John Murray jumps for Broken Country with deals brokered in 23 territories

John Murray has acquired Broken Country, a "love triangle with the pulse of a thriller" by Clare Leslie Hall as translation deals have been brokered across the globe.

Executive publisher Jocasta Hamilton – working with editor Abi Scruby – pre-empted UK and Commonwealth rights from Hattie Grunewald at the Blair Partnership, and the book will be published in summer 2025. US rights were acquired at auction by Carina Guiterman at Simon & Schuster.

Blair Partnership head of international rights Liane-Louise Smith and international rights assistant Kathryn Williams have sewn up 22 deals to date – including a "heated" 14-way auction in Germany, won by Piper.

The book "alternates between the beauty and brutal reality of rural life and the tension of a murder trial at the Old Bailey in the late 1960s and is a compulsive novel about the far-reaching legacy of first love".

Hall, who has previously published two domestic noirs under the name Clare Empson, said: "I have been carrying the love triangle of Beth, Frank and Gabriel inside my head for many years and so it has been amazing to see the response to it in the outside world. The story arrived in one of those rare thunderbolt moments after a farmer threatened to shoot my son’s beloved puppy when he strayed from the footpath into a field of cattle."

Hamilton commented: "Broken Country is impossible to put down. The twists took me completely by surprise and I finished the novel in tears, wrung out in the most satisfying way. In other words, everything you could possibly want from the perfect book club read."