Today I’m on the tour for Within You, Without You by Sara O’Donovan, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising this and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 336
Synopsis: Kathryn Johnson’s life is at a standstill. Stuck in a lacklustre marriage, the spark that once burned so brightly within her has since been snuffed out by the monotony of the everyday.
Returning to England after many years of living in Ireland, she is shocked to discover a familiar face on the side of the road one dark and stormy night. But a person can’t just reappear like that. Not when they’ve been dead for twenty years.
Uncovering long-buried memories of first love and its devastating loss, Kathryn returns to the past to see if she can rewrite her present. But love divided by time is a complicated equation to solve.
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧
My Thoughts: for a debut novel this was bloody brilliant, it hooked me from the beginning.. I was invested in Kathryn’s life.
The story is told spamming 2 different timelines 1992 and 2012.
The earlier chapters had me turning the pages so fast I’m surprised I didn’t get friction burn from my kindle.. I absolutely adored the relationship between Kathryn and Ed and although we are aware quite early on that they don’t get their happy ending due to some tragic circumstances I enjoyed their journey.
The smaller characters in the story were all equally important as they helped to tie the bigger picture together, out of all of them I think Paul was my favourite because he always just said what was on his mind!
Just as you’re getting to a place in the book where you’re preparing to have your heart broken something happens to turn the whole story on its head & although looking back I can see that the author was setting you up for it, not to expect it, but to WANT it, I wasn’t expecting it and it left me a little confused.. I’m not sure I’ve fully managed to work it out yet 🤣
Today I’m on the tour for Agnes’s Broken Dreams by Judy King, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 456
Synopsis: It has been thirty years since Agnes last visited the country of her birth and upbringing. While it is at the request of her aging, narcissistic mother, she has her own reasons for making the journey to Australia from her home on Mallorca.
Something has blighted her life since childhood. Something has cast such a long shadow over her existence that her ability to grasp at life fully, to appreciate her own sense of self-worth, to attain any semblance of happiness, to trust without reservation, has been damaged. Those whom she chooses, and who choose her, seem to want only to exploit her.
Having undergone a long period of psychotherapy, Agnes can now return to re-experience the places that featured in her youth in the hope that burning questions will be answered, haunting mysteries solved, and buried memories let out into the light…
This is the vibrant, heartening, and often amusing tale of a buoyant and irrepressible woman whose natural energy and determination continue to drive her forward. Having reached middle age, she is determined to grapple with – and heal – the ills that have beset her.
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧
My Thoughts: this was such a difficult read all the way through, it really took a toll on your emotions. I felt for Agnes.. where she found the strength to carry on from I’ll never know!
I know this was fiction, but it honestly felt like a memoir/biography. it took you through Agnes’s whole life, her family life was heartbreaking you could feel the hatred and anger that her parents had for her dropping off the page, the only highlight she had throughout were school friends whose houses she was able to escape to & even that didn’t last.
As she got older the pressure she feels from both herself and family members just keeps mounting.
Watching her come into her own and confront her past was such an amazing feeling like she was almost sticking her middle finger up to everyone who was against her.
I couldn’t read this on one go as the subject matter was heavy, but my word was it worth it!
Today I’m on the tour for Love In The Spotlight by Julia Sutton, thank you to Zoé at Zooloos Book Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 333
Synopsis: When Elizabeth Ryan is demoted on Christmas Eve, she resigns herself to a dismal future: selling kitchen utensils in a large department store.
The New Year looks bleak, but a chance encounter on a karaoke evening at her local pub introduces her to the glittering world of showbiz. The Rebels are an up-and-coming pop band who are preparing for a whirlwind tour of the UK. After some persuasion, Elizabeth auditions and is astonished when she is taken on as their backing singer.
Leaving her sleepy Cornish fishing village behind, Elizabeth moves to the manic noise of London. Catapulted into a world of fame, will she succeed in the dazzling world of music and open her heart once more to the possibility of love?
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧.5
My Thoughts: this was a lovely story about learning to live your life again after a loss and also realising that a complete change might be just what you need!
Elizabeth has worked in the same department store for 30 years when she is given the awful news on Christmas Eve that she is being demoted, moved to another department and ‘replaced’ by a younger staff member.
