Elena Hartwell's Blog, page 37
June 12, 2023
You Killed My Wife: A Thriller
You Killed My Wife, a thriller by A J Wilton
Excerpt + Book & Author Info + Giveaway!Don’t miss any blog tour posts! Click the link here.You Killed My Wife
With a post-mortem trail that presents him with scandalous industrial espionage and both police and political corruption within Queensland, Mort finds his colleague Pig is the only one he can trust as he delves into the depths of putrid filth in his home state. Together, they must combat this insidious situation, battle not only rife politics and procedures but also outlaw bikie gangs out to protect their own interests.
With a skillset learned from the front-line military, Mort and Pig’s journey is filled with intrigue and danger and ultimately comes to a climax that will see them at the brink of their own existence with only the air in their lungs to keep them alive…
One answer has many questions…
Book Details:Genre: Australian Thriller
Published by: Shawline Publishing House
Publication Date: June 2023
Number of Pages: 320
ISBN: 9781922993045 (ISBN10: 1922993042)
Series: You Killed My Wife, Book 1
‘You killed my wife.’
There, I had said it. Finally, after all these months of wondering how it would sound. It was out there. The reaction was about what I had expected.
Dillion Benson turned his focus to me and was about to tell me to ‘F … off’ no doubt, but seeing me, he stopped. It had certainly stilled the various conversations amongst his group (and some surrounding groups as well).
Benson wasn’t the first to respond. Joe Lancaster, his boss and the detective inspector, responded, ‘And who might you be?’
‘He knows,’ I said, nodding at Benson.
Benson looked at me and asked, ‘Mort?’ He offered his hand, and I nodded and shook hands with who I believed was my wife’s killer. He continued, ‘It was an accident – the coroner has signed off on it. But I must say I am truly sorry for your loss.’
I did not say anything, just stared at him, making him and some of his colleagues uncomfortable. I am a big man and admit I do know how to intimidate.
Another of his colleagues, whose name I wasn’t sure of, piped up. ‘What do you care?
You didn’t even make the funeral.’
I turned the stare onto him, causing an increase in the tension Eventually, I replied, ‘The Army were unable to extract me, didn’t even tell me she had been killed until our mission was complete.’
I continued to stare at him, gradually broadening my look to include the Detective Inspector and Benson, and said, ‘I have read the coroner’s report. I find it intriguing it is not mentioned anywhere that you are a serving policeman, or that a blood test was carried out. So that alone makes the report interesting reading.’
I let that hang, slowly placing my empty glass on their table without breaking eye contact with Benson.
I said As I left, I told him, ‘You will be seeing me again.’
Upon this, I left the bar and the pub. There, I have set the ball rolling – let the dice fall where they will. If I had known then what those four words, ‘You killed my wife,’ would lead to, would I have uttered them?
You betcha!
***
Excerpt from You Killed My Wife by A J Wilton. Copyright 2023 by A J Wilton. Reproduced with permission from A J Wilton. All rights reserved.
A J Wilton, author of You Killed My Wife
A J Wilton is an Australian small businessman with two thriving businesses who turned to writing through the quieter times brought on by Covid. He describes himself as a ‘Hobby Author’ fitting this into his already time-poor days. To date he has written two novels in his series about Mort and Pig in what is planned to be a series of five.
He lives in the Gold Coast hinterland in Queensland. He and his wife, both inveterate travellers, look forward to exploring somewhere new, with A J able to indulge his other hobby of landscape photography. He has three adult children and three grandchildren.
To learn more about A J, click on any of the following links: Website, Goodreads, Instagram,
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June 11, 2023
The Empty Kayak: New Crime Fiction
The Empty Kayak, a crime novel by Jodé Millman
Excerpt + Book & Author Info + Giveaway!
Don’t miss any blog tour posts! Click the link here.
The Empty Kayak
For Detective Ebony Jones, crime is always personal. But this time, it strikes too close to home.
A pop-up thunderstorm marched its way across the Hudson River, ambushing a young couple’s kayaking trip. The woman miraculously made it back to shore, but her fiancé remains missing. Ebony and her partner are the first responders who rush to the river to assist in rescuing the capsized boater.
The victim’s identity shocks Ebony to the core. Kyle Emory, the ex-boyfriend of her estranged best friend, attorney Jessie Martin, is the man who never made it out of the water. The accident ignites a firestorm between the two friends, pitting them against each other in a race to discover whether Kyle survived or whether he met his untimely demise. Under pressure from the chief and the DA, Ebony needs to solve the mystery, while Jessie seeks justice for the sake of the daughter she shares with Kyle.
The investigation leads them through the dark worlds of social media, online sports betting, and extreme sports. Along the way, they uncover lies and betrayals, and gather a list of dangerous suspects who are all linked to the accident survivor, Kyle’s mysterious fiancée. Even more, the discovery that Kyle possessed his own life-shattering secrets has trapped Ebony between her career and her lifelong friendship with Jessie. Yet neither Ebony nor Jessie will stop until they unearth the truth. Even if it destroys their friendship and their lives.
But the evidence is as murky as the secretive Hudson River. Only the river knows whether Kyle’s untimely death was an accident, a suicide, or murder.
Book Details:
Genre: Crime Fiction, Mystery, Suspense
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: May 2023
Number of Pages: 400
ISBN: 9781685122874 (ISBN10: 1685122876)
Series: Queen City Crimes Series, Book 3
To purchase The Empty Kayak, click on any of the following links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads
Read an excerpt:
The Empty Kayak
Chapter One
Detective Ebony Jones felt as though she was toting around a thousand-pound weight, which grew heavier and more torturous with each step. Her cargo, a petite one-year-old, nestled her dark curly head against Ebony’s shoulder and wriggled on Ebony’s bum left hip, the one with the .38 caliber bullet fragments lodged in it. Even the slightest pressure from the child’s body sent relentless jolts of electricity sizzling down her leg. Between the squirmy kid and the merciless pain, Ebony’s trek up the sidewalk was a living hell. And the situation was about to get worse. Much, much worse.
The toddler’s green eyes locked onto Ebony’s, so trusting and innocent that they tugged at her jaded cop’s heartstrings. Lily Martin’s face was muddy, her fuzzy pink hoodie was soaked from the sudden rainstorm, and she was missing one sneaker. But it wasn’t Lily’s bedraggled condition that made their journey up the front walk so unbearable; it was the heartbreak that would follow after Ebony rang the doorbell. And Lily’s mother answered.
The Tudor-style City of Poughkeepsie home belonged to Jessie Martin, Lily’s mom, and Ebony’s on-again, off-again best friend. Since kindergarten, over twenty-five years ago, the two women had been BFFs, but once they pursued conflicting careers in the law, Ebony as a cop and Jessie as a criminal defense attorney, their relationship had deteriorated. Around every corner, clients, cases, and the legal system had thrust obstacles in their path, testing their friendship. Sometimes, Ebony wanted to pack it in and move on, but deep in her heart, she yearned to reconcile with Jessie. The present catastrophe wasn’t going to help that cause.
* * *
On her trip to Jessie’s, Ebony had stewed over the appropriate way to tell Jessie that her ex, Lily’s father, Kyle, was missing? There would be so many questions—how, when, where, why. How could Ebony explain the outcome of Kyle’s disappearance when she didn’t know for sure whether he’d survived the freak accident?
Ebony limped up Jessie’s bluestone path, laden with a cauldron of emotions. Sorrow. Guilt. Anger. Disbelief. Fear. And reluctance, to name a few. She still couldn’t swallow the reality. Kyle Emory was missing and if she was honest, presumed dead.
Midway down the walk, Ebony glanced over her shoulder at Zander, who had remained curbside with their unmarked black Explorer. He was tall and slender, and leaned against the hood of the car. Zander’s brows were drawn together, and he watched her with hawk-like precision. As partners, they were supposed to deliver death notifications in pairs, but he’d made no move to join her on the threshold.
Chicken, she thought. Or was he being uncharacteristically empathetic, given her close relationship with the victim’s former partner?
Delivering the news of a loved one’s death—or possible death—was the most onerous part of her job, and fortunately, she’d never discharged this duty before. Why did the first time have to be Jessie? This was going to be a day, a moment, that would be branded into Jessie’s heart and mind forever.
The need to perform the death notification properly, professionally, prompted Ebony to ask herself how she’d prefer this horrific news disclosed to her.
It wasn’t as if she was notifying a stranger. She knew Jessie as intimately as she knew her own kid sister, Carly. And similar to her arguments with Carly, they’d always forgiven each other eventually. Ebony only hoped being the messenger of a suspected death didn’t permanently sever their already fragile bond.
But Jessie was a lawyer; a smart, strong, and fierce criminal defense attorney. She’d understand. She’d want honesty. No bullshit.
Straight but gentle, Ebony reminded herself as she scaled the porch stairs, clasping Lily to her side. Upon reaching the landing, she exhaled a deep breath, pressed the doorbell, and waited.
An eternity passed before Jessie answered the door. Jessie’s eyes flitted from Ebony to Lily. Jessie’s broad smile vanished as a ripple of worry lines surfaced on her forehead, and her ears flushed pink. Hal Samuels, Jessie’s fiancé, stood behind her, looking equally surprised. They were dressed for early autumn hiking with scuffed tan boots, plaid flannel shirts, and faded jeans. They radiated happiness. Every time Ebony saw Hal and Jessie together, she was reminded that a homicide investigation had reunited them and that new beginnings could grow from despair.
“Eb, what are you doing here? How did you get Lily? Is she okay?” Jessie craned her neck to peek past Ebony’s shoulder toward the street. “What’s going on? Where’s Kyle?”
Ebony cleared her throat. “Jessie, we have a situation.”
Hal dipped his head in recognition. The former District Attorney, and now Dutchess County Court Judge, seemed to acknowledge her gravitas and cupped his hands on Jessie’s shoulders as if propping her up in anticipation of an imminent disaster.
Jessie’s mossy green eyes burned into hers, and she snatched Lily away from Ebony as though protecting her child from a mistress of evil.
“What do you mean? A situation? Tell me what happened to Lily. Is she hurt?” Jessie peeled off Lily’s wet hoodie, socks, and muddy sneaker, and ran her trembling hands over her daughter’s plump body, checking for bumps, bruises, and cuts. Finding none, she continued, “Has Kyle been in a car accident? Where is he? Is he okay?” As expected, the questions tumbled out, heavy with worry.
Despite the pain in her leg, there had been something comforting about having the baby’s legs locked around her waist and the soft body cuddled against her. The warmth. The maternal stirrings. The irresistible scent of baby shampoo. The sudden emptiness in Ebony’s arms only exacerbated the burden of her visit and reminded her that the worst was yet to come.
Ebony’s entire vocabulary lodged in the back of her throat like a fishbone. Her mind analyzed the techniques for being sensitive, caring, and supportive, as protocol and friendship required. She stood frozen in time and space, cognizant that the truth would make the tragedy real for the both of them.
“Ebony, please come in,” Hal said, guiding Jessie across the foyer. “Take a seat in the living room.”
She followed them into the living room, where vibrant flowered sheets blanketed the sofa and chairs, protecting them from tiny, sticky hands. Ebony recalled that almost four months ago, she and Zander had barged into this room, attempting to pressure Jessie’s client into testifying in what had proven to be a landmark serial killer case. But Jessie had obstructed them, her customary modus operandi when dealing with the police.
The same floral sheets billowed as Ebony occupied an armchair that faced Jessie, who had Lily nestled in her lap upon the couch. Hal settled in beside them and leaned forward with his hands clasped and his elbows resting on his knees.
Ebony coughed at the dust motes floating in the air and cleared her throat. Straight but gentle. “Jessie, I have some bad news.” She sucked in a long breath and exhaled slowly to prepare herself. “We believe Kyle may have drowned in a kayaking accident this morning on the Hudson River. We haven’t found him, but we’re out looking for him. I’m so sorry.”
