Blog Tour Extract: Your Guilty Secret - Rebecca Thornton

You know Lara King. 

The top billing of the showbiz pages, you've seen her every morning; over your breakfast, on your commute to work. You know everything about her; you've dissected her life. 

Her perfect relationship with film-star Matthew Raine. Her beautiful six-year-old daughter Ava. 

And so when a terrible incident shatters the family's carefully constructed facade, a media frenzy ensues. 

What happens when the perfect woman begins to unravel? When her whole life is really just a lie? One she will do anything she can to stop you from finding out?

This story is . . .

YOUR GUILTY SECRET. 

Your Guilty Secret - Rebecca Thornton

ISBN - 9781785760754

Publisher - Bonnier Zaffre

Find - Goodreads | Book Depository | Kindle UK |

Extract 

August 26th, 2018

1530hrs

What would you do if your child disappeared into thin air? I mean, what would you really do?

You might pound the pavements screaming their name, breath sour with fear. Air escapes you.

And when you get home, escorted by the police, you might fall into the arms of your husband or wife or a member of your family. Slamming your fists into their chests, your knees drop ping to the ground. Pleading. With who, you don't really know. And then with a renewed vigour and a sense of hope, you'd go out again. Back to where your child disappeared. You'd watch as the police knocked on surrounding doors and took witness notes and because you were there, in the action, you might feel you were doing something. Anything.

You might consider me for a minute when I tell you that my child has disappeared, yet despite the world's gaze on me, I have absolutely no control over where I look for her. I cannot open the front door to our home in The Hidden Hills. I cannot press the pattern of small, shiny gold buttons that remotely open the huge iron gates, with the hand-carved wooden sign on it. Los Palisades. I cannot use my thumbprint to access the extra security we had installed.

If I could, I might for a moment sweep my gaze across the lawns for any sign of her - my eye line darting in and around the uniformly cut grass, the luscious, rare rose blooms spilling down from the clean lines of our house - even though we were miles from where she disappeared. I'd still glance over to the pool - as I always did. A habit I'd been unable to relinquish from before she'd learned to swim. The clench of my stomach just until I reassured myself, two or three times over, that there was no small body, face down in the softly lapping turquoise water.

I would then race down our cobbled drive, lined with newly buffed cars. I'd curse the palm trees forcing me to weave my way around their silvery trunks. I'd ignore the burn of my lungs. The way my legs would barely be able to hold me up. I'd run, purely because I'd be incapable of driving. Or perhaps it would kick start my senses afresh. And I'd try and think back to where it had all started, my throat swollen with the catch of my breath.

I'd try and revisit that moment we'd left the house, water bottles under our arms. Me, in workout gear despite having no intention to exercise. Her in a navy sundress embroidered rabbits across the collar. Silver Superga trainers. Her face tilted up to mine, scrunched up against the sun.

“Treat day, she'd said. Can you believe it? Just you and me.'

I'd think about this as I tried to remember, left or right? Which way had I manoeuvred the car?

Had I thought about the paps as I normally did when we left the house? Had I planned my whole route along the back streets, where they might not be lurking, eyes scanning for my number plate? The way their lenses followed me, like snipers. Or had I just driven aimlessly, enjoying the day panning out ahead of us, with nothing to do. No one to see. Just me and my daughter. But I can't remember the ins and outs of my thoughts from this morning. If I had known what was going to happen, I'd have taken more care to engage with my inner monologue. To remember the way I'd felt a little impatient as Ava had kicked at the tyres of our car before she'd climbed into the back seat. The slight twist of her front tooth as it pushed its way through her gums. I'd have looked carefully at the way her body was formed. The soft roundness of her stomach. The fine, blonde hairs travel ling down her tanned arms.

But of course, I never thought that today would end up like this. I do, at other times. Think the worst. Catastrophise. But there was something so perfect about the way today had been panning out. Just me and her. A special treat. Ice cream. It was the first day in a long while I'd felt able to breathe.

That in itself should have been the first sign of things to come.

It was Detective Mcgraw who sat me down in the police station and told me that he was driving me straight home and that I had to stay indoors. Those green eyes of his, continuously locked onto one focal point a fraction above my right shoulder. White face, a fine tracing of freckles smudged across his top lip.