She goes out with her friends to drown her sorrows and performs a Whitney Houston song in karaoke that has the whole place in awe.. little did she know that that performance would change her whole life forever.
I really enjoyed this, having lost my dad last year I resonated with a lot of the emotions that Lizzie was feeling at various points in the book, watching her come out of her shell and discover her true calling was like a breath of fresh air.
I also appreciated the fact that she experienced a few wobbles along the way.. it grounded the story and made it feel more authentic.
I will definitely be looking out for the next book in the series 🙂
Today I’m on the tour for Mothers Day by Abigail Burdess, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 375
Synopsis: The last thing Anna needs is a baby. Abandoned, adopted and living hand to mouth, she never dreamt of having a real family.
But when she meets her birth mother, everything changes – because the same day, she learns she’s going to be a mother too.
Marlene is eccentric, generous with her considerable fortune and overjoyed to become a grandmother. Anna’s living the dream. But is it her dream, or someone else’s?
Now she will have to decide what she’s willing to sacrifice for a real family – her future, her freedom, even her unborn child.
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧.5
My Thoughts: this was a slow burn thriller, being completely honest this didn’t feel like a thriller until the last 100 pages which were incredibly fast paced.
The rest of the story read like a dark contemporary, family drama story.
The writing was eerily addictive, I kept thinking I’ll put it down at the end of the chapter but always had to keep reading.
Full of characters that were weird but oddly real, most of them felt ‘normal’ Dermot was by far my favourite, he felt like a friend but someone who needed protecting from the things that were unfolding!
Anna was meek and just went along with what everyone else wanted from her even though she knew it was wrong or just not what she wanted.. so many times I wanted to shake some sense into her.
The story wasn’t what I expected at all and I couldn’t help but feel the ending was a little rushed, but I had a good time reading it and would recommend it, it’s definitely worth a read.
I have a cover reveal for you today for Living Proof by A.H. Martin thank you to Hannah at Hygge book tours for organising this and inviting me along… but before we get to that let me tell you a little about the book!
Synopsis: A shipwreck in the Caribbean.. a global drugs and sex trafficking cartel… an American Presidential candidate… and a survivor who holds a secret that could blow apart the entire western world with her revelations. What is Julia Anderson’s secret and why does a woman named Rachael Rodgers cause Julia’s friends to turn to sinister and frightening measures to silence her? But how far will they go to ensure that Julia’s secret is never revealed?
Living Proof is the debut novel of author A.H. Martin; set in the lush Caribbean resort of Royal Tradewinds, the book explores the lengths people will go to in order to keep a secret. But will it include murder? And do they succeed? Find out in this fast paced thriller with a hint of romance.
No buy link available for this yet but it sounds brilliant!
This cover definitely leaves me intrigued and wanting to read it!
Today I’m on the tour for Syndrome by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli, thank you to Zoé at Zooloos Book Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part.
I have an extract for you today.. but first let me tell you about the book and the author 🙂
Pages: 276
Synopsis: What is the difference between dedication and obsession?
While investigating the murder of two known offenders with connections to a notorious, recently escaped London drug trafficker, the Scotland Yard forensic team headed by DCI Eric Shaw becomes involved in a child abuse case. A nurse had accused a mother of a series of violent, feverish attacks on her ten-year-old son, Jimmy. The woman would exasperate the condition of her child to draw the attention and compassion of health workers at the hospital. Eric learned of this accusation by chance because he is dating Catherine Foulger, the paediatrician looking after the child. She is an old flame, and he is seeing her again in the hope of putting some order back in his life after discovering the identity of the serial killer nicknamed Black Death. But this is a relationship his former partner Adele Pennington, still working as an investigator in Forensic Services, has not really accepted.
