THE LAST ROOM

A gripping story of secrets and guilt.

A gripping story of secrets and guilt. In his remote cottage on the east coast of Scotland, Will Gillen is jerked awake by a crack of thunder. His phone is ringing. It is his daughter, Ania, calling him from Manchester Airport. She is on her way to Lódz , Poland, and is calling to warn him that evidence she gave in a murder trial is being challenged. The next morning, the story breaks in the national English news. Ania, a forensic expert in speaker profiling, is accused of tampering with key evidence in the trial of a man convicted of murdering an eight-year-old girl, the child of an asylum seeker. Is she guilty? Before Will can ask the question, Ania is dead, an apparent suicide. Will must follow the trail from Cote d'Ivoire to the heart of Poland to find what trapped his daughter and led her to her death. Danuta Reah who also writes as Carla Banks has published seven novels and several short stories, one of which won her the Crime Writers' Association Short Story Dagger f. She is an academic who works in the field of forensic linguistics. Crime – or dissent – runs in her family. Her father was declared an enemy of the state by Stalin. One of her ancestors was hung, drawn and quartered in 1646 for his religious beliefs. She is married and lives in South Yorkshire with her husband who is an artist.