Joe Thomas on writing about one's past within Red Menace

I was born in Hackney in 1977 and for 25 years I wanted to leave. Now, it’s an aspirational address, gentrified and expensive. I was born in Hackney Mothers’ Hospital on Lower Clapton Road which was later to become known as ‘Murder Mile’. I lived on Mildenhall Road, just down from Clapton Pond. I wrote White Riot to try and better understand the Hackney I grew up in, the time and place, and how the borough, it seems to me, is something of a lightning rod for the political and social currents of the country. I wrote Red Menace to extend the geographical focus, to widen it to other areas of east and north London.

Red Menace is a historical, social crime novel about police corruption, institutional racism, the devastating effects of Thatcherism, and the counter-cultural movement of the ‘80’s. The novel takes in Live Aid, the Broadwater Farm uprising, the Wapping Dispute and, like White Riot, is rooted in the Hackney experience of the 1980s. Mark Sanderson, writing in the Times, called White Riot, ‘a love letter to London, seething with outrage’. In Red Menace, the love is still there, but I think the outrage is intensified.

I remember the Hackney Show on Hackney Downs, the Labour Club in Dalston, steel bands and heavy reggae, kids in I Love ILEA and GLC t-shirts, Granny’s takeaway and Chimes nightclub, where, for a period, serious violence was a regular occurrence. 

In the novel, I write about the Hackney Show of 1986, one I went to, and the fictionalising of it is an insight into how I accessed sensual memories, sights and sounds, smells and tastes to try to recreate – and reimagine, resurrect – Hackney in the 1980s.

Here’s an edited extract from the novel that I think is instructive:

Over the weekend, the football season safely finished for another year, there’d been the festival up on Hackney Downs, the Hackney Show. Fairground games and food, Jean Breeze and Dennis Bovell, the London All Stars Steels and the Perpetual Beauty Carnival Club, stunts, stalls and side shows –

Across the park, on the north side, a little bit away from the festivities, a tent emitting pounding reggae, pulsating dub.

He and the boy had wandered over towards it, the towers of the Nightingale Estate to their right, Hackney Downs School to their left –

The tent shook with the soundsystem, the sides flapping, the roof lifting and falling, one or two men dancing on their own just outside it, shirts off and bare feet, eyes red, eyes wild –

Jon felt the bass tearing through him. The boy slowed down a touch as they approached.

Jon shook his head and put a hand on his shoulder. The boy close, like when he was a shy toddler, wrapping himself around Jon’s leg, pouting.

The volume and depth of the music made the lights shake and flash.

Air thick with smoke –

Jon seeing the boy’s eyes start to water, not a great deal else.

They stayed about fifteen minutes, Jon recognising a Steel Pulse track that had been stripped right down and then powered right up, an MC over the top of it, that was enough.

On the way out, one of the Rastas winked at the boy, grinned.

‘Welcome to Jamaica,’ he said.

All of this is true, all of this happened, but how much more is there that I can’t remember? 

Writing about your own past in the context of a transparently political novel, a novel unashamedly interrogating society, does something to your own history; if you can get that right, then it’s a good start.

Red Menace by Joe Thomas (Quercus) Out Now

Live Aid, July 1985. The great and the good of the music scene converge to save the world. But the TV glitz cannot disguise ugly truths about Thatcher's Britain. Jon Davies and Suzi Scialfa have moved on since the inquest into the death of Colin Roach, but they're about to be drawn back into the struggle - Jon by his restless curiosity and Suzi by the reappearance of DC Patrick Noble. Noble's other asset, the salaried spycop Parker, is a pawn in a game he only dimly comprehends. First, he's ordered to infiltrate the Broadwater Farm Estate in Tottenham; next will come Wapping, ground zero of a plot to smash the print unions. But who is Noble working for, and how far can he be trusted? The Iron Lady is reforging the nation, and London with it. Right to Buy may secure her votes, but who really stands to benefit? Corruption is endemic and the gap between rich and poor grows wider by the day. Insurrection seems imminent - all that's needed is a spark.