'I need to be out there though. Looking for her. She's my daughter. Please. There must be a way?'

'I know. And I'm sorry. We can't risk hampering the investigation. Thousands of people are out there, looking. And so we need you to stay inside your house.'

I knew he was right. That it was for the best. You see, I wanted you to be looking for her, without distraction. Surely I had learned by now – stay out of view in times of trouble. After all, a

wrongly placed smile, a casual lift of my eyebrow could set you off, and that's not what I need right now. I'm getting ahead of myself. I suppose I should tell you the things that happened less than six hours earlier. Just after we had pulled out of our drive, sun beating down through the windscreen.

I'll tell you as much as I can remember. The same details I told Detective Mcgraw in my oak-panelled study after he'd told me they'd taken my computer and mobile phone. We'd sat, me at my desk with my leather in-trays and stationery drawers all in straight lines in front of me. He was opposite me, in an ergonomic swivel chair that kept twisting from underneath him.

'I'd planned a special day out, I told him. "Just us. It's such... It was such a beautiful day, the words spill out my mouth.

'Any reason for the outing? An occasion, perhaps?'

'Yes. It was my way of saying thank you. For the way Ava behaved for the announcement. Did you see it?'

'I read about it.'

'She had been so good, I continued. 'So I told her that I'd take her out.'

And then what? We've pieced together as much as we can of your journey, mapping the CCTV footage. You hadn't pinned any of your locations on your public social media accounts. Any private ones we need to know about?'

'No.' ‘OK. If you could tell me what happened this morning, then?'

“At nine forty-five this morning we drove to Laurel Canyon. To go for a walk. On the way there, Ava grew tired. She lay down."

I'll Find You - Liz Lawler

Emily Jacobs, a nurse, is in hospital for a minor operation. When she wakes in the night, woozy with anaesthetic, she sees the doctor frantically trying to resuscitate the woman in the bed next to her. In the morning, she is told that she must have had a nightmare. The bed has been empty all along . . .

When Emily returns to work she discovers a bracelet that she believes belonged to the missing woman. Soon, she becomes convinced that her colleagues at the hospital are hiding a terrible secret. 
What if she's wrong? What if her own troubled past has affected her more than she knows?

But what if she's right? 

What else could they be capable of?

I've spent a lot of time in various hospitals, both as a patient and as a nurse (albeit a student!), so the premise of I'll Find You both intrigued and scared the pants off me! I was also exposed to both the book and movie version of Coma by Robin Cook at a very young age so how I ever ended up training as a nurse I'll never know...

Emily Jacobs is a nurse, a nurse with a troubled past. A year previous to the story's opening, Emily's younger sister, Zoe, went missing and has never been found. The two have always been close, despite a ten year age gap, and at the time of her disappearance, Zoe was also training to be a nurse. Now Emily is in hospital for minor surgery at her new place of work, a private hospital with no memories of her sister. What follows is a rollercoaster and nightmare rolled into one and Emily, already seeing a psychologist, starts to wonder if she is losing her mind, especially when she starts to think she's seeing Zoe again. 

The hospital no longer feels like the haven Emily thought it might be and contacts the detective inspector from her sister's case. Geraldine has become close to Emily since meeting her, and at first, is convinced that it's Emily's mental health causing all the problems. However, when the signs point to something truly sinister, it's time for her to start looking into Emily's claims.

No longer sure who she can trust or who she can even talk to about what's going on, Emily digs deeper into behind the scenes of the hospital and staff in the hopes that whatever is happening might just be linked to Zoe and she can finally find out what has happened to her beloved sister.

I'll Find You is full of twists and turns, as Emily lurches from one theory to another, but it keeps you on your toes from start to finish with some truly horrifying moments. If you have any inpatient stays planned soon I'd maybe not take I'll Find You as a hospital read, or if you have even a slight phobia about being locked in a hospital morgue... I very much enjoyed I'll Find You from start to finish, and the discovery of the truth of both Zoe's disappearance and what's going on elsewhere was heartbreaking and tragic. It's scary to realize that a throwaway comment by one person can turn into a terrifying and deadly obsession.

