A local mystery writer has just released her fourth book with Author House.

Laurinburg's Sylvia Witmore published "A Strange Encounter," the tale of a woman who gets wrapped up in a murder mystery involving twins.

Kari Melton, the story's protagonist, meets a London lawyer in a chance encounter after a flat tire threatened to cut short her trip from Boone to Wilmington, the author said.

The man, who is in the state seeking his identical twin brother, helps Melton with her car.

As the two are about to part ways, shots are fired from a dark-colored sedan, fatally-wounding the attorney. In his final moments, the man charged Melton with finding his twin brother.

Witmore said the idea for the story actually started with the back story for the twins.

The author said she was watching a television program on political corruption while the John Edwards scandal was unfolding in the media.

She thought it would make for an interesting story if the teenage daughter of a prominent figure got pregnant out of wedlock and he had the illegitimate offspring whisked away to avoid a political scandal.

As her idea developed, Witmore decided the man should be a New England senator and his unwanted grandchildren should be twins, with one going to a British family and the other to North Carolina.

Most of her works start off that way, with a spark of inspiration.

"I just get a plot in my head," she said.

Witmore said she fleshes out the characters and the story practically writes itself.

The author says she prefers mysteries as she was raised on The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries.

She also has several books in the hopper.

"Moonlight Madness," a story due out laster this year, is the tale of someone who is killed aboard a cruise ship.

Another project, "Echo of Footsteps" is a story about a woman who owns a dance studio atop a Hamlet bar that goes missing.

Witmore is also writing an autobiographical work about her bout with cancer – she had a seven-and-a-half pound tumor removed and underwent eight months of chemotherapy for ovarian cancer – and the death of her husband the day after she got a bill of health from her oncologist.

Witmore has three prior books with AuthorHouse: Wheels of Danger, Treacherous Hearts and The Vodoo Doll.