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Black Champagne – My First Novel…

10 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by in Self Publishing, Uncategorized

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As you may know, my first novel, Black Champagne will be released later his year. It’s set in Chicago in the US and it’s very much steeped in the noir/crime/mystery tradition. It’s main character, Callum McCambridge is a private detective and ex Chicago PD. A face from the past returns to the present to wreak revenge on Callum from the shadows. As Callum watches the life he knows slide down the pan, he goes to ground, coming face to face with his past to find out who’s behind it all.  

In a journey that takes him from the seedy underbelly of Chicago to the other worldliness of rural Illinois,  from the death of Jimmy Hoffa to the mysterious suicide of his wife, this is a tale of a man who lost the soul the though he never had but missed it when it was gone.

Does he get it back? Fate whips its tail in one final awful crack that could send him hurtling to even a lowlier  place but does he succumb?

The editor is Emma Warnock who lives and works in Belfast, United Kingdom/Ireland and the cover art work is being designed by Roberta Martucci from Naples, Italy.

 If all goes to plan, my book will be available for sale on Kindle, CreateSpace and Lulu from September 2012 so watch this space!

Book Review : ‘Taunting the Dead’ – a crime novel by Mel Sherratt

11 Sunday Mar 2012

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Taunting the Dead by Mel Sherratt

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation – David Thoreau

There are many litmus tests for a good crime novel and these are mine:

Was I hooked from the very beginning?

Did I want to finish the book without feeling it was a chore?

Was the book well-paced?

Does the locale act as an unspeaking but textural presence?

Did I have a sense of unease after I finished the final page?

and was I left wanting more?

Taunting the Dead racks up a 6/6 on all these counts.

And then some.

Set in the English city of Stoke-on-Trent, this novel introduces the reader to Detective Sergeant Allie Shenton. The opening chapter does not delay in sinking its narrative hooks in its realistic description of an unnamed woman, unhappily drunk, who staggers around a pub car-park late at night, shouting for her friend from whom she seems to have separated from.

A friend who she will never see again.

She moved a little further into the darkness is one of many smart and poetic touches that the author uses to presage the fate of the character at hand.

Here, the name of Terry Ryder is not as much introduced but yelled at us. Terry Ryder forms a central plank to the novel from the start right to the very end. A seemingly respectable property developer with fingers in pies in the underbelly of Stoke, Ryder is also a ruthless gangster at the head of a major social security fraud and drug dealing.

He seems to have it all. The money, the house, the car, the clothes, the charm and of course the women, everyone in town is taken in by him. Everyone that is except DS Allie Shenton and the local police force.

Shortly after the death of the woman in the car park, we move onto what seems to be a cut and dry murder of another woman at the hands of her junkie husband in a downbeat part of town. It is this murder that sets off an unstoppable chain of events that brings the police investigation in collision with the dark shady world that Ryder and his family and henchmen inhabit.

Stoke is not the usual setting for crime writing it must be said but it’s the author’s hometown and her knowledge of its streets and vernacular gives a sense of realism and authenticity to the characters, their interplay and language. This is one extra reason why the novel works so well. Of course novels are often set in towns and cities that the author has no direct first-hand knowledge of but in such cases, extra care must be taken in making sure authenticity is not sacrificed on the altar of expediency of narrative.

Ryder is married to the alcoholic Stephanie and father to the spoilt Kirstie. They have friends and associates but scratch the surface, one soon finds out that there is little familial love or even real friendship amongst those who live in the glittering darkness of unhappiness in luxury. Rather they seem to cling to one another like life-buoys of bones whose flesh of any original love, has long since rotted away. Dysfunction, betrayal, banality and the mundane run through the main protagonists’ lives like tired blood.

Forget clandestine meetings in swanky wine-bars or high powered shady dealings in the sunshine. Here is a land of Wetherpoon’s pubs filled with people with no future and some too young to have any past glories to cling to. Ryder’s Row, the nickname for the infamous Georgia Road, is a road many people in the UK and Ireland can recognize. A road in which the forgotten underclass live in varying degrees of desperation and squalor, caught in a cycle of welfare dependency, fraud, delinquency and drug abuse- in houses that are in the hands of few or even one person. In this case, Ryder’s. A shadowy land occasionally brightened up by the sirens of ambulances and police squad cars which visit on a dismal regularity of futility.

