Tuesday 30 April 2019

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Hey Crime Clubbers,
 
If you've eaten all the pancakes and are now in the process of giving something up for Lent then please indulge in at least one piece of wickedness and read the wonderfully dark The Guilty Party by Mel McGrath. Published today it has already received some fabulous reviews - you can read chapter one below and exclusively discover what inspired Mel to write her totally unpredictable novel.


Mel McGrath
HQ (£12.99 hardback)    
'Writing The Guilty Party by Melanie McGrath

The germ of the idea for The Guilty Party popped into my head after the last episode of the US comedy Girls. In that show the four old friends suddenly realize, in the middle of a party, that their friendship has passed its sell-by date and they have nothing left in common except their secrets. Most of us have felt that we’ve left a stale friendship hanging on out of loyalty, nostalgia, guilt or because we just can’t face a showdown.
 
I decided that I wanted to write a novel with four points of view, all very different, all (naturally) self-serving, in which the bonds of friendship ties that bind. All four characters – Anna, Bo, Cassie and Dex -  witness the same terrible event and decide to do nothing about it, but try as they might to try to extricate themselves from that event and from each other, it has bound them fast. Escape is no longer possible. Alliances shift while each of the characters desperately struggles to extricate themselves from a mess that just won’t go away.
 
I set the story partly at a music festival London because as Anna, Bo, Cassie and Dex go about their young lives in a city where there’s an inexhaustible supply of fun to be had, I wanted to show that, despite their freedom to date, switch flats, stay out late, drink and generally have a good time, each of them still feels trapped by the sense of what they have become. The remainder of the story is set at a weekend away on the Isle of Portland. If you’ve been you’ll know how atmospheric and dark the island can be. It is dotted with quarries and prisons and beaches where fossils are to be found. During the weekend, as each of the characters’ secrets is brought to the surface, they begin to feel ever more imprisoned by what they saw that night at the music festival and their failure to do anything about it.
 
The novel has already garnered some very positive reviews in the national press. The Financial Times wrote that it is ‘a dexterously written thriller and a cogent examination of the nature of guilt and innocence.’ The Times called the novel ‘absorbing’ and noted that ‘McGrath is a strong, unsettling writer on serious themes.’ Bloggers also seem to love the novel and I’m so grateful for their support. One of my favourite comments so far is from bookmarkthat.co.uk who says, ‘This is one of the first books I’ve come away from with a totally different new point of view from when I first started reading it.’


If you like your psychological thrillers dark, unpredictable and disturbing,
The Guilty Party is for you. Read Chapter One below - we promise you will be hooked.
You can buy a copy here.

You can find out more about Mel McGrath and her books at her website www.melaniemcgrath.com
or on social: Facebook: melaniemcgrath
Twitter @mcgrathmj instagram: mcgrathmelj

Follow Killer Women at the links below for the all the news on criminally good writing.
We look forward to talking to you there!
 
The Guilty Party: Chapter One

Cassie

2.30 a.m., Sunday 14 August, Wapping
I’m going to take you back to the summer’s evening near the end of my friendship with Anna, Bo and Dex.

Until that day, the eve of my thirty-second birthday, we had been indivisible; our bond the kind that lasts a lifetime. Afterwards, when everything began to fall apart, I came to understand that the ties between us had always carried the seeds of rottenness and destruction, and that the life we shared was anything but normal. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I think I had probably known this for years, but it took what happened late that night in August for me to begin to be able to put the pieces together. Why had I failed to acknowledge the truth for so long? Was it loneliness, or was I in love with an idea of friendship that I could not bear to let go? Perhaps I was simply a coward? One day, it might become clearer to me. Perhaps it will become clear to you, once I have taken you back there, to that time and that place. And when I am done with the story, when everything has been explained and the secrets are finally out, I will ask you what you would have done. Because that’s what I really want to know.
What would you have done?
Picture this scene: a Sunday morning in the early hours at a music festival in Wapping, East London. Most of the ticket holders have already left, and the organisers are clearing up now – stewards checking the mobile toilets, litter pickers working their grab hooks in the floodlights. Anna, Bo, Dex and I are lying side-by-side on the grass near the main stage, our limbs stiffening from all the dancing, staring at the marble eye of a supermoon and drinking in this late hour of our youth. None of us speaks but we don’t have to. We are wondering how many more hazy early mornings we will spend alone together. How much more dancing will there be? And how soon will it be before nights like these are gone forever?
At last, Bo says, ‘Maybe we should go on to a club or back to yours, Dex. You’re nearest.’
Dex says this won’t work; Gav is back tonight and he’ll kick off about the noise.
We’re all sitting up now, dusting the night from our clothes. In the distance I spot a security guard heading our way. ‘I vote we go to Bo’s. What is it, ten minutes in an Uber?’
Anna has spotted the guard too and jumps onto her feet, rubbing the goosebumps from her arms.