Jessie’s eyebrows shot up as she absorbed the words. What? Her dilated pupils seemed to demand.
“Jessie, did you hear me? Kyle disappeared this morning.”
“What do you mean, you believe he’s missing? Don’t you know if he’s dead or alive?” Jessie’s face flushed and her grip on Lily tightened. “Kyle had Lily with him. How could he have been kayaking? Who was watching Lily?” Jessie’s voice increased in pitch until it was a squeak.
Hal slid close to Jessie and slipped his arm around her shoulders, shoring her up against the blow. “Let’s take it step by step, Jess. You must be in shock. Ebony, can you please start at the beginning? I’m sure that will answer some of our questions.”
“Before I get into the details, do you want me to call your mom and dad? They can help with Lily while I fill you in. I can send Zander over to retrieve them.”
Jessie balked at the suggestion and clutched the fidgety baby tightly to her breast. Hal tilted his head backward and jutted his chin toward the door, signaling his consent.
Taking the hint, Ebony shot off a text to Zander. Please pick up Ed and Lena Martin and bring them here. She gave him their address, and he texted back. 10-4. On the way.
Although she owed Jessie an explanation, she wanted to delay getting into the details until Ed and Lena arrived to take care of Lily. The poor tot had been through enough at the scene.
“When did you last see Kyle?” Ebony asked.
“This morning. He came by around nine to pick up Lily. It was his Saturday with her.”
“Did he mention where he was headed?”
“No. I didn’t ask. We’re supposed to sign the custody papers this week, and since we were getting along, I figured I’d cut him some slack.” Jessie paused. “I’m working on my trust issues with him.”
“So, he didn’t tell you he was going kayaking at Kaal Rock?”
“No. He was there by himself? He had Lily with him?” A sense of disbelief colored her voice.
“Did he indicate he was meeting… friends?” Ebony asked. She needed to proceed step-by-step. Straight but gentle.
“No, what friends?”
“Does the name Olivia Vargas mean anything to you?” Ebony kept her tone calm, although her stomach clenched into a knot.
“Ebony, you’re scaring me. Who is this person, and what is happening?”
“Apparently, Kyle was engaged to Olivia. They became engaged three weeks ago on Labor Day. They were supposed to be getting married on Valentine’s Day next year.”
“What the hell? You’re telling me Kyle’s missing, and he was engaged?” Jessie shouted. Lily startled and bawled as though she understood the significance of Ebony’s announcement. Jessie rose and paced across the living room carpet, shushing her daughter and planting kisses on her curly head. “It’s okay, Lilybean. Hush, hush.”
Hal narrowed his eyes and made a time-out sign. “You’re asking a lot of questions and not revealing any facts about what happened to Emory.” He paused. “Stop beating around the bush and start at the beginning like I asked.” Hal’s demeanor had pivoted from being a supportive partner into a cool and controlled prosecutor ready to cross-examine an adverse witness. “What does this Vargas woman have to do with the kayak? And Kyle’s disappearance?”
“I’ll explain after the Martin’s arrive,” Ebony said.
As they waited, an uncomfortable silence filled the room. Ebony shifted in her chair as the hinge of the front door squeaked, followed by the shuffling of feet. Jessie’s parents, Lena and Ed Martin, accompanied Zander into the living room, and Jessie’s anxious expression greeted them. Then, in one swift movement, Hal gently pried Lily from Jessie’s embrace and deposited the toddler into her grandmother’s waiting arms. Ed opened his mouth to speak, but Hal interrupted him by whispering into his ear. Ed sighed and disappeared with Lena and their granddaughter in tow.
With the arrival of Jessie’s parents, Ebony could quit procrastinating and get down to business.
Zander perched on the arm of Ebony’s chair and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Okay. Here’s what we know,” Ebony said.
*** Excerpt from The Empty Kayak by Jodé Millman. Copyright 2023 by Jodé Millman. Reproduced with permission from Jodé Millman. All rights reserved.
Jodé Millman author of The Empty Kayak
Photo by Evangeline Gala (www.evangelinegala.com)Jodé Millman is the acclaimed author of HOOKER AVENUE and THE MIDNIGHT CALL, which won the Independent Press, American Fiction, and Independent Publisher Bronze IPPY Awards for Legal Thriller.
She’s an attorney, a reviewer for Booktrib.com, the host/producer of The Backstage with the Bardavon podcast, and creator of The Writer’s Law.
Jodé lives with her family in the Hudson Valley, where she is at work on the next installment of her “Queen City Crimes” series —novels inspired by true crimes in the region she calls home.
To learn more about Jodé, follow her on any of the following links: Website, Goodreads, LinkedIn, BookBub, Instagram, Twitter.
Giveaway: This is a giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Jodé Millman. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited. The giveaway is for: 2 – $10 Amazon Gift Cards
Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell
Amazon #1 bestseller
All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.
Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator
Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery
The Foundation of Plot , a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.
The post The Empty Kayak: New Crime Fiction appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.
June 9, 2023
Jim Nesbitt: Hard-Boiled Thrillers
Jim Nesbitt, author of the Ed Earl Burch novels
Author Interview + Book and Author Info + Author Pet Corner!Find out more about Jim Nesbitt, click the link here for his guest post.The Dead Certain Doubt by Jim Nesbitt
Revenge, Guilt, Redemption & GunsmokeWhen Doubt Is Your Only Friend
Ed Earl Burch, a cashiered Dallas murder cop, is a private detective facing the relentless onslaught of age, bad choices, guilt and regret. Smart, tough, profane and reckless, he’s a survivor who relies on his own guts and savvy and expects no help or salvation from anybody. But he’s also a man who longs for the sense of higher calling he felt when he carried a homicide detective’s gold shield. He seeks redemption and a chance to make amends to a dying old woman he abandoned decades ago when she needed him most. When he sees her again, she has the same request — save her granddaughter from the vicious outlaws on her trail and bring her home for a final goodbye.
Easier said than done because the granddaughter is a hardened hustler and gunrunner, hellbent on avenging a lover who got chopped up and stuffed into a barbecue smoker by cartel gunsels and a rival smuggler. To fulfill the old woman’s last request, Burch heads back to the borderlands of West Texas on a mercy mission that plunges him into a violent world of smugglers, cartel killers, crooked lawmen, Bible-thumping hucksters, anti-government extremists and an old nemesis who wants to see him dead.
The odds are long and Burch has his doubts — about himself, the granddaughter, old friends and the elusive nature of grace from guilt. Truth be told, doubt is the only thing he’s dead certain of.
Grace Or A Desert Grave?
To purchase The Dead Certain Doubt, click the following links: Paperback & KindleInterview with Jim Nesbitt, Author of Hard-Boiled ThrillersTell us about Ed Earl Burch, private detective and protagonist of The Dead Certain Doubt :When I wrote my first novel, The Last Second Chance, I didn’t intend it to be the first in a series. Nor did I know whether Ed Earl Burch would be a durable protagonist for four or five hard-boiled crime thrillers. Turns out he’s stronger than a Missouri mule, a survivor built to last, about to carry a fifth book. But I didn’t know that when I created him.
What I did know was that I wanted him to be a deeply flawed and scarred character, a guy who has a code he sometimes forgets to live by until crunch time. He’s tough, relentless and cagy, but he’s not super smart like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. He’s more of an Everyman.
In earlier books, he self-medicates with pills and bourbon to keep the demons and night terrors at bay from an earlier case. But when you meet him in this book, he’s kicked the Percocet but kept the bourbon. He’s also managed to dig himself out of a financial hole, ditching a shyster lawyer who kept him in the red, enjoying the comfort of a fat bank account and no debt. He’s an aging tough guy—with all the physical decline, regrets and emotional baggage that entails. I didn’t want to make him a poster child for Geritol but I was interested in how he would adjust to life in his late fifties, staring at sixty. Turns out, living a comfortable life revives and sharpens the sense of loss he’s carried through the decades since being forced to turn in his gold shield as a Dallas homicide detective. He managed to bury that with booze and pills, but now that he’s semi-sober, that longing comes roaring back. He misses that sense of higher calling and the adrenalin rush of a manhunt that ends in either an arrest or a showdown. He also wants to make amends to people he has wronged—in particular, a dying old woman he turned his back on when she needed him most.
They meet and she asks him for the same favor from decades ago—save her granddaughter from vicious gunrunners, cartel killers, white supremacists and bent lawmen. That puts Ed Earl on a collision course with Big Trouble in West Texas, a harsh land where more than a few people want to see him dead.
The Dead Certain Doubt takes place in the West Texas borderlands. Describe that location and the role geography plays in the book:It’s desert country, harsh but starkly beautiful, a land where mountain ranges collide and look like the bones of the earth ripped open for you to see. That makes it perfect for a violent tale of revenge and redemption. It’s also a cultural no-man’s-land—not really part of either the United States or Mexico but an imperfect amalgam of both countries. That’s what makes it outlaw country—historically and today.
Back in my journalism days, I was always fascinated with the impact of the land on its people, how it shaped them as they were trying to wrest a living from it. As a novelist, I think the sense of place you create should be strong enough to become a character unto itself. Easy to do with West Texas and its unforgiving beauty, country that puts a hard bark on its people and gives them little in return.
Is there anything you would like readers to know from the earlier Ed Earl Burch books?The short answer is that all of these books are about revenge and redemption.
I also tell people this is an accidental series, not something I planned. And I’ve written them all as stand-alones, so you don’t necessarily need to read them in order, although a Texas buddy of mine, reviewer Kevin Tipple, says that’s exactly what you should do. Take your pick. I guess there are three or four essentials that run through all four books.
First off, they’re not Sunday School fare—the sex and the violence are graphic and explicit. No euphemisms, please. The language is raw, profane, colorful and frequently hilarious. All the characters are fairly well defined, even the minor ones. No cardboard cutouts, please. The women are stronger, smarter and sometimes more lethal than the men. And now, a word about that hackneyed phrase— ‘character development.’ The people in my books aren’t nice and there isn’t that much difference between Ed Earl and a cartel killer. So, you won’t see a wife, kids and a dog to temper the action with domestic bliss.
In my mind, giving a character a wife and kids is a pretty cliche version of character development. Better to show their humanity through how they interact with people they meet during the chase. This doesn’t mean Ed Earl won’t get a dog or a fourth wife. But if he does, you can bet it’s in service of the story—not to check some character development box.
What does “hard-boiled crime thriller” mean to you?I mean hard-boiled in the sense that Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett did when they yanked crime fiction out of the drawing rooms of English country manors and from the well-manicured hands of amateur sleuths using deductive reasoning and put it smack dab in streets, bars, apartments and office buildings of an American city.
Hard-boiled is unflinchingly realistic and unsentimental. It’s a uniquely American art form. The cases are in the rougher hands of an American shamus—often an ex-cop—who is tough, cynical and shows little emotion. He meets plenty of people who are built the same way and he expects most of them to lie to him. He has a code he tries to live by—sometimes he fails, sometimes he ignores it. That’s what I kept in mind when I created Ed Earl Burch.
He’s a chicken-fried tough guy, very hard and cynical. I’m also very aware that my books really aren’t whodunits. I’m too much of a pantster to write a carefully plotted mystery. My books are slam-bang thrillers with Ed Earl in pursuit of a bad actor but it isn’t a mystery who that is.
Before starting your life of crime … fiction, you were a journalist. How does that background impact your writing?I was lucky to start my newspaper career during an era when long-format journalism was the rage and there was a high demand for writers who knew how to ditch the inverted pyramid template and tell the hell out of a story, using all the tricks of the trade found in fiction and, dare I say, literature.
