An author from Dartmoor has released a murder mystery about the moors.

Rachel Francis’s second novel, ‘The Reporter’, follows protagonist Abel Richards as he investigates the disappearance of a widowed farmer in a fictional town on Dartmoor.

With inspiration from Rachel’s life on the moors, the book delves into themes of rural cultures, farming and what it means to belong to a piece of land.

Rachel Francis said: “It starts off as a missing woman but it's a lot more than that, I wrote it to express a different way of life. Writing this book taught me a lot more about Dartmoor and my family heritage.

“I also wrote the book because I felt there was a gap in people's understanding about farming, most of us live in cities and work in front of computers and don’t know what it's like to go out everyday on the farm and check the stock. I’ve had people tell me that farmers are stupid or greedy and that’s just not the case.”

Rachel grew up in a rural community and has spent her time working on farms and with horses across Dartmoor, she started writing her first book ‘The Long Acre’ three years ago and since then she takes every opportunity she can to write.

She continued: “The Reporter has done well with the farming community because it's an honest expression of what it's really like. I also really wanted it to just be an enjoyable read, with good characters and plot twists.”