Kate White has gone where few have been able to go: From magazine editor to best-selling murder mystery novelist with10 standalone psychological thrillers including her latest, “The Last Time She Saw Him” (Harper paperback original, May 14).

“Last Time” chronicles the bitter summer of Kiki Reed, a Manhattan career counselor who is still processing breaking her engagement with Jamie Larsson.  The two meet for the first time since their split at a Connecticut cocktail party.  As everyone leaves, a gunshot is heard and Jamie is discovered in his car, dead, the police say, of a self-inflicted shotgun blast.

Kiki can’t accept that – and so begins a search for what she believes is the truth, a crusade that pits her against everyone else, including the cops, who insist he wasn’t murdered.

“The Last Time” wasn’t inspired by a specific case, White, 72, said in a phone interview.

“I just started to think about the idea that somebody realizes somebody was murdered and can’t convince other people. That’s the case. The extra hurdle she faces is that she is Jamie’s ex-fiancée and people dislike her because she broke off the relationship and almost left him standing at the altar.

“So they’re basically telling her to butt out and don’t see any reason for her to be doing this. I felt that would make her feel even more challenged because it isn’t just convincing people that somebody killed him.

“It’s convincing people who don’t think she has any business raising the issue. And that would make her even more dogged.”

As a former editor in chief at Cosmopolitan magazine, does that influence White’s work?

“Initially, when I dreamed of writing suspense fiction after being a Nancy Drew fan, I wanted to write about a female private eye,” she said.

“During high school I was interested in writing plays but I ended up . . . working in magazines because I won this contest Glamour magazine had called The Top 10 College Women which started my career in magazines.

“Cosmo helped me out by just learning to be a good listener in meetings, pay attention to people and try to figure out their hidden agenda. What they were really feeling — because as a boss, you in some ways want to have an idea of what your staff is thinking almost before they do themselves. Because that makes you a better boss.

“Learning to be more observant in that job probably has helped me a lot with writing mysteries. Just paying attention.

“It also caused me to write a couple of books about career success. That’s part of why Kiki is a career coach, because I know a lot about that.”