I come from a long line of hillbilly story tellers and was pretty successful at this form of journalism for a long time. I was also on the road for almost 20 years, knocking around the West and the borderlands in Texas, soaking up a lot of knowledge, sights, sounds, characters and culture I used in my stories and kept in the memory banks for future use. It wasn’t a big stretch to try my hand at fiction—hard-boiled crime fiction, of course.
What are you working on now?I’m starting to think about my fifth Ed Earl Burch book. I’ve got a working title—The Fatal Saving Grace—and have a broad notion about what the book will be about. But more than likely, I’ll do a brief outline and some character sketches and just start writing. Gotta keep yourself open to the magic and characters that rise from the page and take over the story.
Words of Wisdom for Aspiring Writers:The first is dead simple—keep your butt in the chair and write, even on days you don’t feel like it. Keep that routine and physical discipline. It’s okay to walk away and take a break, but always come back to that chair.
The second is my raging hatred for the dumbest thing anybody can say to a writer—write what you know. What a writer should be told is take what you know and expand your knowledge, do your research, dive deep. Facts are your friends and though you don’t regurgitate what you’ve learned, it will build a strong foundation for your writing, giving it a power and authenticity it would otherwise lack. I find that the stronger that foundation is, the more my writing really flies. Kinda counter-intuitive when you think about it, but life is full of these schizophrenic contradictions, no?
I agree! I always say write what you can learn. Great advice, Jim Nesbitt! Thanks for hanging out with us on my blog.Author Pet Corner!
Daisy!
Max!My wife, Pam, and I lost our two elderly animals a couple of years ago—Marley, a 16-year-old Chihuahua-type, and Milo, a 22-year-old orange tabby tom.
After a suitable period of mourning, we got Daisy, a five-year-old rat terrier, and, more recently, Max, a three-month old black-and-silver tabby.
Daisy’s a sweetheart and an accomplished moocher. Max is a ball of fire and rarely slows down.
Jim Nesbitt
Jim Nesbitt is the award-winning author of four hard-boiled Texas crime thrillers that feature battered but relentless Dallas PI Ed Earl Burch — THE LAST SECOND CHANCE, a Silver Falchion finalist; THE RIGHT WRONG NUMBER, an Underground Book Reviews “Top Pick”; and, his latest, THE BEST LOUSY CHOICE, winner of the best crime fiction category of the 2020 Independent Press Book Awards, the 2020 Silver Falchion award for best action and adventure novel from the Killer Nashville crime fiction conference and bronze medal winner in the best mystery/thriller e-book category of the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards. His latest book is THE DEAD CERTAIN DOUBT, which was released in early March.
Nesbitt was a journalist for more than 30 years, serving as a reporter, editor and roving national correspondent for newspapers and wire services in Alabama, Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington, D.C. He chased hurricanes, earthquakes, plane wrecks, presidential candidates, wildfires, rodeo cowboys, migrant field hands, neo-Nazis and nuns with an eye for the telling detail and an ear for the voice of the people who give life to a story.
His stories have appeared in newspapers across the country and in magazines such as Cigar Aficionado and American Cowboy. He is a lapsed horseman, pilot, hunter and saloon sport with a keen appreciation for old guns, vintage cars and trucks, good cigars, aged whiskey and a well-told story. Nesbitt regularly reviews crime fiction and history on his blog, The Spotted Mule, and his author web site, as well as Facebook, Amazon and Goodreads. He now lives in Athens, Alabama.
To learn more about Jim Nesbitt, click on any of the following links: JimNesbittBooks.com, Goodreads, BookBub – @edearl56 & Facebook – @edearlburchbooksElena Taylor/Elena HartwellAll We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.
Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator
Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery
The Foundation of Plot , a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.The post Jim Nesbitt: Hard-Boiled Thrillers appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.
June 8, 2023
J Ivanel Johnson: Guest Post
J Ivanel Johnson guest post
Author Guest Post + Book and Author InfoJust a STALE MATE by J Ivanel Johnson 
“Thoroughly enjoyed this clever mystery… the characters are charming, diverse, and well-developed, and the story keeps you turning those pages!” –Sherry Hobbs, author of MAC and Bird of Passage
When P.J. Whistler leaves her Appalachian village of Victoria, New Brunswick in the summer of 1969 to visit her godson’s family in south-western Ontario, she isn’t prepared for her keen observational skills to be in demand for solving a murder.
But when her godson, homicide consultant Inspector Philip Steele, and his mother Lary, who is now running their family farm, the “JUST (e)STATE”, as one of the first therapeutic riding schools in North America, ask P.J. to help with the investigation of a young man who fell to his death from a railway trestle, she is happy to oblige.
The many suspects, from as far as Yorkshire, who are staying at the rural retreat outside Sandytown all seem to have a motive. Or, at least a secret. And what of the constant Dickens references behind which they all hide? Will Phil and P.J., along with Detective Trevor Ames (closeting a secret of his own), be able to ‘unearth’ the killer? Or, is what’s buried on the retreat’s property destined to remain there forever?
To purchase Just a STALE MATE, click the following links: Paperback & Kindle
View a thrilling 2-minute book trailer for Just A STALE MATE
BRIDLED PASSIONS
“It is Ability, Not Disability, That Counts”
by J Ivanel Johnson
This article is a tip of the dressage top hat to my maternal grandmother, Dorothy McKenzie, who gave me my first English saddle (seen in one of the photos below) and to her daughter Joy. Both were dedicated teachers, the former teaching Special Education most of her career; both encouraged me always in my work with Therapeutic Riding, Teaching, AND with my Creative Writing.
Having developed spondylolisthesis in my early years (probably from too many falls off my run-away Shetland), I have always been “spurred” on to ignore the spinal condition (and the 3 corrective surgeries thus far) and to live a life of doing things I probably shouldn’t have.
(See photo of Harvest Gold and me, for instance, at Elena’s post from last autumn: click the link here )
I also like to “stirrup” trouble—if not in real life, then in my fiction. That’s why I write murder-mysteries.
And as you may have gathered from that first paragraph, I love word-play. In the equestrian world especially, there are so many double entendres. A “cozy” short story mystery I wrote recently called “Winter’s Warmblood” (soon to be published in the A Warm Mug of Cozy anthology) features many of these. For instance, a “coffin” is a bone in the hoof, but also a standard cross-country jump for competitive 3-Day Event riders, of which I was once. Then there’s “throat-lash”, “stifle,” “cannon,” “wither,” and even “warmblood” itself, all lending to the inspiration for (un)stable-set murder. Irresistible!
But while my whodunnits are considered light reading, primarily puzzles for the reader to solve with literary (and other!) clues, ALL my writing features the trials and tribulations of culturally-diverse characters and those from marginalized communities such as the disabled. Or (dis)Abled, as I like to write it. Because I’ve always owned and loved horses—my mother tells me that my first “sentence’” was ‘Mommy, Mommy, horsie cold’, when my rocking horse’s blanket slid to the floor— I ventured off for a month’s grueling course work to Cheff Center in Michigan in 1984 when I had just turned 20.
The goal, especially since I’d been volunteering for years at SARI (Special Ability Riding Institute) in London, Ontario, was to become qualified as a North American Riding for the Handicapped Association instructor, which I proudly managed while there. (NARHA is now called PATH – Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship). Cheff Center began in 1969 when my latest novel, the 2023 Maxy Award Runner-Up for Mystery/Crime Just A STALE MATE (released TODAY, June 8th!) is set.
Still a major going-concern today, it was founded by the invincible Lida McGowan. I then went on to become certified as an able-bodied riding instructor in my Canadian homeland, through the regular sports-coaching certification program, the NCCP. However, my wonderful first palomino Pal O’Mine, while gifted in many areas, was not up to the level of dressage needed for the Instructor Exams. (Read or watch Disney’s The Horsemasters, if you want a comparable environment. Although we didn’t have time to sing ditties like Annette Funicello!) So the woman who helped found CanTRA (Canadian Therapeutic Riding Assoc.), as well as several stables with riding for the disabled programs in the Ottawa area, kindly loaned me her dream dressage horse Finale for the flatwork portion.
With the new book Just A STALE MATE. I LOVE how even the Maxy Award seal for its cover has a wheelchair with young girl reading. How fitting! I am wearing my Cheff Center shirt of old, and with my very first English saddle given to me by my Special Ed-teaching grandmother. Surrounded by just a few of my favourite ‘boys’… I don’t ride mares. 
Another indomitable force, Lelia Sponsel had always been an avid horsewoman and a Special Education teacher like my grandmother, emigrating to Canada from Germany in 1966. Thus, in Just A STALE MATE, I have melded Lida McGowan and Lelia Sponsel into the character “Lila Sponwin” as a tribute to both women and what they have done for therapeutic riding in North America.
If you aren’t familiar with the countless benefits of riding for the mentally and physically challenged, I encourage you to look these up online. They are numerous and often, seemingly, quite miraculous, as illustrated in my latest novel. In 2002 I was also certified as an EAGALA instructor. This is Equine-Assisted Growth and Learning, in which psychotherapy and horses are utilized to help those dealing with any type of trauma or condition they feel is making them ‘dysfunctional’.
If you have a look at Elena’s interview with me from last September, you’ll see that I’ve also written (still unpublished) a full-length creative non-fiction about my busy equestrian years called Green Broke. That’s another fun play on words considering the term is what many in the industry call a recently-backed young horse, but is also sadly how (dis)Abled people are often considered: “broken” and “naïve.”
As my mystery series is sometimes described as ‘cozy’ (though publishers Black Rose Writing would rather Just A STALE MATE is promoted as a ‘classic whodunnit’), cartoon character mock-ups are often expected by readers of the genre. Here, an evening scene with diverse female characters and some of the animals from both books thus far. The Victoria County SPCA will be benefitting from this summer’s NB sales as well. mock-ups by Rural RevivalsI’m on a mission to try and change that image with my writing, although I admit to falling into the stereotypical “trap” in Just A STALE MATE. But one of the chapters in Green Broke is the true story of my argument with Princess Anne’s husband Captain Mark Phillips at a horse trials competition. (He “stole” my breakfast sandwich!). This was turned into the short story “Iron Bone” which appears in the PrixAurora-nominated anthology Nothing Without Us (Renaissance Press, Ottawa). That entire anthology is written by (dis)Abled authors whose protagonists are also (dis)Abled. So—the heroes, not the sidekicks or the victims. Princess Anne, incidentally, has been the long-time President of the Riding for the Disabled Assoc. in the UK, where I also taught/coached for some years. I even slept in Princess Anne’s cow pasture one spring night– yes, among the “patties’”and all.
With Ron Turcotte, Secretariat’s jockey, at the 2018 filming of CBC’s Still Standing, photo by Leanne Goodfellow.My work in this field (ha-ha!) has connected me with other Royals as well. For a short time in North Yorkshire I was employed by a baroness, a member of the House of Lords for 53 years, the longest reign of any female peer. Lady Swinton was a champion for sports-oriented rehabilitation for the disabled—therapeutic riding especially. When she was just 22 she became a paraplegic due to a riding accident, but went on to compete in several Paralympic Games in other sports and encouraged countless others to do the same. She was truly a marvel and I’m sad that she just died a few months ago. Find out more about her by clicking the link here.
Another “royal” who is actually a neighbour in our Appalachian community in New Brunswick, is Secretariat’s great jockey, Ron Turcotte. I had the pleasure of meeting him a few years ago during filming for a popular Canadian television show, Still Standing (another ironic title, as Ron is a paraplegic and I can barely walk now, being too crippled with back and leg problems of recent years). Learn more about Ron by clicking the link here.