‘I’ve got literally zero booze,’ Bo says. ‘Plus the cleaner didn’t come this week so there’s, like, a bazillion pizza boxes everywhere.’
With one eye on the guard, Anna says,‘How’s about we all just go home then?’
And that’s exactly what we should have done.
Home. A long night-tube ride to Tottenham and the shitty flat I share with four semi-strangers. The place with the peeling veneer flooring, the mouldy fridge cheese and the toothbrushes lined up on a bathroom shelf rimmed with limescale.
‘Will you guys see out my birthday with one last beer?’ Because it is my birthday, and it’s almost warm, and the supermoon is casting its weird, otherworldly light, and if we walk a few metres to the south the Thames will open up to us and there, overlooking the wonder that is London, there will be a chance for me to forget the bad thing I have
done, at least until tomorrow.
At that moment the security guard approaches and asks us to leave the festival grounds.
‘Won’t the pubs be closed?’ asks Anna, as we begin to make our way towards the exit. She wants to go home to her lovely husband and her beautiful baby, and to her perfect house and her dazzling life.
But it’s my birthday, and it’s almost warm, and if Anna calls it a day, there’s a good chance Bo and Dex will too and I will be alone.
‘There’s a corner shop just down the road. I’m buying.’ Anna hesitates for a moment, then relenting, says,
‘Maybe one quick beer, then.’
In my mind I’ve played this moment over and over, sensing, as if I were now looking down on the scene as an observer, the note of desperation in my offer, the urgent desire to block out the drab thump of my guilty conscience. These are things I failed to understand back then. There is so much I didn’t see. And now that I do, it’s too late.
Anna accompanies me and we agree to meet the boys by Wapping Old Stairs, where the alleyway gives onto the river walk, so we can drink our beers against the backdrop of the water. At the shop, I’m careful not to show the cashier or Anna the contents of my bag.
Moments later, we’re back out on the street, and I’m car- rying a four pack but, when Anna and I reach the appointed spot, Bo and Dex aren’t there. Thinking they must have walked some short distance along the river path we call and, when there’s no answer, head off after them.
On the walkway, the black chop of the river slaps against the brickwork, but there’s no sign of Bo or Dex.
‘Where did the boys go?’ asks Anna, turning her head and peering along the walkway.
‘They’ll turn up,’ I say, watching the supermoon sliding slowly through a yellow cloud.
‘It’s a bit creepy here,’ Anna says.
‘This is where we said we’d meet, so. . .’
We send texts, we call. When there’s no response we sit on the steps beside the water, drink our beers and swap stories of the evening, doing our best to seem unconcerned, neither wanting to be the first to sound the alarm. After all, we’ve been losing each other on and off all night. Patchy signals, batteries run down, battery packs mislaid, meeting points misunderstood. I tell Anna the boys have probably gone for a piss somewhere. Maybe they’ve bumped into someone we know. Bo is always so casual about these things and Dex takes his cues from Bo. All the same, in some dark corner of my mind a tick-tick of disquiet is beginning to build.

It’s growing cold now and the red hairs on Anna’s arms are tiny soldiers standing to attention.
‘Shall we call it a day?’ she says, giving me one of her fragile smiles.
I sling an arm over her shoulder. ‘Do you want to?’ ‘Not really, but you know, we’ve lost the boys and . . . husbands, babies.’
And so we stand up and brushing ourselves down, turn back down the alley towards Wapping High Street, and that’s when it happens. A yelp followed by a shout and the sound of racing feet. Anna’s body tenses. A few feet ahead of us a dozen men burst round the corner into Wapping High Street and come hurtling towards us, some facing front, others sliding crabwise, one eye on whatever’s behind them, clutching bottles, sticks, a piece of drainpipe and bristling with hostility. A blade catches the light of a street lamp. We’re surrounded now by a press of drunk and angry men and women. From somewhere close blue lights begin to flash.
‘We need to get out of here,’ hisses Anna, her skinny hand gripping my arm.

