Today, I'd like to share with you…
Where I got the idea for the book from
One cold and dreary October afternoon I caught the bus into the city centre of Stoke-on-Trent, England. As the bus stopped next to the boarded up demolition site of a 1960s shopping precinct. I watched the excavators smash into the reinforced concrete. Their heavy bucket’s teeth clawed at the graffiti covered concrete, revealing tendrils of rusty steel wires.
What if the construction workers discovered human remains under all the rubble? Unearthing, dark secrets from the past!
How the characters and story formed in my head
I climbed off the bus and went to investigate. Peering through the mesh security gates, I fired off some shots with my Sony digital camera at the carnage laid out before me.
Turning, an elderly man leaning on his walking stick, startled me. "They'll only build some monstrosity in it's place. Back in my day that was a bloody social hub, before all these rip-off coffee shops and McDonalds ruined the high street!" he said bitterly.
This brief but poignant interaction set me thinking about the past; memories of when I was a child and my Gran used to take me to town. The bus journey ended at this very place, which as the elderly guy said, was thriving.
There were many sole proprietor businesses on the site: a café, a cobblers, a dry cleaners, a bakers, a Radio Shack, a supermarket and an amusement arcade with pinballs, slot machines and flashing lights.
When I got back home I began to delve into the local crime reports and archives online from the sixties and seventies, and discovered plenty of inspiration. Everything from missing person cases to an unsolved murder case. And I began to think...
What if the demolition site workers discovered human remains under all the rubble? Unearthing, dark secrets from the past?
After a few weeks of fleshing out my ideas into an outline, I pieced everything together to make it a compelling murder mystery with spine-tingling twists that left advanced readers breathless.
A skeleton in a tunnel. Missing teenagers. Five unconnected suspects. Can DI Tom Blake uncover their dark secrets before a twisted killer silences everyone?
A FORTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD MURDER
Soon after he saves a young man from jumping to his death from an eight-storey building, DI Tom Blake is called to investigate the discovery of human remains on a demolition site in Stoke-on-Trent city centre.
The bones confront him with a cold-case from 1978. Was the murder of a notorious seventies gangster linked to the disappearance of a young Italian man over a gambling debt? Or is there an even darker story to uncover?
MISSING CHILDREN
Six-year-old Daisy Ellis went missing the night her house burned down in 1978, killing both her parents. Lorna Atwood, thirteen, caught a bus into town on a cold night in 1978, and was never seen again. Blake stumbles upon these mysterious disappearances when delving into his cold-case: could there be a link?
A KILLER WHO HAS NEVER BEEN CAUGHT
Blake's hunt for the killer plunges him into decades-old secrets. Opening up this cold-case strikes fear into the hearts of witnesses, and takes Blake back in time to a derelict children's home: a place with a disturbing history.
As past collides perilously with present, Blake finds himself part of a terrifying investigation that will lead to a chilling realisation of the killer’s identity…
Set within a gritty town in England with dark secrets: this tense detective novel is a murder mystery that will keep you on edge until the final shocking twist is revealed.
What Readers Are Saying:
Former Detective and crime author, John Pye ★★★★★
"An engrossing and well-crafted whodunit, with a twist that will leave readers breathless."
Crime lover news ★★★★★
'Well-plotted and twisty, with a big emotional surprise at the end, The Missing And The Dead will stay with you long after you've finished reading it.'
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