Huge thanks to Ellen, Bonnier Zaffre, and Liz for the chance to read I'll Find You!

I'll Find You - Liz Lawler
Publisher - Bonnier Zaffre
Release date - eBook | January 24th, 2019 Paperback | May 2nd, 2019
Find - Goodreads | Kindle UK | Book Depository

Review and Q&A: The Secrets You Hide - Kate Helm

In her eyes, no-one is innocent...

A knock-out read for fans of Clare Mackintosh, Anatomy of a Scandal and Apple Tree Yard.

Georgia Sage has a gift: she can see evil in people. As a courtroom artist, she uses her skills to help condemn those who commit terrible crimes. After all, her own brutal past means she knows innocence is even rarer than justice.

But when she is drawn back into the trial that defined her career, a case of twisted family betrayal, she realizes her own reckless pursuit of justice may have helped the guilty go free.

As Georgia gets closer to the truth behind the Slater family, something happens that threatens not only her career - but even her own sanity. At first, she fears her guilt around the events of her terrible childhood is finally coming back to haunt her.

The truth turns out to be even more terrifying...

THE SECRETS YOU HIDE is an ambitious rocket of a novel. Every layer, every twist, every revelation makes you question the very characters you thought you could trust, and rethink a plot you thought you were beginning to unravel... 

Kate Helm is also known as Kate Harrison and has published numerous books both fiction and non-fiction, including the YA trilogy that started with Soul Beach which I loved. This is her crime fiction debut, hence the name change, and it's a corker of a crime debut!

Georgia Sage is one of a dying breed in this digital age, a court artist. The person who draws the sketches you see on television, of the judges and jury, the defendants and other people of interest - all brilliantly brought to life in pencil and pastel.

But Georgia wasn't always Georgia and she knows the horrors and brutality all too well. It's this legacy that leads her to believe she can 'sense' good or evil in a defendant. When Georgia starts to see things, people that can't possibly be there, she believes her past is catching up with her and that she is going mad.

Blaming what turns out to be a desperately sad medical diagnosis on stress, insomnia, and even too much alcohol, Georgia carries on with her life.  Despite everything, she signs up for a new book project which takes her back to one of her most memorable cases of her court artist career. When she starts to jump to conclusions about what really may have happened, she ends up neck deep in trouble and with her life in danger.

The Secrets You Hide is a character-driven novel, all the way through, and has some of the most fleshed out characters I've read in a long time. Georgia is a simply wonderful character. Realizing she's about to lose everything that means something she throws herself into her work, knowing that what she's doing is driven by purely selfish reasons. Also standing out is Georgia's former fiance, Oliver, a barrister who is now married with a child on the way. Even though Georgia pushed him away he never gives up on her and is determined to remain in her life which is quite easy considering he is a barrister!

The Secrets You Hide is a page-turner from start to finish. I started reading it the minute I downloaded it and didn't put it down until I had finished, a couple of hours later.  It's a slow-burner of a novel but it builds up the tension perfectly, leading to what was an excellent confrontation with the real villain of the piece. I very much enjoyed Secrets and am certainly hoping that we'll be hearing more from Kate in her crime writing persona.

The Secrets You Hide - Kate Helm

Publisher - Bonnier Zaffre

Release date - October 4th, 2018

Find - Goodreads | Kindle UK

Q & A With Kate Helm

1. What inspired The Secrets You Hide?

KH - It came from hearing a podcast while I was at the gym about a courtroom artist in America who described what her job was like: I worked as a court reporter when I was a very young journalist, and I realized this was a way to write about justice and guilt and the secrets about ourselves that we all try to keep hidden.

2. What drew you to thriller writing specifically?

KH - I love reading thrillers but I hadn’t planned to write one until I had this idea – now I have been completely bitten by the crime-writing bug and spend an awful lot of time thinking about deadly scenarios, high emotions, and twists. It’s really cathartic and the thriller writing and reading community is just so welcoming too.