They say a person’s destiny is all just a matter of timing. A single second can change the course of a life. It can make your wildest dreams come true or leave you with questions for which there will never be any answers. What if I had not done what I did earlier that night? And what if, instead of using the excuse of another beer to test the loyalty of my friends and reassure myself that, in spite of what had happened earlier that night, I couldn’t be all bad, I had been less selfish and done what the others wanted and gone home? Would this have changed anything?
‘Come on,’ I say, taking Anna’s hand and with that we jostle our way across the human tide, heading for the north side of the high street but we’re hardly half way across the road when we find ourselves separated by a press of people surging towards the tube. Anna reaches out an arm but is swept forwards away from me. I do my best to follow, ducking and pushing through the throng but it’s no good. The momentum of the crowd pushes me outwards towards the far side of the road. The last I see of Anna she is making a phone sign with her hand, then I am alone, hemmed in on one side by a group of staggering drunks and on the other by a blank wall far too high to attempt to scale.
Moments later, the crowd gives a great heave, a space opens up ahead and I dive into it, ducking under arms and sliding between backs and bellies and a few moments later find myself out of the crush and at the gates of St John’s churchyard, light-headed, bruised and with my right hand aching from where I’ve clutched at my bag, but otherwise unhurt. I feel for my phone and, checking to make sure no one’s looking, use the phone torch to check inside the bag. In my head I am making a bargain with God. Let me get out of here and I will try harder to believe in you. Also, I will find a way to make right what I have done. Not now, not right away, but soon. Now I just want to get home.
The light falters and in its place a low battery message glows. God’s not listening and there’s nothing from the others. I tap out a group text, where r u?, and set myself to the task of getting out.
Taking the path through the churchyard, feeling my way past gravestones long since orphaned from their plots, I head along a thin, uneven stone path snaking between outbuildings at the back of the church. From the street are coming the sounds of disorder. Somewhere out of view a mischief moon is shining, but here the ground is beyond the reach of all but an echo of its borrowed light and it’s as quiet as the grave.
The instant my heart begins to slow there’s a quicken- ing in the air behind me and in that nanosecond rises a sickening sense that I’m not alone. I dare not turn but I cannot run. My belly spasms with an empty heave then I am frozen. Does someone know what I’ve got? Have they come to claim it? What should I do, fight for it or let it go?
A voice cuts through the dark. ‘Cassie, darling, is that you?’
There’s a sudden, intense flare of relief. Spinning on my heels, I wait for Anna to catch me up. ‘Oh I’m so glad.’

She flings an arm around my shoulders and for a moment we hug until the buckle of my bag digs into my belly and I pull away. What a shitty birthday this has turned out to be. If they knew what I’d done some people would say it’s kismet or karma and if this is the extent of it I’ve got off lightly. They’d be right.
‘Have you seen the others?’ I ask Anna.
‘Bo was with me for a bit. He and Dex got caught up in the crowd which was why they didn’t make it to the Old Stairs, then they got separated. No idea where Dex is now. He might have texted me back, but my phone’s croaked.’
‘I got nothing from him either.’
‘You think we can get out that way?’ She points into the murk. ‘Hope so.’
We pick our way down the pathway into the thick black air beside the outbuildings, me in front and Anna following on. As we’re approaching the alleyway between the buildings my eye is drawn to something moving in the shadows. A fox or a cat maybe? No, no, too big for that. Way, way too big. I’ve stopped walking now and Anna is standing right behind me, breathing down my neck. Has she sensed it too? I turn to see her pointing not to the alley but to the
railings on the far side of the outbuildings. ‘Anna?’
‘Thank God!’ She begins waving.‘The boys have found us – look, over there.’ In the dim light two figures, their forms indistinct, are breaking from the crowd and appear to be making their way towards us.

‘Are you sure it’s them?’
‘Yes, I can tell by way they’re moving. That’s Dex in front and Bo’s just behind him.’
I watch them for a moment until a group of revellers passes by and the two men are lost from view. From the alley there comes a sudden cry. Spinning round I can now see, silhouetted against the dim light of a distant street lamp, a man and a woman. The man is standing and the woman is bent over with her hands pressed up against the wall, her head bowed, as if she’s struggling to stay upright. I glance at Anna but she’s still looking the other way. Has she seen this? I pull on her arm and she wheels towards me. ‘Over there, in that alley.’ It takes a moment for Anna to register, a few seconds when there is just a crumpled kind of bemusement on her face and then alarm. The man has one arm around the woman’s waist and he’s holding her hair. The woman is upright now but barely, her head bowed as if she’s about to throw up.
Anna and I exchange anxious looks.
Every act of violence creates an orbit of chaotic energy around itself, a force beyond language or the ordinary realm of the senses. A gathering of dark matter. The animal self can detect it before anything is seen or heard or smelled or touched. This is what Anna and I are sensing now. There is something wayward happening in that alley and its dark presence is heading out to meet us.
With one hand the man is pressing the woman’s face into the wall while, with the other, he is scrabbling at her clothes. She is as floppy as a rag doll. He has her skirt lifted now, the fabric bunched up around her waist at the back. Her left arm comes out and windmills briefly in the air in protest. Her hand catches the scarf around her neck and there’s a flash of yellow and blue pom-poms before the man makes a grab for her elbow and forces the arm behind her back. The woman stumbles but as she goes down he hauls her up by her hair. Her cry is like the sound of an old record played at half speed.
Something is screaming in my head. But I’m pushing it away. Another voice inside me is saying, this is not what I think it is, this is not what I don’t want it to be, this is not real. The man has let go of the woman’s hair. He’s pressing her face into the wall with his left hand while his right hand fumbles at his trousers. His knee is in the small of the woman’s back pinning her to the wall. The woman is reaching around with her arm trying and failing to push him away but her movements are like a crash test dummy
at the moment of impact.
‘Oh God,’ Anna says, grabbing my arm and squeezing hard, her voice high-pitched and tremulous.
In my mind a furious wave is rising, flecked with swirling white foam, and in the alley the man’s pelvis is grinding, grinding, slamming the woman into the wall. The world has shrunk into a single terrible moment, an even horizon of infinite gravity and weight, from which there is no running away. Anna and I are no longer casual observers. We have just become witnesses.

