A hunt for a murderer in a small Warwickshire village is the plot of the latest page-turner from a Stratford author now on her fourth novel.

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Angela Dandy, 71 and from Stratford, self-published her latest novel, The Gypsy Killer, in February, and after already receiving a number of positive reviews, is hoping to find a fanbase for her novels about misunderstood communities.

The novel follows student, Elizabeth, searching for answers after a caravan fire kills a member of the gypsy community and the villagers of the picturesque Bartonford come under suspicion.

After writing three novels about the members of a retirement home, Angela decided to try her hand at a story about another group of people that are often misunderstood.

“I decided to research the gypsy community,” she said. “And what came up in some of the forums was some of the most vile language I’ve ever read in my life, and it wasn't just from one person. Whenever something went wrong in a village, everyone was up in arms saying, ‘It must be the gypsies’.

“I found that they often had extremely high values, and in very tough times as well. So I thought it was something that maybe needs to be written about, just to try to reset the preconceptions about gypsies. So I started to write this book about a woman who’s murdered at campsite, and the life of this family in their quest to try to find out who murdered her. It’s not the sort of crime thriller that goes into forensics and all that sort of thing; I tend to stay away from that kind of detail as I like my readers to actually be able to sleep at night.”