3. The book is about the world of the court artist. Are you artistic?

KH - I would love to be artistic but I can’t draw or paint to save my life (except walls: I am quite good at decorating!). I failed Art at school when I was going through a bit of a monochrome Gothic phase, but I love colour, especially the names of all the different shades, which are like a palette to paint word pictures with. It was fascinating to research how sketch artists work, and I share Georgia’s fascination with faces and portraits, but I will leave creating art to the people with a talent for it!

4. How would you describe the main character Georgia in five words?

KH - Damaged, vengeful, loyal, compassionate, courageous.

5. What is the best thing about being an author?

KH - So many things to choose from but I think it’s a huge privilege to be able to create characters and invent stories that become so real in readers’ minds that they want to talk about their decisions and disasters!

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Guest Post: Do's And Don't's Of Crime Writing - G J Minett

Today on the Outsider it's a pleasure to welcome G. J. Minett, whose latest book is Anything For Her, an amazing follow-up to The Hidden Legacy and Lie In Wait. My review of Anything For Her can be found here, and huge thanks to G. J. Minett, Emily Burns & Bonnier Zaffre for including me on the tour! Enjoy reading reading G. J.'s post on what you should and shouldn't do in crime writing.

Dos and Don’ts of crime writing

DO keep a healthy balance between plot and character. It’s so easy to get carried away with the storyline but readers need to see the development of a central character they can believe in and care about. They don’t want cardboard cut-outs or cartoon sketches.

DON’T make the central character a paragon of virtue. Readers like to identify with someone who is flawed, maybe unreliable or even dangerous, as long as the redeeming features outweigh the negatives.

DO make sure you come up with an opening that grabs the reader’s attention. Most people have a ‘to be read list’ that is spiralling out of control and not everyone sees every book through to the end.

DON’T confuse pace with breakneck speed. Pace is a variable, not a constant. If every scene ends with a cliffhanger and the hero wriggles out of seemingly impossible situations every 30 pages or so, the overkill will alienate the reader. Remember: pace can be measured and considered, allowing everyone a chance to take a deep breath and prepare for the next onslaught.

DO treat your readers with a bit of respect. If they are prepared to devote several days to reading what you’ve produced, there’s a duty of care and you need to avoid huge coincidences or Deus ex Machina interventions that could have been avoided with a little more imagination and effort.

DON’T agonise for too long over the quality of what you’ve written on any given day. Get it down on paper – you can always improve on what’s there at a later date. It’s when there’s nothing there to work on that you have a problem.

DO showcase your skills. Everything you picked up on writing courses and in workshops is just as relevant in a crime novel as in any other genre and readers are perfectly capable of appreciating quality writing wherever they find it.

DON’T go out of your way to imitate. Find your own style and work at it from novel to novel. If you are too anxious to copy others you’ll inevitably lose out in any comparison. Make your own writing the yardstick.

DO think hard about your locations. Some readers derive considerable pleasure from a setting they know well and the demands of plotlines and word counts can sometimes prevent writers from giving the story the detailed backdrop it might need.

DON’T info dump. It’s so tempting, when you’ve researched something in great depth, to want to demonstrate what you’ve picked up but the aim of the research is to provide a backdrop, not dominate the page.

DO provide a twist or two to keep the readers on their toes. A real surprise at the end is particularly effective as it’s what the readers will take away with them. Be careful not to overdo it though – by definition, these twists are out of the ordinary and the difference between the unexpected and the utterly implausible can be wafer thin.

DON’T kid yourself that there’s a substitute for sitting down in front of the laptop and writing. There’s not. There are distractions aplenty and you can try to justify them in the name of research or downtime or networking but what gets the novel written is sheer hard graft and a bit of inspiration. Sit down, shut the door and WRITE.

Having said all that, I do most of the don’ts – and fail to do most of the dos – at least 50% of the time. All part of the fun of being a writer.

Anything For Her - G. J. Minett

Publisher - Bonnier Zaffre

Release Date - November 30th, 2017

Find - Goodreads | Kindle UK

About The Author

Graham was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire and lived there for 18 years before studying for a degree in Modern and Medieval Languages at Churchill College, Cambridge.