I feel myself take a step forward. My legs know what I should be doing. My body is acting as my conscience. The step becomes a spring and Anna too is lunging forward and for a moment I think she’s on the same mission as me until her hand lands on my shoulder and I feel a yanking on the strap of my bag and in that instant, Anna comes to an abrupt stop, sending the bag flying into the air. It lands a foot or two away and breaks open, its contents scattering. The shock soon gives way to a rising panic about what might have spilled and I’m down on my knees, rooting around in the murk, scraping tissues and lip balm, my travel card and phone, cash and everything else back inside the bag, checking over my shoulder to make sure Anna hasn’t looked too closely at the spilled contents.
As I rise she’s grabbing my wrist and squeezing the spot where my new tattoo sits. I try to shake her off but she’s hissing at me now, her body poised to pull me back again. ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid! You don’t know what you’re getting into.’
‘He’s hurting her! Someone needs to intervene. At least let’s call the police.’
My hand makes contact with my bag, peels open the zip and fumbles around in the mess. And in that moment in my mind a wave crests and rushes to the shore and the foam pulls back exposing a small bright pebble of clarity. What would the police say if they found what I am carrying? What would Anna say?
In my mind an ugly calm descends. My hand withdraws and pulls the zip tight. They say that it’s in moments of crisis that we reveal most about ourselves.
‘My battery’s dead. You’ll have to call from yours.’
I’d like to say I’d forgotten that Anna’s phone was out of juice but I hadn’t. In any case, Anna isn’t listening. Something else has caught her attention. On the far side a phone torch shines, a light at the end of a dark tunnel, and in its beam is Dex, as frozen as a waxwork. Behind him, in the gloom, lurks a shadowy figure that can only be Bo. If anyone is going to put a stop to what is going on in the alley it’ll be Bo.
Won’t it?
‘Please,’ murmurs Anna. ‘Please, boys, no heroics.’ Dex continues to stand on the other side of the alley,
immobile, his gaze fixed on me and Anna. It’s at that moment that I become conscious of Anna shaking her head and Dex acknowledging her with a single nod. For a fraction of a second everything seems frozen. Even the man, ramming himself into the woman in the alley. And in that moment of stillness, an instant when nothing moves. We all know what we are seeing here but in those few seconds and without exchanging a word, we make the fateful, collective decision to close our eyes and turn our backs to it. No one will intervene and no one will tell. The police will not be called. The woman will be left to her fate. From now on, we will do our best to pretend that something else was happening at this time on this night in this alley behind this church in Wapping. We’ll make excuses. We’ll tell each other that the woman brought it on herself. Privately, we’ll convince ourselves that this can’t be a betrayal because you can’t betray a person you don’t know. We will twist the truth to our own ends and if all else fails, we will deny it.
We’ll do nothing. But doing nothing doesn’t make you innocent.
The light at the end of the tunnel snaps off and in a blink Dex and the shadowy figure of Bo have disappeared into the darkness. I look at Anna. She looks back at me, gives a tiny nod, then turns and begins to hurry away up the path towards the church. And all of a sudden I find myself running, past the alley where only the woman remains, slumped against the wall, past the wheelie bins, along the side of the church, between tombstones decked in yellow moonlight and out, finally, into the street.




Copyright © 2017 Killer Women, All rights reserved.

Get in touch:
info@killerwomen.org





Dearest Crime Clubbers,
 
We're jumping the gun a bit with this month's Killer Women Book of the Month as we want to give you an early head's up on Erin Kelly's Stone Mothers which is available to pre-order now and publishing on 4th April. Moving back through time to reveal twists you'll never see coming, Stone Mothers is already creating a major buzz and generating great reviews. Marian Keyes said: 'The plot is so clever, the characterisation weep-makingly wise, and the writing is perfection. It is great.' And Lee Child praised it saying: 'Doubly excellent - truly fine psychological suspense, and plenty to think about, too, when your pulse has returned to normal.' This is a book you will be telling your friends about. So now you know. Read on to hear what inspired Erin to write the book and for a link to read Chapter One. Enjoy!


Erin Kelly
Hodder & Stoughton (£12.99 hardback, also available in audio and as an ebook)  

Erin Kelly on writing Stone Mothers:

'Stone Mothers is the old Victorian name for a mental hospital; these old asylum buildings look like Hammer Horror mansions to us now, but the Victorians thought of them as nursing the mentally ill back to life. My fictional asylum, Nazareth Hospital, was inspired by the vast, gothic Colney Hatch Mental Hospital near my house in North London.
 
Marianne is the narrator of Stone Mothers but in some ways Nazareth Hospital is the main character. The novel is told backwards and when we meet the old lady, she’s had a face-lift: Nazareth Hospital has been converted into luxury flats. The story then moves back to the days when the building was abandoned and finally the story’s darkest secrets are revealed in the chapters set when it’s a working hospital. 

