A Moment With…Isabella Muir
I am delighted to be welcoming Isabella Muir and the blog tour for her book, A Notable Omission to Novel Kicks today.
A 1970s debate on equality is overshadowed by a deadly secret…
Spring 1970. Sussex University is hosting a debate about equality for women. But when one of the debating group goes missing, attention turns away from social injustice to something more sinister.
It seems every one of the group has something to hide, and when a second tragedy occurs, two of the delegates – amateur sleuth Janie Juke, and reporter Libby Frobisher – are prepared to make themselves unpopular to flush out the truth. Who is lying and why?
Alongside the police investigation, Janie and Libby are determined to prise answers from the tight-lipped group, as they find themselves in a race against time to stop another victim being targeted.
In A Notable Omission we meet Janie at the start of a new decade. When we left Janie at the end of The Invisible Case she was enjoying her new found skills and success as an amateur sleuth. Here we meet her a few months later, stealing a few days away from being a wife and mother, attending a local conference on women’s liberation to do some soul-searching…
*****
A Notable Omission is the fourth novel in the Janie Juke series, crimes and mysteries set during 1969 and 1970. Here Isabella Muir provides some insight into what attracted her to this particular historical period…
Delving into the past
When I first conjured up Janie Juke I knew that her story had to be set in the 1960s. It’s an era I have always loved. My older brother and sister both grew up during the sixties, so I’m lucky to have first-hand memories of all kinds of wild events. My sister was at the Rolling Stones concert on Hastings Pier in 1964 when tickets probably cost a few shillings. My brother was a real mod, with a scooter, and the ‘mod’ uniform of a Parka jacket, with fur-lined hood. He didn’t take part in the crazy event in 1964, when 5,000 mods and rockers planned to storm Hastings sea front to create the ‘Second Battle of Hastings’ and the police had to fly in extra officers to control the crowds, but he may well have inevitably watched from the sidelines.
I remember sitting gazing at my sister when she put on her makeup before a night out. She aimed for that ‘bare-faced’ sixties look with just a touch of face powder. All the focus was on the eyes, with white or sometimes bright blue eyeshadow and thick black mascara and eye-liner, trying to emulate the sixties model, Twiggy. She would spend hours back-combing her hair into a bouffant style and then use oceans of hair spray to keep it just perfect.
by 
Book Extract: Mrs Bambi Knows by Chris Mason
I am pleased to be welcoming Chris Mason to Novel Kicks. He’s here with the blog tour for his novel, Mrs Bambi Knows.
In a small town in Oregon, everyone wants to kill the local advice columnist, Mrs Bambi. If only they knew who she was.
Mrs Bambi’s advice is so snarky that people have long since stopped asking for it. Instead she eavesdrops on conversations and writes the letters herself. The readers would lynch her, but no one knows who she is.
In fact, Mrs. Bambi is not a woman. The column is written by Richard, a quiet widower with a young daughter.
The uneventful part of Richard’s life is nearly over: he begins dating Pam, a well-known realtor and a sports addict. When people begin to learn the identity of Mrs. Bambi, Richard is threatened and humiliated in public. Despite the pleas of his editor, his friends, and Pam, he refuses to stop writing the column.
The only thing that can prevent disaster is for the town to finally learn the whole truth about Richard, which is much larger than the simple mystery of Mrs. Bambi.
Set in 1995, Chris Mason’s skillful storytelling brings a tale of humour and romance – and not a little peril – charmingly to life in the mind of the reader.
Chris has shared an extract today. Enjoy!
*****beginning of extract*****
The advice (agony aunt) column in a small town newspaper is written by a widower using the alias Mrs. Bambi. Because no one will ask him for advice anymore, he eavesdrops on peoples’ conversations and writes the questions and the answers himself. Every chapter in the book begins with one of the advice columns. Here’s an example.
Dear Mrs. Bambi:
My mother is sick, but not as sick as she thinks she is. She’s an incurable hypochondriac, and I think it’s going to kill me.
Last week her vision went blurry. She called me at one in the morning, hours after I’d gone to bed, to tell me she had an eye tumor. I drove over and cleaned her glasses for her.
by Book Review: One Down by Diana Wilkinson
I am pleased to be welcoming Diana Wilkinson to Novel Kicks. She’s here with the blog tour for her novel, One Down.
