T Minus Six Days – Perfect Lie @RubyLit @ClaireEESheldon #EXCLUSIVE

Something special for you all today to celebrate it being six days till the release of my novel Perfect Lie.

As some of you will know my book is written from different point of views so EXCLUSIVELY I am going to share with you Chloe Seaward’s POV

“She never imagined it would end this way. Travelling to the unknown, bundled into the back of a van.

Her hands were bound behind her back, the more she struggled to free them, the more the rope cut off her circulation. It chafed against her skin, causing blisters to form.

She was close to dehydration, licking her lips in search of moisture. Her mouth felt as if it was full of cotton wool stopping her from shouting for help. No one would hear her over the rumble of the engine and loud voices and laughter coming from the front of the van.

The strong smell of tobacco and weed stung her nose as she tried to get a sense of where they might be taking her. She’d lost track of how long she’d been lying there, drifting in and out of consciousness from the beating she had received, the blood long dried on her face.

She tried to kick out, shuffling towards the door in hope of making an escape but the pain from where she had been held down, beaten and raped both by the various men and a series of objects, was too much. She knew better than to just give up. She tried to remember her training; there were protocols for everything. But no one was coming to rescue her. She had screwed up big time.

Suddenly feeling cold and alone, she thought of Adam. Had she told him how much she loved him when she saw him last? Did she need to make her peace with God? Should she have paid more attention at Sunday school? Surely this wasn’t the end?

The van came to a sudden halt and the laughter and talking stopped. The doors opened and the sound of the crunchy gravel replaced the drone of the engine. Her ears were filled with the sound of their footsteps in time to her racing heartbeat.

The door would open at any moment and she’d be in for the fight of her life. Was she ready? She would fight through the pain because, if she didn’t, what was left would be much worse.

The doors opened and the back of the van filled with bright sunlight as someone grabbed her legs and dragged her out of the van. As her body scraped along the floor of the vehicle she attempted to block out all the pain as she summoned all her strength, tensing her body. If she didn’t fight back, this would be the end …”

Find out what happened to Chloe by reading Perfect Lie which will be available to buy on the 16th June 2020.

book cover

Blurb:

What is ‘perfect’ trying to hide?
Jen Garner tries her best to be ‘wife and mother of the year’. She helps organise school plays and accompanies her husband to company dinners, all with a big smile on her face.
But Jen has started to receive strange gifts in the post … first flowers, then a sympathy card.
It could just be a joke; that’s what she tells herself. But then the final ‘gift’ arrives, and Jen has to question why somebody is so intent on shattering her life into pieces …

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See what the early reviews are saying about Perfect Lie

Book Review: Chloe: Never Forget @DanLaughey @rararesources @CreativiaPub #Book2

Chloe: Never Forget

An off-duty detective gunned down. A dead woman. A student missing, feared dead. And now, a former policeman in search of his past. All these people, dead or alive, have one thing in common. D.I. Carl Sant must discover what it is.

A series of cold-case enquiries leads D.I. Sant and his colleagues to investigate a botched assassination plot dating back to the 1980s. The deeper they dig into the case, the more secrets are revealed, including shocking connections to the infamous National Front.

Meanwhile, the memory of former P.C. Tanner, survivor of the assassination horror, is beginning to recover. Sant must find Tanner, and find out who is behind it all – before his superiors lose their rag and more lives are lost.

My Thoughts:

To my relief this novel starts off almost immediately after the 1^st one finished.

A we in the middle of the case and our DI Saint is in the middle of the investigation, he has been warned off the Drysdale Case once but that isn’t going to stop him investigating both Chloe’s disappearance as well. Something is a miss and it all seems to relate to a police case in 1980’s when two officers were shot and killed. This book also carries a heavy undertone of police corruption, who is on the good side and who corrupt. Does this book give a huge nod to Line of Duty or am I reading to much into it?

Also during this book we start to hear more from who we later find out is PC Tanner who is struggling to remember what happened on that faithful day. He also seems to fill in some of the back story of what happened that night.

Where Is this Chloe, is she still alive, did she have that meeting with Drysdale on the night in question?

Mia is still on hand to help our DI in the right direction and I’d be keen to see if she becomes a reoccurring character in future books.

One thing I did enjoy about this book is the trip back down the memory lane of Leeds, where I was a student back in 04/08. I recognised some of the places that where mentioned in this book, though I know how much Leeds has changed since my trip there last year.

I am not sure what I felt about the ending of this book. There are a couple of twists in the end (as to be expected) but you can sort of tell that the author is hoping to lead onto a third book. Though after being left disappointed at the ending of the first book and this one not having as much of a cliff hanger. I don’t particularly feel drawn to reading the next one especially it I am going to left hanging AGAIN!

A good read, that tied up the loose ends from book 1, but left me with more threads waiting to be untangled.

Grab your copy from:

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Dan Laughey is a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University where he teaches a course called ‘Youth, Crime and Culture’ among other things. He has written several books on the subject including Music and Youth Culture, based on his PhD in Sociology at Salford University. He also holds a BA in English from Manchester Metropolitan University and an MA in Communications Studies from the University of Leeds.

Dan was born in Otley and bred in Ilkley, West Yorkshire, a hop and a skip away from the Leeds setting of his Chloe novels.

His crime writing was purely academic to begin with. He’s written about media violence and tackled the age-old concern about television and video games influencing patterns of antisocial behaviour in society. After years of research and theoretical scrutiny, he still hasn’t cracked that particular nut.

He’s also written about the role of CCTV and surveillance in today’s Big Brother world, the sometimes fraught relationship between rap and juvenile crime, football hooliganism, and the sociocultural legacy of Britain’s most notorious serial killer – the Yorkshire Ripper.

All in all, Dan’s work has been translated into four languages: French, Hebrew, Korean and Turkish. He has presented guest lectures at international conferences and appeared on BBC Radio and ITV News in addition to providing expert commentary for The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.

Dan Laughey @danlaughey

Read my review of Chloe: Lost Girl

Book Review: Chloe: Lost Girl @DanLaughey @rararesources @CreativiaPub

Chloe: Lost Girl

A missing student. A gunned-down detective. A woman in fear for her life. All three are connected somehow.

Detective Inspector Carl Sant and his fellow officers get on the case. But what links the disappearance of a university student, the death of an off-duty police sergeant, and a professor reluctant to help them solve the case?

Their only clue is a sequence of numbers, etched by the police sergeant Dryden on a misty window moments before he breathed his last. Soon it becomes clear that Dryden’s clue has brought the past and present into a head-on collision with the very heart of Sant’s profession.

Racing against time, D.I. Sant must find out what’s behind the mysterious events – before the bodies start piling up.

My Thoughts:

Chloe gone girl, is most certainly a graphic novel. There is no doubt about that.

The death of Drysdale a police officer no one knows anything about at the beginning of the novel and the torture of another character later in the novel! All the gory bits are most definitely included. The author does not shy away from telling you how it is. And with the authors background he certainly does know what he is talking about in these scenes.

I loved DI Saint and his way of doing things, compared to his partner who does everything by the book, the textbook way. I loved the names chosen for the detectives, such as Chapstick! Though I did get a bit confused who was who in regards to the senior Detectives, to many of them maybe or I missed the organisation structure somewhere.

One thing I don’t understand about this book is why end the way it did? The second book does follow on and I am lucky enough to be reviewing this later this month. It left me kind of disappointed, I feel that if I had brought the first book I’d of felt cheated in away. Books that end with a cliffhanger I find disappointing but at least this one does have a follow on…