I got the idea when a friend who’s an urban explorer was in just such a place and came across a cabinet full of old medical records, with some pretty incriminating details. She’s a nurse so knew what to do with them, but I couldn’t help thinking that in the wrong hands, this information would be incredibly dangerous… and my story was born.' 

 
The Victorians used to call their mental hospitals stone mothers,' I say. 'They thought the design of the building could literally nurse the sick back to health.'
Marianne grew up in the shadow of the old asylum, a place that still haunts her dreams. She was seventeen when she fled the town, her family, her boyfriend Jesse and the body they buried.
Now, forced to return, she can feel the past closing around her. And Jesse, who never forgave her for leaving, is finally threatening to expose the truth.
Marianne will do anything to protect the life she's built; the husband and daughter who must never know.
Even if it means turning to her worst enemy...
But Marianne may not know the whole story - and she isn't the only one with secrets they'd kill to keep.
To read Chapter One please click here.
You can watch the book trailer for Stone Mothers by clicking here.

And you can pre-order your copy here.

Erin Kelly is best known for the Sunday Times bestselling hit He Said/She Said, about a young couple who witness a rape and, after the trial, begin to wonder if they believed the right person. Her first novel, The Poison Tree, was a Richard and Judy bestseller and a major ITV drama starring Myanna Buring, Ophelia Lovibond and Matthew Goode. She has written three more original psychological thrillers – The Sick Rose, The Burning Air, The Ties That Bind.

If you'd like to know more about Erin Kelly and find out all her news you can do that via a multitude of ways:
Book club www.erinkelly.co.uk/subscribe
Blog www.erinkelly.co.uk/blog
Twitter @mserinkelly
Facebook @erinkellyauthor
Instagram @erinjelly

To stay up-to-date with all the news from Killer Women follow us on social at the links below. We'd love to hear from you so do keep in touch.

We will have some very special news for you in the next newsletter.




Copyright © 2017 Killer Women, All rights reserved.

Get in touch:
info@killerwomen.org





Hello Crime Clubbers,
 
Welcome to a bumper bonus February Crime Club treat with an exclusive introduction from Kate Rhodes to Ruin Beach, the second in her Scilly Isles series, on how a holiday to Tresco gave her the perfect setting. Fellow Killer Woman Alison Joseph explains how turning the real life Agatha Christie into a character both terrified and inspired her.


Kate Rhodes
Simon & Schuster (£7.99 paperback)    
'Writing Ruin Beach by Kate Rhodes

'The idea arrived on a hot summer day. I was sitting outside Ruin Beach café on the island of Tresco, watching the sun glinting off the face of the Atlantic, absorbing the peace and quiet. A retired fisherman and his wife sat at my table just as I was about to leave. They told me about Tresco’s past, their story so fraught with shipwrecks, wars and smuggling, it forced me to revise my opinion. These days every blade of grass on Tresco looks manicured, with day boats delivering tourists all summer long, to admire exotic plants in the Abbey Gardens. 

Thousands of vessels have foundered on the razor-sharp rocks over the centuries, sometimes lured ashore by the wreckers with false lights, intent on stealing their bounty. By the time I had studied a map of shipwrecks that litter the ocean floor around Tresco, I understood why the island is a mecca for divers, and decided to set a thriller there.

Ruin Beach is the second in my crime series, set on the Isles of Scilly. The area is proving to be fertile terrain, with some fascinating folklore. It was a local myth that helped me choose the starting point for my book. Piper’s Hole is a sea cave on Tresco, which floods with every high tide. The cave runs so deep into the island’s granite foundations, local storytellers claim that it tunnels all the way back to the island of St Mary’s. My first visit to Piper’s Hole gave me the setting for Ruin Beach: it’s a dank, dangerous place, even at low tide, reeking of seaweed and the island’s murky past.'
Ruin Beach is the second novel in Kate Rhodes new series set on the windswept Scilly Isles. The island of Tresco holds a dark secret someone will kill to protect. Everyone is a suspect. Nobody is safe. Since Hell Bay Ben Kitto has become Deputy Commander in the Isles of Scilly Police. As the islands’ lazy summer takes hold, he finds himself missing the excitement of the murder squad in London. But when the body of professional diver Jude Trellon is discovered, anchored to the rocks of a nearby cave, his investigative skills are once again needed.

‘Rhodes does a superb job of balancing a portrayal of a tiny community oppressed by secrets with an uplifting evocation of setting’ Jake Kerridge, Sunday Express

Ruin Beach is out now. You can buy a copy here.


