Nell Pattison calls on her own experience with the deaf community to create a protagonist so unique you’ll be drawn to Paige Northwood form the outside in her debut thriller The Silent House.

Working freelance, taking assignments at interviews for the police is one aspect of Paige’s work. When she’s pulled from a warm bed to attend at the home where a ghastly murder had taken place, she realizes immediately she’s into foreign territory.

A little girl has been savagely murdered, and with the Hunter family being deaf, no one heard the intruder who took the child’s life in the middle of the night.

It’s a dicey line Paige walks, as her sister was dead child’s godmother. She hides this at first until she’s embroiled in the case. Competent sign language interpreters are thin on the ground.

Soon, threats come to Paige to leave the case alone, and that only shores up her determination to see the case through and help the police find a killer. But that decision leave her and those she loves in harm’s way.

Pattison gives a window to the deaf world with all of its challenges, while letting readers inside the way a BSL interpreter really works. This gives a view into how body language and facial features add to the interpretation.

A terrific debut that will leave readers hoping there’s a sequel in the works—there is, out this fall.