The rumour is Lesley Kara is the next big literary thing.

And you don’t need to take my word for it. Even before it came out last month, people were talking about it.

Writers and critics have been variously describing it as having ‘a brilliant premise with a killer twist’ and ‘a cracking thriller about the damage that idle gossip can wreak in a small town’.

Then there’s the film world with Cuba Pictures, the people behind McMafia, picking up the television rights for it, following a six-way auction.

Lesley says: “I still have to pinch myself every now and again because all it feels like a dream, I mean a wonderful dream but definitely a dream nonetheless.”

Born and brought up in Chelmsford after Moulsham School and the city’s college, Lesley went to train as a nurse in London before taking up a job as a secretary for a firm of accountants in the City.

After having children, she went back to university and trained as an English teacher, before finally becoming a writer.

“It’s all I ever wanted to do,” she smiles, “it’s just life constantly got in the way. Then I was quite ill and had to take a bit of time off. During my convalescing I began writing and that’s when I thought if I’m going to do this properly I need to do this properly.

“I saw an advert for the Faber Academy, which is an intensive six month course, in the heart of Bloomsbury, which I thought was a good start.”

After graduating she took the brave decision of quitting her well paid job and started writing full time. Now based in Frinton for the last couple of years, the idea for her debut novel The Rumour, came about when Lesley herself passed on a rumour about a notorious figure who was said to be in a ‘safe house’ somewhere in the vicinity she was living at the time.

“For the next few days,” Lesley confesses, “I couldn’t help looking at the houses I was walking past every day and wondering not only ‘what if’, but how I would feel if I knew for sure.

“It got me thinking about how we never really know who our neighbours and acquaintances are. But also about the vitriol so often levelled at perpetrators of such crimes - that goes way beyond any notion of justice but spills over into revenge fantasies and vigilantism.”

In Lesley’s book, set in the fictional town of Flinstead on Sea, which she assures me is inspired by her new town in place only, not people, The Rumour begins with just that, a rumour that a former child killer is living under a new identity in a sleepy seaside town.

It starts with hushed whispers at the school gate. When young mother Joanna Critchley hears the disquieting murmurings, she makes an innocent, throwaway remark that unintentionally fans the flames. As the pitchfork-and-torches-wielding mob swings into action, Joanna has her own ideas about who Sally might be.

Lesley is at Waterstones, Colchester, on January 28 when she’ll be in conversation with Colchester thriller writer, Jack Jordan. It starts at 7pm and for more information call 01206 561307.