Tag: After You Die

#CTG FRIDAY #GIVEAWAY: #WIN A #CRIMEFICTION BOOK BUNDLE

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Hurrah it’s Friday! That’s as good an excuse for a give way as any I reckon!

Today I’m giving you the chance to win a bundle of four fabulous paperbacks – perfect for crime fiction lovers.

The Prize:

AFTER YOU DIE by Eva Dolan is the third book in the fantastic Peterborough Hate Crime Unit series. Here’s what the blurb says: “DS Ferreira is back on the force after being severely injured in the line of duty. The first case to land on her desk takes her and DI Zigic to a brutal crime scene where a woman has been stabbed to death and her disabled daughter left to starve to upstairs. The murdered woman is Dawn Prentice – a woman who had come to Ferreira for help when she and her daughter were being subjected to harassment. As Ferreira battles her demons and Zigic clashes with another officer, the detectives realise that the Prentice case rests on one crucial question – who was the real target of the killer: mother or daughter?”

TIME OF DEATH by Mark Billingham is the latest book in the fabulous Tom Thorne series. Here’s what the blurb says: “Two schoolgirls are abducted in the small, dying Warwickshire town of Polesford, driving a knife into the heart of the community where police officer Helen Weeks grew up. But this is a place where dangerous truths lie buried. When family man Stephen Bates is arrested, Helen and her partner Tom Thorne head to the flooded town to support Bates’ wife – an old school friend of Helen’s – who is living under siege and convinced of her husband’s innocence. As residents and media bay for Bates’ blood, a decomposing body is found. The police believe they have their murderer, but one man believes otherwise. With a girl still missing, Thorne sets himself on a collision course with local police townsfolk – and a merciless killer.”

SILENT SCREAM by Angela Marsons was an ebook phenomenon, now out in paperback. Here’s what the blurb says: “Even the darkest secrets can’t stay buried forever. Five figures gather round a shallow grave. They had all taken turns to dig. An adult-sized hole would have taken longer. An innocent life had been taken the the pact had been made. Their secrets would be buried, bound in blood. Years later, a headmistress is found brutally strangled, the first in a spate of gruesome murders which shock the Black Country. But when human remains are discovered at a former children’s home, disturbing secrets are also unearthed. DI Kim Stone fast realises she’s on the hunt for a twisted individual whose killing spree spans decades. As the body count rises, Kim needs to stop the murderer before they strike again. But to catch the killer, can Kim confront the demons of her own past before it’s too late?”

THOSE WE LEFT BEHIND by Stuart Neville is the first book in the brilliant DCI Serena Flanagan series. Here’s what the blurb says: “DCI Serena Flanagan is forced to confront a disturbing case form her past: the murder conviction of a 12-year-old boy who has just been released from prison. DCI Serena Flanagan hasn’t heard  the boy’s name in years. Not since the blood on the wall and the body in the bathroom. Not since she listened as he confessed to brutally murdering his foster father. But now Ciaran Devine is out of prison and back in her life. And so is his brother, Thomas – the brother that Flanagan always suspected of hiding something. When Ciaran’s probation officer comes to Flanagan with crest fears about the Devines, the years of lies begin to unravel, setting a deadly chain of events in motion.”

How to enter:

For a chance to win this book bundle all you need to do is tweet the link to this post (using the Twitter button below and including the #CTG hashtag) OR retweet one of the CTG tweets about the giveaway. [You’ll also need to follow CTG on Twitter, so that we can send you a direct message should you win].

Rules
(1) One entry per reader (2) UK residents only – due to postage costs – sorry! (3) We will draw the winners at random (4) No cash alternative (5) The competition closes for entries at 10pm GMT on Friday 9th December 2016 (6) The judge’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

Good luck!

Bloody Scotland Preview: EVA DOLAN, MARI HANNAH & BEN MCPHERSON

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OSLO 20131101 Portrait of author Ben McPherson downtown Oslo, Norway. Photo byline: nyebilder.no

One of the events I’m really looking forward to at Bloody Scotland is the Saturday 10.30am panel with Eva Dolan, Mari Hannah and Ben McPherson. Having seen each of these dynamic writers in action before, I’m sure this is going to be a lively and entertaining debate. So, in advance of the festival, I thought I’d pop them a few questions, you know, to get them warmed up …

Firstly, for those new to your work, can you tell us a little bit about your latest novel?

EVA: After You Die is the third in the Zigic and Ferreira series and follows the investigation into the suspicious death of a young right-to-die activist and the murder of her mother, in an idyllic commuter village a long way away from the team’s usual stamping ground. It was quite an emotional book to write as it covers the complicated and contentious issue of right to die, the demands of being a carer and the way a family copes in the aftermath of a terrible accident.