Books to Look Forward to from Quercus, Riverrun and MacLehose Press

 

January 2022

Dead End Street is by Trevor Wood. A group of vigilantes are carrying out a campaign of harassment against the homeless, hounding them both verbally and physically to get them off the streets. Jimmy Mullen is approached by his friend Gadge, who wants to confront the people behind it but Jimmy has finally got his life back on track. He's working at a hostel for 18 to 25-year-olds and he's reluctant to get involved in anything dodgy. Gadge decides to go it alone but is attacked by two of the vigilantes. The police find him unconscious in an alley, covered in blood. Problem is, there's a dead body in the alley too and it's his blood that Gadge is covered in. He's also got the murder weapon in his hand. Convinced that Gadge has been set up, and feeling guilty that he didn't back him up in the first place, Jimmy returns to the streets to try and find out who's behind his friend's difficulties. Unfortunately, he's about to discover that Gadge has a lot of enemies to choose from.

Ryan Wilkins grew up on a trailer park, a member of what many people would call the criminal classes. As a young Detective Inspector, he's lost none of his disgust with privileged elites - or his objectionable manners. But he notices things; they stick to his eyes. His professional partner, DI Ray Wilkins, of affluent Nigerian-London heritage, is an impeccably groomed, smooth-talking graduate of Balliol College, Oxford. You wouldn't think they would get on. They don't. But when a young woman is found strangled at Barnabas Hall, they're forced to. Rich Oxford is not Ryan's natural habitat. St Barnabas's irascible Provost does not appreciate his forceful line of questioning. But what was the dead woman doing in the Provost's study? Is it just a coincidence that on the night of her murder the college was entertaining Sheik al-Medina, a Gulf state ruler linked to human-rights abuses in his own country and acts of atrocity in others? As tensions rise, things aren't going well. Ray is in despair. Ryan is in disciplinary measures. But their investigation gradually disentangles the links between a Syrian refugee lawyer now working in the college kitchens, a priceless copy of the Koran in the college collection and the identity of the dead woman. A Killing in November is by Simon Mason and introduces an unlikely duo from different sides of the tracks in Oxford in a deftly plotted murder story full of dangerous turns, troubled pasts and unconventional detective work.

The Wanderer is by Luca D'Andrea. It begins with a slap in the face. Out walking his St Bernard, Tony Carcano is confronted by a girl on a motorbike who shows him a photograph from his past. Of him posing with the body of a young woman. Smiling. "Why were you laughing?" It's not the last Tony sees of Sybille Knapp, an orphan whose mother drowned herself in Kreuzwirt lake in 1999. That was the official verdict. Before long, Tony, a bestselling writer, is turning his imagination to working out what really happened. But Kreuzwirt is a sullen, silent community, loyal to the powerful Perkman family, who will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried. And there are other forces at work in this valley. Stories of an ancient evil. Whispers of a figure who stands between this world and the next. The Wanderer sings and his song is the wind.

February 2022

Ruth Galloway and DCI Nelson are on the hunt for a murderer when Covid rears its ugly head. But can they find the killer despite lockdown? Ruth is in London clearing out her mother's belongings when she makes a surprising discovery: a photograph of her Norfolk cottage taken beforeRuth lived there. Her mother always hated the cottage, so why does she have a picture of the place? The only clue is written on the back of the photo: Dawn, 1963. Ruth returns to Norfolk determined to solve the mystery, but then Covid rears its ugly head. Ruth and her daughter are locked down in their cottage, attempting to continue with work and home-schooling. Happily, the house next door is rented by a nice woman called Zoe, who they become friendly with while standing on their doorsteps clapping for carers.Nelson, meanwhile, is investigating a series of deaths of women that may or may not be suicide. When he links the deaths to an archaeological discovery, he breaks curfew to visit the cottage where he finds Ruth chatting to her neighbour whom he remembers as a carer who was once tried for murdering her employer.Only then her name wasn't Zoe. It was Dawn. The Locked Room is by Elly Griffiths.

