CHERYL COLE’s success has thrown the spotlight on the North East where my great granddad was a sparks in a Tyneside shipyard.
Now crime writer Howard Linskey is throwing a darker light on the region with his new thriller The Damage.
In the follow-up to his highly-praised debut The Drop, Gang boss David Blake returns as Newcastle’s “Top Boy”. He aims to stay that way but someone who wants to take over the city has hired hitmen.
David’s Toon Army are the sort of hard men where eye contact can get you killed. They hunt the assassins and their backer through seedy clubs and bars and drug-infested council estates. The plot drives ahead like a drill bit through a kneecap.
The book is hard to put down, certainly not until David and his boys say you can.
My first crime-thriller in the Danny Lancaster series – The Wreck Of The Margherita – has received some wonderful reviews and a very positive response from readers.
Paratrooper-turned-detective Danny follows a trail of mayhem and murder in Brighton after the discovery of a deadly cargo in a wrecked shipping container.
After all those months of coffee and doubt, typing away in a gloomy back room, it was a real boost to read one reviewer describe the book as, “Witty, gory, sexy, it’s a fantastic read”.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion but I can’t bring myself to agree with, “slow, dull, boring” from another reviewer. Fortunately, no one else has.
The second Danny book – Death Squad – is now published on Amazon. It sees the wounded Afghan veteran hunting the sadistic killers who are murdering members of a Seventies rock band.
An early review described it as, “action aplenty as Danny moves from catastrophe to disaster to a thrilling climax.”
Makes the coffee and the doubt all worthwhile.
… and finally, a puzzled security guard walks by waving a light sabre pulsing with many colours. Strong enough to get through security at Heathrow T1 The Force was not.