Nick Elliott's Blog, page 2
January 11, 2019
DARK OCEAN: BOOKBUB FEATURED DEAL COMING UP – BUT ALREADY ON OFFER!
Hi there,
For those of you who don’t know BookBub, it is the top book promotion site, worldwide – by a mile. It’s well worth subscribing to (free to readers) and you can choose your favourite authors, genres, etc. to find special price deals.
Getting a featured deal on BookBub is not easy. As an author you’re competing with hundreds, if not thousands of other authors/titles vying for a place. And there’s a rigorous editorial vetting process to get through. I’ve been lucky to have had two previous deals for SEA OF GOLD.
This coming Monday – 14 January – the second Angus McKinnon thriller, DARK OCEAN, is being featured on BookBub in the UK, Canada and Australia. For a short period DARK OCEAN will be available at the reduced price of £0.99, or equivalent.
In order to be ready for when the deal appears, I’ve already reduced the price on Amazon. So you can grab it here now if you like: http://amzn.to/2vIPRyJ
But give BookBub a try anyway: https://www.bookbub.com/welcome
Best wishes,
Nick
December 22, 2018
BLACK REEF – THE NEW ANGUS MCKINNON THRILLER now available in paperback
A SHIP’S CAPTAIN IS FOUND HANGED IN HIS CABIN: SUICIDE OR MURDER?
Marine claims investigator Angus McKinnon is assigned to the case, but when he discovers a falsely declared cargo of military equipment in the ship’s holds, alarm bells start ringing in the intelligence world.
What looked routine becomes a perilous mission to thwart a coup d’état that threatens to pit two global superpowers against one another, while a secretive bank with Nazi gold glimmering darkly in its vaults attempts to derail the investigation.
And as questions and misgivings mount, what motivates the beautiful Mariana da Cunha to help Angus in the troubled land of her birth?
From the Atlantic Ocean to the jungles of West Africa and a final face-off in the vast emptiness of the Sahara, McKinnon must finally join with a daunting array of military resources, and marshal his own wits to bring down a psychopathic war criminal and those playing him as their proxy.
The Kindle e-book AND PAPERBACK are now available on Amazon:
And if you enjoy BLACK REEF, please consider leaving a brief review on Amazon. Reviews help drive sales. Thank you!
(BLACK REEF is the third stand-alone Angus McKinnon thriller following on from SEA OF GOLD and DARK OCEAN.)
“Nick Elliott delivers in spades when it comes to fast-paced, intelligent, international thrillers. You feel, smell and touch every authentically crafted location; you’re expertly drawn into a maze of shadows and sinister organizations and characters where nothing is what it seems. This really is thriller writing of the highest calibre.” Craig Russell, award-winning author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed Jan Fabel and Lennox crime thrillers.
December 15, 2018
BLACK REEF – THE NEW ANGUS MCKINNON THRILLER now available in paperback
A SHIP’S CAPTAIN IS FOUND HANGED IN HIS CABIN: SUICIDE OR MURDER?
Marine claims investigator Angus McKinnon is assigned to the case, but when he discovers a falsely declared cargo of military equipment in the ship’s holds, alarm bells start ringing in the intelligence world.
What looked routine becomes a perilous mission to thwart a coup d’état that threatens to pit two global superpowers against one another, while a secretive bank with Nazi gold glimmering darkly in its vaults attempts to derail the investigation.
And as questions and misgivings mount, what motivates the beautiful Mariana da Cunha to help Angus in the troubled land of her birth?
From the Atlantic Ocean to the jungles of West Africa and a final face-off in the vast emptiness of the Sahara, McKinnon must finally join with a daunting array of military resources, and marshal his own wits to bring down a psychopathic war criminal and those playing him as their proxy.
The Kindle e-book AND PAPERBACK are now available on Amazon:
And if you enjoy BLACK REEF, please consider leaving a brief review on Amazon. Reviews help drive sales. Thank you!
(BLACK REEF is the third stand-alone Angus McKinnon thriller following on from SEA OF GOLD and DARK OCEAN.)
“Nick Elliott delivers in spades when it comes to fast-paced, intelligent, international thrillers. You feel, smell and touch every authentically crafted location; you’re expertly drawn into a maze of shadows and sinister organizations and characters where nothing is what it seems. This really is thriller writing of the highest calibre.” Craig Russell, award-winning author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed Jan Fabel and Lennox crime thrillers.
The post BLACK REEF – THE NEW ANGUS MCKINNON THRILLER now available in paperback first appeared on Nick Elliott.
BLACK REEF – THE NEW ANGUS MCKINNON THRILLER
A SHIP’S CAPTAIN IS FOUND HANGED IN HIS CABIN: SUICIDE OR MURDER?
Marine claims investigator Angus McKinnon is assigned to the case, but when he discovers a falsely declared cargo of military equipment in the ship’s holds, alarm bells start ringing in the intelligence world.