This nail-biting Glasgow-set crime thriller introduces Billie Carlson, an ex-cop turned Private Investigator. When you've lost everything, you'll stop at nothing. Billie Carlson left the police force under a cloud. Once a promising young officer she now works as a private investigator, rooting out insurance scams and spying on cheating spouses. One morning a distraught young woman comes into her office saying that her baby has been stolen. Her story seems unbelievable, yet something about her makes Billie want to help - Billie knows what it's like to lose someone too. To get to the bottom of the case Billie must rattle some dangerous cages and rely on old police friends for inside help. Soon she discovers a network of crime deeper and far more twisted than she ever could have imagined. But is she in way over her head? Until I Find You is by Anna Smith.

A Good Day to Die is by Amen Alonge. Meet Pretty Boy. Vengeance is on his mind. His real name: Unknown His code of conduct: Don't be a pawn in someone else's game. Never underestimate the enemy. Above all, survive. There is no glory in death. His mission: It's been ten years since Pretty Boy left the big city - today he's back. No one knows why, but it's clear that revenge is on his mind: he is determined to make the person responsible for his exile from the London scene finally pay. But his plans seem derailed when he takes possession of a bracelet, unaware that its original owner has set a high price for its safe return. Suddenly, the hunter becomes the hunted and Pretty Boy will have to find out if it is indeed a 'good day to die'.

Even The Darkest Night is by Javier Cercas. When Melchor goes to investigate the horrific double-murder of a rich printer and his wife in rural Cataluna nothing quite adds up. The young cop from the big city, hero of a foiled terrorist attack, has been sent to Terra Alta till things quieten down. Observant, streetwise and circumspect, Melchor is an also an outsider. The son of a Barcelona prostitute who never knew his father, Melchor rapidly fell into trouble and was jailed at 19, convicted of driving for a Colombian drug cartel. While he was behind bars, he read Hugo's Les Miserables, and then his mother was murdered. Admiring of both Jean Valjean and Javert - but mostly the relentless Javert - he decided to become a policeman. Now he is out for revenge, but he can wait, and meanwhile he has discovered happiness with his wife, the local librarian, and their daughter, who is, of course, called Cossette. Slowly at first, and then more rapidly once ordered to abandon the case, he tracks the clues that will reveal the larger truth behind what appears at first to be a cold-blooded, professional killing.

March 2022

Three women. Two bodies. One big lie...At an elite private school nestled in the Colorado mountains, a tangled web of lies draws together three vastly different women. Natalie, a young office assistant, dreams of having a life like the school moms she deals with every day. Women like Brooke-a gorgeous heiress, ferociously loving mother and serial cheater-and Asha, an overachieving and overprotective mom who suspects her husband of having an affair. Their fates are bound by their relationships with the handsome, charming assistant athletic director Nicholas, who Natalie loves, Brooke wants and Asha needs. But when two bodies are carried out of the school early one morning, it seems the jealousy between mothers and daughters, rival lovers and the haves and have-nots has shattered the surface of this isolated, affluent town-a town where people will stop at nothing to get what they want. Set in a world of vast ranches, chalet-style apartments and mountain mansions, The Lying Club is by Annie Ward and is a juicy thriller of revenge, murder and a shocking conspiracy-one in which the victims aren't who you might think.

Four pregnant women. Three nights of pampering at an exclusive yoga retreat. One too many deadly secrets . . . On a remote farm in the deepest Devonshire countryside, four pregnant women arrive at an exclusive yoga retreat for a five-star weekend of prenatal pampering. The location is idyllic. Their host, Selina, is eager to teach them all she knows about pregnancy and motherhood. But, like Selina, each of the women has a secret. And secrets can be deadly. The Sanctuary is by Charlotte Duckworth. 

April 2022

The House at Helygen is by Victoria Hawthorne. 2019: When Henry Fox is found dead in his ancestral home in Cornwall, the police rule it a suicide, but his pregnant wife, Josie, believes it was murder. Desperate to make sense of Henry's death she embarks on a quest to learn the truth, all under the watchful eyes of Henry's overbearing mother. Josie soon finds herself wrestling against the dark history of Helygen House and ghosts from the past that refuse to stay buried. 1881: New bride Eliza arrives at Helygen House with high hopes for her marriage. Yet when she meets her new mother-in-law, an icy and forbidding woman, her dreams of a new life are dashed. And when Eliza starts to hear voices in the walls of the house, she begins to fear for her sanity and her life. Can Josie piece together the past to make sense of her present, or will the secrets of Helygen House and its inhabitants forever remain a mystery?

