This weekend is CrimeFest 2016 and I’m super excited because it’s the first festival I’ve been able to attend this year, if you are there, come and find me and my LifeOfCri.me groupies in the bar for your exclusive photo opportunity!
If I can keep up my current pace I’m on target to beat my 2016 reading goal, all I need to concentrate on then is keeping up to date with the reviews too, (although I do have a plan!)
I’m fifty books read for the year so far with I Know Who Did It by Steve Mosby marking the half century.
The hardest crimes to acknowledge are your own…
Charlie Matheson died two years ago in a car accident. So how is a woman bearing a startling resemblance to her claiming to be back from the dead? Detective Mark Nelson is called in to investigate and hear her terrifying account of what she’s been through in the afterlife.
Every year Detective David Groves receives a birthday card for his son…even though he buried him years ago. His son’s murder took everything from him, apart from his belief in the law, even though the killers were never found. This year, though, the card bears a different message: I know who did it.
Uncovering the facts will lead them all on a dark journey, where they must face their own wrongs as well as those done to those they love. It will take them to a place where justice is a game, and punishments are severe. Nelson and Groves know the answers lie with the kind of people you want to turn and run from. But if they’re to get to the truth, first they’ll have to go through hell…
So back in September we had #TeaWithLeigh, where a few of us bloggers got to sit around, drink champagne and talk all things Geraldine Steel and Ian Peterson.
This time around the character up for discussion was Lucy Hall, and not being one to do things by halves Leigh had several events to celebrate the launch of Journey To Death. Her soirée at The Sherlock Holmes Hotel on Baker Street London was the one I was lucky enough to be invited to attend.
It was a fabulous event and there was a great buzz to the whole evening with everyone there to celebrate everything Lucy Hall.
There was of course wine, but not only that there was some great food too with delicious canapés abound although my favourites, by far, were the mini burgers.
There was some great company, (yes I know that’s me), but I also got to meet up with some fellow bloggers and writers, many of which were already known to me, but equally and delightfully almost as many who weren’t. My address book and follow lists have increased to include the intriguing new contacts I made that I look forward to hearing from in the future.
On top of that was an amazing guest, the Minister of Tourism & Culture for The Seychelles, who having made a special journey in for the event, gave a great speech and made sure that all of us who want to travel to The Seychelles after reading Journey To Death, now know exactly how friendly the local sharks are.
And of course there was a fantastic cake, because it’s not an event until there is cake.
Above all the whole evening was one huge success, and I am grateful to Leigh for the invite, it was well worth the effort of a six hour round trip coach ride to attend.
Oh and speaking of coaches, I did at least make it back in time for mine.
Just.
I don’t know about you but when the Ambassador for Iceland invites you to the embassy itself to celebrate the launch of the latest book from an author you love, and regularly chat to at festivals, it’s not the sort of thing you turn down.
Thin Ice by Quentin Bates is the fifth and latest installment in his series featuring Officer Gunnhildur of the Reykjavik Police force, and I was very grateful for the invite to the event. I had a great opportunity to meet with bloggers I’d not met before, and experience something completely new to me, as it was the first London book launch I had attended.
Not only were we treated to some fantastic Thin Ice Cupcakes, but we were also lucky enough to hear an extract of Thin Ice read out, by Mel Hudson, who has been the narrator of all of Quentin’s Gunnhildur audio books since Frozen Out (released as Frozen Assets in the US) and has an amazing knack for getting all those tongue twisting Icelandic names right!
For me some of the high points of the evening including the opportunity to meet the Ambassador for Iceland
and of course spending some time with the much in demand (well it was *his* book launch) Quentin Bates, who is a fantastic writer and a fabulous guy.
Thin Ice by Quentin Bates
Snowed in with a couple of psychopaths for the winter…
When two small-time crooks rob Reykjavik’s premier drugs dealer, hoping for a quick escape to the sun, their plans start to unravel after their getaway driver fails to show. Tensions mount between the pair and the two women they have grabbed as hostages when they find themselves holed upcountry in an isolated hotel that has been mothballed for the season.
