Tag: Q&A

Blog Tour/Q&A: The Death Chamber by Lesley Thomson

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The Death Chamber Blog Tour

I’m thrilled to be co-hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for The Death Chamber by Lesley Thomson, the sixth instalment in the bestselling The Detective’s Daughter series.   I took part in the blog tour for the previous book in the series, The Dog Walker, featuring a fascinating Q&A with Lesley.  I’m delighted that Lesley has agreed to answer some more of my questions and I’m sure you will find her answers this time equally fascinating.

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Lesley Thomson The Death Chamber_2018About the Book

Queen’s Jubilee, 1977: Cassie Baker sees her boyfriend kissing another girl at the village disco. Upset, she heads home alone and is never seen again.

Millennium Eve, 1999: DCI Paul Mercer finds Cassie’s remains in a field. Now he must prove the man who led him there is guilty.

When Mercer’s daughter asks Stella Darnell for help solving the murder, Stella sees echoes of herself. Another detective’s daughter.   With her sidekick sleuth, Jack, Stella moves to Winchcombe, where DCI Mercer and his prime suspect have been playing cat and mouse for the past eighteen years…

Format: ebook, hardcover (448 pp.)  Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published in UK: 5th April 2018         Genre: Crime

Pre-order/Purchase Links*
Publisher website ǀ Amazon.co.uk  ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Death Chamber on Goodreads

Interview with Lesley Thomson, author of The Death Chamber (The Detective’s Daughter #6)

Without giving too much away, can you tell me a bit about The Death Chamber?

The story’s based on an early Neolithic Long Barrow above Winchcombe, a village in the Cotswolds where Victorian archaeologists found 31 bodies. In my novel, on the last day of 1999, the police discover another body. An eighteen-year-old woman who vanished from the village 22 years earlier. Her murder remains unsolved. The discovery is made during the hunt for another young woman also presumed dead. A cloud of suspicion hangs over the village. Someone is guilty, but who?

Set in the countryside, there’s a ruined house, a remote cottage with no electricity and a wandering scarecrow.  Jack and Stella are city people, who take solving a murder in their stride, but negotiating fields and stiles is a challenge. All in all, I hope these are ingredients for a pretty scary story!

The Death Chamber is the sixth book in The Detective’s Daughter series.  How do you approach balancing the needs of readers who have followed the whole series and those reading The Death Chamber as a standalone book?

I take a tip from The Archers of which I’m a diehard fan. The writers create drama that doesn’t depend on knowing the back story to draw in the listener. Equally they mention past events (60 years ago sometimes!) that reward us die-hard listeners.

When I arrive late on in a series, I enjoy going back and starting at the beginning to see how characters got to where they are. I write novels with this in mind. There will be references that new readers won’t get, but I hope not to baffle and divert. I specifically consider how experience has shaped my characters, as it does us. Not mentioning previous events is to foist amnesia on Jack or Stella. Unlike Miss Marple (who I love), they age and develop with each novel.

In The Death Chamber, Stella has another cold case to investigate; this time one dating back over twenty years to the Queen’s Jubilee in 1977.  Do you enjoy the challenge of recreating events and evoking the atmosphere of the past? 

I’m interested in exploring the repercussions of murder. What happens to the people affected? How do they go on with their lives?  To do this, I can set a murder in the past. So far I’ve written about eras that were once my present.  Although not a historian per se, I have to say it’s unsettling to admit that 1977 is history! I do enjoy revisiting the clothes, music and tastes of that time – although not the flares!

How has your lead character, Stella, changed over the course of the series?

In the first novel, Stella can be uptight. It’s giving nothing away to say that her dad has a heart attack at the start of the story and from then on she’s dealing with the aftermath of his death.  She’s rubbish at grief! A woman of action, who is soothed by cleaning – the deeper the better – she gets on with life. Gradually, over the course of each novel, as she and Jack get closer, Stella opens up. I expressed this change by never writing ‘Stella felt’ or ‘Stella imagined’ in the first couple of novels. Now she’s feeling and imagining all the time.

