I'm happy to report that my fourth mainstream thriller, Still Waters Run from The Book Folks is doing okay for itself and picking up some nice reviews.
In late summer, sixteen-year-old Dan and his recently divorced mother head to a Norfolk seaside town’s holiday park for a vacation.
Shy Dan soon strikes up a friendship with a girl of his age, quirky and pretty Charlie, and his mother is swept off her feet by a suave local property developer.
Yet a shadow is cast over their stay when one of the camp attendants, Mia, goes missing. And things go from bad to worse when her body turns up near the town’s derelict lido.
Charlie draws Dan into her efforts to discover the truth about Mia’s death. But as the locals close ranks, cracks begin to show in their new friendships, and he’ll soon find himself in deep water.
This could turn out to be a holiday that mother and son will remember for all the wrong reasons, if they survive.
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Stephen Bacon posted a review on his own blog and said he had "a real blast reading" it. As well as picking up on the nostalgia, he also made the perceptive comment that "there's an interesting romantic aspect for Jude here too, and one that has much to say about the desires and vulnerabilities of middle-aged characters, an angle that is often neglected in crime fiction."
I'm really pleased about that, because the Jude thread is as important as the Dan/Charlie teenaged one in the book and I came to really like Jude as a character - both in herself and also writing her.
You can check out the rest of Steve's review here and there's more to see at both Amazon and Goodreads (links below).
As we move into 2023 I'm hard at work on the first draft of Book 5, which features a married couple going on a guided hike in Northumberland and finding that someone in their party doesn't want everyone to come away alive.
In the meantime, thank you for your continued support and if you choose to read one of my books, don't forget to leave a rating/review!