Back in the capital, Gunnhildur, Eiríkur and Helgi find themselves at a dead end investigating what appear to be the unrelated disappearance of a mother, her daughter and their car during a day’s shopping, and the death of a thief in a house fire.
Gunna and her team are faced with a set of riddles but as more people are quizzed it begins to emerge that all these unrelated incidents are in fact linked. And at the same time, two increasingly desperate lowlifes have no choice but to make some big decisions on how to get rid of their accidental hostages…
When I heard about this fresh approach to a blog tour I just had to join in and give it a go. Instead of writing a review, or doing an author Q&A, us bloggers were given a hashtag and a challenge.
The Challenge
To read the synopsis of the novel, and in no more than a few minutes using only the information in the synopsis to write down where you think Suzy is. Then using #WhereIsSuzy encourage our followers to do the same, to see just where the creative flows will take us. So here goes…
The Synopsis
Robert, an Oakland cop, still can’t let go of Suzy, the enigmatic Vietnamese wife who left him two years ago. Now she’s disappeared from her new husband, Sonny, a violent Vietnamese smuggler and gambler who is blackmailing Robert into finding her for him.
As he pursues her through the sleek and seamy gambling dens of Las Vegas, shadowed by Sonny’s sadistic son, ‘Junior’, and assisted by unexpected and reluctant allies, Robert learns more about his ex-wife than he ever did during their marriage. He finds himself chasing the ghosts of her past, one that reaches back to a refugee camp in Malaysia after the fall of Saigon, and his investigation uncovers the existence of an elusive packet of her secret letters to someone she left behind long ago.
As Robert starts illuminating the dark corners of Suzy’s life, the legacy of her sins threatens to immolate them all.
Here’s what I thought….
Suzy is back in Malaysia looking for the son she left in the refugee camp to keep him safe from his gangster father, the man who trafficked her to America, and keeping herself and her secret son safe were the reasons behind marrying men who could protect her by whatever means necessary.
Then I thought I’d ask a couple of authors what they thought.
Vu Tran’s fellow No Exit stable mate Leigh Russell went for the pessimistic view.
I guess she went back to Malaysia to find the guy she left behind. Her boat capsized and she’s now at the bottom of the ocean….
Graham Smith author of Snatched From Home had this to say.
She’s in a Western country trying to track down the daughter she gave birth to after being raped in Vietnam. The daughter is now grown up and like her mother has married a westerner.
And finally, I asked some of my friends…
Ann B said firmly
She’s In Las Vegas
Vic W agreed
I think she’s in Fremont Street, Las Vegas.
Marc F isn’t quite so sure
She could be anywhere, but I’m guessing looking for someone in Asia…..
and the fantastic Kate H really let her imagination go
Suzy is in the UK, in Telford. She got nervous in Vegas and running through one of the hotels a few streets off the strip, quite by accident stumbled into a World Archery Vegas archery competition. Initially, she hid in the audience, but shrewd as she is, she quickly started befriending one of the coaches who she had noticed eyeing her up. Throwing all her best moves at him and hiding her fear, she manages to convince him to allow her to accompany him home to the UK for a holiday. She spends the last of her cash on a fake passport and heads back to the UK with the archery team from Telford. Once in the UK, she gets her bearings and then disappears from her ‘holiday romance’ and slips away to start a new chapter in her life…
Now, using the comments tell us what you think, and if you want to find out for real? Go pick up a copy of DragonFish now….
#MAESTRA
Closing 20th February 2016
The Readers Digest 100 word story competition.
Closing 4th March 2016
The CrimeFest, Bristol Flash Bang Competition.
Closing 14th March 2016
The Mslexia Womens Short Story Competition
This was today’s….
Exciting! 😀
Life of Cri.me 