Thus, constantly being surrounded by all these inspirational figures, is it any wonder I’m motivated to write stories, many often featuring amalgamated or slightly-fictionalized versions, as a tribute to them all? And if I have to bump one or two of them off from time to time, to offer my readers the opportunity to solve the mystery of their deaths, well—that just means they’ll be all the more remembered. That’s surely a “cinch,” isn’t it?
J Ivanel Johnson
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAJ Ivanel Johnson is the pen name for an award-winning author/poet, playwright and composer living with (dis)Ability, who now resides in the Appalachian range of Northwestern New Brunswick, where she and her husband and mother manage near-to- self-sufficiently on their small farm overlooking inspirational views of nature.
Like her grandmother before her (the ‘Ivanel’ of her pen name) she has written her entire life, first publishing two poems with Annick Press in Toronto when she was only 11. She has been a high school English and Drama teacher, working and living in the highlands of Scotland, the moors of Yorkshire, and the Rockies of Montana and the Yukon, before settling in the east of Canada. She has also been a Junior Olympic/Young Riders equestrian coach in 3 countries, and a therapeutic riding instructor, with some of those experiences related in the short creative memoir published as “Iron Bone” in 2019’s Nothing Without Us by Renaissance Press, Ottawa. Learn more about J Ivanel Johnson on Facebook, Twitter, or visit her website.Elena Taylor/Elena HartwellAll We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.
Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator 2020
Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery 2020
The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.
The post J Ivanel Johnson: Guest Post appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.
June 7, 2023
The Child Riddler: Spotlight
The Child Riddler, a spy thriller by Angela Greenman
Spotlight: Book & Author InfoDon’t miss any new books! Click the link here.The Child Riddler
OCALA, FL – Debut author and International Firebird Book Award winner Angela Greenman draws inspiration from her time with the International Atomic Energy Agency and U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to create what BestThrillers.com called “a slick spy thriller that balances a futuristic counter-terrorism mission with the battle for its heroine’s soul.”
In “The Child Riddler” (Bella Books) Zoe Lorel has attained her dream job as an elite operative in an international spy agency, and she’s found her one true love. Her world is mostly perfect–until she is sent to abduct a nine-year-old girl.
The girl is the only one who knows the riddle that holds the code to unleash the most lethal weapon on earth: the first ever “invisibility” nanoweapon, a cloaking spider bot. But Zoe’s agency isn’t the only one after the child. And when enemies reveal the invisibility weapon’s existence to underground arms dealers, every government and terrorist organization in the world wants to find that little girl.
Zoe races to save not only the child she has grown to care about, but also herself. Meanwhile, the agency-prescribed pills–the ones that transform her into the icy killer she must become to survive–are beginning to threaten her engagement to the one person who brings her happiness. Can she protect the young girl, and still protect the one thing she cares about more than anything else?
To purchase The Child Riddler, click on any of the following links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, BellaBooks.Praise for The Child Riddler“…outstanding and brilliant tale…never a dull moment…detailed and vivid…” — Readers’ Favorite
“A slick spy thriller that balances a futuristic counter-terrorism mission with the battle for its heroine’s soul.” — Best Thrillers
“Extremely entertaining techno-thriller…a globetrotting adventure…memorable characters…fast action…plus some beautiful descriptions of cities and architecture.” — Audiobook Blog
“The highly suspenseful narrative flowed at a fast pace with startling and exciting twists and turns.” — Love Reading
“The book opens with a bang with a powerful, action-packed scene that matches up well with some of the best spy thrillers I’ve read previously… Greenman is a capable writer… well done and highly entertaining.” — Crime Fiction Critic
Angela Greenman— Author of The Child Riddler
Angela Greenman is an internationally recognized communications professional. She has been an expert and lecturer with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for over a decade. She had the honor to be selected to draft the Communications Review Criteria (internal, external and crisis) for the IAEA’s prestigious Corporate Operational Safety Review Team.
As Lead Trainer for an IAEA regional workshop, she received perfect scores from nine countries. At the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) she served as a spokesperson and was given a special citation for developing an agency publication which was published by the Federal government (“Guidelines for Conducting Public Meetings”). Also while at the NRC, she was a recipient of multiple awards for exceptional effectiveness in dealing with the media and public.
Prior to the NRC, she was a press officer for the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, the City’s civil rights department where she coordinated a city-wide anti-bias campaign. She has traveled the world (21 countries and counting), sailed the turquoise Caribbean waters, explored Canada’s beautiful wilderness and lakes, and now her imagination is devising plots for future novels that will feature more of the exciting places she has been.
To learn more about Angela Greenman, click on any of the following links: Website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok. Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell
Amazon #1 bestsellerAll We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.
Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator
Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery
The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.
Header photo by Keywi on Pixabay
The post The Child Riddler: Spotlight appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.
June 5, 2023
Hot Pot Murder: Cozy Mystery
Hot Pot Murder (L.A. Night Market) by Jennifer J. Chow
Trouble is brewing for cousins Yale and Celine Yee after a hot pot dinner gets overheated and ends in murder in this second novel of the L.A. Night Market series by Jennifer J. Chow.
Yale and Celine Yee’s food stall business is going so well that they’ve been invited to join an exclusive dinner with the local restaurant owners association. The members gather together for a relaxing hot pot feast…until Jeffery Vue, president of the group, receives a literal shock to his system and dies.
Everyone at the meal is a suspect, but the authorities are homing in on family friend Ai Ho, owner of the restaurant where Jeffery was killed—and Yale’s dad is a close second on their list. Yale and Celine step up to the plate and investigate the dinner attendees: the association’s ambitious VP, a familiar frenemy, a ramen king, a snacks shopkeeper, and a second-generation restaurateur. It’s up to the detecting duo to figure out what really happened before their friends and family have to close their businesses for good.
Hot Pot Murder (L.A. Night Market)
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Cozy Mystery
2nd in Series
Setting – California
Publisher : Berkley (June 6, 2023)
Mass Market Paperback : 288 pages
ISBN-10 : 0593336550
ISBN-13 : 978-0593336557
Digital ASIN : B0BDDMZ3BK
Jennifer J. Chow writes cozies with heart, humor, and heritage. Her newest series is the L.A. Night Market Mysteries. The first book, Death By Bubble Tea, was nominated for both an Agatha Award (Best Contemporary Novel) and a Lefty Award (Best Humorous Mystery). It hit the SoCal Indie Bestseller List multiple times and was one Aunt Agatha’s Best of Cozies 2022, Kings River Life Staff Favorites of 2022, and one of the 2022 Bestsellers at Bel Canto Books.
It’s been featured in Book Riot, BookBub, Bustle, CrimeReads, Goodreads, and Mystery Scene Magazine. The New York Times Book Review said of the novel: “Yale and Celine’s growing loyalty to each other, coupled with the warmth of Chow’s prose, adds extra depth, just like the tapioca balls nestled in a glass of bubble tea.” Jennifer currently serves as President on the board of Sisters in Crime and regularly blogs at chicksonthecase.com.
She is also an active member of Crime Writers of Color and Mystery Writers of America. Connect with her online at JenniferJChow.com.
To learn more about Jennifer, click on any of the following links: Website, Facebook, Instagram.Participating Blogs
JUNE 5
Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book
JUNE 6
#BRVL Book Review Virginia Lee
Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell
Amazon #1 bestsellerAll We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.
Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator
Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery
The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.
The post Hot Pot Murder: Cozy Mystery appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.
June 1, 2023
Bastard Verdict: New Thriller
Bastard Verdict, a mystery crime thriller by James McCrone
Guest Post + Book & Author Info + Giveaway!
Don’t miss any blog tour posts! Click the link here.
Bastard Verdict
YOU DON’T NEED TO WIN, JUST DON’T LOSE
In politics, people cheat to win, or because they’re afraid to lose. Which isn’t always the same thing. A second referendum on Scottish Independence looms, an unlikely investigator uncovers meddling in the first, and desperate conspirators panic, with deadly results. Bastard Verdict weaves high stakes, low politics, and complex characters into a noir tale of power, loss and Faustian bargains. When a Scottish government official enlists FBI Elections Specialist, Imogen Trager (on research leave at the University of Glasgow) in the fall of 2023 to look into the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum—ostensibly as a means of ensuring that a possible second referendum will be conducted fairly—he claims that he wants an outsider’s unencumbered view.
The government official may not be what he seems, and the trail Imogen follows becomes twisted and deadly, leading to a corrupt cabal intent on holding on to power. But they didn’t count on Imogen, a feisty, conflicted and driven investigator who goes strictly by the numbers, if rarely by the book. To find the truth, Imogen will risk everything—her reputation, career, and possibly her life. None but a very few know that truth. And those few need it to stay hidden. At any cost.
Book Details:
Genre: Mystery-Crime, Thillers
Published by: Hernes Road Books
Publication Date: May 2023
Number of Pages: 293
ISBN: 978-0999137741
To purchase Bastard Verdict, click on any of the following links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads
Guest Post by James McCrone
There’s no question that the loneliness of writing makes me sometimes think about how it might be nice to bounce things off someone else, to work on a project together. But I think that if I’m honest with myself, I wouldn’t be a very good collaborator. I worry that sharing the vision would diminish the work.
Recently, I saw an excellent talk in my hometown, hosted by the Free Library of Philadelphia, between S.A. Cosby and Questlove, about their new YA novel The Rhythm of Time. I only know Questlove through his music, and though Cosby and I follow one another on social media, I don’t know him personally. From reading his work, however, I know he’s an intensely personal writer, with a unique voice, who writes direct, evocative, and uncompromising prose. From a distance, he strikes me as someone who’d prefer to work alone. So, I went, not only excited to see him in person and to hear about the new book, but I also really wanted to hear about how two men at the top of their game worked together.
By their own account, it worked well, and they are pleased with the resulting book, its story, its characters and its message. Which makes my dilemma all the worse.
I’m no misanthrope. I genuinely enjoy meeting and interacting with people. And I like to think that I’ve got a good sense of give-and-take, that I’ll do what’s right for the story, irrespective of ego. But it’s that focus which makes me ruthless about what I produce, and I suspect the drain of trying to be polite with someone else would become intolerable.
This is not to say that I’m pig-headed, that I always go my own way; that I don’t listen to advice. But I do so on my terms. (Okay, maybe a little bit pig-headed.) The process of writing—and finishing—a novel is itself an exercise in headstrong obstinacy. It requires what I like to call a “seemly arrogance.” That is, no one asked for the story, no one told me to write it, but when I made a start, I believed, and hoped, it would be good and that it would find an audience. To accomplish the task no one asked me to do, I must believe whole-heartedly in the story, in the characters, and in myself; that I can create and finish something that others might enjoy reading. I worry that sharing the vision would diminish the work. What if you disagree profoundly about the direction of the story, or how a character is portrayed? Does one writer have final say over the other? What if the other writer has terrible work habits? Or no work habits?
There is, of course, a moment where the writer needs to let go, to show it to an editor, but in most cases the editor has already bought into the writer’s vision for the book, and the revisions—difficult as some of them may be to make—are about making the book better, a more fully realized vision. And then, as with Bastard Verdict, which is out now, you arrive at the final letting go, when you have to send if off into the world and let it be itself.
Read an excerpt:
‘But facts are chiels that winna ding,
An downa be disputed’
-Robert Burns, A Dream (1786)
Glasgow – 28 September
1
Anyone with the temerity to look upward into the rain that night on campus would have witnessed a kind of negotiated settlement between light and dark, as the wet Glasgow night held the pale glow from the Adam Smith Building’s top floor close in a murky halo. One man did look up, before sullenly returning to the meager shelter of a young birch tree outside the west entrance to the building. He mopped his face and dabbed his bald head with a handkerchief as he settled back against the tree trunk.
Inside those high windows, brightness reigned, the lecture theatre dazzlingly arid and contemporary. Though it was chilly for all that. Not that Imogen noticed. Within her slow-burn, imposter syndrome panic, she felt flushed, anxious as she began taking questions.
