{"product_id":"reserved-robert-porter-9781911879596","title":"Reserved: A Jan Vale Mystery","description":"\u003cp\u003eNearly a year has passed since Jan Vale returned to Penraven, and life has finally settled back into something resembling normal. The library has found its familiar rhythm, another Christmas has come and gone, Jan has another birthday approaching, and Moss-older, greyer and supposedly wiser-is enjoying retirement, three walks a day and every treat he can persuade someone to give him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen a young woman at the library makes an unexpected discovery.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA chance encounter on social media leads her to a man with the same surname. What begins as curiosity becomes something extraordinary: they share the same father. A father who walked out when she was a baby, briefly returned when she was five, and then disappeared from her life again.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer newly discovered half-brother brings something their father left behind after his death.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA key.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt bears only a number, but Jan recognises what others don't. With the help of an old reference book, she identifies it as belonging to a safety-deposit box.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat waits inside isn't money.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt's a lifetime of research.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePhotographs. Records. Names. Newspaper cuttings. Notes. Evidence carefully gathered and hidden by a man who knew far more about the past than he ever told his daughter.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd at the centre of it all is an impossible suggestion: \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer mother may not be the woman she has always claimed to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDecades earlier, a frightened young woman arrived in Cornwall carrying a stolen bag, a new identity and a terrible secret. She had witnessed something that could have got her killed, fled the violent man whose life she had shared, and buried everything she knew beneath the quiet respectability of Penraven.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut someone eventually found her.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe father of her child.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe chose not to expose her. Instead, he spent years following the fragments of a story involving a criminal network, a haulage company, a bloodstained van, a murdered mechanic and a driver who vanished without explanation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe never solved it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHe simply reserved the truth for the one person he believed had the right to decide what to do with it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHis daughter.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNow Jan begins pulling at the thread he left behind.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere may be no fresh body, no obvious killer and no conventional murder investigation-but some mysteries are about more than finding out who killed whom. Sometimes the hardest truth to uncover is the one a family has spent a lifetime protecting.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith Moss beside her-occasionally helpful, frequently asleep and still perfectly capable of forgetting his age when confronted by a Frisbee or squirrel-Jan must separate memory from evidence, fear from guilt, and love from forgiveness.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBecause discovering the truth about your family doesn't necessarily tell you who was good and who was bad.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSometimes it reveals that they were simply human.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRESERVED is the fifth Jan Vale Mystery: a warm, character-driven Cornish mystery about family secrets, buried identities, second chances and the truths we keep until someone is finally ready to find them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Robert Porter\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1911879596\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781911879596\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Porter Professional Publishing\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 08\/22\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 254\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.64lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.25h x 5.50w x 0.53d","brand":"Robert Porter","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":50780009332991,"sku":"9781911879596","price":16.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/reserved-robert-porter-9781911879596","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}