Amid the desolate wilderness of the Great Plains of Nebraska, a region so isolated you could drive for hours without seeing another human being, sits Hatchery House. Having served as a church, an asylum and an orphanage, Hatchery is now a treatment facility for orphaned or abandoned children with psychiatric disorders. Haunted by patients past and present, only the most vulnerable find a home within its walls. Dr. Lorelei 'Lore' Webber, a former FBI psychiatrist, has almost grown used to the unorthodox methods used at Hatchery House. But when one of her patients is murdered, Lore finds herself dragged into the centre of an investigation that unearths startling truths, shocking discoveries, and untold cruelty. And as the investigation unravels, Lore is forced to confront the past she's spent her whole life running from - a secret that threatens to undo her entirely. Those Who Return is by Kassandra Montag. 

Young Beasts at Play is by Davide Longo. September 2008. Commissario Arcadipane arrives at the scene of a macabre discovery: the bones of twelve men and women buried in the countryside near Torino. By the next morning, a task force specialising in mass graves from WWII is already in place. But something doesn't feel right: one of the femurs shows signs of an operation that couldn't have taken place before the seventies. Suspecting a cover-up, Arcadipane launches his own investigation, enlisting his old mentor, Corso Bramard, long retired, and Isa, a young officer still haunted by the unexplained death of her father. These mismatched allies - one at last at peace, one jaded to the point of breakdown and one under a permanent disciplinary cloud - will unveil a cruel political conspiracy that someone wants covered up for the second time.

May 2022

The Last to Disappear is by Jo Spain. A luxury resort. Three missing women. One body. When young London professional Alex Evans is informed that his sister's body has been pulled from an icy lake in Northern Lapland, he assumes his irresponsible sister accidentally drowned. He travels to the wealthy winter resort where Vicky worked as a tour-guide and meets Agatha Koskinen, the detective in charge. Agatha is a no-nonsense single mother of three who already thinks there's more to Vicky's case than meets the eye. As the two form an unlikely alliance, Alex also begins to suspect the small town where his sister lived and died is harbouring secrets. It's not long before he learns that three other women have gone missing from the area in the past and that his sister may have left him a message. On the surface, Koppe, Lapland is a winter wonderland. But in this remote, frozen place, death seems only ever a heartbeat away.

Dead Rich is by G W Shaw. Super yachts are secretive, like their owners. The bigger the richer. Like castles, they are created to inspire awe. Like castles too, they are defended. They are an entire world, separate from the rest of us. Kai, a carefree once-successful musician is invited by his new Russian girlfriend Zina to join her family's Caribbean holiday. Impulsively accepting he learns that Zina is the daughter of a Russian oligarch, Stepan Pirumov and that the trip is aboard his yacht, the Zinaida, moored in St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. The crew consists of Captain Marius Falk, the first mate Erin Wade and a hastily assembled staff, including a chief stewardess Marissa from Miami, a chief engineer from Lagos and a personal trainer from Los Angeles. All know how to behave around the very rich. On arrival Kai discovers that the head of security has been arrested, armed guards are below deck, there's an onboard panic room and a strong sense of all not being quite right beneath the gleaming surfaces of the Pirumov's lives. An unnerving presence punctures the atmosphere: a murderous imposter is on board the Zinaida, but who is it? Kai will find that the only person he can trust will be Erin and that the world of the super-rich will become a prison from which they must escape.

