Murder at Keller Lake, a novel by Judith Noelle

Below is the synopsis for my first novel. I am currently seeking a publisher for my work.


Caleb Murphy spent the past fifteen years of his life in the Navy as a fighter pilot with his best friend Tommy Turner at his side. Caleb and Tommy had grown up, joined the Navy and spent most of their careers together. But, in one fiery moment all was lost over the jagged landscape of Afghanistan. Caleb's career was gone. His best friend was gone. And his life seemed over.

The only thing Caleb had left was the home that his parents had left him back in the small Mississippi town of Keller where he grew up. He packed his things and headed back to a life that he had left behind the day after his high school graduation and maybe the love of his life, his high school sweetheart Kate Forest. It had been seven years since he had been home and only then for a few days for his parents' funerals after a tragic accident. While home for the funerals, Kate came to see him and they spent a few magical hours together at their favorite place by Keller Lake.

Now, without his career, Caleb found himself looking to the past for the answers to his future. Caleb decided to fulfill a dream his mother had carried throughout her life of converting his childhood home into a bed and breakfast. Odd that a fighter pilot would want to open a bed and breakfast but Caleb headed home without regret and with a new found lease on the rest of his life.

His return home was hampered when he stopped just short of his destination to look at the lake where he and Tommy used to fish as kids. Everything changed when he heard an anguished crying sound from the wooded area near Keller Lake. It was a sound of terror; he knew the sound well, hearing the echoes of it in his own nightmares after the crash. A frantic search turned up his lost love Kate Forest, in shock, armed with a dangerous weapon and looking as though she had been through a war zone. Mystery gripped the town as EMTs took Kate to the hospital and the authorities confronted Caleb about his reasons for being there. Two bodies were found at Kate's home and she was accused of the murders of her husband and her twin sister. Caleb had once loved this woman and knew she was not capable of murder. He vowed to help clear her name only to find himself drawn further into the chaos that was Kate's life.


In the wake of a scandal, Kate Forest had moved her family back to Keller, Mississippi and had begun trying to rebuild their lives by opening a new law practice in her hometown. Little did she know that when they moved back into the house where she had been raised that her husband would start an affair with her twin sister, Charity? The girls had been identical in every aspect, physically. Psychologically they were polar opposites. Kate was steady, intelligent, and dependable wanting nothing more than a successful career and a quiet family life raising her seven year old son. Charity had never worked a day in her life; the classic kept woman; a fact evidenced by her choice of lifestyle and husbands, some hers and some not. Charity was outgoing and loved men – a lot of men. Ever the more selfish of the two, Charity had a desire to have everything Kate had or wanted…including Kate's husband.

Accused of murder and afraid for her life and that of her son, Kate had no choice but to trust that Caleb working with her business partner, Bristol Woodland and her husband Jack could find the evidence that would clear Kate of murder.  Caleb and Jack began an investigation that led them into the underground world of stolen cars, chop shops and a conspiracy to keep quiet the fact that Kate and Charity were married to the two men running a major chop shop ring throughout the southern states and into Mexico.

The mystery deepened as sordid speculation blazed through the phone lines to every business and residence in the small town that had watched the group involved grow up together. Among the murder victims were Kate’s husband and sister, but at whose hands? Was it Kate? Did Caleb do it to have Kate for his own?  Perhaps it involved the chop shop ring.  Or could it have been someone out for revenge?