Category: Mystery

“Betrayal” – the penultimate final draft – Day 26

I’m sure I’ve been down this road more than once, and with the same novel, but whereas the last edit, which was probably the second or third, finished up in the pile, then forgotten.

I’m doing an active update to all my works in progress, and sending them to the editor, after going through the manuscript once again, with a view to publishing.  Hopefully, before the year is out.

…

Today went well, the book is now almost editing itself, such is the benefit of outlining.

I’m almost sold on the planning idea, but that will sort itself out next time.

The way the story is running, and the additions I have made so far, the story is going to be longer than anticipated.

I’ve just seen a glaring plot hole and will be working to fix that, and then, that opens a can of worms because the ending is now a choice of three.

This is the trouble with rereading and changing and not being satisfied and letting editors tell you what needs to be fixed when nothing really needs to be fixed in the first place.

Damn, it’s just the editing jitters kicking in.

It’s time to get back to the current project and finish it.

‘Sunday in New York’ – A beta reader’s view

I’m not a fan of romance novels but …

There was something about this one that resonated with me.

This is a novel about a world generally ruled by perception, and how people perceive what they see, what they are told, and what they want to believe.

I’ve been guilty of it myself as I’m sure we all have at one time or another.

For the main characters Harry and Alison there are other issues driving their relationship.

For Alison, it is a loss of self-worth through losing her job and from losing her mother and, in a sense, her sister.

For Harry, it is the fact he has a beautiful and desirable wife, and his belief she is the object of other men’s desires, and one in particular, his immediate superior.

Between observation, the less than honest motives of his friends, a lot of jumping to conclusions based on very little fact, and you have the basis of one very interesting story.

When it all comes to a head, Alison finds herself in a desperate situation, she realises only the truth will save their marriage.

But is it all the truth?

What would we do in similar circumstances?

Rarely does a book have me so enthralled that I could not put it down until I knew the result. They might be considered two people who should have known better, but as is often the case, they had to get past what they both thought was the truth.

And the moral of this story, if it could be said there is one, nothing is ever what it seems.

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Available on Amazon here: amzn.to/2H7ALs8

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An excerpt from “Echoes from the Past”

Available on Amazon Kindle here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

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With my attention elsewhere, I walked into a man who was hurrying in the opposite direction.  He was a big man with a scar running down the left side of his face from eye socket to mouth, and who was also wearing a black shirt with a red tie.

That was all I remembered as my heart almost stopped.

He apologized as he stepped to one side, the same way I stepped, as I also muttered an apology.

I kept my eyes down.  He was not the sort of man I wanted to recognize later in a lineup.  I stepped to the other side and so did he.  It was one of those situations.  Finally getting out of sync, he kept going in his direction, and I towards the bus, which was now pulling away from the curb.

Getting my breath back, I just stood riveted to the spot watching it join the traffic.  I looked back over my shoulder, but the man I’d run into had gone.  I shrugged and looked at my watch.  It would be a few minutes before the next bus arrived.

Wait, or walk?  I could also go by subway, but it was a long walk to the station.  What the hell, I needed the exercise.

At the first intersection, the ‘Walk’ sign had just flashed to ‘Don’t Walk’.  I thought I’d save a few minutes by not waiting for the next green light.  As I stepped onto the road, I heard the screeching of tires.

A yellow car stopped inches from me.

It was a high powered sports car, perhaps a Lamborghini.  I knew what they looked like because Marcus Bartleby owned one, as did every other junior executive in the city with a rich father.

Everyone stopped to look at me, then the car.  It was that sort of car.  I could see the driver through the windscreen shaking his fist, and I could see he was yelling too, but I couldn’t hear him.  I stepped back onto the sidewalk, and he drove on.  The moment had passed and everyone went back to their business.

My heart rate hadn’t come down from the last encounter.   Now it was approaching cardiac arrest, so I took a few minutes and several sets of lights to regain composure.

At the next intersection, I waited for the green light, and then a few seconds more, just to be sure.  I was no longer in a hurry.

