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 