BEN: A Line of Blood is my first novel. It’s about a father and his eleven-year-old son who discover a corpse in the house next door. The father fails to stop his son from seeing the dead man, and at first he thinks that’s his biggest problem, but then his marriage begins to unravel, and he realises his wife knew the dead man. The murder exposes fault lines in the marriage and confronts the family with a past that none of them can escape. I’m deep into my second novel at the moment. Again it’s about a family, and again something terrible happens to that family, but this time they’ve done nothing to deserve it. They have to choose between justice and revenge… 

MARI: I’m best known for my Kate Daniels series but my latest book is a standalone. THE SILENT ROOM is conspiracy thriller introducing Special Branch DS Matthew Ryan who I am a little bit in love with. The opener sees his disgraced boss, DI Jack Fenwick, sprung from a prison van. Professional Standards officer, Eloise O’Neil investigates. Under suspicion of aiding the audacious escape, Ryan is suspended, warned not to interfere. Convinced of Jack’s innocence, he works off-book with Grace Ellis (ex-DCI) & Frank Newman (ex-MI5) to find him. I had such a lot of fun writing this book. Fear not if you are a Kate Daniels groupie. She’s back in GALLOWS DROP in November.

You’re on stage at 10.30 – 11.30am on Saturday 10th at Bloody Scotland – what can the audience expect?

EVA: At half past ten in the morning? Three bright-eyed and bushy-tailed crime writers who definitely didn’t stay up all night in the hotel bar and then quickly freshened up to go straight on stage. I think it will be a pretty lively panel, Mari Hannah is a marvellous writer and lovely lady and Ben McPherson’s book starts with a dead guy with an erection, so he’s obviously not shy!

BEN: I’m on with Mari Hannah an Eva Dolan, so I think the audience can expect to be entertained! I also hope we’ll have something to say about the big questions that crime books raise: What makes a murderer? How should people react when terrible things happen? And for me the two most important questions: Why do good people do bad things? And what does it take for a bad person to do the right thing? But the pleasure in being on a panel is that you never know exactly which way the conversation is going to go. The audience can lead you in unexpected directions…

MARI: There will be blood! Ben, Eva and I have written very different books. The discussion will no doubt reflect this. We’ve all met before and I’m looking forward to taking the stage in such brilliant company. From a personal point of view, I’m hoping to meet some passionate readers and have a few laughs.   

Bloody Scotland is one of my favourite crime fiction festivals. If you’ve been before, what makes it great for you? And, if you haven’t, what are you most looking forward to?

EVA: I love Bloody Scotland and am delighted to be back again this year as it really is the highlight of the crime calendar. The programme is always a good blend of big names and newcomers and the organisers have a knack of putting the right people together on stage so the panels are generally much sparkier and funnier than at some more, um…staid festivals. I’m marking up Chris Brookmyre and Stuart Neville in conversation, Into the Dark with Malcolm Mackay, James Oswald and Craig Robertson looks very good too and (Not) Born in the USA on Sunday afternoon is bound to be fascinating and fiery. Away from the purely bookish things I’m looking forward to catching My Darling Clementine and Mark Billingham’s The Other Half show, which I’ve heard is brilliant. Then the late night cabaret at Crime at the Coo straight after. And, of course, the Scotland v England football match, where the fittest authors available – and some who probably aren’t – show off their silky skills.

BEN: I was born in Glasgow and grew up in Edinburgh, so it’s great to becoming home to Scotland. I’ve heard such good things about Bloody Scotland. I’m most looking forward to seeing friends and colleagues, and just talking! Writing is lonely, especially if you live away from your home country, so festivals give you the chance to see people you would otherwise only know from Facebook. And the crime fiction community — writers, readers and bloggers — is very supportive. It makes you feel part of something bigger.

MARI: Living in rural Northumberland – no that far from Scottish border – I was delighted to learn that Scotland was planning its very own International Crime Festival back in 2012. So, like a true Border Reiver, my clan and I hopped over Hadrian’s Wall to see what all the fuss was about. Any excuse for a trip to Stirling. Right from the off, I knew that Bloody Scotland was a wee bit special. Over and above the quality crime writers on the programme – everyone knows that Scotland has produced some of the finest in the genre – what I like most about the festival is the relaxed atmosphere and how much fun the fringe events are. Crime in the Coo is a sell-out, must see event. Please someone drop out so I can get a ticket! And then there’s the grudge footy match. C’mon England!

And, lastly, do you have any pre-panel routines, green room riders, or quirky foibles, that you’ll have to do before you go on stage?

EVA: I’m quite relaxed about events generally and the crowd at Bloody Scotland tends to be very welcoming, which is a big help. So it’s a quick nervous wee and check my dress isn’t tucked into my knickers and I’m good to go!

