Painted Fire by Mark Fowler
Actress Kate Tolle falls victim to an illness that baffles the medical world.
In desperation her husband Ben appeals to the public, and an anonymous benefactor comes forward. Soon the couple find themselves on a flight bound for San Francisco. Where the enigmatic Merle is waiting.
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Kate’s health appears to improve as people around her die horrifically. Merle tells Ben that healing comes at a price and questions what he’s willing to pay.
But what does Merle want? And what is the chilling truth waiting out in the desert … in Las Vegas and beyond?
My Review
This was a very bizarre book. It’s kind of a thriller, but then again it’s not. It’s a murder mystery, but only in as much as people get murdered. It’s fantasy, but only if you believe in Merle. I was very slightly reminded of Mr Wednesday in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and the way Ben and Kate just follow Merle from California to Nevada and meet his ‘friends’. Everywhere they go, everyone seems to know him.
But back to the beginning. Kate has fallen victim to a mysterious illness and no-one in the UK knows what is wrong with her or how to cure it. She has terrible, dark nightmares and is getting weaker all the time. Then they get an offer from an anonymous benefactor to go to America and soon become celebrity news. So off they go to San Francisco to meet the person who is going to help Kate.
While staying in a very expensive hotel, paid for of course by the benefactor, Ben leaves Kate for a few minutes to go and get a drink in the bar. And it’s there that he meets Merle for the first time. A tiny figure (again I visualise Neil Gaiman’s leprechaun) though this one is dressed in a white suit, with a buttonhole and bow tie. The latter appear to change colour every time Ben sees him, but the white suit never does.
‘The buttonhole and bow tie alone continued to defy expectations, now becoming a blue so deep and dark that it threatened at any moment to proclaim itself midnight.’
So is Merle a kind person trying to help Ben and Kate or does he have a more sinister agenda? And does he really have the power he claims?
‘Was this man unhinged, dangerous, or just having fun at the expense of some innocent abroad?’
That’s for me to know and you to find out, as they say. Painted Fire is a superbly written book and the author has a wonderful way with words. This has to be one of my favourite examples.
‘The place hummed with death, was alive with death.’ What a great phrase that is!
Many thanks to @zooloo2008 for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the Author
Mark writes detective crime fiction, and psychological and supernatural thrillers. He is the author of the popular Tyler & Mills detective crime series set in Staffordshire. RED IS THE COLOUR was shortlisted for the 2018 Arnold Bennett Prize and begins with the grim discovery of a schoolboy who disappeared thirty years earlier. BLUE MURDER involves a missing singer and a murdered guitarist, elevating an obscure band to sudden fame and fortune. THE DEVIL WORE BLACK unveils the mystery of a crucified priest. The latest book in the series, THE SMELL OF COPPER, finds Tyler out on a limb as the detectives uncover high level police corruption. All the books can be read as standalone crime novels.
Other detective mysteries include THE BATHROOM MURDERS. A series of women are found hacked to death while taking a shower. This is the first in a new series set in Manchester, featuring female detective Charlie Reed. TWIST has the eponymous private investigator returning, against his better judgement, to the city of nightmares to look into the strange case of a dead philosophy student. THE MAN UPSTAIRS introduces hard boiled Frank Miller, discovering he’s a fictional detective and that his author is plotting to kill him.
Mark also writes psychological and supernatural thrillers. SILVER finds journalist and crime writer Nick Slater obsessed with an unpublished manuscript that a best-selling author was working on when she was murdered, and which her family refuse to publish. SEXTET explores the twisted rivalry between twin sisters, the weird games they played as children, and the rising murder rate in a small English town. COFFIN MAKER is a gothic tale. Death is sent two apprentices amid warnings from an out-of-favour priest that the devil has arrived on Earth. Mark’s latest book PAINTED FIRE finds a writer travelling to America’s West Coast in a desperate bid to find a cure for a baffling illness afflicting his wife. An anonymous benefactor has offered to help, but at what price?
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Buy Links – https://geni.us/Yfqb
