AN ESCAPIST CONFRONTS A VILLAGE OF HATE
CITY FOLK ARE A FUNNY LOT. When they take a trip to the countryside, they tend to adopt a superior attitude towards the rustic bumpkins while betraying their general ignorance regarding all about them.
They smile with pleasure at the sight of the lambs gambolling about the fields, conveniently forgetting that soon those cute animals will be slaughtered to satisfy their appetites. Their delicate urban nostrils sniff with disgust at such basic farming odours as manure spread over the fields.
That does not fit their idea of the simple life, i.e. a deodorized dream of bucolic paradise. Sadly that paradise never existed. And as for the “simple life”, that can be just a little complicated.
As the “hero” of David Baird’s latest book, Don’t Miss The Fiesta!, a thriller with macabre touches set in a Spanish village, discovers to his cost.An Englishman collides with old hatreds and vengeful villagers when he takes refuge in a tranquil Andalusian pueblo. Running from his past, this escapist falls for a local girl only to find that, beneath the village’s placid surface, lurk dark secrets and a nightmare of guilt.
One sinister event succeeds another, leading to a dramatic climax.
Award-winning journalist David Baird says that much of his book is based on personal experience — he has lived in Spain for many years.
Born in Shropshire, David is well-known for his travel and guide books, but Don’t Miss The Fiesta! is his first work of fiction.
Though the characters in the book are figments of his imagination, true-life incidents sparked the idea for the plot, especially the experience of some friends who bought a farmhouse not a thousand miles away from the Costa del Sol.
“It’s so easy for strangers to stumble into situations they don’t understand. They thought they had found shangri-la and sat back to enjoy the simple life. Then came midnight knocks on the door and other strange incidents and they found they had become involved in fierce family feuds.”
To browse extracts, go to:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?printsec=frontcover&id=gm-IaqeMY-YC#v=onepage&q=&f=false
David Baird has worked around the world, from Fleet Street to Canada and Hong Kong. His other books include Sunny Side Up – the 21st century hits a Spanish village and Back Roads of Southern Spain (published by Santana Books). His books have also been published in German and Spanish.
Don’t Miss the Fiesta! is on sale at English-language bookshops in Spain. It can also be bought direct from the publishers, Maroma Press, on this site and from Amazon.co.uk. To save postage costs, buyers can also download it at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/15830
Maroma Press also published Baird’s non-fiction book Between Two Fires. That well-researched account of the impact of a forgotten war waged by the anti-Franco guerrilla movement in the 1940s and 1950s won praise from historians Ian Gibson and Paul Preston.
