Editing by Elizabeth

March 19, 2012

The Return of Joe Geraghty by Nick Quantrill

I’m pleased to welcome Nick Quantrill to the blog to explain how he had to write an entire novel – then throw it in the bin – in order to discover what he really needed to be writing about… Private Investigator Joe Geraghty. With one successful entry, Broken Dreams, already under his belt, PI Geraghty hits the streets again in The Late Greats, out today from Caffeine Nights Publishing.

Nick Quantrill Private Investigator Joe Geraghty is the undoubted star of my two published novels, Broken Dreams and The Late Greats, but it’s also a fact that he was the consequence of failure. A police procedural, Black and White, featuring Detective Sergeant Coleman, a minor character in the Geraghty books, pre-dates them. Looking back, the novel has obvious flaws. I didn’t know the police culture or live it. It was hard to effectively toss a year’s work in the bin, but it was clear to me that I had to step away and start over.

Geraghty was conceived as the mechanism to tell the story of Broken Dreams. I was making decisions that would have consequences I couldn’t foresee. He was to be a small-time Private Investigator who worked to pay the bills. Unlike a lot of other investigators, Geraghty was to be human. If he was hit, he went down. He was to be some way off being a hard man. I also wanted him to have a sporting background which was ripped away just as he was on the brink of success. I wanted him to know what the death of a dream felt like. →

March 17, 2012

Zee Bee & Bee by David James Keaton

“You know what? If they try too hard to scare us, I might call their bluff.” – Honeymoon Husband

Welcome to the “Z B & B” – aka the Zombie Bed & Breakfast – where guests pay for the unique experience of pretending to be honeymooning couples at a remote Bed & Breakfast that is besieged by zombies.

But despite the Honeymoon Husband’s concern that the cast will try too hard to scare them, initially it’s kind of difficult to imagine the employees of “Z B & B” being motivated enough to scare anyone.

Indeed, the cast members are much more inclined to sit around smoking, snacking, and discussing the merits and flaws of zombie films than they are to put any real effort into terrifying the paying customers.

Known to the reader and each other by their particular zombie ensemble – Baseball Zombie, Cowboy Zombie, Cigarette Zombie, Lumberjack Zombie, etc. – the employees of “Z B & B” spend the majority of the first three quarters of the book having discussions that read more like a cross between Slacker and Clerks than it does a zombie story, which is actually the brilliance of Zee Bee & Bee. →

March 16, 2012

Old Ghosts by Nik Korpon

“Ain’t how a man does things that makes the man. It’s how he deals with what he’s done.” – Paddy

Cole is trying his best to man up and deal with the things he’s done. He used to run with the wrong crowd back in Boston, doing heavy lifting for his lifelong friend Chance Miller’s not so legit business. It was fun for awhile, especially spending ‘quality time’ with Chance’s beautiful if slightly psychotic sister, Delilah. Then Cole said the wrong thing to the wrong person and took a knife to the gut for his troubles. Not so fun anymore.

Older and trying to be wiser, Cole now lives in Baltimore with his new bride, Amy. He’s got a steady construction gig renovating houses, and he and Amy are working on adding a new edition to their family. The future’s looking bright. That is until two old ghosts crawl out of the shadows of the past and cast a pall over Cole’s future.

Upon arriving at his newest home renovation project, Cole’s informed by his boss, Paddy, that the owner and his wife have some very specific requests for the basement, and that they also give him a bit of the creeps. Cole immediately understands why when he’s introduced to the couple… Chance and Delilah.

Seems in the time since Cole last saw them they’ve upgraded their business and joined forces with the Russian Mafia. Oh, and they’re moving that business to Baltimore and want Cole to pick up where he left off and help them out moving a big shipment. Now Cole has to figure out a way to get out from under the ghosts of the past without turning his future into a nightmare. →

March 16, 2012

By the Nails of the Warpriest by Nik Korpon

By the Nails of the Warpriest by Nik Korpon If I thought God actually existed, I would call him out as the coward he is and spit in his face. – The Thief

In a world with no apparent future, The Thief lives in and off the past. Once one of the leaders of The People in their rebellion against The Party, The Thief now wanders the ruins of The City looking for those from whom he can steal memories.

In a place where children play amongst rubble and an entire generation has no understanding of the way things used to be before The Struggle, memories are a commodity more valuable than diamonds or gold, heroin or cocaine ever were.

The Thief knows this better than most, as he not only survives by stealing memories and selling them, but by reliving his own precious memories of life before the war; before his wife and young son were killed in one of the riots that sparked the beginning of the end.