June 2022

A woman is found wandering the corridors of Nobel Hospital in Stockholm, accompanied by a young boy. She appears to be looking for a man who was involved in a car accident earlier that day. Meanwhile, in one of the emergency rooms, Tekla Berg is fighting to save a patient who was seriously injured in the same incident. The resulting chaos goes beyond anything anyone could have predicted, leaving hospital staff, police and everyone else involved equally shocked and perplexed. Hospital Director Monica Carlsson has stepped up her attempts to privatise her fiefdom with the launch of an exclusive patient hotel, a controversial liver transplant unit and the prestigious recruitment of star surgeon Klas Nystroem. It soon becomes obvious that Klas has his own agenda and is working to undermine Tekla at every turn. But Tekla is too distracted to meet this challenge head on: she has become obsessed with the mystery surrounding the woman and her young charge - for the boy's identity remains unknown and no trace of his past can be found. A Grain of Truth is by Christian Unge. 

Blog Blast for The Untameable by Guillermo Arriaga - Out now!

 As part of the Quercus blog blast for The Untameable by Guillermo Arriaga read the review below.

The Untameable is set in the late 1960s, and is an epic saga about revenge and retribution by a teenage boy seeking vengeance for the murder of his brother. The revenge story is interwoven with the story of that of an Inuit hunter and its prey. The narrative journey traverses Mexico and Canada, where the reader is introduced to Juan - the young protagonist in a series of short but incredibly descriptive paragraphs.

Juan and his older brother Carlos have hardworking parents who attempt to raise them out of poverty by sending them to private school; but to no avail as both boys are soon mixed up in a network of misfortune, cruelty and dishonesty. Despite this, both are successful rather to the chagrin of a Catholic hit squad that is working in tandem with corrupt police. With the death of his brother Carlos - to whom he is devoted and that of his parents and grandmother, Juan is having to deal with his own bereavement and brimming anger alongside the fact that he now has to defend himself. 

To read the rest of the review please go here.

The Untameable by Guillermo Arriaga (Published by Quercus Publishing) Out Now.

Yukon, Canada's far north. A young man tracks a wolf through the wilderness. The one his grandfather warned him about: "Of all the wolves you will see in your life, one alone will be your master." In Mexico City, Juan Guillermo has pledged vengeance. For his murdered brother, Carlos. For his parents, sentenced to death by their grief. But in 1960s Mexico justice is sold to the highest bidder, and the Catholic fanatics who killed Carlos are allied to Zunita, a corrupt and influential police commander. If he is to quench his thirst for revenge Juan Guillermo will have to answer his inner call of the wild and discover what links his destiny to a hunter on the other side of America.

Elly Griffiths on The Postscript Murders

When I came to write the Ruth books, I turned to my Aunt Marge, who lived in Norfolk. Marge, a retired Maths teacher, was the perfect research assistant. In The Janus Stone, when Ruth and Nelson are involved in a deadly race on the Broads (it’s more exciting than it sounds, I promise) Marge and I traced the entire route in her boat, even to scraping under Potter Heigham Bridge. Marge took me to museums and archaeological digs. She told me about folklore and tide times. She seemed to know every pub and every church in a county where both proliferate.

Then Marge moved from Norfolk. She wanted to be nearer to us and to her son. She bought a flat on the south coast with a magnificent view of the sea. She loved her new location but something about it - maybe the sea air - seemed to make her dwell on murder. Marge had always been an avid reader of crime novels but now her head teemed with ideas for…well, with ideas for how to kill people.  She kept a notebook and, at least once a week, she’d ring me with a new homicide suggestion. I used one of her scenarios in The House At Sea’s End and it was described by the Financial Times as ‘particularly nasty’. Marge framed the cutting. 

I started to think. What if there was such a thing as a murder consultant? And what if that consultant was an innocent-looking elderly lady living in sheltered accommodation? And so the idea for The Postscript Murders was born. 

The Postcript Murders by Elly Griffiths (Quercus Publishing)

PS: Thanks for the murders. The death of a ninety-year-old woman with a heart condition should absolutely not be suspicious.

 DS Harbinder Kaur certainly sees nothing to concern her in carer Natalka's account of Peggy Smith's death. But when Natalka reveals that Peggy lied about her heart condition and that she had been sure someone was following her... And that Peggy Smith had been a 'murder consultant' who plotted deaths for authors, and knew more about murder than anyone has any right to... And when clearing out Peggy's flat ends in Natalka being held at gunpoint by a masked figure... Well then DS Harbinder Kaur thinks that maybe there is no such thing as an unsuspicious death after all. PS: Trust no one.