The Death Chamber is an arresting title.  At what point in the writing process do you come up with the title for a book and to what extent is it a collaborative process?

Titles are not my thing. The only one I’ve come up with was The Dog Walker and even then I wasn’t sure. Laura, my editor insisted it was great.  Then take my title for The Detective’s Daughter. In homage to Katherine Mansfield’s ‘The Daughters of the Late Colonel’, I’d called it ‘The Daughter of the Late Detective’. Yeah okay! I’m grateful to my agent Georgina for changing that one.  The House With No Rooms was ‘The Detective’s Shadow’ until Laura thankfully stepped in again. I still get emails from readers who’ve tried to find The Detective’s Shadow.  It truly is a ‘ghostly’ book.  I credit the wonderful crime writer Elly Griffiths with The Death Chamber. Now, she’s great on titles!

Your book, A Kind of Vanishing, featured minor characters that appeared in the first book in the series, The Detective’s Daughter.  Is this something you might repeat?

If I feel a character has more to do, yes. Mrs Ramsay found her way into The Detective’s Daughter because she fascinated me.  A complex woman – beautiful in her youth, washed up and lonely in her old age – I’m still drawn to her. She also features in my short story ‘The Runaway’ about Stella aged seven.  However, I’m about to write a standalone novel in which none of my previous characters will feature.

I know you teach creative writing.  Have you been tempted (or courageous enough) to invite your students to critique your own writing?

Yes absolutely. I teach on an MA and in a session on suspense students have discussed chapter eight in The Detective’s Daughter. They came up with insightful and considered ideas, making connections and seeing resonances that I hadn’t thought of. I hope they also saw how, while writers are conscious of much they put on the page, levels emerge in the storytelling that they didn’t plan, yet still work.

What makes the partnership between Stella Darnell and her sidekick, Jack Harmon, so successful?

I think it’s that old chestnut that opposites attract. Stella, as I said, is all about getting things done, she’s rational and logical. Stain by stain is her motto, when cleaning but also as a detective. Jack is fanciful and whimsical. He believes in ghosts and is always seeing signs and drawing conclusions from them. This has confounded Stella, but with each novel she’s a little more drawn in. She too spots deeper meanings in personalised number plates. Their differing skills make them the perfect team.

Are there elements of Stella’s character that you recognise in yourself?  For instance, are you fond of cleaning?

Hah, so not! My mum always said how cleaning was therapeutic and Stella – if she thought in such terms – would probably agree. I’ve never really got that. Although when I do clean – in the manner of Stella, stain by stain – I get into every nook and cranny. The thing is I’m dumbfounded when, having gone through the house, eradicating dust, like the washing up, it comes back. However, like Stella, I love compiling spreadsheets and eat too many ready meals.

What are you working on next? 

I’m on the seventh in The Detective’s Daughter series. It’s called The Playground Murders – a title that I thought of and wasn’t sure worked but which Laura liked. So, no change there.  In this one Jack and Stella are working on a murder case that was only a couple of years before, so barely cold. However the story will take us back to December 1980, the month that John Lennon was shot when we’ll meet Stella’s dad as a young man.

Thanks for those fascinating answers, Lesley.  Fans of the series will be thrilled by the news of another instalment…and by the prospect of meeting Stella’s dad.

Lesley Thomson NewAbout the Author

Lesley Thomson grew up in west London. Her first novel, A Kind of Vanishing, won the People’s Book Prize in 2010. Her second novel, The Detective’s Daughter, was a #1 bestseller and sold over 500,000 copies.  Lesley combines writing with teaching creative writing. She lives in Lewes with her partner.

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An Engineered Injustice (Philadelphia Legal #2) by William L. Myers, Jr.

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Philadelphia Legal Series

I’m delighted to welcome William L. Myers, Jr., author of the legal thriller, An Engineered Injustice, to What Cathy Read Next today.  An Engineered Injustice is the second book in the Philadelphia Legal series, the follow-up to the bestselling and much praised, A Criminal Defense.  I’ll admit I don’t read an awful lot of crime fiction or legal thrillers but I think I can spot the prospect of a good story when I see it.  Therefore, I quickly accepted William’s offer of a review copy of his book.  I’m really looking forward to reading An Engineered Injustice.  In the meantime, I’m pleased to bring you a fantastic Q&A with William.

