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The Alibi with Twelve Witnesses
Topic: Perfect crime
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Short Description:
When Simon Blackwood, a hospital ethics chair who reads every page, is found dead in his freezing study, Detective Mara Coyle suspects poison and one man: celebrated surgeon Julian Ashworth. There is only one problem. Twelve strangers, none of whom ever met, swear they watched him all evening. Every one of them is telling the truth. This crime thriller asks how a flawless alibi can be built from honest witnesses, and what it hides.
Book Details
Pages
173
Language
English
Published
July 2026
Publisher
amacox
ISBN
Book Details:
Twelve witnesses. Four hundred guests. One surgeon who never left the room. When Simon Blackwood, Bellhaven Memorial’s uncompromising ethics chief, turns up dead on his study floor, the official story is simple: a bad heart, a quiet death, nothing more. Detective Mara Coyle isn’t convinced — and when the medical examiner starts asking harder questions, every road leads back to Dr. Julian Ashworth, the hospital’s most decorated surgeon, a man with a spotless record and a ballroom full of people who watched him all night. A donor. A nurse. A valet. A pianist. A teenage volunteer with a camera. Twelve strangers who never met each other, who have no reason to lie, and who all tell Mara the same thing: Ashworth couldn’t have done it. He was right there.
The trouble is, she believes every one of them. The Alibi with Twelve Witnesses is a slow-burn crime novel about what happens when the truth and the facts stop agreeing — when a room full of honest people can be wrong without a single one of them lying. As old grievances surface and a buried medical scandal edges into the light, Mara has to find the two hours nobody thought to ask about, before a very careful man finishes getting away with it. If you’ve ever wondered how far a good reputation can carry a bad man, this is the book that lets you watch him do it — in plain sight, in front of everyone.
About the author
Meet Vera Quinn
Vera Quinn was born and raised in Cork, Ireland, and now lives in a harbour town in Cornwall. She studied journalism at Dublin City University, spent twelve years as a court reporter, then moved into hospital compliance writing, where she saw how institutions record what they would rather forget. She began filling notebooks at nine with conversations overheard on her grandmother's bus route. Early manuscripts were rejected, often kindly, which she found harder than rudeness. She wrote before dawn for six years, around a full-time job, until a novel finally stuck.
Writing, for Vera, is a form of paying attention. She keeps going because careful, honest observation still matters, and she hopes readers finish her books more curious about the stories behind headlines and slower to trust a convenient answer. Her ideas begin with small inconsistencies: a date that doesn't fit, a number that won't reconcile. She researches through court transcripts, public records, and conversations with specialists, building mysteries where every clue is fair. She wants readers uneasy first, then absorbed. Away from the desk she swims in the cold sea, walks the coast path, and rereads Kate Atkinson and Tana French. Her grandmother taught her to listen; her values are patience, fairness, and accuracy. Her guiding philosophy: ask one more question.