BEN: Coffee. Far too much coffee.

MARI: Other than checking that I haven’t split the waistband of my pants before I’m called for a sound check – yes, that really did happen – I don’t think so. I suppose it very much depends on my fellow panelists. If Eva’s up for a rum beforehand, it would be churlish to expect her to drink alone. I’m sure Ben and I could manage a wee dram of something to take the edge off the nerves. J

Brilliant! And if you want someone to join you for a quick dram let me know!

Huge thanks to the terrific EVA DOLAN, BEN MCPHERSON, and MARI HANNAH for chatting with me in the run up to the fabulous BLOODY SCOTLAND CRIME WRITING FESTIVAL.

As you can tell, their panel is going to be a cracker. It’s not too late to get yourself a ticket. Hop over to the BLOODY SCOTLAND website and grab one quick at www.bloodyscotland.com

To find out more about EVA DOLAN follow her on Twitter @eva_dolan and AFTER YOU DIE is out now, you can buy it here

To find out more about BEN MCPHERSON follow him on Twitter @TheBenMcPherson and A LINE OF BLOOD is out now, you can buy it here

To find out more about MARI HANNAH follow her on Twitter @mariwriter and THE SILENT ROOM is out now, you can buy it here

THE BLOODY SCOTLAND CRIME WRITING FESTIVAL is held in Stirling from the 9th – 11th September 2016. It’s a fantastic programme. Find out more at their website here and be sure to follow them on Twitter @BloodyScotland to stay up-to-date with all their news

The AFTER YOU DIE Blog Tour: CTG interviews crime writer EVA DOLAN

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After You Die - flat

Today I’m delighted to be hosting a stop on Eva Dolan’s AFTER YOU DIE Blog Tour and to have Eva joining me on the CTG blog to chat about writing the fabulous Zigic and Ferreira series and to tell us more about the latest brilliant book in the series – AFTER YOU DIE.

Welcome, Eva!

So, to the questions …

Your latest book AFTER YOU DIE is published this month, can you tell us a bit about it?

After You Die opens with a gas explosion at a pair of cottages in an affluent commuter village, which reveals the corpse of a young mother and, upstairs, the body of her paralysed daughter who has died as a result of neglect. Zigic and Ferreira are called in to investigate after it becomes clear that the family have been subjected to months of harassment linked to the daughter’s activities as a prominent right to die advocate.

It’s a book about the grinding torment of online harassment and the expectations put on carers, but more than that it’s about what happens to a family in the aftermath of a personal tragedy.

AFTER YOU DIE is the third book in the Zigic and Ferreira series and takes the detectives out of Peterborough centre and into a smaller, village location – what prompted you to change the setting for this story?

Partly it was a desire to show a different side to Peterborough. I’d shown the worst of it in the first two books and it’s easy to believe that ‘nicer’ areas don’t suffer crime to the same degree as the inner city, and that was something I wanted to challenge.

Also, the nature of this crime, being motivated by a personal form of hatred rather than an overtly political one, gave me an excuse to examine how a murder can unbalance a different kind of community, one which sees itself as comfortable, more genteel, the kind of place people move to in order to escape from city centre criminality. I liked the idea of having this quite insular village where all the players are in close proximity and their shared history remains inescapable.

All your books stand out for me in that you seem to effortlessly blend hard-hitting social issues with engaging and fast-paced crime fiction. What is it that interests you in a story idea and what’s your process for turning that initial spark into a book?

Thank you very much! Because the series is set in a Hate Crimes Unit I don’t actually have total free range over the subject matter of the books – they have to be based on crimes which are motivated by prejudice over race, religion, disability, homophobia or transphobia, otherwise Zigic and Ferreira wouldn’t be investigating them. So it does automatically rule out quite a lot of storylines. But it’s a welcome limitation because it means I have to find crimes which are outside the ordinary.

In After You Die the initial inspiration was the case of Fiona Pilkington and her family who had been harassed and abused for years as a result of her daughter’s disability. They were ignored by the police, left to fend for themselves, until Fiona couldn’t take anymore. She killed her daughter and herself. It was a heart-breaking case and spurred me on into researching the rise of disability related hate crimes, which made for incredibly depressing reading. Mencap believe 90% of people with a disability have been victims of some form of hate crime, which is a staggering statistic.

The image of a mother and daughter under siege, stuck with me, and as I started working on characters Holly – the daughter – came through as a very strong voice, defiant despite the terrible injuries she’d suffered, a strong, opinionated young woman determined to fight off the bullies with her intelligence and eloquence.

(c) Mark Vessey

(c) Mark Vessey

Over the first three books of the series you’ve thrown a lot at Zigic and Ferreira in their personal lives as well as professionally. Do you have the series mapped out, or does the action unfold organically as you write?