FBI Agent Imogen Trager had finished her first lecture as the Alma Guthrie Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at University of Glasgow. Twenty-five scholars, professors and graduate students sat bunched toward the front of a large lecture room in broad, curving rows of steeply raked seats. Each had listened with that cultivated, scholarly air of bored attentiveness to her inaugural lecture, meant as an introduction and discussion of her research interests for the coming year. Rain pattered against the windows, a discomfiting susurration that swelled and hissed during the agonizing moments of silence before questions and comments began.
The Head of School, David Reidy, sat next to her at a table beside the lectern in what felt like a well at the front of the room. He was himself cultivated, though administration had groomed him in its image. While most of his colleagues affected a smart-casual, anorak diffidence, he radiated trim-suited, camera-ready gravitas. To her immense relief, the gathered academics began to ask questions: regarding methodology, about the role and effects of policing in urban environments; two extended offers of help in research design methods.
As Reidy sensed that things were coming to an end, he asked a question of his own to wrap up.
“Thank you, Dr. Trager. Most enlightening and well presented,” he said from the bottom of their shared well space. “You’ve given us insight into your research agenda for this year,” he continued. “But I’m sure we’d all like to understand, as an FBI Special Agent, if you’d care to discuss how you begin your investigations. What’s the catalyst?”
Even at the bottom of a well, Imogen stood out, long-limbed, a sharp bearing, with striking red hair and green eyes. “As I mentioned, my special brief is voting integrity,” she began. “It’s said that the difference between voting in North Korea and Texas is that in North Korea, if you vote, you’re dead: whereas in Texas, if you’re dead, you vote.”
That won the chuckle she had hoped for, and she relaxed a little. She had a doctorate in political science but hadn’t made a presentation to a group of academics in years. She was pleased that her proposal to investigate how voting security was processed in another country had met with some measure of approval and interest and pleased to now be on the firmer ground of criminal inquiries.
“Both of those methods, by the way,” she added, “intimidation and fraudulent voting, fall under my group’s purview, and we would investigate…though obviously not in North Korea. We’re a domestic agency, after all.”
Of course, she thought dismally, she wasn’t part of that group any longer. Whatever praise the FBI bosses accorded her publicly, it was given through gritted teeth and rictus smiles. Most of the higher-ups at the Bureau still regarded her as a pariah. They were thrilled that she was taking her leave out of the country in the great abroad. The cowards.
“You’ve no doubt heard the braying about fraudulent voting in the U.S,” she continued, looking out at the gathered academics. “But despite my little quip about Texas, in the U.S., like here, voter fraud is exceedingly rare and hasn’t been a determining factor in an election in decades. But electoral fraud—manipulating, suppressing or outright disenfranchising voters—remains a danger. In each case, the fraud is an attempt to undermine or outright destroy the right of the people to determine their future.
“So typically,” she continued, tapping the mental brakes lest her newfound calm erupt into indignant anger, “an investigation begins when someone at the Federal Election Commission, a State Attorney General or some other official files a complaint. Having determined that there’s a case, and that it falls under federal jurisdiction, we open an inquiry and then I, or someone in my group, will be tasked with investigating. But we’re also meant to be entrepreneurial, actively looking for potential cases.”
Of course, she thought, it was the entrepreneurial part that seemed to land her in trouble. Then, because she couldn’t help herself, she added, “And there’s sometimes an infuriatingly myopic interpretation of the line between what’s deemed to have violated the law, and that which is just morally unacceptable.”
“I assume,” ventured a small man with a knotty thatch of iron hair seated in the front row, “that you’re aware Scotland may yet have its second referendum on independence from the UK some time this year or next, and—”
“—I knew you’d bring that up!” Reidy yelled. He looked at Imogen with embarrassed exasperation, then shook his head mournfully.
“And so,” the second man continued, his eyes bearing into Imogen as though much depended on her answer, “how could we ensure that the next referendum isn’t stolen?”
“Give it a rest, Frankie!” a scholar at the back of the room called out.
“I’ve read that Scottish Parliament wants a second referendum,” she began, “and that they ran on it in the most recent election, but I wasn’t aware there were irregularities in the one held in 2014—”
“Right,” said a professor sitting next to Frankie, “that’s because the irregularities’re only in Wee Frankie’s mind.”
“See you!” Frankie began, turning to the man as uncomfortable laughter stirred through the room.
“Well, I…” Imogen murmured into the growing noise. “This may not be the place to talk about it. I don’t know as much as most of you must about British politics, and irrespective of whether there was tampering the first time…”
Here the room erupted in passionate debate. By the look of things, the lecture hall could well have been parliament, with parties divided to left and right across the aisle. For a moment, she wondered whether she was cast as Speaker, and should be shouting “Order!” or whether that task fell to Reidy.
“HOWEVER!” she continued, as if taking the first role. “To answer the substance of your question: in my investigations, I make historical comparisons with similar elections, and I’m guided by events that don’t conform. Anomalies don’t always indicate malfeasance, but they’re a good place to start digging.”
“Aye, well there were anomalies aplenty!” Frankie interjected.
“The problem,” she continued, “is that referendum votes are such rare events that there’s not really a history to compare.” She let that sink in. “How do you know something’s an anomaly? Prior to 2014, there’d never been a referendum on independence, so what do you compare it to? Where do you look?”
She ended her presentation there, thanking all who had come as Reidy shook her hand and congratulated her. “Well,” he said, “that was a little more robust than the previous lectures.”
That was true, she thought. As a visiting fellow, she had attended the two previous lectures in the series, “Determination and consequences of the recognition of education among immigrants in Germany” and “(Un)settling epistemologies using digital tools.” There hadn’t been much controversy during the questions after those.
Reidy smiled. “What do you do for an encore?”
As the final cluster of scholars filed out of the room and Imogen began packing away her laptop, a man who had been sitting on his own near the back came forward. He was one of the few who hadn’t entered the fracas. He had stood out, though. Handsome, well-groomed, with soft, boyish features on a man’s slender body. Crisper, and with sharper angles—sharper elbows, too, by the look of him—than the graduate students and professors who had made up the bulk of the audience, he seemed more like a confident advertising agent. The department head nodded to him.
“Dr. Imogen Trager,” he said, “this is Ian Ross, Special Adviser to the First Minister.” He looked pointedly at Ross and made to leave. Imogen registered the look but didn’t know what it meant. “You’ll both be at the dinner?”
Ross nodded and the department head left them alone.
Holding out his manicured hand to shake hers, Ross said, “Wee Frankie’s concerns—“
“—I’m sorry,” she interrupted, “is that what you call the eminent Political Philosopher, Francis McDougal?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s Wee Frankie to everyone?”
“Not to the students, no. Not to his face, anyway,” he added, with a mischievous grin. “Reidy misspoke just now. I report to Janette Ritchie, Chief of Staff to the First Minister of Scotland, not to the FM directly.” The smile dimmed. “The chief of staff is aware that you can’t establish a norm in a referendum like this, but it might nevertheless be useful to note and explore potential points of difficulty or weakness in the system, don’t you think? Wasn’t that part of your analysis of what happened in the Electoral College?”
“Indeed,” Imogen responded. “But I would hope that if there’s an open inquiry the Scottish or UK Election Committee is doing just that.” She reached down for the UK-US plug adapter.
“Yes,” he said nebulously. “Maybe you might look at it as well? Unofficially, of course. Because irrespective of what’s been said publicly, a number of us are pretty convinced it was stolen last time. And if this referendum does go forward, we want to make sure it isn’t stolen again.”
Dundee – 28 September
2
He’d felt it for a day or two already, a presence watching him from across a street, or the someone who turned a corner just as he looked round. The previous day he’d noticed a figure sitting alone in a car. The engine started, and it pulled away when the driver saw that he’d been noticed. So, he was being watched, followed. But by whom? And why? He’d had a good look at his shadow the previous day when he started the car and pulled away, and the clues only raised more questions. It wasn’t a Serious Organized Crime Command operation. He’d more than likely have been tipped off about something like that. And even so, he’d have been able to tell, would have seen them working in pairs and noted the “handoffs” from one officer to another. This seemed to be solitary, possibly the same man each time. Which was a worry.
Buff Lindsey was head of the Madmen crime syndicate in Dundee, itself part of a larger criminal enterprise throughout the UK and abroad. He referred to himself as the Dundee “shop steward.” Whoever was watching him didn’t seem to come from management. The Madmen used foreign outsiders for this kind of work, and the shadow, based on what Lindsey had seen of the man’s clothes, his face and build, was local, loutish. British. And not the police.
A rival gang? he wondered as he sauntered alone that night out the alley leading from the collision centre chop-shop where one of his offices was located. Reaching the main street, he looked up and down it, noted someone waiting in the passenger seat of a car across the road to his right. Lindsey turned left. He had no rival in Dundee, he mused, and any potential usurper would know that his death would only goad the larger syndicate into scorched earth retaliation.
A dismal night. The air seemed smothered in gray baize. Light seeped from the few working streetlamps, registered in large, greasy pools along the pavement and the road. As Lindsey walked down the empty street between derelict warehouses and shuttered shops, he heard whoever it was get out of the car and fall into step some thirty or forty yards behind him. Could it be someone who wanted revenge? This last seemed the most likely, and the most worrisome. Such men were unpredictable.
Buff was taking a chance being out alone on the streets like this, but he needed to turn the tables and put an end to whatever this was. He had chosen to face this problem alone because if he was wrong and it was his bosses looking to clean house, his favored, right-hand man Alec would likely be part of the scheme. “Ye don’t get tae be heid, alive and fifty-seven all at the same time,” he thought, “without a healthy dose a paranoia.”
There was a pub ahead, at the near corner marking a tentative hipster foray across the boundary road between the Madmen’s playground and an up-and-coming district. In the boozer, it was all beards, tattoos and grim Spotify playlists, but the owners knew the score, and Lindsey enjoyed dropping in from time to time, was pleased to find that part of the hipster ethos was keeping on tap some of the brews he liked and remembered from earlier days.
“Liam,” he roared at the barman as he entered. “A pint of heavy, if ye’ve no objection.” He put a five pound note at an empty spot on the bar and indicated that he was heading for the Gents. The barman nodded as he drew the pint.
Lindsey slipped out the back door.
A narrow service alley for deliveries and rubbish collection ran along the back of the building. Lindsey crept toward the street, stepping carefully in the darkness between puddles and grease. He was approaching the corner where the alley met the road when his shadow arrived. The stalker moved cautiously but his eyes were fixed on the pub’s doorway at the corner. “Definitely an amateur,” Lindsey thought. “No even a glance down this way.” His follower was a big lad, a head taller than Lindsey and outweighing him by two stone. Now, barely six steps from him but still focused on the pub door at the corner, Lindsey saw him slow and touch a bulge in his jacket. Gun.
At 57, Lindsey might not have been as spry as in earlier days, but he still knew his business—and someone carrying a gun had to be subdued. Quickly. Lindsey’s knife was out. The shadow registered him too late as he struck from the darkness. He slammed the butt of the hilt into the man’s left eye and again at his temple. As the man recoiled, Lindsey stamped viciously into the man’s left knee. Then a swift kick in the groin.
The big man’s bulk collapsed in sputtering, breathless agony. A hand fumbled inside his jacket toward the gun. Lindsey stabbed this time, slicing him across the hand and wrist. With one hand he stuck the point of his blade into the man’s fleshy neck and with the other grabbed him under the jaw and hauled him deeper into the alley behind the bins.
“Who sent you?” Lindsey hissed, when he was sure they were out of view of the street.
“Fuck off!” the man sputtered, as he sat in one of the grimy puddles.