At the next, I heard what sounded like a gunshot.  A few people looked around, worried expressions on their faces, but when it happened again, I saw it was an old car backfiring.  I also saw another yellow car, much the same as the one before, stopped on the side of the road.  I thought nothing of it, other than it was the second yellow car I’d seen.

At the next intersection, I realized I was subconsciously heading towards Harry’s new bar.   It was somewhere on 6th Avenue, so I continued walking in what I thought was the right direction.

I don’t know why I looked behind me at the next intersection, but I did.  There was another yellow car on the side of the road, not far from me.  It, too, looked the same as the original Lamborghini, and I was starting to think it was not a coincidence.

Moments after crossing the road, I heard the roar of a sports car engine and saw the yellow car accelerate past me.  As it passed by, I saw there were two people in it, and the blurry image of the passenger; a large man with a red tie.

Now my imagination was playing tricks.

It could not be the same man.  He was going in a different direction.

In the few minutes I’d been standing on the pavement, it had started to snow; early for this time of year, and marking the start of what could be a long cold winter.  I shuddered, and it was not necessarily because of the temperature.

I looked up and saw a neon light advertising a bar, coincidentally the one Harry had ‘found’ and, looking once in the direction of the departing yellow car, I decided to go in.  I would have a few drinks and then leave by the back door if it had one.

Just in case.

© Charles Heath 2015-2020

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A photograph from the inspirational bin – 18

On a clear day you can see forever.

Perhaps, it just depends on what you want to see.

What I first see, looking at this view, is a horizon that is so far away, I cannot reach it.

Is that the one goal in life that I have?

Or is it time to change that goal and try to reach one that is attainable?

What sacrifice does that entail?

Does it come to pass that you must make sacrifices in order to get what you want?

It’s one of those perennial questions that has an answer, mostly, that no one wants to hear, or wants to be told.

Everything has a price. It’s whether you want to pay for it.

This subject, this situation, is manna from heaven for a writer.

So, for instance…

…

I stood on the edge of the cliff and took in the view, which on any given day could be either magnificent or like being in hell.

Today, while being majestic, it was also like being in hell.

37 days.

I didn’t think I’d last 2.  Yet here I was, having survived the worst that could be thrown at me.

The question was,  did I want to go back, did I want the life that was being offered?

Or was it time to simply walk away?

…

That, of course, is another story, and you’ll have to wait just a little longer to find out.

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© Charles Heath 2023

I should be on holiday but…

You would think that going away for a few days, you would be able to drag yourself away from writing.

You would think, after doing it every day for the last six months, it would be time to take a break. But, the trouble with good intentions and being in a different place, there’s a ton of new and different places and things to write about.

We are away primarily for a wedding, with part of it being a Chinese Tea Ceremony, and at course I’ve been reading up on it, and there is any number of descriptions, making it difficult to get a clear idea of what happens.

I guess I’m going to have to wait until the day, next Friday.

In between, there will be a dinner that will have as the centrepiece, Peking duck, my absolute favourite duck dish.

I had it last in Hong Kong two years back before the riots at the restaurant in the Peninsular hotel, and it was exquisite.

Then it’s my brother’s 70th birthday. As he is working feverishly on the family history, and having jetted off many times overseas tracking down the long lost relatives we knew nothing about, it’ll be time for a progress report.

I must admit that some of those relatives have roused my writer’s curiosity. When I helped clear out my parent’s house after they moved into a retirement home, we found a great deal of ancestral material, the most interesting of which is, would you believe, was about my mother.

We have found a whole lot of letters she received from her first boyfriend and then from my father. It shows a side to her I never knew about, and a side to my father that given what I know of him, is totally out of character.

There will no doubt be more on this subject later.

And finally but not least there was a baby announcement, always a subject of much joy and happiness.

This is only day two. There is definitely more to come.

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to go on a treasure hunt – Episode 12

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

…

Feeling a little miffed at Boggs’ dismissal, I decided to go on my own fact-finding mission. 

Of course, it depended a lot on whether the Cossatino’s still hung out at the same bar, and whether I’d get a foot in the door.

I was going to talk to Nadia, or at least try to.

The Lantern Inn was about as far from the image the name threw up, it was more a place where respectable people wouldn’t be caught dead in.