He taught for several years, first in Cheltenham and then in West Sussex before opting to go part-time and start an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester. Completing the course in 2008, he gained a distinction for the dissertation under the guidance of novelist, Alison MacLeod and almost immediately won the Segora Short Story Competition with ‘On the Way Out’.

Other awards soon followed, most notably his success in the 2010 Chapter One novel competition with what would eventually become the opening pages of his debut novel. He was signed up by Peter Buckman of the Ampersand Agency, who managed to secure a two-book deal with twenty7, the digital-first adult fiction imprint of Bonnier Publishing.

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The Perfect Victim - Corrie Jackson

Husband, friend, colleague . . . killer?

Charlie and Emily Swift are the Instagram-perfect couple: gorgeous, successful and in love. But then Charlie is named as the prime suspect in a gruesome murder and Emily's world falls apart.

Desperate for answers, she turns to Charlie's troubled best friend, London Herald journalist, Sophie Kent. Sophie knows police have the wrong man - she trusts Charlie with her life.

Then Charlie flees.

Sophie puts her reputation on the line to clear his name. But as she's drawn deeper into Charlie and Emily's unravelling marriage, she realises that there is nothing perfect about the Swifts.

As she begins to question Charlie's innocence, something happens that blows the investigation - and their friendship - apart.

Now Sophie isn't just fighting for justice, she's fighting for her life.

After the brilliance of Breaking Dead Sophie Kent is back and this time the truth is much closer to home than she wants to believe. Sophie is at a crime scene, a drowning, and discovers the victim was somehow connected to one of her best friends, the Herald's Business Editor Charlie Swift. When it's established that the victim is Sabrina Hobbs, a prominent lawyer, and she didn't drown, she was murdered. Sophie links Sabrina to Charlie, at first in a business way, but then she discovers that the two may have been intimately involved. Only she can't ask Charlie because he has disappeared and everyone's thoughts about him start to turn to a darker possibility. Is Charlie Swift a murderer? Sophie doesn't want to believe this, especially as Charlie is newly married to Emily after tragically losing his first wife, in a drowning accident... Do Charlie and Emily really have the Instagram perfect life that Emily insists they have? Or is the perfect victim right under everybody's noses? 

Sophie once again is struggling in her personal life. Still obsessing over her brother's death she will grab at anything that may lead to information so when it turns out that there may be a link between Charlie, her brother and a religious group called Christ Clan, she leaps in with both feet again. DCI Durand makes a welcome return but unfortunately for Sophie, the man in charge of Charlie's case holds a personal grudge against her because of a connection to events in Breaking Dead. We get to see the story from Emily's point of view too, the state of her marriage in the weeks leading up to the murder and the disappearance, and her state of mind.

As with Breaking Dead, I was hooked from the very first page. There seems to be an awful lot going on and more than one plot strand but Corrie Jackson weaves them together skillfully over the course of the story and by the end, having stumbled through more twists and turns than the first book, she leads you to a most unexpected conclusion, which most people won't even have thought about. Given that Charlie works at a newspaper it was fascinating to see how everybody initially thought completely incapable of any wrongdoing, even infidelity, but as time passed and Charlie stayed missing, even the most loyal of friends and colleagues can start to have their doubts. The crumbling relationship between the missing Charlie and his colleagues as they struggle to accept that they may have a murderer in their midst and that it's up to them to unmask the facts to convict him if it is indeed true was extremely well written and great to see other people's opinion of him.

The Perfect Victim doesn't let up from start to finish, there's an energy about Corrie Jackson's writing that compels you to keep turning the pages and her characters are completely engaging, although not always likable, which makes them all the more human. It's a fantastic sequel to Breaking Dead and I have only one request. Sophie Kent book three, please!!!

The Perfect Victim - Corrie Jackson

ISBN - 9781785761829

Publisher - Bonnier Zaffre

Release Date - November 16th, 2017

Find - Goodreads | Book Depository

About The Author

Corrie Jackson has been a journalist for fifteen years. During that time she has worked at Harper’s Bazaar, the Daily Mail, Grazia, and Glamour.

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Don't forget to check out all the other participants on the blog tour, for links check out Bonnier Zaffre's Twitter feed!

Huge thanks to Bonnier Zaffre and Netgalley for my copy of the book!