English, Lindsey thought. Manchester? “Who’re you working for? Why are you following me?”
“I don’t know what you’re on about, I was just—”
Lindsey pushed the tip of the blade a little further into the donut folds of flesh at the back of his neck. “Keep it down, now,” he advised. A thin stream of blood pulsed along the cutting edge.
“You people, always fucking things up!” the man said boldly, as Lindsey patted him down. No wallet, no identification. He grabbed hold of the pistol from inside the coat and skidded it across the ground to the far side of the alleyway. “You don’t even know what you’ve done, do you?” the man on the ground gasped. “You want the police on you?”
“And you with a pistol on ye? Ah’d love ta here ye explain tha to the polis.”
“I don’t have to worry about them.”
“Explain that,” said Lindsey, thumping his fist in the same bleeding eye. The man’s shoulder and head rested against the brick wall of the alley, but he remained seated.
“When they find out,” he said, still looking downwards, “your life won’t be worth shit.”
“Ah’ll ask ye again. Who’s ‘they?’ Who’re you working for?”
“Fuck you.”
It sounded like ill-advised revenge, a civilian out of his depth in a soldiers’ world. Well, civilian or no, Lindsay thought, you can’t let this kind of thing slide, can’t give him a good hiding and leave him be. Or he’ll be back. With mates. For two days, Lindsey had been living with the fear that his bosses wanted him out of the picture, on edge for every nuance that might give him a clue as to why. Now, it was clear he was safe on that score at least. And he had a pint waiting inside.
The civilian on the ground struggled, glared at him defiantly through his one good eye.
It had been Lindsey’s experience that no one ever believes you’ll kill them. But this needed to be done for a good many reasons. Still standing behind him, Lindsey plunged the knife between the neck folds at the back of the man’s bald head and let him fall in a heap. Gazing down at him, Lindsey wondered whether people would be more, or less, willing to give you information if they knew they were going to die. Still, the shock in their eyes was always disquieting.
He fished a set of keys out of the man’s pocket. Maybe there’d be some information inside the car when his boys took it apart in the chop shop. Lindsey wiped the blade on the man’s coat and cleaned his hands on the man’s trousers. He picked up the gun. Then he made a phone call.
“Is that Mr. Dettol?” he asked. “Clean up on aisle seven, if you please. Jist the one. But mebbe bring a mate. It’s a wide load. The wynd behind that hipster bar.” He paused to listen, then chuckled. “Naw, nothin like tha. Ah try not ta shit where Ah drink.”
Glasgow
3
Imogen’s reputation, it seemed, had followed her across the Atlantic, and Ross was still waiting for an answer. At home in the US with a blend of good casework, canny analysis and tenacity, she had tracked down and brought to justice those responsible for conspiring to steal the presidency by manipulating the Electoral College. It was the kind of important case that would have made any other agent’s career. But to bring the case, she had exceeded her authority. She had gone outside the FBI, had worked with outside agencies, bypassed proper authority and had used non-FBI staff. She had even gone to the press.
For her efforts, Imogen became the public and photogenic face of the “Faithless Elector” investigation, but an exile within the Bureau. Those who knew that what she’d done was the right thing nevertheless joined the wagon circle against her because she had embarrassed the Bureau, which among careerists was regarded as the cardinal sin. What was more, an anonymous agent shouldn’t have her picture on the front of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, however good-looking she was.
After all she had achieved and despite the public recognition she received, she found herself sequestered in the Studies in Electoral Integrity office in a non-investigative role, still reviled by many of her colleagues and superiors, still discounted. From the start, her superior at Electoral Integrity had been trying to get rid of her, the FBI’s redheaded stepchild. At their first meeting, he had helpfully suggested that she might enjoy an academic post, away from him and the Bureau. He had tried not to show his elation when she requested leave. She was exhausted, spent. She hadn’t made up her mind whether she’d go back to the Bureau after her one-year leave of absence, but she needed to keep her nose clean irrespective of what came next. Whatever this Special Adviser Ian Ross was selling, she wasn’t buying.
“Shall we go together?” Ross asked. “The restaurant’s about a ten-minute walk from campus on Eldon Street.”
“That would be fine, thank you,” she agreed. “I’d like to put my laptop away in the office first.”
They walked in silence down two flights of stairs. He was waiting for her to respond, she felt, but was giving her space. She knew what she should say—No—but something wasn’t letting her do so. She wondered what Duncan would have had to say. He would have been intrigued by the prospect, as she was, but it was a ruinously bad idea.
She had chosen University of Glasgow for her research leave of absence in large part because years earlier, before she and Duncan Calder were together, Duncan had spent a year at Glasgow as a Fulbright Scholar. He had often spoken of his time there, and of Scotland in general, in glowing terms. Coming to Glasgow had felt like a means of staying connected with him. There was a family connection for her, too. The favorite aunt for whom she was named—and from whom she’d inherited her deep, red hair—had emigrated with Imogen’s maternal grandparents, the Lochries, from Ayrshire, less than 30 miles to the south and west of Glasgow.
She had wanted time away to heal, to work on some research and maybe a bit of genealogy while she thought about next steps. The idea of doing it somewhere with a connection to Duncan, however tenuous, had been irresistible. She had gone so far as to imagine there might be a kind of ghostly dialogue with him as she worked or took in the sights, like feeling the chill light of a full moon when far from home and knowing that it also shined on a beloved. But a gaze across time—Duncan, younger than when she knew him, walking these streets in the rain.
She had imagined his voice teasing her that first day when she’d gone to the wrong floor looking for her new office—“It’s not the metric system, ’Gen,” she had heard him say, “but you do still have to convert: UK ground floor equals US first floor.” Now, as she and Ross trod the wide, metal staircase she imagined Duncan giving an unflattering disquisition on the Brutalist style of the building they were in, the Social and Political Sciences Adam Smith Building:
“I get that ‘brutal’ comes from the French for raw,” she could hear Duncan saying, “but it’d make more sense if it was based on the Italian ‘brutto’ – ugly.”
She almost nodded in agreement. Squat and gray, it seemed better suited as a bunker than an academic building. “And surely,” Duncan’s indignant voice continued in her head, “a building named for the author of Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments deserves better.” It was entirely possible that she was going mad.
The idea of communing with him like this was fraught. No fond memory, no warm thought was free from gut-stabbing regret. Every cheery moment began in her mind’s eye with Duncan as he had been, generous yet snarky, bookish but passionate, and it ended where it all ended, with him dead on a slab at the morgue. Although she tried to suppress the memory, it often burst in on her without warning.
As she put her notes and laptop away in the office, she found herself crying bitterly. Jesus, why now? she wondered. Fortunately, Ross had stayed in the hallway to make a phone call while she put away her things. He rapped on the doorframe as she collected herself and dabbed at her eyes.
“Ready?” he asked.
Imogen drew a clearing breath. “Yes,” she said.
“Well, you’ve settled in, I see,” he said, eyes roving over the office with its well-stocked shelves and a tartan throw over the armchair.
“The only things that are mine are on the desk,” she said, her back to him. “The rest belongs to Professor Ogilvy, who’s on leave this term. He stops by now and then when he knows I’m not here, to pick up a book or something. He leaves passive-aggressive notes thanking me for keeping it tidy. Cleanliness that I can only assume applies to everyone but him.”
She smiled as she turned toward Ross, her eyes still wet. “I’ll have to move out of the Druid’s quarters and find somewhere else next term.”
“The Druid?” he asked, amused.
“That’s the nickname.” She shrugged as though it couldn’t be helped. “A bit like Wee Frankie, I guess. I’ve never met the Druid in person, though we correspond in snark.”
“Snarky runes, eh?” He stared at her as if there was something more he wanted to say. Whatever it was, he let it go and gestured toward the door. “Shall we?”
The rain had stopped. Patches of grass shimmered with icy wet, and there was a cold bite to the air. Light from the streetlamps played and scattered on the pavement and flagstones as they retraced their steps out of the building, behind the library and down the hill toward Eldon Street.
At the edge of campus, they passed a thick-set man in a leather overcoat. Though he’d sought refuge from the rain under a tree by the Adam Smith Building, he looked sodden, and his bald head glistened. As they continued past him, he left off whatever he was pretending to look at on his phone and fell in behind them, matching their sauntering pace and taking care to keep about thirty yards behind.
Twice, as Imogen passed under one of the streetlights, their damp, trailing admirer snapped her and Ross’s picture from his phone. Engrossed in their conversation, they paid him no mind, even if he was one of the few others on the street.
“You’re not interested in helping us ferret out any weaknesses then?” Ross asked her finally.
“I’m an FBI Agent, Mr. Ross.”
“Call me Ian,” he said.
“Even on leave, I’m not allowed to be involved in non-federal cases. I expect someone from MI5 wouldn’t be able to work outside the UK.”
Ross shrugged.
She thought again of what Duncan would make of this new puzzle. He’d jump at the chance, she was sure, but he was a professor. Well, he had been. He could follow his whims, could take up “interesting questions” because his very job required him to do so. He was also dead because of it.
As they approached the King’s Bridge, the bald, beefeater in the leather jacket turned away and headed down a steep side street. When he was out of sight of the bridge, he pulled out his phone and dialed a number. “Can’t say,” he said into the phone. “Did you see the pictures?”
On the bridge, Ross noted in his lilting accent: “You still haven’t said no.” He arched his neck to look down over the iron railing into the Kelvin.
“Why me?” she asked again.
“It’s delicate,” he said, looking behind them for a moment. “Anyone we might use officially would be embedded in or seconded from the Electoral Commission or the Met. Or both. And they would have to make reports. Once that starts, we couldn’t be certain whom they were telling or where their directives were coming from—a clusterfuck, if I might borrow a vivid American term—of epic proportions.”
Christ, she thought, it sounded a lot like the situation she was running from at the FBI, even if it was delivered in a dulcet Scottish accent.
“You’re an outsider,” he continued. “One with an astounding track record.”
Despite herself, she scoffed. That wasn’t the way they saw it back home.
“Am I missing something, Dr. Trager?”
“No,” she sighed. “Not really. And please, call me Imogen.”
“Well, Imogen, you took on—and took down—the president of the United States.”
***
Excerpt from Bastard Verdict by James McCrone. Copyright 2023 by James McCrone. Reproduced with permission from James McCrone. All rights reserved.
James McCrone, author of Bastard Verdict
James McCrone is the author of the Faithless Elector series—Faithless Elector, Dark Network, and Emergency Powers—“taut” and “gripping” political thrillers about a stolen presidency. Bastard Verdict is his fourth novel. To get the details right for this thriller, he drew on his boyhood in Scotland, and scouted the locations for scenes in the book while attending Bloody Scotland in 2019 and again in ’22.
His short stories have appeared in Rock and a Hard Place; Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon, and in the short-story anthology Low Down Dirty Vote, vols.2 and 3. He’s a member of Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, Philadelphia Dramatists’ Center and he’s the vice-president of the Delaware Valley Sisters in Crime chapter.
A Pacific Northwest native (mostly), he lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and three children. James has an MFA from the University of Washington, in Seattle.
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The post Bastard Verdict: New Thriller appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.
May 30, 2023
The Peacock and the Sparrow
The Peacock and the Sparrow, by I.S. Berry
Author Interview + Book & Author Info + Author Pet Corner!Don’t miss any debut author interviews. Click the link here. The Peacock and the Sparrow
During the Arab Spring, an American spy’s final mission goes dangerously awry in this eerily realistic and sophisticated espionage debut from a former CIA officer that is perfect for fans of John le Carré, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Alan Furst.