The sense of economic and societal decay, while by no means overbearing, does hang in the background off this book. Restaurants and high class boutiques share high-street space with charity shops and Poundlands. This is the texture, the bleak canvass upon which Mel has painted a wonderfully paced story and cleverly constructed plot that is largely based on a chance for a small business man to clear his debts but only for this Faustian pact to unravel in tragedy for all concerned.

DS Allie Shenton is a former social worker who joined the force after her sister Karen was raped and left for dead fourteen years earlier. Despite surviving, Karen suffered brain damage and needs round the clock care. Her attacker was never found despite the best efforts of their parents, who seemed to die premature deaths not long after.

The ending of the novel is a master-class of careful, cleverly and seamless weaving of the narrative strands that came into being at different points from earlier in the novel but there is a twist, a dark and totally unexpected one that is quite breathtaking and chilling and leaves the door open for a much anticipated sequel.

DS Allie Shenton however, is not without faults and not immune to the charms of Ryder. While not giving into them, she does entertain them and therein, we see the seeds for perhaps future problems for her in novels to come. Her hearts in the right place and knows right from wrong but she is just about able to check her animal passions. Will she in the future? We’ll see.

In conclusion, this is a wonderful novel and I recommend it thoroughly. Novels need not be set in London, New York or LA. I recognized the characters, the pubs they went to, the restaurants they ate at, the quiet desperation and high drama that, ironically, only acute ordinariness can engender.

Did I unwittingly have a drink next to a henchman of one of the many Terry Ryders that perhaps every British town has?

You can buy Taunting the Dead on Amazon here

Mel’s website is: http://www.melsherratt.co.uk/

Mel’s blog is: http://highheelsandbookdeals.blogspot.com/

And on Twitter she is: @writermels

Trapped in Myopia : A Short Story : Episode 7 : The Finale

26 Sunday Feb 2012

Posted by in Short Stories, Uncategorized

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 “Indeed you have” said a voice.

  It was a voice I recognized but hadn’t heard in a long time. It came from behind me.

 Voices always seem to do.

 

I turned around and it was him; the young bearded man from the start of this nightmare.

“And now you are free”

He held his hand out and a blinding light flew from his palm. It was so bright that I squinted hard. I thought he’d fired a fire cracker at me. It went dark and quiet.

After some time, I opened my eyes. I was back in the shop. Customers were there, browsing. The bearded man was behind the counter, serving an attractive young lady.

“Hey, hey you” I shouted. People looked up, some gave me nasty looks. I didn’t care. I ran up to the counter.

“Hey, what the fuck is going on here. What was that for?”

The bearded man sighed and raised his eyebrows and put a book into a shopping bag and handed it to the girl.

“Sir, can you keep the noise down, this is a book store. I don’t have to remind you a second time and by the way, I’m serving a customer”

I looked at the girl. She had a pleasant face, large eyes and a mass of curly brown hair. She wore a little pork pie hat which was very fetching. She smiled at me, despite the brou-ha-ha I was causing.

“I’m sorry miss but I need to speak to this guy”

“That’s ok” she said. “I can tell it’s pretty important” she said. She turned to the bearded man.

“George, see you later at 8”

“See you later, Melissa”

George and Melissa? Those were the names inside the cover of that Norman Mailer book I’d found all those months ago, before my imprisonment. But surely, not, it’s a coincidence.

The man leaned over the counter.

“Why the fuck did you do that to me?” I said

“Do what to you? Are you crazy?” he asked.

“I was kidnapped and trapped over there in the back and forced to read all your fucking books, one by fucking one. I must have been there for months. You appeared. You spoke to me. You told me you were the spirit of the books. It was you. I recognize you”

He looked at me. “I’ve something for you. Wait there” I stood there, watching him leave the podium behind the counter and out the back into the staffroom. A little queue had formed. I was embarrassed about turning to whoever it was standing behind me. If they heard any of that, they would have put me down as a crazy man but this town’s full of crazies.

One more wouldn’t hurt them.

Time passed and the queue got longer and people were tut-tutting. The young bearded man still hasn’t returned. Then the staff door opened and a different young man came out. He took a look at the queue and looked aghast.

“I’m really sorry everyone, I’ll be as quick as I can” he exclaimed. I was first in line.