And, as I recall, a few had.  Seemingly respectable people anyway.

It was the place to go if you were looking for three things, not necessarily all at once, trouble, girls, and drugs.  Soggy, a friend of Boggs and I, had always looked older than his age and was able to get into places like the Lantern Inn, mainly to buy us beer, and we would go down to the beach and drink it before going home.

When I found a spot to keep an eye on the place and assess whether it was safe or not to go in, now I was old enough, I saw old man Gattle, Soggy’s foster father stagger out, on his way home.  It brought back memories of Joel, Soggy’s real name.

Soggy got his name because he was always falling in the water, whether it was a pool or the ocean, and one day, after too many beers, he fell in and didn’t come back up.  Boggs and I almost finished up in jail for that, since we were with him, but there was no way we could rescue him as it was in a spot where there was often a rip, and he had been carried away before we could get to him.

And, the body was never recovered.  I thought, at the time, he may have jumped in, because his life with foster parents was no fairy tale, and he had suffered.  Of course, those foster parents were friends with the Benderby’s so they were never held to account.

It would be easy to lie in wait in a dark alley and simply hit him over the head with a four by two, but I doubt it would make me feel any better.

I watched him stagger and fall several times before I looked back at the Inn.  In days past, the patrons often spilled out onto the sidewalk where there used to be tables and chairs.  Now, it was just the Inn, and it didn’t look like many people were there.

Had it changed from a den of iniquity to something more respectable?

A large truck, an F350 by the look of it, stopped outside the front entrance, the passenger door opened and what looked like Nadia, or another Amazonian woman, got out.  She spoke to the driver, slammed the door, and the truck left.

The light over the door shone on her face, yes, it was a woman, and yes, it was Nadia.  By herself?  Was that Vince who dropped her off, or Willy, her younger brother, and why didn’t they join her?

I guess I was not going to get any answers from where I was sitting.

Time to make my first foray into the place my mother always told me never to step foot in.

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2021

“Betrayal” – the penultimate final draft – Day 25

I’m sure I’ve been down this road more than once, and with the same novel, but whereas the last edit, which was probably the second or third, finished up in the pile, then forgotten.

I’m doing an active update to all my works in progress, and sending them to the editor, after going through the manuscript once again, with a view to publishing.  Hopefully, before the year is out.

…

Having reached the milestone of writing 50,000 words plus, it’s not the time to hang up the pen and think the job’s done.

It isn’t.

I still have a few more chapters to write, to bring the story to a satisfying conclusion.

That I’m still not quite sure about, but I have one conclusion I’ll write and then later if I think of something better I’ll substitute it.

That isn’t to say the end won’t change when it’s time to make a second pass at the manuscript.

Other than that things are going according to plan. This means, I guess, that writing to a plan can work even for someone who doesn’t usually use that method

I will be considering this to plan the sequels for the two series I’m writing at the moment.

But, not to get ahead of myself, I have this project to finish.

The cinema of my dreams – It continued in London – Episode 35

Attack!

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It seemed to me that trouble gravitated towards Juliet, especially when I was around.  Perhaps between the two of us we had that sort of chemistry going.  The sort that attracted bullets.

She had got up to collect her computer from a desk on one side of the dais, and I had just turned after taking her hand to assist her off the dais when I caught sight of a movement out of the corner of my eye, and with barely enough time to consider what it was, I pushed her to one side and dived towards the floor, feeling the plucking effect of a bullet ripping at my sleeve.

“What the…”, was as much as she got to say before she too realised, we were being shot at from the top of the aisle, bullets thumping into the floorboards barely inches from us as we scrabbled to get behind the seats of the first aisle.

Nineteen shots from a silenced gun, then silence.

Was the shooter reloading.

“Is everything alright in here?”  A deep male voice yelled out from above.

Was it the shooter of our saviour?

Juliet put her head above the seats and recognised the man and slowly dragged herself up from the floor.

“Mr Roberts.”

“Is everything alright?”

“No.  We were just shot at by someone up there on the other side of the hall.  Be careful.”