Writing Agatha Christie Investigates by Alison Joseph
'When I was asked if I'd like to write a series featuring Agatha Christie as a detective, I have to admit I rather hesitated. For someone who has only ever written a fictional detective, Sister Agnes, it seemed a huge challenge, to have to get things right in a way that bears some kind of connection to historical fact. But then I said yes.
And it turns out that establishing Agatha as a character who works for the story, while still being true to her as a real person, has been really interesting and fun. Of course, it’s involved a lot of research about her life, to make sure I get the facts right.  But at the heart of the stories, I hope, is someone who bears some resemblance to the real Agatha Christie. I’ve set the stories earlier on in her life, when she wasn’t the world-famous writer she became, but when she was beginning to find her voice as a writer. She was a steadfast, loyal person, who was very private and rather shy.   And of course there’s fun to be had knowing that my reader knows more of her future than she does herself.  And then I put her at the heart of a crime story that is entirely made up by me – but I hope that all my research means that she responds in a way that is true to her.

And the funny thing is, that’s exactly the same for a fictional detective.  With Sister Agnes, I know what she’s like. I know her foibles, her obsessions. I know about the life events that made her a nun, and the doubts she continues to have. And I know what it’s like to think, Sister Agnes wouldn’t do that.  In the end, as writers and as readers, we recognise that a fictional character carries the same truth as someone who really existed.'


Alison Joseph’s excellent Agatha Christie Investigates novels Murder Will Out, Hidden Sins and Death in Disguise are collected together in a single volume - out now. Her Sister Agnes collection Capital Crimes is also available as an ebook omnibus edition. 
'Wickedly clever - written with a sharp eye and elan.
Guaranteed to make every Agatha Christie fan smile.' Peter James
Follow Killer Women at the links below for the all the news on criminally good writing.
We look forward to talking to you there!




Copyright © 2017 Killer Women, All rights reserved.

Get in touch:
info@killerwomen.org





Hello Crime Clubbers,
 
Welcome to February's Crime Club Book of the Month. Each month Killer Women are proud to introduce you to your next crime fix. This time round it is Val McDermid's favourite series...

Read on for an introduction from the author, a taster chapter and a quick recap of the next in the Dr Ruth Galloway series where forensic archeology, superstition and myth are interwoven with pulse racing detection.


Elly Griffiths
Quercus (£18.99 hardback)    
'The Stone Circle is the eleventh Ruth book and in it I go back to the landscape of the first, the North Norfolk coast. I was inspired by finding a stone on the beach with a hole all the way through. They are called witch stones round here and are meant to guard against evil. My husband (an archaeologist) says that these stones were sometimes found in Neolithic graves. So the book starts with a body being found with a witch stone beside it...' Elly Griffiths
Those of you who have been following Ruth's complicated relationship with DCI Harry Nelson will be excited to learn that the Ruth, Nelson, Michelle love triangle takes another climatic twist in Stone Circle.

DCI Nelson has been receiving threatening letters telling him to 'go to the stone circle and rescue the innocent who is buried there'. He is shaken, not only because children are very much on his mind, with Michelle's baby due to be born, but because although the letters are anonymous, they are somehow familiar. They read like the letters that first drew him into the case of The Crossing Places, and to Ruth. But the author of those letters is dead. Or are they?

Meanwhile Ruth is working on a dig in the Saltmarsh - another henge, known by the archaeologists as the stone circle - and trying very hard not to think about the baby. Then bones are found on the site, and identified as those of Margaret Lacey, a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared thirty years ago.

As the Margaret Lacey case progresses, more and more aspects of it begin to hark back to that first case of The Crossing Places, and to Scarlett Henderson, the girl Nelson couldn't save. The past is reaching out for Ruth and Nelson, and its grip is deadly.

Elly Griffiths was born in London. She read English at King's College, London, and worked in publishing for many years before becoming a full-time author. Her bestselling series of Dr Ruth Galloway novels, featuring a forensic archaeologist, are set in Norfolk. The series has won the CWA Dagger in the Library and has been shortlisted three times for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. In 2017 she was the chairperson of Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival. In 2018 she published her first standalone novel The Stranger Diaries to great acclaim. She lives near Brighton with her husband, an archaeologist, and their two children.

Elly can be found tweeting at @ellygriffiths, on Instagram at @ellygriffiths17 and on Facebook at EllyGriffithsAuthor. Her website is www.ellygriffiths.co.uk

We hope you enjoy a taste of Stone Circle below. You can order it here.
The Stone Circle

CHAPTER 1

12 February 2016

DCI Nelson,
Well, here we are again. Truly our end is our beginning. That corpse you buried in your garden, has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? You must have wondered whether I, too, was buried deep in the earth. Oh ye of little faith. You must have known that I would rise again.

You have grown older, Harry. There is grey in your hair and you have known sadness. Joy too but that also can bring anguish. The dark nights of the soul. You could not save Scarlet but you could save the innocent who lies within the stone circle. Believe me, Harry, I want to help.
The year is turning. The shoots rise from the grass. Imbolc is here and we dance under the stars.
Go to the stone circle. In peace.

DCI Harry Nelson pushes the letter away from him and lets out something that sounds like a groan. The other people in the briefing room – Superintendent Jo Archer, DS Dave Clough, DS Judy Johnson and DS Tanya Fuller – look at him with expressions ranging from concern to ill-concealed excitement.

