Monmouth author Naomi Rettig has just reached number ten in the English crime chart, and number 19 in the murder fiction chart on Amazon with her latest novella ‘Murder at the Surgery’.

Naomi told the Ross Gazette: “Murder at the Surgery began life as a play. I love going to the theatre to see murder mysteries, so I thought I’d write one myself. I’d structured it in my head and was about to commit it to paper when I saw a short story competition that was looking for crime thriller entries. My play fitted that theme, so I started to convert it into a short story.”

The short story grew past the word count limit for the competition, but Naomi carried on writing as she was enjoying it too much to stop.

The story then grew into a novelette, and then into a novella. The tone is ‘light crime’, nothing too grisly or bloodthirsty, Naomi said she saves that for her short horror stories.

“When originally deciding on a setting for my murder mystery play I thought a doctors surgery would make a good choice, it’s pure coincidence that I used to work in one myself and I’d like to point out that no characters are based on anyone I know. I’m a pharmacy dispenser (at Rosser’s Chemist in Church Street) and find this helpful when choosing drugs to fictionally kill people.”

The novella, Murder at the Surgery is available on Kindle or via the Kindle app, on paperback via Amazon.