Author’s first detective novel – which started ‘as a giggle’ – stormed into the Top 10 just days after publication, as new Shotley Bridge Puzzle book is published.
The author of Shotley Bridge Murders, the new hit police detective novel, has revealed that as a young pupil in Sheffield she would perch every day in the tree at the end of her garden writing until it got too dark to see.
Bobby Cussens says the bottom of the family garden in Nether Edge is where her creative streak took flight and where, once she’d started writing, she’d not lay down her pen until the sun had set.
Cussens’ debut novel has stormed up the charts and entered the Top 10 in Women’s Adventure Fiction less than a week after the police procedural was published at the end of November.
Shotley Bridge Murders is a gripping murder mystery set in County Durham where a brutal killing shatters the calm of a tight-knit community — and sparks a hunt for a killer hiding in plain sight.
The new author has gone one step further – and published a companion book of Shotley Bridge Puzzles designed to immerse readers even deeper into the world of Detective Constable Heather Hudson.
Cussens lived in Ashland Road, Nether Edge, during the 1970s and 80s, and attended Abbeydale Middle School and Abbeydale Grange Comprehensive.
She said: “My English teacher told my mother at a parents’ evening that it didn’t matter if she didn’t understand any of my poems. He told her it was a sign of ‘creative genius’ – which just spurred me on.”
Cussens also recently revealed, in a BBC Radio interview, that the reason she started penning the story was to make friends giggle – but the project quickly deepened into something more powerful.
Cussens told BBC Radio Tees that she never set out to write a novel — instead, she began writing as “a way to make friends smile” in her home village of Shotley Bridge.
“I realised I was writing Heather’s story, and then it just became a compulsion,” Wilson told Scott Mackin’s drivetime programme.
“I’d get these images in my head and I had to write them down. It got uncomfortable if I didn’t. That’s what drove me to finish the book.”
Shotley Bridge Murders uses real local locations — including The King’s Head, Wood Street, Muggleswick, Derwent Reservoir and the historic streets of Shotley Bridge — woven into a modern crime mystery led by Detective Constable Heather Hudson.
Wilson also reveals that she became completely obsessive about getting the local details right.
She said: “I was literally measuring the exact number of metres between points in the village. Shotley Bridge is a hidden gem with so much history — it felt like an honour to capture it.”
Cussens is the pen-name of local businesswoman Julie Wilson who helped to build nationwide bereavement notification service Settld with her daughter — helping thousands of families deal with death-admin before the business was acquired in 2024.
After the business sold, Wilson says she suddenly found herself “at a loose end.” Writing, she says, was the next obvious chapter.
“Many people who write secretly want to write a novel. I didn’t realise I was doing it until halfway through. And then it just took over.”
The book is the first in a planned five-part series, with 26,000 words already written in the second book. Wilson describes Shotley Bridge Murders as sitting firmly within the northern crime tradition of Ann Cleeves, LJ Ross and Val McDermid.
Shotley Bridge Puzzles invites fans to solve cryptic clues, decode hidden messages, and untangle word mysteries – all directly inspired by scenes, characters, and events in the original novel, which has soared up the charts in Women’s Adventure Fiction on Amazon.
The police procedural novel introduces Detective Constable Heather Hudson, a young mother whose first major case plunges her into a world of deception, small-town secrets, and professional peril.
Shotley Bridge Murders is available here in paperback and e-book on Amazon and Shotley Bridge Puzzles is available here on Amazon.