“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting sir, how may I help you?” he asked me.

“Actually, I am being served already?”

“Oh really, by whom?”

“The other young guy, the one with the beard and shoulder length hai. His name’s George”

“George?”

“Yes, George” I said. “I know that because before me, he was talking to a girl and he called her Melissa and she called him George”

The young guy looked puzzled.

“Sir, I have these others customers to serve but can you do me a favour and wait here. I think we need to talk”

I nodded and I waited. After a while, the queue had dissipated and the young man stood down from the podium behind the desk and came to speak to me.

“Sir, did you say you were being served by a guy called George?”

“Sure, George, he went out the back into the staff room and never came back”

“And he was talking to Melissa?”

“Yeah, where the hell is he? I need to talk to him”

The young man twisted his mouth and felt his chin.

“This isn’t the first this has happened. How can I explain it. George was a guy who used to work here. Melissa was his fiancé. They died in 1968. Cops shot them outside the Democratic Party Convention. They weren’t even protesting. Just the wrong place and the wrong time.”

“But I’ve just spent the last several months trapped out the back, forced to read every book in here. George wouldn’t release me unless I finished my task, say what date is it?”

“July 3rd 2010 sir”

“It couldn’t be, that’s the date I came here at”

“Come here” He ushered me to the counter and picked up a copy of the Sun-Times.

“Look at the date, July 3rd 2010”

I never felt such relief.

“You’re not shittin’ me are you?”

“Why would I do that?”

“But I was trapped out the back over here” I pointed to the back. He looked over.

“All I know is that I saw you come in here half an hour ago and now half an hour later, you say you spent the last few months kidnapped out the back?”

“Yes, the books, they made me, they made me..”

But I let my sentence tail off as I became aware of how foolish I was sounding. I took a deep breath and thanked the young man for his time and I ran out the door.

It was Friday night. I asked several bystanders what date it was, just to make sure.

July 3rd.

Same reaction each time. Reticent looks on their faces, eyes focused on my hands, making sure I wasn’t about to spring a gun or a knife. They would tell me the date and scurry off like spooked antelopes down the street.

I didn’t care. I took out my cell phone. It was back on full power. I phoned my hotel to make sure I was still checked in. It was. The lady asked why I was asking. ‘Just making sure’ I said.

I walked and I walked, sucking in the magic and liberty of the night air of a living city. Hours went by like this, grinning like I was high for I was high until I felt tired. I hailed a cab to take me back to my hotel.

When I arrived, I walked through the lobby.

“Sir, we hope you had a nice evening” said the lady

“You could say that”

“I forgot to tell you about our new amenity to the hotel”

“Sure, I’m all ears tonight”

“It’s the new hotel library, it opening tomorrow but we’re letting our guests have a sneak preview…”

“It’s ok, I think I’ll pass on that one, thanks anyway” I said.

“You’re welcome” she said.

I went to the elevator and pressed the button. I looked up. The digitized floor reading was changing swiftly. Then ‘Ding’ and the doors opened. I went in and pressed 4. The doors closed and up I went. Seconds later, the doors opened and I stepped out and walked down the long airless corridor back to my room. I slid my key into the lock.

“You sure you don’t want to read anything?”

I turned around. It was George.

In his right hand, a book.

In his left hand a gun.

I took my chances.

********

This story was inspired by my many enjoyable visits to the Myopic Bookstore, in the wonderfully boho Wicker Park/Bucktown district of Chicago, USA. It opens late into the night but not as late as I mentioned in the story (license my friends!) and is the most cavernous and well stocked second-hand bookstore I’ve ever been to and believe me, I’ve been to one to two!

 I got the idea for the story when I started to contemplate the sheer volume of books there were in the store, and in the world to.

I started to wonder if all the books would ever been read again or would they be condemned to a life of dusty anonymity. This made me feel a little melancholic and thus, the seed of my story was planted. What if the books got fed up being ignored and kidnapped a hapless soul to make him read them and not let him go until he was done.

When this plot formed in my head, I beat a hasty path to the door and out onto the street.

PS : I have returned since.

If you ever want to visit and say hello to George and take some quality time out of your life, then you can find Myopic Books right here:

http://www.myopicbookstore.com/

1564 N. Milwaukee Ave Chicago, IL 60622
Conveniently located near the Damen Blue Line CTA stop.