And then one evening while on a job everything he thought he knew to be true is turned upside down when one of the memories he collects not only includes his wife, but appears to show that she and his son weren’t killed in the riots. Now The Thief must confront his boss and former comrade from The Struggle, the man who told him his family was killed… the man The Thief now suspects not only knows more than he’s saying about the disappearance of The Thief’s family, but who may actually have had something to do with it. →

March 13, 2012

Helsinki White by James Thompson

James Thompson My overriding emotion in life thus far had been remorse. My life had been a constant struggle to make up for what I perceived as my failures. – Kari Vaara

It seems to be Inspector Kari Vaara’s destiny to lead a life out of balance. When we last saw him in Lucifer’s Tears his career had taken a turn for the better, with Kari being hailed as a national hero after being shot in the line of duty (for the second time, actually). Unfortunately he also learned that the crippling headaches from which he’d been suffering were caused by a brain tumor.

As Helsinki White opens Kari once again finds the balance in his life shifting. He and his wife, Kate, are the proud new parents of a baby girl, he gets an offer from the National Chief of Police to run a top secret unit dedicated to eradicating Helsinki’s most serious crimes, and Kari’s scheduled for surgery his physicians are optimistic will remove the tumor. That’s a little too much of a solid foundation given Kari’s history, so you know something has to give.

The first piece of the foundation starts to crumble when Kari realizes the real reason his little unit has been empowered with such autonomy and secrecy… it’s meant to be the ‘boots on the ground’ front for a few very highly placed corrupt government officials. Kari and his team – including the return of über intelligent if slightly unstable Milo Nieminien, as well as the addition of Sulo “Sweetness” Polvinen, a mountain of a man who has a surprisingly gentle soul – are expected to put criminals out of business by any means necessary, including stealing their guns and drugs, even framing people in order to get them out of the way, and then funnel the proceeds of their own criminal activity back up the highly selective chain of command. Not what Kari thought he was signing up for, he thought he would get a chance to stop the human trafficking running through Finland, but he’s in too deep to just quit. He has to go along until he can figure out an exit strategy. →

March 12, 2012

Will I Be Assassinated? – An Interview With James Thompson

©Elizabeth A. White/James Thompson – Please do not reprint/reproduce without express written permission.

Back in March of 2011 when I invited author James Thompson for a guest post in conjunction with the release of the second book in his Inspector Kari Vaara series, Lucifer’s Tears, I really had no idea what to expect from him. What Jim ended up writing, “My life just isn’t anybody else’s business,” was an incredibly powerful piece that really struck a nerve with readers. When I asked Jim back for another guest post in anticipation of the release of Helsinki White (March 15th from Putnam), this time he suggested we do an interview instead. As you’ll see, I tried to just stay out of the way and let my questions serve as jumping off points for Jim to, again, share with readers another incredibly frank look behind the curtain at both himself and Kari Vaara.

James Thompson When Lucifer’s Tears, the second book in the Kari Vaara series, came out you did a guest post here in which you reflected on how much of you is in Kari and vice-versa. You also spoke about a serious health issue you were having with severe headaches. As the third book in the series, Helsinki White, is poised to launch, how are your headaches doing, and have you and Kari gotten closer or farther apart?

The headaches aren’t gone, but have gotten much better. I spent a horrid few months playing guinea pig while my neurologist tried out different meds on me. It wasn’t his fault; he’s truly an excellent doctor. Note that he received thanks for serving as a consultant for Helsinki White. He loved the book, by the way. He checked it for accuracy in neurological matters and their behavioral consequences and told me I hit the nail squarely on the head. That was important to him because there are so many misconceptions about trauma-induced neural disorders (his specialization), and he hopes the book will raise public awareness.

Anyway…apparently I have very sensitive brain chemistry and even small doses of drugs that affect most people not at all made me physically and/or mentally ill. For instance, once, when the EMTs came in an ambulance to take me to hospital, I couldn’t tell them my name. I spent a fair amount of time in the emergency room during that time. We finally struck upon a meds combination that both keeps me in pretty good condition and my system can tolerate. I tire a little more easily than I used to. Other than that, I’m doing well. I thought for a while, after a straight talk from my doctor, that I was going to die with my head in the toilet. The sequence: uncontrolled vomiting, dehydration, shock, cardiac arrest, and goodbye. Interestingly, it made for a good

March 07, 2012

Fifth Victim by Zoë Sharp

Fifth Victim by Zoë Sharp The only thing more terrifying than fighting for your life is fighting for someone else’s. – Charlie Fox

Even though she’s extremely good at it, close-protection specialist (that’s bodyguard to you and me) and ex-special forces soldier Charlie Fox nevertheless has a bit more fighting experience than she’d prefer. This is especially true following the disastrous results of her last job, in Barry Award finalist for Best British crime novel Fourth Day, the repercussions from which she is still sorting through.

