A Fall For Springtime

At this rate I’m never going to be on trend. Jane Casey is the latest Irish crime scribe to turn her hand to writing young adult novels with HOW TO FALL (Corgi), following in the footsteps of John Connolly, Eoin McNamee, Cora Harrison, Colin Bateman and Adrian McKinty - and I’m reliably informed that two more of our high profile authors will be publishing YA titles in 2013. (Eoin Colfer, of course, being obstreperous and from Wexford, moved in the other direction, from writing YA to adult crime).
  I’d love to write a children’s book, but I’d imagine it’s a very difficult thing to get right, especially if you can’t allow your characters swear like stevedores when you run out of polite things for them to say.
  Anyway, HOW TO FALL will be published at the end of January, with the blurb elves wibbling thusly:

When fifteen-year-old Freya drowns, everyone assumes she’s killed herself, but no-one knows why. Her cousin, Jess Tennant, thinks she was murdered - and is determined to uncover the truth. On a summer visit to sleepy Port Sentinel, Jess (who bears a striking resemblance to her dead cousin) starts asking questions - questions that provoke strong reactions from her friends and family, not to mention Freya’s enemies. Everyone is hiding something - and Freya herself had more than her fair share of secrets. Can Jess unravel the mystery of her cousin’s death? A mystery involving a silver locket, seething jealousy and a cliff-top in the pitch black of night?

  Sounds like a cracker. There’s an early review of HOW TO FALL over at Chicklish (“Reader, I snogged him!”) which augurs well …