I slowly got up, shook out my clothes and saw the tear from the bullet.  Any closer would have hit my arm and another injury.

“Are you alright?” I asked her.

She glared at me.  “Who did you bring with you?”

“No one.  I made sure no one was following me.  Of that much, you can be assured.  Whoever it was, they were here for you.”

“And you being here, you know who it is?”

The man from the top of the hall, invisible, yelled out, “There’s no one up here now.”

“You’d better call the police.  We have a wrecked floor with bullet holes in it.  It might give some indication of who was shooting at us.”

He came out from behind a wall near the top row of seats.  “What do you mean, shooting at you?  Bullet holes?”

He came down the steps and Juliet took him over to where we were standing when the shots started.  “Why would anyone be shooting at you?”  He looked at the damage to the floor and groaned.

“This is all I need.  The place is booked solid.”

She looked at me.  “Evan?”

“It seems you might be entitled to a share of an estate worth quite a lot of money, and there are people who might not want you to inherit what they think is theirs, not yours.”

She had an expression that conveyed a degree of astonishment, not forced, which told me that it was a surprise.

I don’t know anyone who would have that sort of money.”

“Not immediately, but perhaps we should wait for the police, then have a talk about it.  I was hoping we could have a few glasses of wine first, but that’s not going to be possible.”

The police came and looked at the crime scene, and then one of the constables called a detective who also looked at the crime scene, who then called in the forensic team. 

The hall manager was told the hall would be out of action for a few days, the last news he needed to hear.

The detective asked Juliet a half dozen quests, the usual like, do you know anyone who would want to shoot at you, do you have any criminal connections, a interesting question she answered with a qualified yes, the man was now dead, and did you see anyone suspicious now or earlier in the day, where she was staying, a friend’s apartment in Bloomsbury, how long was she in the city, what she was doing here, and how long was she staying.

It answered nearly all of the questions I’d intended to ask her.

The detective looked at me, asked me why I was there, and was it possible I was the target.  Of course, I had to ask him why he thought I was, so he asked me my profession, and I told him that I was a journalist specializing in Archaeology, which I was.  She too learned where I lived, answers that seemed to amuse her.

Especially the one where he asked what the nature of our relationship was.  I let her answer with exes catching up. 

When he was done, an hour and a half later, along with the forensic team, we were allowed to go.  Her lecture the next day was now not going to happen, calls going to the organisers, and the hall owners.

“Well,” she said, once everyone had left, “you now owe me dinner, and some of your time tomorrow since I now have a free day.”

“You don’t seem overly worried that people are trying to kill you.”

“Why should I.  You’re here to protect me, are you not?”

I don’t think that was in the terms of my remit.

© Charles Heath 2023

“Betrayal” – the penultimate final draft – Day 24

I’m sure I’ve been down this road more than once, and with the same novel, but whereas the last edit, which was probably the second or third, finished up in the pile, then forgotten.

I’m doing an active update to all my works in progress, and sending them to the editor, after going through the manuscript once again, with a view to publishing.  Hopefully, before the year is out.

…

I was writing Chapter 29 and suddenly I had a bad feeling. You know the sort of feeling you get, you’ve forgotten something, or there wasn’t a lead into an event which will feel like it came from nowhere…

I’m having one of those moments.

Damn.

I’ve forgotten something.

So, I stopped editing, brought up the last eight chapters and started reading.

No, nothing I’ve forgotten. But there is something.

No point going on. This has to run around in my mind for a bit while doing something completely different, like painting a ceiling.

True, I’m in the middle of painting the dining room ceiling and putting it off to get on with the project. The project has hit a speed hump, so it’s back to the painting.

Halfway through the roof, it comes to me.

A basic error, of not making sure all of the points are covered in the story otherwise the reader will say, ok, you said that back in Chapter 18 and now, why haven’t you realised that something’s going to happen because of your negligence.

I know what it is.

And it will require another chapter.

But first, I have to finish the painting.

‘The Devil You Don’t’ – A beta reader’s view

It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.

John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.

So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?

That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.

What should have been solace after disappointment, turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

He suddenly realizes his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.

The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where, in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.

All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.

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Available on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

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