If you’re tempted to enter the world of Philadelphia Legal, you can find purchase links below.

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An Engineered InjusticeAbout the Book

What if the deadliest train wreck in the nation’s history was no accident?

When a passenger train derails in North Philadelphia with fatal results, idealistic criminal defense attorney Vaughn Coburn takes on the most personal case of his young career. The surviving engineer is his cousin Eddy, and when Eddy asks Vaughn to defend him, he can’t help but accept. Vaughn has a debt to repay, for he and his cousin share an old secret – one that changed both their lives forever.

As blame for the wreck zeros in on Eddy, Vaughn realizes there’s more to this case than meets the eye. Seeking the truth behind the crash, he finds himself the target of malicious attorneys, corrupt railroad men, and a mob boss whose son perished in the accident and wants nothing less than cold-blooded revenge. With the help of his ex-con private investigator and an old flame who works for the competition, Vaughn struggles to defeat powerful forces – and to escape his own past built on secrets and lies.

Format: ebook, paperback (317 pp.) Publisher: Thomas & Mercer (Amazon Publishing)
Published: 23rd January 2018             Genre: Crime, Thriller, Mystery

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ  Amazon.com
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find A Criminal Defence and An Engineered Injustice on Goodreads

Interview with William L. Myers, Jr., author of An Engineered Injustice

William, welcome to What Cathy Read Next!  Without giving too much away, can you tell me a bit about An Engineered Injustice?

An Engineered Injustice is a fast-paced, plot driven novel built around the crash of an Amtrak passenger train. The novel’s protagonist, attorney Vaughn Coburn, is the cousin of Eddy Coburn, the train’s engineer.  When Eddy turns to Vaughn for help, Vaughn has no choice but to answer the call; he owes Eddy as a result of something that happened when they were younger, an event that threw Eddy’s life into a tailspin while Vaughn skated through and went on to success. At the outset of the story, Vaughn expects he’s only going to have to help Eddy through the NTSB investigation. But Vaughn quickly realizes that the train crash was no accident and that Eddy is being set up to face criminal charges.

As the story unfolds, Vaughn finds himself pitted against the most powerful forces in Philadelphia, the villains who actually caused the crash and, even more worrisome, Jimmy Nunzio, a mob leader whose son was killed in the crash and who is seeking blood vengeance. Vaughn teams up with Erin Doyle, his strong-willed ex-girlfriend, and the two of them embark on a bold and dangerous plan to unmask the villains and save Eddy before Nunzio decides take his revenge. The protagonists’ quest takes them on a roller-coaster of ups and downs, both in and outside the courtroom and it isn’t clear until the very end whether they will succeed, or even live through it themselves.

An Engineered Injustice is the second book in your Philadelphia Legal series (the first being A Criminal Defense).  How, if at all, are the two books connected?

An Engineered Injustice takes place in the same world as does A Criminal Defense – the same law firm and the same city. Many of the characters are the same, though Vaughn, a secondary character in A Criminal Defense takes the lead in An Engineered Injustice, while Mick takes a supporting role. Perhaps the main differences in An Engineered Injustice are the introduction of Erin Doyle, Vaughn’s love interest, and Philly crime boss, Jimmy Nunzio.  In Erin Doyle, I wanted to pair Vaughn with a woman every bit his match in wits, legal skills and courage. Erin fits that bill, and then some. Jimmy Nunzio, a truly terrifying personality, was a fun character to write, and he will play a major role in the third book in the Philadelphia Legal series, which is entitled A Killer’s Alibi. Another difference between A Criminal Defense and An Engineered Injustice is that the latter is much more fast-paced than the former and places the protagonists in physical peril. [Great news for fans that there’s going to be a third book in the series!]

Your leading characters are attorneys: Mick McFarland in A Criminal Defense and Vaughn Coburn in An Engineered Injustice.  How much of them is based on your own experience as an attorney?

