last person to see her alive and so her family (along with others) suspect him of murdering her. Did he or didn’t he?
In an attempt to find her, he uses his camping van and poses as a private investigator specializing in missing persons. As he tours around the many different areas he has gone with Anna, a slew of different characters approach him with their own cases of missing persons (one being even a robot). As Toby solves these cases his search for Anna intensifies.
Janet Gogerty takes us into Toby’s head – his fears, his loneliness, his unpleasant relationship with Anna’s parents – especially her father who wants nothing to do with Toby as he suspects him of murdering his daughter, his relationship with his parents (rather warm) and his pregnant sister. The novel is a mixture of domestic gambol and a complex solving of finding Anna, the love of his life. It is a mystery full of suspense, romance and a study of ordinary people desiring to live a more satisfying life.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like being a private detective, Janet Gogerty’s Toby Channing the Camper Van Detective, through his various cases, illustrates that the job is not all about solving murder cases. In fact, not all missing cases, as is pointed out in this novel, are about crime. But Anna’s case is.

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