What looked routine becomes a perilous mission to thwart a coup d’état that threatens to pit two global superpowers against one another, while a secretive bank with Nazi gold glimmering darkly in its vaults attempts to derail the investigation.
And as questions and misgivings mount, what motivates the beautiful Mariana da Cunha to help Angus in the troubled land of her birth?
From the Atlantic Ocean to the jungles of West Africa and a final face-off in the vast emptiness of the Sahara, McKinnon must finally join with a daunting array of military resources, and marshal his own wits to bring down a psychopathic war criminal and those playing him as their proxy.
The Kindle e-book is now available on Amazon:
(Amazon paperback edition due within 48 hours)
And if you enjoy BLACK REEF, please consider leaving a brief review on Amazon. Reviews help drive sales. Thank you!
(BLACK REEF is the third stand-alone Angus McKinnon thriller following on from SEA OF GOLD and DARK OCEAN.)
“Nick Elliott delivers in spades when it comes to fast-paced, intelligent, international thrillers. You feel, smell and touch every authentically crafted location; you’re expertly drawn into a maze of shadows and sinister organizations and characters where nothing is what it seems. This really is thriller writing of the highest calibre.” Craig Russell, award-winning author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed Jan Fabel and Lennox crime thrillers.
April 18, 2018
Of spies, typhoons and shipwrecks
Hello from Scotland – and especially welcome to those who have subscribed to this newsletter recently.
Black Reef
The third Angus McKinnon thriller, provisionally entitled Black Reef, is currently under construction. I’m hoping to get it published in August or September. Meanwhile sales of the first two, Sea of Gold : http://amzn.to/1jkQUYT and Dark Ocean http://amzn.to/2vIPRyJ are ticking along and attracting positive reviews, although inevitably comparisons are made between my ‘English’ English and American English…
Kim
I saw recently Rudyard Kipling’s Kim rated as one of the ten best espionage novels of all time. As I recall, I read it when I was around twelve. And that book really did trigger my interest in the world of spies and spying. I must read it again.
RIP Philip Kerr
On a sad note, Philip Kerr, author of the Bernie Gunther series, died recently at the age of just sixty-two. He wrote fourteen Bernie Gunther novels spanning the German detective’s cases from before, during and after WW2 through into the 1950s. The last in the series, which Philip finished shortly before his death, is entitled Greeks Bearing Gifts and finds Bernie in Athens investigating a claim on a sunken ship – familiar territory for Angus McKinnon!
From the archive
I attended a reunion in London last month. A small group of us got together for lunch at the Baltic Exchange. In the seventies we’d all worked for a now defunct shipowner whose story began in nineteenth century Shanghai before moving to Hong Kong. Most of them I hadn’t seen since those days.
At the lunch I was given this photo which I never knew existed. It was taken in Hong Kong harbour by colleague Brian Donaghue when we were on the company launch in July 1973, six months after my arrival in Hong Kong. I was twenty-four, it was a Sunday (hence casual attire) and typhoon signal number 3 was up (note the sea state). The ship was ordered to move off the buoy and out to an anchorage, but the mooring gang was having trouble unshackling the mooring chain. The ship’s weight was pulling the shackle taught meaning they couldn’t get the pin out. Eventually the ship was moved forward to slacken it off. I’d completely forgotten the incident.
LISBON MARU: “Falling leaves return to their roots”
I’ve written of this tragic saga before, Dark Ocean having been based in part on the story.
Now, the wreck has been located and a Chinese-American businessman is searching for relatives of those who perished. “They spent the last moments of their lives trying to break out,” he says “but after so many years, they remain incarcerated,” the Daily Express reported this week.
He has been encouraged after relatives of those on board contacted him and expressed their wish that the remains be retrieved consistent with the Chinese belief that “falling leaves return to their roots”.
But 97-year-old Dennis Morley, believed to be the last British survivor of the atrocity, has said that “it’s a war grave and should be left”. Conversely, a British woman whose grandfather, Montague Glister, was lost with the ship, said her family would like to see her grandfather’s remains returned.
Explaining his plans for a documentary to honour the dead, Mr Fang said: “With only two eyewitnesses left, we would lose the last opportunity to tell their stories and to remember them if we don’t act now. They at least deserve a decent memorial.”
Available from Amazon:
Sea of Gold: http://amzn.to/1jkQUYT
Dark Ocean: http://amzn.to/2vIPRyJ
December 9, 2017
KISS KISS, BANG BANG: THE BOOM IN BRITISH THRILLERS FROM CASINO ROYALE TO THE EAGLE HAS LANDED
I’m into thrillers. I have been since reading John Buchan as a child then graduating to Alistair Maclean, Hammond Innes, Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Le Carre, et al. Today I read travel, history and the odd biography as well but I tend to default back to the genre I grew up loving.
Recently Mike Ripley (see his “Mike Ripley’s Getting Away With Murder” ezine) published Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang which for me presented a feast of memories and introduced me to many writers I had never read or even heard of. The title is borrowed from how Ian Fleming described his Bond stories.