Shane Collins, a world-weary CIA spy, is ready to come in from the cold. Stationed in Bahrain off the coast of Saudi Arabia for his final tour, he has little use for his mission—uncovering Iranian support for the insurgency against the monarchy. He certainly has no use for his naïve and ambitious twenty-eight-year-old station chief. Then Collins meets Almaisa, a beautiful and enigmatic artist, and his eyes are opened to a side of Bahrain most expats never experience, to questions he never thought to ask.
When his trusted informant becomes embroiled in a murder, Collins finds himself drawn deep into the conflict, his growing romance with Almaisa—and his loyalties—upended. In an instant, he’s caught in the crosshairs of a revolution. Drawing on all his skills as a spymaster, he must navigate a bloody uprising, earn Almaisa’s love, and uncover the murky border where Bahrain’s secrets end and America’s begin.
“A breathless tour-de-force, the perfect spy tale” (Ian Caldwell, author of The Fifth Gospel) and dripping with authenticity, The Peacock and the Sparrow is a timely story of the elusiveness of truth, the power of love and belief, and the universal desire to be part of a cause greater than oneself.
To purchase The Peacock and The Sparrow, click on any of the following links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Books-A-Million Interview with I.S. Berry, author of The Peacock and The Sparrow
BahrainThe Peacock and the Sparrow follows Shane Collins, a CIA spy. What should readers know about Shane?Collins is not a warm, fuzzy guy. A lifetime’s worth of espionage—operating in the shadows, dealing in deceit, manipulating people—has taken a toll on him. He’s middle-aged, jaded, divorced, tarnished by a lackluster career, and faces a terminal sense of impotence. In many ways, he’s a failure. But Collins is true-to-life. Authenticity was paramount to me. There are plenty of novels with glamorized, slick spies; it was important to write something that felt true to my experience, an unconventional spy novel. One that reflected the true weight and dimensions of espionage.
That said, readers will find a core of humanity in Collins. In a world where the good guys look a lot like the bad, Collins tries to navigate his own path through the murk and the Arab Spring. Even for the angels among us, choosing what’s right can be difficult—and Collins is no angel. I hope readers will appreciate—and relate to—Collins’ struggle, and perhaps ask themselves what they would do in his shoes.
Tell us about significance of the title, The Peacock and the Sparrow:The Peacock and the Sparrow is a tale from 1001 Arabian Nights: a sparrow ignores a peacock’s warning, strays from his path, and gets caught in a net. Fundamentally, it’s about the futility of trying to outrun your destiny. In the Arab Spring, each side—the Sunni monarchy and Shiite majority—believes it’s the rightful victor, that winning is its destiny. Collins, a middling, apathetic spy, also tries to reshape his destiny. Most of us harbor visions, hopes, sometimes illusions, of what our lives should look like. And reality doesn’t always match.
There’s a second, underlying meaning to “The Peacock and the Sparrow” parable in 1001 Arabian Nights that Collins doesn’t figure out until the end. But I don’t want to give anything away.
You spent six years as an operations officer for the CIA, including a stint in Baghdad. How do your real-world experiences impact your fiction?For me, spying was a dark, haunting profession. I spent a year in wartime Baghdad and had to operate under uncertain, shifting circumstances. One of my most affecting memories is helping to apprehend an alleged terrorist, only to later learn he might not be guilty. To this day, I’m plagued by the irresolution. So I think the murk of espionage really came out in my book—the loose ends, the questions you never answer.
And spying runs on manipulation, which, over time, affects both the person being manipulated and the manipulator. Collins describes manipulation as “an addictive substance, the kind of drug easily procured in the dark isolated tunnels of espionage. No one watching, God on your side.” It was important to me to capture this eroding, deleterious aspect of spying—which is why my characters are messy, battered, debilitated. They’re not James Bond.
At a more literal level, The Peacock and the Sparrow is set during the Arab Spring, so there’s plenty of armed conflict in the book. For these scenes, I drew on my experiences as a spy in wartime Baghdad. Once you witness war, it stays with you. Images in my book are taken from my memories: the stench of burning metal; bombed-out windows like eyes ripped from sockets.
In so many ways, my ghosts tumbled out onto the pages. I agree with Tim O’Brien’s adage: “fiction is the lie that helps us tell the truth.”
In addition to your years working for the CIA, you also have a law degree. What drew you to that education, and how does it manifest in your life now?Mostly, I went to law school because I didn’t think I could support myself as a writer! But I loved law school. I was fascinated by foreign policy, so I studied mostly international and national security law. My interest in foreign affairs never subsided, transferring to my job at the CIA and eventually to my writing. The Peacock and the Sparrow plunges deep into global politics: the simmering conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia/Bahrain, the new Cold War in the Persian Gulf.
I think my legal education comes in handy in my approach to research and writing—I’m methodical, consider every side and argument, look for holes in the plot, try to ascertain where a critic could find flaws and weaknesses. After all, writing a book is essentially making a case to a reader: Do you buy my story? Have I persuaded you?
What can we find you doing when you aren’t writing crime fiction?Reading crime fiction! Actually, reading everything. I love going to art museums and offbeat historic sites, trying new flavors at local coffeeshops, going on urban hikes where I can take in interesting architecture. And I’m a mom, which is my favorite pastime.
What are you working on now?Another spy novel! This time with a female protagonist. It’s about a first-tour case officer who accidentally kills a young man while rushing to meet an informant. But, of course, it’s espionage, so there’s more to the story: in ferreting out the truth behind the accident, the officer uncovers years of secrets about a muckraking journalist who has mysteriously disappeared inside an embassy, intertwined with the complex relationship between the United States and Russia. It’s set against the battle between rising fascism and democracy, a post-modern story of betrayal.
Words of Wisdom for Aspiring Writers:Craft a story you absolutely love, that you can stick with through the ups and downs (of which there’ll be many).
Come up with a great plot, and the deeper meanings and themes will reveal themselves.
Write your book like it’s your last and only, like it’s the one shot you’ve got. Don’t think about publication until it’s time.
Try, try again. Don’t be afraid to tear things up, restart, edit till your fingers fall off, till the story feels right.
There will be one victory for every ten rejections—but one is all you need.
Find your voice. Don’t try to please everyone. What makes your writing distinctive is also what will spark opinions, favorable and unfavorable.
Great advice!Author Pet Corner!
My son, Zev, has five fish: three harlequin rasboras, one female betta, and a fancy guppy.
They’re named Bill, Gill, Phil, Gamma, and Bob.
Apropos of this mystery blog, Zev notes the plethora of mystery snails in his tank (“mystery” is their actual type).
I.S. Berry author of The Peacock and The Sparrow
I.S. Berry spent six years as an operations officer for the CIA, serving in wartime Baghdad and elsewhere.
She has lived and worked throughout Europe and the Middle East, including two years in Bahrain during the Arab Spring.
She is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law and Haverford College. Raised in the suburbs of Washington, DC, she lives in Virginia with her husband and son.
To learn more about I.S. Berry, click on any of the following links: Website, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.
Elena Taylor/Elena Hartwell
Amazon #1 bestsellerAll We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.
Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator
Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery
The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.
The post The Peacock and the Sparrow appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.
May 25, 2023
Thunder Road: New Noir
Thunder Road, the noir mystery by Colin Holmes
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Thunder Road
In this gamble, more than a few poker chips are at stake.
When an Army Air Force Major vanishes from his Top Secret job at the Fort Worth airbase in the summer of 1947, down-on-his-luck former Ranger Jefferson Sharp is hired to find him, because the Major owes a sizable gambling debt to a local mobster. The search takes Sharp from the hideaway poker rooms of Fort Worth’s Thunder Road, to the barren ranch lands of New Mexico, to secret facilities under construction in the Nevada desert. Lethal operatives and an opaque military bureaucracy stand in his way, but when he finds an otherworldly clue and learns President Truman is creating a new Central Intelligence Agency and splitting the Air Force from the Army, Sharp begins to connect dots. And those dots draw a straight line to a conspiracy aiming to cover up a secret that is out of this world—literally so.
Praise for Thunder Road:
“[In this] intriguing debut . . . clear crisp prose . . . morphs from a western into a detective story with an overlay of conspiracy theories.” ~ Publishers Weekly “This genre-defying and enormously entertaining romp is Mickey Spillane meets Whitley Strieber meets Woody Allen. I can’t remember when I’ve had so much plain old fun reading a book and just didn’t want it to end.” ~ Historical Novel Society, Editor’s Choice
Book Details:
Genre: Noir Mystery
Published by: CamCat Books
Publication Date: February 15, 2022
Number of Pages: 384
ISBN: 9780744304978 (ISBN10: 0744304970)
To purchase Thunder Road, click on any of the following links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | CamCat Books
Guest Post: Detective Sharp Finds a MacGuffin
by Colin Holmes
Most good mysteries have a MacGuffin. An item or a plot device that is the object of desire everyone in the story is trying to lay hands on. It can be a treasure map, a secret decoder ring, or even a Maltese Falcon. It just needs to be valuable enough to keep everyone looking for it. On its surface, the MacGuffin in Thunder Road is just a simple piece of tinfoil. Our hero, Jefferson Sharp has it, mobsters and CIA operatives want it, and Army Air Force scientists believe it could change the world.
A good MacGuffin always is a little more than it seems. And in the summer of 1947 when Thunder Road takes place, almost nothing is as simple as it seems. For instance, that stately home on the hill on the Jacksboro Highway? Behind the hill is a secret entrance to an underground gambling hall that’s played host to everyone from movie stars to Bugsy Siegel.
Even Jeff Sharp’s army buddy, who gave him the tinfoil for safe keeping, Jerry Cartwright? Well, he turns out to work for some super-secret department of the Army and when he disappears, boy, is that a mess for Sharp.
Thunder Road is filled with people and situations that aren’t quite what they seem, and I hope that’s some of the fun of the story. The interaction between those characters and the situations they wind up in is based on real events that happened that long hot summer of 1947. Bugsy was murdered in Beverly Hills. Those CIA operatives? President Truman signed an executive order that summer setting up the spy agency. And in the same piece of legislation, he cut loose the Air Force from the Army and made it its own branch of the service.
So, what does all of that have to do with a piece of tinfoil that works as a MacGuffin? You may have heard of the mysterious crash of what some people believe was an alien spacecraft near Roswell. It happened that same summer. And the wreckage? It was brought to the Fort Worth Army Air Base. About five miles down the road from that stately home on Thunder Road. Eyewitnesses say that some of that wreckage was just tinfoil.
I wondered, what if all of this could be related? What if it all tied together and the most unlikely guy in the world pulled on the string? That’s where we meet Jefferson Sharp—down-on-his-luck former cop who couldn’t find a job after the war and wound-up chasing cattle rustlers. He’s camped out in the middle of empty ranchlands, guarding cows and waking up to what might be the worst day anybody ever had.
Colin Holmes, author of Thunder Road
Before the pandemic, Colin Holmes toiled in a beige cubical as a mid-level marketing and advertising manager for an international electronics firm. A recovering advertising creative director, he spent far too long at ad agencies and freelancing as a hired gun in the war for capitalism. As an adman, Holmes has written newspaper classifieds, TV commercials, radio spots, trade journal articles and tweets. His ads have sold cowboy boots and cheeseburgers, 72-ounce steaks, and hazardous waste site clean-up services. He’s encountered fascinating characters at every turn.
Now he writes novels, short stories and screenplays in an effort to stay out of the way and not drive his far too patient wife completely crazy.
He is an honors graduate of the UCLA Writers Program, a former board member of the DFW Writers Workshop and serves on the steering committee of the DFW Writers Conference. He’s a fan of baseball, barbeque, fine automobiles and unpretentious scotch.
To learn more about Colin, click on any of the following links: Website, Goodreads, BookBub, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.