I’m not being paranoid! It’s all there in the crossword clues…in black and white. There’s no doubt the threat is real. Today, the answers spell out my murder.
May Third. Amanda. Silver Birch. Noontime. Assassination.
Is Nathan, my estranged crossword-setter husband, really planning to kill me? Or is it someone closer to home?
I check the door is bolted, slither to the ground, and count down the seconds to noon. There’s nothing left to do, and no one I can call. Who’d believe me anyway? The lady on the ground floor has already left the building, and my new boyfriend is on holiday. Or is he?
A tread of footsteps. A rap at the door, and I close my eyes, hold my breath…
*****
Completing the crossword puzzle is a part of Amanda’s daily routine, a thing she does to distract herself from temptation.
However, when she starts to see clues that are meant for her, anxiety and need for alcohol increases.
Is it her ex husband setting the clues? A man who blames her for a horrible accident? Whoever it is, they mean to cause paranoia or even worse, her death.
I was intrigued by this novel and so was pleased to be on the blog tour for One Down.
Having not read anything by Diana Wilkinson before, I didn’t fully know what to expect so was keen to get started.
by A Moment With… Tony Bassett
I am pleased to be welcoming Tony Bassett to Novel Kicks. He’s here with the blog tour for his novel, Out For Revenge.
When notorious gangland boss Tadeusz Filipowski is released from prison, several people start looking over their shoulder.
A volatile character, not shy of picking fights, Filipowski plans to expand his drugs empire and put his competitors on a backfoot. That’s until he turns up dead. Very dead.
DS Sunita Roy of the Heart of England police is handed the case but it’s a challenge to find the killer of a man with so many enemies.
DCI Gavin Roscoe would lend more support but he is busy nailing down suspicions of corruption plaguing the force.
Soon, however, the investigations will bump into one another. And unless Roy and Roscoe can get to the bottom of the mystery, they could well become the next victims.
OUT FOR REVENGE is the fourth gripping standalone mystery in the Detectives Roy and Roscoe crime fiction series by Tony Bassett.
*****
Without further ado, it’s over to Tony to talk about his writing process when writing his crime series.
The days of the fictional English male detective bustling round quiet country villages solving murders are almost certainly numbered.
Books based on popular characters like Morse and Barnaby will, of course, always sell extremely well.
But writers new to the crime genre have to accept such characters may be a dying breed. This is why, in such a competitive market, anyone wishing to write crime novels with any chance of success has to be more inventive.
That explains why I chose for my series of crime novels set in the Midlands a female detective from a West Bengali background.
Detective Sergeant Sunita Roy is a twenty-five-year-old law graduate who has recently joined her Midlands CID department.
by Book Review: Because You Loved Me by Beth Moran
I am so excited to be welcoming Beth Moran back to Novel Kicks. She’s here with the blog tour for her novel, Because You Loved Me.
Marion Miller needs a fresh start.
Her childhood in Northern Ireland wasn’t easy, with a father who passed away when she was young and a mother who got lost in grief. Now grown-up and with family relations as tense as ever, Marion heads to England, to find out the truth about her father’s mysterious past – and hopefully an extended family who will love her as much as he did.
Scarlett Obermann runs a holiday park in Sherwood Forest with her daughter Grace, but what’s she’s best at is making people feel like they belong. With her merry band of waifs and strays, Scarlett welcomes Marion with open arms, and it isn’t long before Marion finally understands what it means to find a home.
As she tries to uncover her father’s story, Marion slowly blossoms, even daring to indulge in her crush on Reuben, the son of the Lord of the Manor, but she hasn’t quite out-run her past. And as Scarlett faces her own tragedy, it’s Marion’s turn to take care of everyone.
Because you can’t choose your family, but you can make your friends the family you choose.
This novel was first published as Making Marion.
*****
Marion has not had an easy life. She lost her father at a young age and became the focus of her mother’s need for blame.
Marion flees her hometown and goes to England looking for answers. Who was her father prior to her birth? Why did he move to Northern Ireland from England and can she, after all these years, find peace with her mother and herself?
I am a huge fan of Beth Moran’s novels and so jumped at the chance to be part of the blog tour for Because You Loved Me.
I love a good book cover and the one for this novel is beautiful and very dreamy.
I have to admit, this one took me a couple of chapters to settle into but before long, I couldn’t stop reading, continuing through to the early hours, wanting to know what became of these characters. I very much became invested.
by Book Club