‘He’s back,’ says Clough.
‘Bollocks,’ says Nelson. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Excuse me,’ says Jo Archer, Super Jo to her admirers.
‘Would someone mind putting me in the picture?’ Jo Archer has only been at King’s Lynn for a year, taking over from smooth, perma-tanned Gerald Whitcliffe. At first she seemed the embodiment of all Nelson’s worst nightmares – holding meetings where everyone is supposed to talk about their feelings, instigating something unspeakable called a ‘group huddle’ – but recently he has come to view her with a grudging respect. But he doesn’t relish the prospect of explaining the significance of the letter to his boss. She’ll be far too interested, for one thing.

But no one else seems prepared to speak so Nelson says, in his flattest and most unemotional voice, ‘It must have been twenty years ago now. A child went missing. Lucy Downey. And I started to get letters like this. Full of stuff about Gods and the seasons and mystical crap. Then, ten years on, we found a child’s bones on the Saltmarsh. I wasn’t sure how old they were so I asked Ruth – Dr Ruth Galloway – to examine them. Those bones were nothing to do with the case, they were Iron Age or something, but I got Ruth to look at the letters. She thought they might be from someone with archaeological knowledge. Anyway, as you know, we found Lucy but another child died. The killer was drowned on the marshes. The letter writer was a Norwegian professor called Erik Anderssen. He died that night too. And this,’ he points at the letter on the table, ‘reads like one of his.’

‘It sounds like someone who knows you,’ says Judy.
‘Because it goes on about me being grey and sad?’ says Nelson. ‘Thanks a lot.’ No one says anything. The joys and sorrows of the last few years are imprinted on all of them, even Jo.

After a few seconds, Jo says, ‘What’s this about a stone circle?’
‘God knows,’ says Nelson. ‘I’ve never heard of anything like that. There was that henge thing they found years ago but that was made of wood.’
‘Wasn’t the henge thing where you found the murdered child last time?’ says Jo, revealing slightly more knowledge than she has hitherto admitted to.
‘Yes,’ says Nelson. ‘It was on the beach near the Salt- marsh. Nothing’s left of it now. All the timbers and suchlike are in the museum.’
‘Cathbad says they should have been left where they were,’ says Judy.

Judy’s partner, Cathbad, is a druid who first came to the attention of the police when he protested about the removal of the henge timbers. Everyone in the room knows Cathbad so no one thinks this is worth commenting on, although Clough mutters ‘of course he does’.

‘This is probably nothing,’ says Jo, gesturing at the letter which still lies, becalmed, in the centre of the table. ‘But we should check up the stone circle thing. Nelson, can you ask Ruth if she knows anything about it?’
Once again everyone avoids Nelson’s eye as he takes the letter and puts in his pocket.
‘I’ll give her a ring later,’ he says.

‘How did you know about the stone circle?’ says Ruth. Nelson is taken aback. He has retreated into his office and shut the door for this phone call and now he stands up and starts to pace the room.
‘What do you mean?’
‘A team from UCL were digging at the original henge site just before Christmas. They think they’ve found a second circle.’
‘Is this one made of stone?’
‘No,’ says Ruth and he hears her switching into a cautious, academic tone. ‘This is wood too. Bog oak like the other one. But they’re calling it the stone circle because a stone cist was found in the centre.’
‘What’s a cist when it’s at home?’
‘A grave, a coffin.’
Nelson stops pacing. ‘A coffin? What was inside?’ ‘Human skeletal matter,’ says Ruth. ‘Bones. We’re waiting for carbon-14 results.’
Nelson knows that carbon-14 results, which tests the level of carbon left in human remains, are useful for dating but are only accurate within a range of about a hundred years.
He doesn’t want to give Ruth the chance to explain this again.

‘Why this sudden interest in the Bronze Age?’ says Ruth. ‘I’ve had a letter,’ says Nelson.
There’s a silence. Then Ruth says, her voice changing again, ‘What sort of letter?’
‘A bit like the ones I had before. About Lucy and Scarlet.
It had some of the same stuff in it.’
‘What do you mean “the same stuff ”?’
‘About corpses sprouting, shoots rising from the earth. Imbolc. The sort of stuff that was in Erik’s letters.’
‘But . . .’ Nelson can hear the same reactions he witnessed in his colleagues earlier: disbelief, anger, fear. ‘Erik’s dead.’ ‘He certainly looked dead to me when we hauled him out of the water.’
‘I went to his funeral. They burned his body on a Viking boat.’
‘So it can’t be him,’ says Nelson. ‘It’s some nutter. What worries me is that it’s a nutter who knows a bit about me. The letter mentions a stone circle. That’s why I rang.’
‘It can’t be this circle. I mean, no one knows about it.’ ‘Except your archaeologist pals.’
‘Actually, they’ve got funding for a new dig,’ says Ruth.
‘It’s starting on Monday. I was planning to drop in for a few hours in the morning.’
It’s Friday now. Nelson should be getting ready to go home for the weekend. He says, ‘I might drop by myself if I’m not too busy. And I’d like to show you the letter because, well, you saw the others.’
There’s another tiny sliver of silence and Ruth says, ‘Isn’t the baby due any day now?’
‘Yes,’ says Nelson. ‘That might change my plans.’
‘Give Michelle my best,’ says Ruth.
‘I will,’ says Nelson. He wants to say more but Ruth has gone.

