A NEFYN author who says her inspiration for writing is a desire to entertain and amuse, has released another book.

Beth Jones, 57, feels that escapism is very important in today’s stressful world.

That is why she keeps her writing light-hearted and, to some extent, timeless.

Beth said she felt that nobody was writing the sort of books she enjoys nowadays - so she decided to write her own.

Her love of rural village life is the basis for her writing, and her settings are a mixture of the Kentish villages around where she grew up and the villages of the Llyn Peninsula where she has spent the last 30 years.

Her books are aimed at anyone of any age who loves a good old-fashioned murder mystery, and anyone who just wants to escape for a while to a world with old-fashioned values where strange things happen and policemen eat a lot of cake.

It had always been her intention to write a book, but this didn’t happen until 2017, when she wrote and self-published the first Mandalay Mystery, Strange Times in Little Happining. The Mandalay Mysteries were inspired by her love of the classic murder mystery, but she decided to give her stories a bit of a different slant, interweaving them with some of her other interests such as science fiction, the paranormal and history, adding her love of comedy to the mix, resulting in what she terms ‘a light-hearted cross-genre mystery’.

The story concerns Inspector Mandalay, a peace-loving police inspector and the eager Sergeant Barnes as they investigate a series of inexplicable events as history seems to be coming to life in the usually uneventful town of Little Happining.

The book was well received, with Starburst Magazine describing it as “One of the most utterly charming reads we’ve come across in many a year”. Going on to say, “As for Beth Jones, with her work here she marks herself as one to keep your eyes on, with her particularly adept at having a great eye for detail while also allowing for the plot and story to play out in a way that feels fresh, natural and, most importantly, engaging”. Beth has just finished writing her second Mandalay Mystery, The Oakley Woods Murders, in which Mandalay and Barnes investigate a series of grizzly murders which seem somehow to be linked to an ancient woodland and a mythical monster. Beth said she intends to write many more Mandalay Mysteries as she has grown very fond of the characters and has many other bizarre mysteries in mind for them.

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