I map out each book in quite a lot of detail but I prefer to let Zigic and Ferreira’s personal lives unfold organically. It’s more interesting for me to keep finding out new things about them as the series continues, and hopefully for the reader too.

So far I think they’ve got off fairly light for fictional coppers! Zigic especially has a calm and happy family life; I’m increasingly tempted to throw him a major curveball to see if it shakes him out of being such a good man. He’s been perfectly morally upstanding so far but I feel there’s a darkness in him which I haven’t quite drilled down into yet.

Just to contradict myself, I do know what’s coming up for Ferreira in personal terms. It wasn’t planned but she’s stumbled into a bad situation in book four and, even though she doesn’t realise it yet, the blowback is going to be pretty major!

As a reader of crime fiction, what authors and/or books have influenced or inspired you?

I’ve been rereading some of the early Rebus books lately and even though I’ve always cited them as a major influence I didn’t realise just how deep that went until I revisited the ones I was reading as a began my writing career. Without them and John Harvey’s books – both the Resnick and Frank Elder series – I wouldn’t have become a crime writer. They created the template for socially engaged, politically cynical crime fiction for me.

And, finally, what does the rest of 2016 have in store for you?

I’m currently finishing off book four – would like to give a little teaser about it but I’m way too superstitious to discuss work in progress. After that… editing and more writing and then I’ll be out promoting After You Die, which let’s be honest, is the best part of being a writer. I’m hugely looking forward to Essex Literary Festival and ChipLitFest, and there are a couple more events I probably shouldn’t mention yet but judging by previous visits, they will be loads of fun.

A massive thank you to Eva Dolan for popping along to the CTG blog today and chatting to us about her new book AFTER YOU DIE and her writing process.

AFTER YOU DIE by Eva Dolan is out now. Click here to buy it from Amazon 

And you can see Eva Dolan in person, speaking at Essex Book Festival, on Monday 23rd March at 7.30pm http://essexbookfestival.org.uk/event/sceneofthecrime/

Also, be sure to check out all the other fabulous stops along the AFTER YOU DIE Blog Tour …

AYD blog tour poster JPEG

CTG Reviews: AFTER YOU DIE by Eva Dolan

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What the blurb says: “A gas leak in a picturesque Fenlands village leads to the discovery of two bodies – a mother brutally murdered, and her severely disabled teenage daughter left to die of neglect. Dawn Prentice was already known to the Peterborough Hate Crimes Unit, the previous summer she had logged a number of calls detailing the harassment she and her severely disabled teenage daughter were undergoing. Now she is dead – stabbed to death whilst Holly Prentice has been left to starve upstairs. DS Ferreira, only recently back serving on the force after being severely injured in the line of duty, had met with Dawn that summer. Was she negligent in not taking Dawn’s accusations more seriously? Did the murderer even know that Holly was helpless upstairs while her mother bled to death?

Whilst Ferreira battles her demons, determined to prove she’s up to the frontline, DI Zigic is drawn into conflict with an official seemingly resolved to hide the truth about one of his main suspects. Can either officer unpick the truth about mother and daughter, and bring their killer to justice?”

AFTER YOU DIE is the third book in the Zigic and Ferreira series, and a stunning addition to a crime fiction series that is going from strength to strength.

DI Zigic and DS Ferreira are a great duo, but the explosive events at the end of book two – TELL NO TALES – have left them scarred and battling doubts and fears that they both try to hide from those around them and, at times, from each other. Ferreira is determined to prove she’s fit and well enough to be working a murder case, and Zigic is feeling the pressure of juggling work with the demands of a young family and increasing concerns about his work partner’s ability to cope.

The murder of Dawn Prentice, and the knowledge that her teenage daughter was left to die alone, impacts them both and as they start investigating, and unravelling the complex layers of hurt, guilt and secrets surrounding what happened to Dawn and Holly Prentice, both detectives find themselves becoming more emotionally involved in the case than usual.

Beautifully written and grittily complex, through following Zigic and Ferreira’s investigation this sensitively nuanced story explores the impact of the events on the shocked community, while exposing a myriad of dark truths hidden behind closed doors and twitching curtains.

This gripping thriller shines a spotlight on very real issues – including cyber bullying and assisted right-to-die – in a way that it makes it impossible to look away. Emotive and powerful, AFTER YOU DIE is a stunning read that will stay with you long after you’ve read the final page.

AFTER YOU DIE is police procedural crime fiction at its best – an absolute must-read.

 

AFTER YOU DIE is out now. To buy the book from Amazon click here

And find out more about Eva Dolan and the Zigic and Ferreira series pop on over to Random House’s website here and be sure to follow Eva on Twitter @eva_dolan

 

[many thanks to Harvill Secker for my copy of AFTER YOU DIE]