Domestic Darkness by L K Fox

Some while back I set out to write the kind of book that’s utterly alien to me in its construction; a psychological thriller.

Good psychological thrillers fascinate me, from Ira Levin’s ‘A Kiss Before Dying’ to Gillian Flynn’s ‘Gone Girl’. The creation and sustaining of suspense is a completely different discipline to constructing a mystery, and within the field there are further sub-genres, one of which we now call ‘domestic suspense’, which usually has a female protagonist and barely involves a police investigation. A favourite is ‘Mischief’ by Charlotte Armstrong, which seamlessly unfolds in real time, as a woman staying in a hotel starts to suspect that a child is in danger. The novels of Margaret Millar, a forgotten author just coming back into print, are even better, but reading them is very different to writing them. I tend to construct matrices of facts rather than delving into the minds of two or three characters and putting them through the emotional wringer. This is partly because I don’t usually write first person narratives.

Four years later, fourteen drafts in, after dozens of reworkings from every angle and a hundred titles selected and discarded, the book was bought by Quercus. Now I experienced how a really thorough edit can reshape and improve a book; it’s the largest I’ve received on a manuscript and the most complex, because the story is about memory and emotion, and each editorial change pulls apart the next. Think of a jigsaw in which two thirds of all the pieces are missing an edge and you have some idea of the difficulty level involved in reassembly. But it’s been a fascinating challenge.

My editor was as excited as I was, so the novel became a big departure for me. The strategy was to start it as an e-book, then bring it into print. As it’s not written in my usual style I came up with a pseudonym; LK Fox. It’s non-gender specific, will sit right next to my regular books (FOW-FOX), and happens to be my mother’s initials. Next it needed a title and an image. That’s how ‘Little Boy Found’ was born.

I wanted to see if I could bring a new twist to the genre, and came up with a couple of angles I’d never seen in this kind of novel. Did I succeed in ringing the changes? Perhaps you’d best be the judge of that!

Little Boy Found by LK Fox
(ebook published by Quercus on 6^th July 2017)

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WHEN HE FOUND HIS LITTLE BOY, NICK THOUGHT THE NIGHTMARE WAS OVER . . . IT WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING.

One rainy morning, just after Nick drops off his young son Gabriel outside the crowded school gates, he has a minor collision with another car. The driver won't surrender his insurance details, so Nick photographs the licence plate. When he gets home, he enlarges the shot on his phone and spots something odd about the picture - Gabriel in the back seat, being driven away by a stranger. Nick needs to know what happened to his boy, but losing Gabriel turns out to be far less terrible than the shock of finding him. Now, to discover the truth, he must relive the nightmare all over again...Be warned, this is not another missing child story: what happened to Nick and his son is far more shocking.

A riverrun, past Peter May’s Cast Iron

Meeting former journalist, screen-writer turned bestselling crime-writer Peter May, has become an annual highlight to start the year for the Shots Magazine Editors.

So thanks to Sophie Ransom and the Quercus Publishing team we met up with Peter in a restaurant in Farringdon, West London. Peter is published in the new riverrun Imprint managed by renowned publisher Jon Riley, who is also Peter’s long-standing Editor. In case you were wondering where this niche imprint gets its name, remember the opening to Finnigan’s Wake by James Joyce –

Riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Joining the Shots Editors were several journalists including the ubiquitous Barry Forshaw, Jake Kerridge from The Telegraph, Jon Coates of The Express and of course the team from rriverun and Quercus.

So what has Peter in store for his readers in 2017 with CAST IRON?

In 1989, a killer dumped the body of twenty-year-old Lucie Martin into a picturesque lake in the West of France. Fourteen years later, during a summer heat wave, a drought exposed her remains - bleached bones amid the scorched mud and slime.

No one was ever convicted of her murder. But now, forensic expert Enzo Macleod is reviewing this stone cold case - the toughest of those he has been challenged to solve.