About the Author:
Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli is an Italian science fiction and thriller author. She has lived in Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy) since 1993, earning a degree in biology and working as a writer, scientific and literary translator, and freelance web copywriter. In the past she also worked as researcher, tutor and professor’s assistant in the field of ecology at ‘Dipartimento di Biologia Animale ed Ecologia’ of the University of Cagliari. She has written original fiction since 2009. In 2012-2013 she wrote and published a hard science fiction series set on Mars and titled Deserto rosso. The whole Deserto rosso series was also published as omnibus in December 2013 and hit No. 1 on the Italian Kindle Store in November 2014. Deserto rosso was published in English, with the title Red Desert, between 2014 and 2015. It includes the following books: Red Desert – Point of No Return, Red Desert – People of Mars, Red Desert – Invisible Enemy, and Red Desert – Back Home. She also authored three crime thrillers in the Detective Eric Shaw Trilogy – The Mentor (Il mentore, 2014), Syndrome (Sindrome, 2016), and Beyond the Limit (Oltre il limite, 2017) –, an action thriller titled Kindred Intentions (Affinità d’intenti, 2015), five more science fiction novels – L’isola di Gaia (2014), Per caso (2015), Ophir. Codice vivente (2016), Sirius. In caduta libera (2018), and Nave stellare Aurora (2020) – and a non-fiction book titled Self-publishing lab. Il mestiere dell’autoeditore (2020). Her crime thriller The Mentor was first published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015 and became an international bestseller hitting No. 1 on the Kindle Store in USA, UK, and Australia in October 2015. This is a new edition of The Mentor (published in November 2022). The other two books in the trilogy, Syndrome and Beyond the Limit, are expected in 2023. She’s also a podcaster at FantascientifiCast, an Italian podcast about science fiction, an Italian Representative of Mars Initiative, and a member of the International Thriller Writers organization. She’s often a guest both in Italy and abroad during book fairs, including Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino (Turin Book Fair) and Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt Book Fair), local publishing events as well as university conferences, where she gives speeches about self-publishing and genre fiction writing. She has also taught a class on self-publishing at the University of Insubria (Varese, Italy) since 2016. Her books have been reviewed or recommended by national magazines and newspapers such as Wired Italia, Tom’s Hardware Italia, La Repubblica, Tiscali News and Global Science (magazine of the Italian Space Agency). As a science fiction and Star Wars fan, she is known in the Italian online community by her nickname, Anakina, which has become the name of her imprint.
Now for the extract…
Extract: We haven’t even started working yesterday’s case.’ Miriam placed her mobile phone in front of his eyes. ‘But, apparently, it’s the same case.’
A photograph of a corpse appeared on the screen. Eric took the device and looked at it, then he turned his attention to the dead body before him and again to the image. Except for the clothes and the shade of the parquet flooring, everything else matched.
He heard a camera shutter click.
‘Here too there are gravitational drops.’ Adele had already opened her kit, put on the gloves, placed the first tag and started taking pictures.
With a finger, Eric scrolled the screen on the mobile phone. ‘I haven’t really had a chance to check yesterday’s forensics; you’ll have to update me.’ More details, besides the corpse, made the two scenes very similar. In both of them, the flats were vacant and unfurnished. Everything looked perfectly clean.
‘Look.’ Another click, this time towards the window. A sheet was attached to the pane, but unreadable from the inside. Adele opened the frame, so that she turned the sign towards them. ‘Am I wrong or is it the same estate agency?’ She took another picture.
‘Sutton Estates.’ Miriam grabbed the mobile phone out of Eric’s hands. ‘Sorry, I want to call Dawson to see how much longer he expects us to wait. Two victims in less than twenty-four hours makes me nervous.’
He watched her enter one of the adjoining rooms. A moment later she was muttering at the phone. So he resumed observing the corpse. Two dead in vacant flats, killed with the same exact modus operandi.
Better get to work.
He put down his case and camera and donned a pair of gloves. There were no visible footmarks on the floor, but the victim’s shoes were dirty. ‘It doesn’t look like he came here on his own two feet. Unless someone cleaned up the place.’
He turned his eyes to the door and visualised a man walking in and stopping where his feet were now. The silhouette of another person appeared behind the man. The newcomer was brandishing a firearm. As they fired, hitting the victim at the back of the head, the latter fell forward, while high-velocity impact spatters ended on his clothes, perhaps also the murderer’s and the floor all about.
He took the luminol bottle and sprayed a bit of it around the corpse, steering clear of the bloodstains already tagged by Adele. Then he wore his safety glasses and pointed the UV lamp to the moistened areas. ‘I don’t see anything. This isn’t the primary crime scene.’