 
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Hello Crime Clubbers,

Kate Medina's new novel, Two Little Girls, was published this week in paperback. Here's an exclusive Crime Club look at why Kate wrote it:


In the previous two Dr Jessie Flynn crime novels, Fire Damage and Scared to Death, Jessie was working as an Army psychologist.  When it came to writing Two Little GirlsI decided that I wanted to expand the opportunities available to Jessie as a character by moving her into the civilian world.  Having been invalided from the Army, she has been asked to help DI Bobby ‘Marilyn’ Simmons, of Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes, solve the murder of two young girls, the first, two years previously, the second, in the opening chapters of the book. 
Two Little Girls begins with a question: How could two little girls walk to their deaths and nobody notice?   
At its heart, Two Little Girls, is an intense psychological exploration into the minds of three very different women: a mother accused of filicide, a vagrant, who pounds the beach looking for ‘treasure’ and a clinical psychologist, haunted by the suicide of her little brother, and crippled by OCD. 
Carolynn Reynolds is the mother of the first little girl, murdered two years previously.  Accused of filicide, she was tried for her daughter’s murder, but acquitted due to lack of evidence.  However, few believed that she was innocent, including the original investigating detective, DI Bobby ‘Marilyn’ Simmons.  When a second little girl is found dead in the sand dunes on West Wittering beach, the case explodes open and DI Simmons calls in a psychologist who had helped him solve a previous murder – Dr Jessie Flynn.   
Mental health is a huge issue in our society, with an increasing number of people struggling to live within the boundaries of what our society considers to be ‘normal’ and to survive the challenges of modern life mentally intact.  Ruby Lovatt is a young, drugged addicted vagrant who walks the beach looking for ‘treasure’, but what devastating trauma in her past has led her to this lonely, marginalised, despised life?  And how is she connected to these two little girls?
Dr Jessie Flynn is the psychologist tasked with investigating these two highly disturbing and emotive murder cases, where nothing is what it seems, however she is struggling with her own mental health issues, driven by her forced exit from the Army and her Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, which she developed after the suicide of her younger brother many years earlier. 
Thanks and best wishes,

Kate




Buy the book here 




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Hello Crime Clubbers,

 
Welcome to November's Crime Club Book of the Month. Each month a member of the Killer Women will review a newly released crime title.

This month, Kate Rhodes (author of Hell Bay) is taking a look at Liz Nugent's Skin Deep.




Liz Nugent
Penguin (£7.99 paperback)    

Liz Nugent has made a speciality of chilling psychological portraits, and her third novel, Skin Deep, is a tour de force. It focuses on Delia O’Flaherty, whose twisted nature is masked by a thin carapace of beauty. The novel poses fascinating questions about our reverence for physical perfection, as we watch Delia wreck the lives of everyone she touches. It becomes clear early on that her narcissism precludes all forms of empathy: ‘I knew that I wasn’t normal. I have never needed people, just the comforts they could offer me.’ Delia’s self-concern makes her a volatile force, endangering the lives of those that love her most. I was struck by her resemblance to another notable psychopath from the world of crime fiction, the central character from Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley. Just like Ripley, Delia craves a life of consummate luxury. She has fled the bleak Irish island of Inishcrann, where she grew up, and has lived for over twenty-five years on the French Riviera, passing herself off as an English socialite. When Delia’s past returns to haunt her, she is forced to reinvent herself. Nugent does an excellent job of portraying her as a monster with almost mythological strengths: like Hydra she can survive every attempt to capture or destroy her.
One of the most impressive aspects of Skin Deep is Nugent’s ability to bring landscapes to life. Her writing has an immersive quality, describing the Riviera’s glittering, opulent settings with such accuracy, the coastline assumes a central role in her narrative. She is equally at home when depicting the bleak, unforgiving beauty of rocky, windswept Inishcrann. 
The story segues between current events and the past which has shaped Delia’s sociopathic personality. Nugent’s writing has a mesmeric quality as she describes the charismatic fugue her heroine creates, while casting her evil spell. She has managed to create a genuinely memorable, at times terrifying central character, without resorting to clichés. The fact that we often feel sympathy for Delia’s warped mindset proves how nuanced and thoughtful Nugent’s writing has become.

Skin Deep will appeal to readers who enjoy an exciting, fast-paced journey of psychological extremes, which delivers a shocking final twist. I won’t hint at the story’s last revelation, to avoid spoilers, but its grim justice and sheer cleverness lift this book into a class of its own. 




Kate Rhodes' new book Ruin Beach is available in hardback here






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