There’s no rest for the highly skilled and in-demand, however, and Fifth Victim once again finds Charlie in the thick of things on assignment. At least this time the surroundings are a little nicer, as Charlie is hired by wealthy investment banker Caroline Willner to guard her twenty-year-old daughter, Dina.

Seems there have been three kidnappings amongst the über-rich Long Island crowd, and even though each victim was returned when their families paid the ransom the kidnappings have become increasingly violent with each subsequent event.

Keeping a headstrong twenty-year-old safe would be a challenge under any circumstances, but it borders on an outright nightmare when that twenty-year-old runs with a crowd that has access to fast cars, limousines, fancy yachts, Lear jets, thoroughbred horses and pretty much anything else their hearts desire… and they’re used to getting their way. And far from being scared at the prospect of being kidnapped, Dina and her friends, including the three who were already taken, seem to actually be getting a perverse thrill out of the events, a development which both bothers Charlie and sets her radar on high alert. What exactly is going on in The Hamptons? →

March 06, 2012

Meet Charlie Fox by Zoë Sharp

I’m incredibly pleased to welcome Zoë Sharp to the blog today. Though already well-known and quite successful with her Charlie Fox thriller series in her native U.K., it wasn’t until relatively recently that the series started to become available in the U.S., and even then the back catalog was difficult to find. No more. The complete Charlie Fox series is now readily available, with the most recent in the series, Fifth Victim, having recently been released by Pegasus. Today Zoë is going to catch you up on the series so you can jump in and hit the ground running… and go back and see what you’ve been missing! The floor is yours, Zoë.

Meet Charlie Fox by Zoë Sharp I don’t know quite where Charlie Fox came from. She just arrived one day, climbed off her motorcycle, sat down and started to talk. I knew from the start I’d be a fool to ignore her. Charlie had the watchful wariness of somebody who’d been through life’s grinder and was still putting herself back together again. She’d been a victim and worked hard never to become so again.

When I began to chart her story, in Killer Instinct, Charlie’s ill-fated military career was several years behind her. She’d separated herself from her family and was living in a northern UK city and teaching self-defence classes to women. I knew right from the start that she wasn’t going to stay an amateur sleuth for long, but that point in her life felt like the right introduction. Charlie had been to rock bottom and hauled herself back up again, but the events of this book marked the moment she discovers just how much her experiences have changed her. As the title suggests, she is tested again and this time she discovers her personal killer instinct. From that moment forwards, her life is never going to be quite the same.

I felt it was important to show Charlie’s evolution, her reactions to the urban battlefield of race riots in Riot Act, where she once again encounters Sean Meyer, the army training instructor she fell for – with disastrous consequences for both of them. He is now a professional bodyguard, something for which his mindset, training and abilities make him perfectly suited. And something which Charlie proves she has the guts for, too. →

March 06, 2012

Murder on the Ropes by S. Furlong-Bolliger

Delaney MacKay is used to a little weirdness; it kinda comes with the territory when you’re raised by a father who happens to be a professional wrestler. All her life Delaney grew up surrounded by Malcolm ‘The Highlander’ MacKay’s friends, people with names like The Sledgehammer, Dangerous Dan, and Calvin the Cyclone.

But when she returns home for a visit while on break from school the last thing she expects is to find her father charged with the murder of one of his wrestling stablemates, Triple P. Determined to find the real killer, Delaney begins nosing around and soon discovers quite a few people had reason to want Triple P. dead.

All Delaney has to do is figure out which of the colorful cast of suspects it was before the killer decides to put her down for more than a three count.

Author Susan Furlong-Bolliger’s short story Murder on the Ropes is an entertaining and quick read, one that you’ll find particularly interesting if you are or ever were a fan of professional wrestling.

Murder on the Ropes is available from the Untreed Reads Fingerprints mystery line.

A former high school language teacher, Susan started working as a freelance translator and writer fifteen years ago. During her writing career, she has worked to compile several literary encyclopedias, text books, and medical reference dictionaries. In addition to her work as an academic writer, she has published several nonfiction articles in national magazines. Recently she has turned to writing fiction and has published several short mysteries. To learn more about Susan, visit her website.

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