‘As in the other one …’ Adele commented in an absent-minded tone. She was kneeling at the opposite side of the victim, by his shoulders, and leaning forward, staring at his back, but keeping her arms folded to avoid touching it. She’d left her camera beside the wall. ‘Do you think they may be fingermarks?’ Now she was pointing at an undefined spot on the dead man’s shirt.
He placed his lamp and glasses on the floor and walked way around to come beside her. He crouched down on one knee to take a close look. There was an evident dark stain where the shirt had been pulled enough to expose the shoulders, and was still crumpled. ‘This must be one of the points from which he was dragged.’
‘He was lifted right after being killed.’
Eric pointed to an area. ‘Look at this space.’ No blood was there.
‘Before!’ Adele closed her hand in a fist, mimicking a jerk. ‘He was grabbed from behind with one hand, while they shot at him with the other. There’s no blood, because this flap of fabric ended up inside, and the hand prevented it being reached by the spatters.’
Today I’m on the tour for The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore, thank you to Anne at Random Things Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 336
Synopsis: Forbidden, passionate and all-encompassing, Margo and Richard’s love affair was the stuff of legend– but, ultimately, doomed.
When Richard walked out, Margo locked herself away, leaving her three daughters, Rachel, Imogen and Sasha, to run wild.
Years later, charismatic Margo entertains lovers and friends in her cottage on the Isle of Wight, refusing to ever speak of Richard and her painful past. But her silence is keeping each of the Garnett girls from finding true happiness.
Rachel is desperate to return to London, but is held hostage by responsibility for Sandcove, their beloved but crumbling family home.
Dreamy Imogen feels the pressure to marry her kind, considerate fiancé, even when life is taking an unexpected turn.
And wild, passionate Sasha, trapped between her fractured family and controlling husband, is weighed down by a secret that could shake the family to its core…
The Garnett Girls, the captivating debut from Georgina Moore, asks whether children can ever be free of the mistakes of their parents.
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧
My Thoughts: having grown up in a single parent household this story resonated with me so much that I couldn’t put it down!
I found myself drawn into the writing quite easily as it flowed so well.
We’re following the 3 Garnett sisters, Rachel, Imogen and Sasha, all very different despite the same upbringing and throughout the story you can really tell from their personalities that they were all affected in different ways and all have carry certain aspects of their childhood quite heavily.
And then you have their mum Margo, who seems to pretend that the past didn’t happen and has a very blasé attitude to the girls when they try and bring it up, but you can tell that deep down she feels things a lot more than she lets on.
All of the main characters are flawed in their own ways, but I couldn’t help but love them and felt like I wanted to wrap them all in a hug!
A story full of secrets that will have you captivated throughout. A perfect debut novel, will be looking out for Georgina’s future work!
Today I’m on the tour for You Can’t Hide by Emily Shiner, thank you to Zoé at Zooloos Book Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages:225
Synopsis: Beth thought she’d escaped her past. She was wrong.
Beth and Ian are desperate to have a child. So much so that they decide to sell his family cabin in upstate New York to pay for IVF.
When they arrive at the cabin, they meet Ryan, the caretaker. But Ryan is not who he says he is… He’s here because he knows Beth has a dark secret. And now he intends to use it against her.
He threatens to tell Ian everything about Beth’s past unless she does exactly what he says.
Beth finds herself caught in a nightmarish trap. If Ian discovers what she’s been hiding from him, she’s sure he’ll leave her. She’ll lose everything she cares about, including the chance to have a child of her own.
On the other hand, what Ryan wants her to do is so dark and twisted it’s beyond horrifying.
Either way, Beth is sure her life is over, she can see no way out. Unless… Unless she digs deep and finds a part of herself that is willing to do something so awful it doesn’t even bear thinking about…
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧🐧
My Thoughts: Yet another 5 star rating for a psychological thriller! – Inkubator and Zoé are obviously bringing me the goods this year 🤣
Wow, wow, wow!
I’m going to go a different way with this review & not lay out the plot for you.. but this one was incredible!
I read this in 2 sittings, only stopping because I had to go to work or it would’ve definitely been a 1 sitting read, I flew through it!
The pacing was perfect, the intrigue levels were high throughout and the action just kept coming!
I was on edge constantly… I had chills and was biting my lip so hard I made it bleed.
