website: http://valknowles.com
email: valknowles1@gmail.com
About my debut novel – A Darkly Bound Betrayal
A Darkly Bound Betrayal starts on a beautiful sunny day in Somerset. It’s May 2020 and the UK is still in the first lockdown and just about to take its initial tentative steps out to freedom. Nick and Anna are sitting in their garden celebrating their daughter Talya’s eighteenth birthday with their son Mikey.
But there are dark and dangerous closely kept family secrets that are about to be revealed as Talya innocently insists to be told the story of their family history. As her father reluctantly begins to tell the story, she and her brother can have no conception of the tangled web of lies, deceit and betrayal that will unfold.
Through a series of complex twists and turns the story goes back in time to experience a treacherous and explosive family history that has been kept successfully hidden for years.
It follows Anna’s story as she embarks on a journey that will have a dramatic and emotional impact on her life as she struggles to come to terms with the death of her mild mannered and introverted father, eminent scientist Professor Alexander Hamilton. Professor Hamilton had been found murdered one evening after working late in his laboratory.
With no apparent enemies, his violent death is a complete mystery. As the police search for his killer continues, Anna’s life is turned upside down as suspicion falls on the one person she has grown to love and trust, her half-brother Michael. Her grief and distress at the loss of their father are made all the harder to bear when Michael goes missing after his death.
And as the police uncover more devastating lies and deceit she is forced to face up to the subterfuge and betrayal that had unknowingly been a part of her life and she has to question the very nature of herself and her family.
As the book continues Anna finds herself in grave danger and the further she is drawn into this dangerous situation of intrigue and fear, nothing it appears is as it seems. The investigation into the death of Professor Hamilton and the whereabouts of Michael Hamilton becomes ever more complex and the suspense builds as the link with the former Soviet Union becomes firmly established.
The final part of the book deals with the dramatic denouement as all the various threads are pulled together and all the treacherous secrets are disclosed. The mystery surrounding the death of Professor Alexander Hamilton is finally exposed and the intriguing and dramatic story of Michael Hamilton is revealed.