Read an Excerpt
Thunder Road
A thin flicker of flame licked the blue enamel coffeepot as Jefferson Sharp stirred life into the embers of last night’s campfire. He broke his morning stare and cocked his head as a shiver brought him fully awake. The herd was moving, shuffling uneasily through the wooly ground fog. Somewhere off in the predawn darkness, a mechanical whine spooled up, echoing across the ranchlands of the Rafter B. He shot a glance at the small oak where he’d tied Dollar the night before. The buckskin quarter horse flicked his ears and danced at the end of the lead rope, pulling the branch with him.
“Easy, fella.” Sharp tried to calm them both, but Dollar pranced and threw his head. To the west, the whine increased in volume, and the morning mist glowed with enough purple light that Sharp could make out the terrain through the patchy fog. Whatever had the livestock spooked was just beyond a small rise.
Sharp buckled on his gun belt, and his hand found his Colt. Not the six-shooting cowboy revolver of Gentry Ferguson’s King of the West movies, but a well-used Army issue .45 automatic that had followed him home from the European theater.
All through that war, Sharp had explained that, yes, he was from Texas, but that didn’t make him a cowboy. He’d walked the beat as a cop before the war—didn’t own a horse, have a ranch, or ever slept out under the stars or tended cattle. So naturally, here he was two years later, camped out on a ranch with a borrowed horse, guarding cows.
He patted Dollar’s shoulder as if that would settle the horse, then hiked up the hill in the low crouch that had been driven into him on too many mornings in the infantry.
When he was two steps up the hill, the earth rumbled with the tremor of aggravated shorthorns thundering away from the noise and light. Sharp had been a special ranger for the Fort Worth and Western Stockmen’s Association since the war, but he’d yet to be involved in a stampede.
Of course, it had to happen now, he thought. Before sunup. In the fog.
He had no place to hide as dozens of terrified red cattle came bellowing over the rise. He scrambled back to the campsite. He could see the white faces on the lead pair of Herefords when he yanked the Colt off his hip and fired twice into the air. The startled cattle reeled and parted right and left at the gunfire, the herd splitting to flow past the campsite like a stream around a rock. Luck and the good Lord favored the ignorant.
Sharp shooed the last of the stragglers past as the adrenaline drained away. “That,” he said to the nickering quarter horse, “is enough excitement for today.”
The mysterious whine disagreed. Pulsing lights strobing red, purple, and golden orange rose from beyond the hill. The apparition moved over the ridgeline, and the fog glowed. Behind Sharp, Dollar screamed a whinny and reared, trying for all his might to pull the scrubby tree out of the ground. The branch cracked. Sharp dove for the lead rope and dug his heels into the damp earth before Dollar could bolt. Something was out there with the man and horse, and the smarter one of the pair wasn’t sticking around to find out what it was.
But the light show could move as well, and it did. The brilliant colors rotated in concert with the whine as it became a deafening howl. The hovering glow spun together into an intense white circle, levitated high over the hill, and disappeared into the morning fog. Instantly, the noise changed course and roared back over the camp. The lights flashed overhead, then vanished at incredible speed, leaving a dying echo and a breeze that moved the wisps of fog.
Sharp and Dollar stood frozen as whatever the hell it was blasted above them. They shared a look, and then the quarter horse went full rodeo, bucking, jumping, and twisting—anything to get out of this halter, off this rope, away from this tree, and back to the safety of the barn. Any barn.
It took five minutes of profanity and cajoling, but Sharp finally calmed down the panicked gelding. He took a good hold on the halter and led them back to the campsite. “Look, I don’t know what it is either, but I’m pretty damn sure it doesn’t eat horses for breakfast.”
Dollar’s wild eyes and flicking ears suggested that he was not convinced.
Sharp remembered that something else was out there. Sixtyfour head of cattle the Stockmen’s Association was paying him to keep track of. Now, they were scattered from here to Mingus, and he and Dollar would be all morning rounding them up.
***
Excerpt from Thunder Road by Colin Holmes. Copyright 2023 by Colin Holmes. Reproduced with permission from CamCat Books. All rights reserved.
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All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.
Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator
Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery
The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.
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May 24, 2023
The Disappearance of Emily
The Disappearance of Emily by Elizabeth Pantley
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The Disappearance of Emily
A magic mirror. An enchanted world. A mysterious missing mother. A suspicious package. An unexplained death. A community of strange, quirky people. A sassy cat and a hilarious, perpetually annoyed witch. Come visit Destiny Falls and escape to a great time.
…Hayden’s life was normal until she fell through a mirror and was thrust into an alternate, magical place. Destiny Falls is not on any map and is home to a family she never knew she had. The town is enchanted and charming, and the amazing mansion she lives in changes to meet the needs of the people who live there, including her! Every day she discovers a new enchantment. But something is amiss. Hayden gets an ominous warning from a strange woman, who promises to tell her the town secrets and give her a package – if she’ll meet her at the mysterious ferry that lacks a published destination.
The ferry visit is cancelled, but the package is delivered. Once it arrives, someone turns up dead. Then the suspicious episodes start, too many to call them coincidences. She and her family are targeted and in danger. Who or what is causing the chaos? All signs point to the mysterious disappearance of her mother – way back when Hayden was just two days old. Can she identify and eliminate the threat before another person in her life is stolen away? Can she learn more about the secrets kept for her lifetime?
With the help of her sassy sidekick cat, and a host of new family and friends, Hayden finds herself surrounded with support as she solves the mystery of the death and learns secrets about herself.
Book Details:
Genre: Cozy Mystery Published by: Better Beginnings, Inc. Publication Date: March 2021 Number of Pages: 208 ASIN: B08MDZDQY7 Series: Destiny Falls Mystery & Magic Series, Book 2
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To purchase The Disappearance of Emily click on the following link: Amazon
Read an excerpt from The Disappearance of Emily
The mountain trail was tricky. I was moving slowly through the deep snow. I knew the lake had to be nearby. It was important to find it, but I could barely see ten feet in front of me due to the storm. The trail was steep and slippery, and I was making my way using trekking poles to assess where I should step next. My hands and feet were cold. I heard Latifa calling out to me. Where was she? What was she saying?
“Good morning, Sunshine!” Her lilting voice woke me from my dream. “Happy one-month-a-versary!”
It’s amazing how accustomed I’d grown to my cat’s telepathic voice in my head. I squinted at my fluffy Himalayan sidekick. She was sitting beside me on the bed. I stretched out my arms and gave an extra-loud yawn in her direction, hoping she’d get the hint that she had woken me up.
“Message received. Woke you up. So sorry. Got it.” She squinted at me and whispered, “Not sorry.”
I yawned at her again.
“Bet you forgot today is one month from the earth-shattering day we arrived in Destiny Falls.” Her big, baby blues were focused on me, and her whiskers were twitching. “I have appointed myself Keeper of Your Calendar. You can be so forgetful about celebratory dates.” She shook her furry head as if it were impossible to believe.
I gave another exaggerated stretch and reached over to the bedside table. With a flourish, I presented her with a small, gift-wrapped package.
“Squeeee! You remembered!” She head-butted my face and spun a little circle on the bed, then turned to tear open the package. There was more squealing as she discovered her new, feathered cat toy.
I patted my sidekick’s head and tossed my legs over the side of the bed. A glance at my phone confirmed that Latifa-the-alarm-clock was right on time. I needed to get changed and meet Axel downstairs for a morning jog into town. He was often too busy with work to join me in the morning, so it was a wonderful treat to have some extra time with my newfound brother.
My brother. How I loved the sound of that. After a lifetime as an only child in a tiny three-person family, finding out that I had siblings and a large hidden family was monumental. Add to that a mysterious, magical new world, and I was floating on cloud nine.
The only dark spot was missing my family and my best friend, Luna. I was still trying to figure out how to tell them about Destiny Falls. I’d have to sort this out soon, since my cover story of a working trip to Denmark was nearing its expiration. A month overseas was feasible, but as the timeline continued, I’d need to address my disappearance.
My Nana and Granana would be happy that I was happy. They’d been my biggest cheerleaders my entire life. They always said my happiness mattered most to them. Both my parents disappeared the week I was born, so my grandmother and great-grandmother jumped into raising me. They were dedicated to the job, with an enthusiasm that was a complete contrast to their tiny, delicate appearances. Luna and I referred to them as the Mighty Minis, which was an apt description.
Figuring out how to explain that I wasn’t really in Denmark, but in a magical, hidden town in an unknown location was a whole new ball of wax. Especially since the town was finicky about who it revealed itself to. Any e-mails or texts I attempted to send explaining my location, disappeared into the ether in a wisp of bounces— undeliverable, message not sent, connection lost. Even phone calls suddenly lost the signal. Maybe Axel, my brother—deep sigh of joy—could help me solve this problem.
I turned on the movie channel for Latifa, my furry little movie buff, tucked my ponytail through the back of my baseball cap, and headed out. I strolled slowly down the hallway, so I could absorb the beauty of this amazing home.
Hmm. That was odd. Where was the window seat? It was usually somewhere in my hallway, but it was oddly absent. There was a glorious swatch of sunlight, which is where it normally would be lounging. I snickered. Imagine that. A window seat that can lounge in the sun. Magic touched the Caldwell Crest home in the most interesting ways.
Caldwell Crest is a masterpiece of design. It could be described as a cozy, mansion-sized mountain cabin. I felt embraced by the sweeping staircase made of polished wood. I loved the plank wood floors and ceilings and the gorgeous but understated chandeliers. I adored the stone fireplaces that soared all the way up to the tall ceilings. The earthy colors of the décor were soothing. Even after a month, I was still adjusting to the fact that it was now where I lived.
The home was enchanting. I could almost believe the rumors that it was originally built as a castle back in the 1800s and magically remodeled many times. It’s difficult to understand Caldwell Crest and the mysterious place that was Destiny Falls, especially since the definition seemed to always be changing.
It had been a wild ride of a month since I’d been thrown through a portal and landed here.
Destiny Falls is different from any place I’ve ever known before. I had to let go of my preconceived notions of what defines a town. I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that the town isn’t on any map and isn’t accessible by normal means.
You must be called here by either the home or the town. Then you whoosh through time and space, to the accompaniment of a flash of brilliant light, as you tumble through a mirror. It’s a one-way trip. Once you’re here, you are, well . . . “trapped” is a harsh word for such a lovely place. However, it’s accurate. I cannot choose to leave. Destiny Falls controls the comings and goings.
I feel a bit like Alice falling through the mirror into wonderland. Albeit a much nicer wonderland than Alice had to deal with.
I’ve figured out that’s it’s easier if I just go with the flow and don’t try to understand all the nuances of this place.
***
Excerpt from The Disappearance of Emily by Elizabeth Pantley. Copyright 2023 by Elizabeth Pantley. Reproduced with permission from Elizabeth Pantley. All rights reserved.
Coming Soon!! *** Excerpt from The Disappearance of Emily by Elizabeth Pantley. Copyright 2023 by Elizabeth Pantley. Reproduced with permission from Elizabeth Pantley. All rights reserved.
Elizabeth Pantley, author of The Disappearance of Emily
Elizabeth Pantley is the international bestselling author of The No-Cry Sleep Solution and twelve other books for parents, published in over twenty languages.
She simultaneously writes the well-loved Destiny Falls Mystery & Magic book series and the new Magical Mystery Book Club series.
Elizabeth lives in the Pacific Northwest, the gorgeous inspiration for the setting in many of her books.
To learn more about Elizabeth, click on any of the following links: Website, Goodreads, BookBub, Instagram, Facebook
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All We Buried, available now in print, e-book, and audio.
Silver Falchion Award Finalist, Best Investigator
Foreword INDIE Award Finalist, Best Mystery
The Foundation of Plot, a Wait, Wait, Don’t Query (Yet!) guidebook.
Header image by LN_Photoart on Pixabay.
The post The Disappearance of Emily appeared first on The Mystery of Writing.