This book is still staying with me, it’s like I knew the characters in real life for such a quick read I got so attached!
This is my first dive into Emily’s work but I can promise you it won’t be the last
Today I’m on the tour for Blood Mothers by Gaye Maguire, thank you to Zoé at Zooloos Book Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part and thank you to the author and the publisher for my copy.
Pages: 240
Synopsis: They took the children. Now they have to pay.
A rich socialite is found hacked to death in her Dublin home. It’s the beginning of a killing spree that leaves five apparently unconnected people brutally slain.
Kate Hamilton, a brilliant and ambitious detective sergeant, is assigned to the case and soon uncovers the connection between the victims – they were all involved in an illegal adoption scheme which was running in Ireland up to the 1980s.
In a deeply traditional society, unmarried mothers were shamed by their families, forced to give birth in secret and surrender their newborns for adoption, fuelling a lucrative and cruel baby trade.
Now, decades later, it seems someone is taking bloody revenge on those who played a part in the adoption racket.
With each day bringing a new victim, Kate and her team race to stop the bloodshed. But when she discovers she has a personal link with both victims and murderer, Kate realises her own life is in danger as never before.
My Rating: 🐧🐧🐧🐧
My Thoughts: a story told from 2 different perspectives through 2 different timelines, this was brilliant!
In 2010 we’re following Kate, she’s a detective in the Irish Garda, determined to show she can pave her way in a predominantly male oriented place of work.
As the main character in the new series, I loved her, she’s dedicated & open to listening but keen to stand on her own 2 feet at the same time.
She’s solving a series of murders that on the surface seem sporadic and random but as we dog a little deeper we find that the link is subtle but it’s there.. a link that Kate is dreading coming to light.
In the past, 1967 we’re following a young girl who finds herself pregnant at 14, gets sent to a ‘Mother and Baby Unit’ which sets off a whole chain of events with tragic circumstances.
As the story goes on and the pieces start falling into place, I found that I worked out the ending but can’t help that that was done on purpose because it added a new sense of dread to the story 🤣
A brilliant opener to what promises to be a fantastic crime series, I can’t wait for book 2!
Today I’m on the tour for The Mentor by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli, thank you to Zoé at Zooloos Book Tours for organising it and inviting me to take part & I have an extract for you.
Pages: 214
Synopsis: What if someone you love is a serial killer?
DCI Eric Shaw, leading a forensic team at Scotland Yard, together with DI Miriam Leroux from a Murder Investigation Team, is investigating the death of a known offender. Killed by two gunshots: one to his neck, execution style, but preceded by another to his groin, implying a more personal motive. Shaw’s attention at work is often distracted by a young forensic investigator, Adele Pennington, who is a beautiful woman over two decades his junior. However, his attraction to her is unreciprocated. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the London police, an anonymous blog describes the details of a very similar crime. The author of the blog signs herself as Mina, like one of the victims in a case Shaw investigated many years ago.
Twenty years ago Eric saved her. Who will save him now?
Meet DCI Eric Shaw . . . and his pupil.
About the Author:
Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli is an Italian science fiction and thriller author.
She has lived in Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy) since 1993, earning a degree in biology and working as a writer, scientific and literary translator, and freelance web copywriter. In the past she also worked as researcher, tutor and professor’s assistant in the field of ecology at ‘Dipartimento di Biologia Animaleed Ecologia’ of the University of Cagliari.
She has written original fiction since 2009.
In 2012-2013 she wrote and published a hard science fiction series set on Mars and titled Deserto rosso. The whole Desertorosso series was also published as omnibus in December 2013 and hit No. 1 on the Italian Kindle Store in November 2014.
Deserto rosso was published in English, with the title Red Desert, between 2014 and 2015.
It includes the following books: Red Desert – Point of No Return, Red Desert – People of Mars, Red Desert – Invisible Enemy, and Red Desert – Back Home. She also authored three crime thrillers in the Detective Eric Shaw Trilogy – The Mentor (Il mentore, 2014), Syndrome (Sindrome, 2016), and Beyond the Limit (Oltre il limite, 2017) –, an action thriller titled Kindred Intentions (Affinità d’intenti, 2015), five more science fiction novels – L’isola di Gaia (2014), Per caso(2015), Ophir. Codice vivente (2016), Sirius. In caduta libera (2018), and Nave stellare Aurora (2020) – and a non-fiction book titled Self-publishing lab. Il mestiere dell’autoeditore(2020).