I’ve drawn parts of each character from attorneys I’ve had the fortune (and misfortune) to come up against in my practice. Mick is Machiavellian, very much the puppeteer. I’ve encountered one or two attorneys like that along the way. You learn a lot from them, usually the hard way. Vaughn is young and idealistic, like and I so many of my colleagues were when we first started out. He sets out to do the right thing but finds that sometimes he has to adopt an “ends justifies the means” attitude.

In both books, the lead character faces a conflict between finding the truth and bonds of friendship or family.  What is it about this that interests you? 

I believe this kind of conflict ads a layer of richness to the story and depth to the characters because it places great stress on the characters, who have to choose between working to achieve true justice and protecting the ones they love.

Is there a scene in the book you found particularly challenging or rewarding to write?  If so, why?

In A Criminal Defense, the hardest scenes to write were the confession scenes where the various culpable parties admit to their sins. I had to begin the scenes by making the reader think it was going to play out one way, and then pivot to the real shockers.  In An Engineered Injustice, the hardest scenes to write were the ones where Vaughn is facing off with Nunzio. I wanted to really bring home the danger Vaughn was in.

You’ve had a successful career as an attorney.  At what point did you decide to write a novel?

I’d like to say I’m an overnight success but I have actually been writing novels for twenty years. It took me that much time – and sweat – to learn the craft, and I always tell aspiring writers to stick with it, and, when reading other authors, to “read for craft” – that is, to read with an eye to learning.

What’s the key to keeping a reader turning the pages when writing a crime thriller?

The key, I believe, is to keep them guessing.  Make sure there are enough crests and valleys – and surprises! – along the way that the reader never knows what to expect and feels compelled to turn the page to see what’s going to happen next.

Do you have a special place to write or any writing rituals?

I like to say I do my best writing when I’m not writing. What I mean by that is that many of my best ideas, best scenes, best exchanges of dialogue, happen when I’m not sitting in front of my computer. Every morning, I walk my dogs in Valley Forge Park, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stopped, pulled out my iPhone and dictated for up to five minutes. (It irks the dogs to no end.) I also write during the day by stealing a few minutes here and there while practicing law. I find the writing breaks actually help my legal work, and vice versa.

Which other writers do you admire or enjoy reading?

I love Michael Connelly’s Bosche books and his Lincoln Lawyer series. Another favourite is Dennis Lehane. Perhaps my all-time favourite is Elmore Leonard; I enjoy his terse writing style and spot-on dialogue.

What are you working on next?

I’m just finishing the third book in the Philadelphia Legal series, entitled A Killer’s Alibi.  Mick returns as the protagonist to match wits with Jimmy Nunzio, who fights Mick every step of the way as Mick tries to clear him from murder charges.

William L Myers, Jr.About the Author

William L. Myers, Jr. is the 2017 No. 6 bestselling Kindle author for his debut novel, A Criminal Defense (Part 1 of the Philadelphia Legal series.) Once you pick up his legal thriller and bestselling novel, A Criminal Defense, it becomes obvious he is not new to the intricacies of the legal profession. Open A Criminal Defense and you’ll find yourself lost in a labyrinth of deceits and hidden agendas, a world where everyone has a secret. You never know what is going to happen next or when the plot is going to take another unexpected turn.  In Part 2, An Engineered Injustice (now available on Amazon), you’ll really feel what it’s like to be a young attorney in the trenches, beating the streets, against all odds.

Born in 1958 into a blue-collar family, Mr. Myers inherited a work-ethic that propelled him through college and into the Ivy League at The University of Pennsylvania School of Law. From there, Mr. Myers started his legal career in a Philadelphia-based mega defense firm. After ten years defending corporate America, he realized his heart wasn’t in it. So, with his career on the fast track to success – he gave it all up and started his own firm. It was time to start fighting for the common guy.  That was twenty-five years ago and, since then, he has focused on representing railroad employees and other honest, hard-working people who have been injured by others. He has represented thousands of clients in his tenure and has become a highly-regarded litigation attorney up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Connect with William

Author Page  ǀ  Facebook  ǀ  Twitter  ǀ  Instagram ǀ Goodreads