Yet when Enzo finds a flaw in the original evidence surrounding Lucie's murder, he opens a Pandora's box that not only raises old ghosts but endangers his entire family.

Fellow crime-writer Michael Jecks reviewed CAST IRON at Shots –

…........this was a seriously competent crime novel, with more twists and turns than the average anaconda. Peter May’s writing is … well, I’ll admit to a certain professional jealousy here. He writes with a precision and clarity that is all too rare nowadays. It is fluid, brilliant and entrancing. There’s an almost poetic quality to his sentences which I found just brilliant.

So, in short, would I recommend this book? Yes, and more, I am going to get a hold of his previous titles in the series too. It is clear that this book does not deserve to be read on its own. As an individual piece of work, it is very good. However, it leaves me feeling that I had read one of the later Harry Potter books without knowing the story of the main characters before. There is much that I look forward to learning of Enzo’s background.

I would rate this as a highly recommended novel.

Read Mike Jeck’s full review from Shots Magazine Here

CAST IRON is the 6th and Final Book in Enzo Files Series, and for those who only know Peter for his award-winning Black House [the Lewis Trilogy], or Entry island - you are in for a treat, as Quercus / riverrrun have released the Enzo Files backlist in Paperback.

So after some mingling and chatting over a most generous lunch; riverrun Publisher Jon Riley introduced Peter’s latest work

And then Peter spoke in his self-deprecating manner, and you can see the genuine warm relationship between author and publisher as well as how many of us got past the first page of Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake.

We present a few photographs of the lunch with Peter May.

And a reminder, Shots have discounted copies of CAST IRON available from our bookstore HERE [50% off Cover Price]

Another remember, Peter continues his talks as he tours promoting CAST IRON, so if you wish to get a signed copy, see his itinerary below.

Always check with his web-page HERE in case of any changes, and remember to book ahead to ensure you get a seat, as Peter’s talks are always full houses as he is an extraordinary raconteur, and is as amusing as he is insightful.

In fact, apart from being an extraordinary writer of crime-fiction, he’s a top bloke.

Monday 16th January - PERTH

19.00           Culture Perth and Kinross in association with Waterstones Perth

St John’s Kirk, 31 St John’s Place, Perth

Tickets: £6

Tel for tickets:  01738 444949 (library) or 01738 630013 (Waterstones)                        

Tuesday 17th January - EDINBURGH

12.30-14.00        Formal signing at Waterstones Edinburgh

Waterstones West End, 128 Princes Street, Edinburgh EH2 4AD

Contact: Euan Tait


Email: Events.EdinburghWestEnd@waterstones.com


Phone: 0131 226 2666                                                                             

18.30            Edinburgh Library event in association with Blackwell’s

Edinburgh Central Library, George IV Bridge                                         

Tel:  0131 242 8000 (library) or 0131 622 8222 (Blackwell’s)                                      

Wednesday 18th January - GLASGOW

18.30            Glasgow Life in association with Waterstone’s Sauchiehall Street

Partick Burgh Halls, 9 Burgh Hall Street, Glasgow

Tickets: £8

Tel:  0141 353 8000 or 0141 332 9105 (Waterstones)                                

Thursday 19th January – MANCHESTER

19.00        WATERSTONES Manchester, Deansgate

Waterstone’s, Deansgate, Manchester

Tickets: £5/£3

Tel:  0161 837 3000                                                                                                 

Monday 23rd January - OXFORD

19.00            WATERSTONES Oxford

Waterstone’s, William Baker House, Broad St, Oxford OX1 3AF

Tickets: £5 or £3 with a Waterstones Loyalty Card
           

Tel:  01865 790212                                                                                                     

Tuesday 24th January - LONDON

19.00            WATERSTONES Kensington

Waterstone’s, 193 Kensington High St, Kensington

Tickets: £5 or £3 with a Waterstones Loyalty Card
  

Tel for tickets: 020 7 937 843

Shots Magazine would like to thank Sophie Ransom, Jon Riley and the riverrun and Quercus Publishing teams for an excellent lunch; and or course Peter May, for the wonderful, insightful read that is CAST IRON.