Her crime thriller The Mentor was first published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015 and became an international bestseller hitting No. 1 on the Kindle Store in USA, UK, and Australia in October 2015.
This is a new edition of The Mentor (published in November 2022). The other two books in the trilogy, Syndrome and Beyond the Limit, are expected in 2023.
She’s also a podcaster at FantascientifiCast, an Italian podcast about science fiction, an Italian Representative of Mars Initiative, and a member of the International Thriller Writers organization.
She’s often a guest both in Italy and abroad during book fairs, including Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino (Turin Book Fair) and Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt Book Fair), local publishing events as well as university conferences, where she gives speeches about self-publishing and genre fiction writing. She has also taught a class on self-publishing at the University of Insubria (Varese, Italy) since 2016.
Her books have been reviewed or recommended by national magazines and newspapers such as Wired Italia, Tom’s Hardware Italia, La Repubblica, Tiscali News and Global Science (magazine of the Italian Space Agency).
As a science fiction and Star Wars fan, she is known in the Italian online community by her nickname, Anakina, which has become the name of her imprint.
Extract: Eric hesitated for a moment, unsure whether or not to approach her. That was why it was a bad idea to fraternise with colleagues. You felt embarrassed about gestures that in any other circumstances would’ve felt normal. Only there hadn’t been any real fraternisation, because nothing had happened between them. It was all in his head. As he repeated that concept to himself, he glanced at Dawson.
‘She’s all yours,’ the medical examiner commented. A wrong interpretation of those words made Eric gave a feeble start. ‘I’ve already seen it.’ The further clarification wasn’t really of any help. Then Dawson put his glasses back on and went back to his file.
With a certain reluctance, Eric walked around the table and stood next to her. She moved her head a little, then waved one hand in front of her face as if to shoo away an insect. He couldn’t see any, but the gesture freed a fragrance from her hair, which for a few seconds prevailed over the stench of the corpse.
‘This is a reconstruction of the crime scene. It’s pretty rudimentary.’ Adele had seemed as if she was apologising whilst pronouncing those words.
On the screen was a three-dimensional image of a room, the one where they’d found the body. About one metre away from the table on the floor were two large bloodstains, one of which was roughly three times the other. Their shapes weren’t round, but irregular, as if something had prevented the liquid from spreading out freely. The reconstruction was very realistic. Eric recognised the scene. Only the corpse was missing.
‘At first, we supposed the victim was here, more or less, when he was shot,’ Adele continued. A human figure materialised over the largest stain.
‘No, wait,’ Eric cut it. ‘Were it so, we would have high-velocity spatters all around the body and some gravitational drops where it fell afterwards.’
‘In fact, there weren’t any. When we lifted it, most of the floor underneath was clean. That made me think Thompson wasn’t standing at all when he was shot.’
‘Wait a moment.’ Eric knew where she was going with this. ‘You think he was already on the floor.’
‘That would explain the shape of the bloodstains and also why the one related to the neck was a bit farther from the body,’ Adele said, nodding.
But now Eric was a little lost. They’d thought that the abnormal position of the stain was due to the victim writhing as he was dying.
‘I’ll show you.’ She tapped an icon on the side of the screen and the body’s position changed. Now the human figure was no longer standing, but lying down supine. ‘If they’d shot him while he was already on the floor, we could explain the direction of the bullets for a start.’
A new figure, this time equipped with a gun, was standing beside the victim, its feet by his groin.
‘The murderer threatens him with a handgun, forces him to gag himself.’ Adele’s account was flowing. It was evident that she’d worked on it for a long while. Considering that it was nine o’clock on Monday morning, she must have devoted the day before to it. ‘Then they make the victim lie down, and bang.’ She’d imitated the shot by raising her voice. ‘They shoot him in the groin.’
Without meaning to, Eric winced. He instinctively moved a hand to cover his private parts, but as he realised it, he stopped halfway. However, the manoeuvre didn’t escape Adele, who shot him a mischievous glance. He wondered whether she’d done it on purpose, to see his reaction.
If you like the sound of this it can be bought here!
prdgreads 