Lee Child (author of the Jack Reacher novels in case anyone anyone needs reminding) wrote the Foreword and with characteristic eloquence, reflected on the post-war era in which the books Ripley covers in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, were written, and in which Ripley, Child and myself grew up in:
“…we were in a liberal democracy, at peace, with a cradle-to-grave welfare system that worked efficiently, with all dread diseases conquered, with full employment for our parents, with free and excellent education from the age of five for just as long as we merited it. We had no bombs falling on our houses, 
and no knocks on our doors in the middle of the night. No previous generation ever had all of that, not in all of history, and standards have eroded since. We were very lucky.
“But, …it was very boring. Britain was grey, exhausted, physically ruined, and financially crippled. The factories were humming, but everything went for export. We needed foreign currency to pay down monstrous war debt. Domestic life was pinched and austere. We escaped any way we could. Reading was the main way. Thrillers were the highest high, and British writers were never better than during our formative years. But finding out about them was entirely random. Obviously there was no Internet –electricity itself was fairly recent in some of our houses –and it was rare to meet a fellow aficionado face to face, and enthusiast bookshops were inaccessible to most of us, and so on. We blundered from one random find to another. Some of us had older brothers blazing the way, and really that’s exactly what this book is – the perfect older brother, equipped with 20/ 20 hindsight, saying, ‘Read this, and then this, and this, and this.’”
“…it seems of great sentimental value, like a long-lost diary, like a list of the way stations that carried us through a time that promised to be forever grey.”
I couldn’t put it better.
November 18, 2017
The LISBON MARU
I spotted this just now and thought it would be of interest to all those of you who responded to my previous post on the subject. This book was published just last month and I see it’s available on Amazon. Not particularly cheap but these kinds of translated historical accounts rarely are.
Here’s the blurb as it appears on Amazon:
“A FAITHFUL RECORD OF THE LISBON MARU INCIDENT is a recent translation from an original Chinese publication covering an important chapter in Hong Kong’s wartime history. It gives details of the Lisbon Maru Incident of 1942, seen through the eyes of the Chinese fishermen who rescued hundreds of British prisoners of war from Hong Kong, whose ship had been torpedoed. The Japanese had tried to keep them in the holds as the ship sank, and then shot at them as they tried to escape.
“These courageous fishermen not only prevented hundreds more deaths, they also hid three prisoners under the noses of the Japanese until they could be sent secretly on a journey across more than 1,000 miles of China to reach Chongqing, from where they could tell the world what had happened.
“The book also recounts the visit to Zhoushan in 2005 of one of the survivors of the sinking and his emotional reunion with those who saved him; as well as a visit to Hong Kong in the same year of the last few remaining fishermen who had taken part in the rescue.”
The wreck of the LISBON MARU has recently been discovered by divers, but I’ve seen nothing further on the story since. If any of you have news please get in touch.
As I’ve mentioned before, the tragedy of the LISBON MARU inspired me to reconstruct a similar but fictional event in my recently published thriller, DARK OCEAN, also on Amazon.
November 3, 2017
The world’s biggest grave robbery: Asia’s disappearing WWII shipwrecks
A friend has sent me this link to a disturbing, in-depth article from today’s Guardian.
It’s well worth a read and is enhanced by excellent graphics:
The world’s biggest grave robbery: Asia’s disappearing WWII shipwrecks
Exclusive: the unmarked graves of thousands of sailors are threatened by illegal metal salvagers
This follows the recent discovery of the wreck of the “hell ship”, Lisbon Maru which features, disguised as the Lady Monteith, in my book, DARK OCEAN.
Artists conception of the sinking of HMS Prince of Wales (top left) and HMS Repulse by Japanese aircraft on December 10, 1941. Courtesy of MaritimeQuest
Nick
October 30, 2017
Lee Child on fiction
I love this quote by Lee Child:
As a writer of thrillers, he may never be embraced by some literary critics. But he believes well-crafted popular fiction serves a profound purpose, rooted in our earliest history.
“At some point we began telling stories about things that had not happened,” he explains.
“This made people feel emboldened or empowered and just a little bit more self-confident, which would help them survive.
“You are shown the edge of the cliff, but you’re told you don’t have to fall off.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainme...
In the Studio with Lee Child can be heard on the BBC World Service at 11:30 GMT on 31 October.
I’ll be tuned in.
Nick
October 26, 2017
WORK IN PROGRESS
WORK IN PROGRESS
With the first two books in the Angus McKinnon thriller series published, I’m now working on the third with the aim of launching it by mid-2018.
In this latest book, Angus suspects more than the obvious when he’s called to investigate the apparent suicide of a ship’s captain off the Portuguese coast. Why are the owners reluctant to disclose details of her cargo? And what lies behind the mystery of her destination?
The case leads him from the Black Sea to the rain forests of equatorial Africa, setting him against his most formidable adversaries yet…
