Janet Neel

Janet Neel is the nom de plume of Baroness (Janet) Cohen of Pimlico, who sits as a Labour peer in the House of Lords. She started out as a solicitor, then went into the Board of Trade, then to Charterhouse Bank. She now works at several places at once including the London Stock Exchange and the Ministry of Defence. She has published seven crime novels. The first, DEATH'S BRIGHT ANGEL, won the John Creasey Prize and the third, DEATH OF A PARTNER, and fourth, DEATH AMONG THE DONS, were both shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger. She has also published two novels as Janet Cohen.

Her crime novels use background material from her various careers, including a spell as a restaurateur. She has not yet produced one about the House of Lords but is thinking about it.

Jules Carlisle, the youngest and most recently qualified member of the firm, knew very little about illegal immigration and asylum and would have liked to keep it that way. But her last appointment before Easter is an asylum case with a difference, a young Serb who believes his brother has died at the hands of people-smugglers on his way to England. Jules, who wanted to hand the case over at the earliest opportunity to her senior partner, finds herself drawn inexorably into great danger, and back into the territory of the abused childhood she thought she had escaped forever.