The growing crime of romance fraud has an emotional cost for its victims and the issue is explored in the latest in Peter James’s 15-strong series of novels featuring Detective Superintendent Roy Grace.

Dead At First Sight is serialised exclusively in The Argus from tomorrow – the paper is mentioned in the book.

“What happens when you find out the person you love isn’t who you thought they were?” is the eye-catching subtitle to the novel, which is out on Thursday.

It’s a line that was spoken to Peter by a real-life victim of romance fraud and it has evolved into his story of Grace’s investigation into the suicide of a woman in Brighton.

During his enquiries, Grace is approached by a handsome Brighton motivational speaker who has discovered that his identity was being used to scam 11 women looking for love online including the woman found dead.

As his investigation widens, Grace uncovers a global empire built on clever internet scams.

“It’s one of the fastest growing crimes in the world, and in Sussex it is huge,” said Peter, who lives near Henfield. “People don’t want to believe they are being scammed and they don’t want to admit to their family and friends that they’ve been conned.”

Sussex Police, who have a specialist fraud department, came up with the idea of using romance fraud as the basis of Dead At First Sight as they wanted to publicise it.

To research the book, Peter, who has sold 19 million copies of his books worldwide including a number of standalone novels, worked closely with Sussex Police, particularly with their financial abuse safeguarding officer Bernadette Lawrie.

She said: “In Sussex last year, the victims who came forward lost a total of £2,280,000. But due to many cases going unreported, we believe the real total to be much higher.

“There is a lot of shame felt by victims and we want to let them know that they haven’t been foolish by falling for a romance fraudster. These types of criminals are trained to manipulate. We hope that Dead At First Sight can help destigmatise being a victim of this type of crime and educate people on the ‘red flags’ to watch out for when talking to people you meet online”.

Uncovering a scam creates a difficult job for police officers, tasked with informing victims.

Peter said: “I’ve been told that it’s not that different to telling someone about a death. They are about to ruin someone’s life. That person is facing a double whammy – their future is lost and the money’s gone.”

Men and women are equally likely to become victims. “It can happen to anyone at any age, from people in their fifties to their nineties, people who have become single again and are lonely,” Peter said. “Scammers often pose as soldiers or young women using pictures taken from magazines.

“It’s not just lonely hearts who are victims either. Scammers are very cunning and use psychology. They send letters to people from their bank deliberately containing spelling mistakes. Those who spot the spelling mistakes are too clever to be scammed and the ones who don’t are those they target.”

One shocking aspect of the crime Peter learnt was that in Ghana there are schools training people to be internet scammers. “There’s even a term for it, sakawa, which combines internet fraud with traditional rituals so victims can be manipulative spiritually,” he said. Peter himself has been the victim of internet fraud twice. “Three years ago I received an email from someone about real estate. Someone had set up a website called Peter James Real Estate, based in Tallahassee, Florida, with pictures of me, my wife Lara and our dogs. I eventually got it taken down. There was also someone pretending to be me on Instagram.”

Dead At First Sight by Peter James is published on Thursday by Pan Macmillan, £20, ebook £16.99, audiobook £24.99. The stage adaptation of Peter James’s The House On Cold Hill, with Joe McFadden and Rita Simons, is at The Connaught Theatre, Worthing, from June 3 to 8. The book’s sequel The Secret Of Cold Hill will be published in October.

Peter will be signing copies of Dead At First Sight on Thursday at:

Sainsbury’s Hove 10am to noon

WHSmiths Churchill Square 1pm – 2.30pm

WHSmiths Worthing 3.30pm – 4.30pm

Ropetackle Event Hove with City Books

On Friday at:

Asda Eastbourne 10am – 11.30am

WHSmiths Eastbourne 12.30 – 1.30pm

WHSmiths Hove 3.30pm – 4.30pm

Waterstones Brighton 5pm