My
new serial Blasphemy starts on Friday, Meanwhile, some readers have been in touch to ask
for more details about my novel, Catching
up with Murder published by Raider International last year. For this
reason, I am publishing a synopsis here today; I may well serialise it on the
blog eventually. The novel is
available to overseas readers from amazon.com & Barnes and Noble.com
& (UK readers) amazon.co.uk as well as (all readers) Raider’s
own site: http://raiderpublishing.com/Home_Page.html
CATCHING UP WITH MURDER: a novel in three acts (approx. 100,000 words)
By Roger N. Taber
SYNOPSIS:
In parts more black comedy than conventional crime fiction, the novel divides itself naturally into three acts.
Act One begins with a young woman,
JULIE SIMPSON, asking retired Chief Inspector FRED WINTER to investigate the
death of an aunt, RUTH TEMPLE, found dead in her bath. Since a large amount of
alcohol was found in Ruth’s body, the coroner records a verdict of accidental
death. Julie thinks otherwise but cannot
convince Winter at first...
Once
Winter is on the case, he not only embarks on various avenues of enquiry
regarding Ruth Temple but is also reunited with an old flame CAROL BRADY whose
husband had been murdered some years ago and whose son LIAM has been killed in
a car accident although no body recovered and assumed washed out to sea. One
potential lead after another leads to the same dead end, a village on the south
coast called Monks Tallow. Moreover, Winter starts to suspect that Liam Brady
is not only alive but inextricably linked to a series of tragic ‘coincidences’
there.
Act
Two now
takes the reader back twenty years to the early 1980s. A young man, RALPH
COTTER, shoots his friend, SEAN BRADY, at Brady's home, witnessed by Brady's
young son, LIAM. Cotter, a married,
closet gay man, is terrified that Brady will expose him. Cotter runs to his
lover, Darren “Daz” HORTON for help. They head for a cottage belonging to
Horton’s aunt. (The aunt is visiting her daughter in New Zealand so the cottage
is empty). En route, they stop to give a lift to a woman, SARAH MANNERS, whose
car has broken down in a storm. Shortly afterwards, the car skids and smashes
into a tree, killing Sarah. The two men
bury the body and Cotter evades capture by taking her identity. Darren’s aunt dies and he inherits the
cottage. He and Cotter live there, happily enough, as man and ‘wife’ in an
obscure English village called...Monks Tallow.
In
due course, the past catches up with Cotter and Horton, driving them to commit
three more murders.
Act
Three starts where Act Two ends, and follows Fred Winter to Monks Tallow where he slowly pieces together this jigsaw
of audacious masquerade and murder while inadvertently putting himself and
loved ones in mortal danger...
Copyright R. N.
Taber 2007
Enjoy the novel:
http://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/catching-up-with-murder-chapter-1.html
Enjoy the novel:
http://rogertaberfiction.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/catching-up-with-murder-chapter-1.html
