Someone You Know
by Brian McGilloway
on Tour May 20 - June 19, 2014
Book Details:
Genre: Women Sleuths, Police Procedurals, Suspense
Published by: Witness Impulse
Publication Date: May 20, 2014
Number of Pages:
ISBN: 9780062336705
Series: A Lucy Black Thriller #2 (Stand-Alone)
Purchase Links:
Synopsis:
Lucy Black must protect the young and vulnerable...but can she protect herself? Late December. A sixteen-year-old girl is found dead on a train line. Detective Sergeant Lucy Black is called to identify the body. The only clues to the dead teenager's last movements are stored in her mobile phone and on social media - and it soon becomes clear that her 'friends' were not as trustworthy as she thought. Lucy is no stranger to death: she is still haunted by the memory of the child she failed to save, and the killer she failed to put behind bars. And with a new boss scrutinizing her every move, she is determined that - this time - she will leave no margin for error. Hurt is a tense crime thriller about how, in the hands of a predator, trust can turn into terror.Praise for Little Girl Lost:
"Effortlessly blending Black's personal woes into her professional life, McGilloway weaves a taut police procedural in an unadorned style that belies the stories complexity." (Irish Times)."Cleverly constructed, packed with vibrant and believable characters...It confirms him as one of the most original voices in the notably expanding field of Irish crime fiction." (Irish Independent).
"Assured and grittily realistic tale from an author who is being compared to James Lee Burke and Ian Rankin." (Sunday Business Post).
Author Bio:
Brian McGilloway is the bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Inspector Benedict Devlin series. He was born in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1974. After studying English at Queen’s University, Belfast, he took up a teaching position in St Columb’s College in Derry, where he is currently Head of English. His first novel, Borderlands, published by Macmillan New Writing, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger 2007 and was hailed by The Times as ‘one of (2007’s) most impressive debuts.’ The second novel in the series, Gallows Lane, was shortlisted for both the 2009 Irish Book Awards/Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year and the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2010. Bleed A River Deep, the third Devlin novel, was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of their Best Books of 2010.
Brian's fifth novel, Little Girl Lost, which introduced a new series featuring DS Lucy Black, won the University of Ulster's McCrea Literary Award in 2011 and is a No.1 UK Kindle Bestseller. The follow-up novel, Hurt, will be published in late 2013 by Constable and Robinson.
Brian lives near the Irish borderlands with his wife, daughter and three sons.
Deal Sharing Aunt
Someone You Know
Guest Post by Brian McGilloway
After I finished the fifth Devlin novel, The
Nameless Dead, I wasn’t sure whether to continue with Devlin’s story or to
write a second novel for Lucy Black, the central detective from my novel Little
Girl Lost. I’d planned for LGL to be a stand alone novel but, in the writing of
it, I’d become fond of the character of Lucy and found myself wanted to know
where she’d got to and how she was doing in the aftermath of the ending of LGL.
Then I heard an American police officer
talking about a pimp he had arrested who was grooming teenagers. The method by
which he had selected his victims had stayed with the officer. The pimp hung
around shopping centres, keeping an eye out for teenage girls, generally on
their own or hanging on the periphery of groups. He would pass the girls and
casually say ‘You’ve very pretty eyes.’ If the girl ignored him, or told him to
get lost, or even thanked him for the compliment, he forgot about them. If, on
the other hand, the girl blushed, or more importantly, looked to the ground in embarrassment,
he guessed that she had self-esteem issues and would be susceptible to
grooming.
The psychological insight required to have
devised such a method and to use it to such horrible ends was shocking. Around
the same time, a number of high profile cases in the UK highlighted the abuse
of children in care, not by those looking after them, but by other adults who
had recognised that these children were vulnerable and open to exploitation.
Indeed, the charity Barnardos had published a report on the exploitation of
children living in the care system by adult males outside of that system
through grooming. The rise in the use of smart phones and tablets, and the
ability to hide behind sock puppet accounts all fed into this. It was, I
realised, a story which Lucy, who is based with the Public Protection Unit, would
investigate.
Lucy is driven to protect those whom others
would exploit. Through Little Girl Lost it became clear to me that that was her
reason for being in the police. She has a natural affinity with those abandoned
by the ones who should love them most. She is also particularly angered by men
who would hurt women. I’d wanted to explore this issue in the Devlin books but
it seemed to me that the best character to take a stand against men who abuse
women would be a young woman herself.
The book was originally called Family Life
after the Blue Nile song. The song was one which was playing a lot when I
started writing the book and which set the tone for its composition. It’s a
beautiful piece of music, sad and aching. The book features a number of
families, some completely dysfunctional -not least of which is Lucy’s own - and
some trying in difficult circumstances to create a sense of normality for
children who have suffered loss. In the UK, the book came out under the title
Hurt. It was the issue of loss that brought about this change in title for the
book, for it dealt with loss and how it impacts on those left behind. Again, it
came from a song; this time Johnny Cash’s version of the Nine Inch Nails song,
Hurt. But ultimately, the book is about how all too often, those who exploit
the vulnerable are known to them. We may well look to serial killers and master
criminals in our fiction, but more often than not, sadly, those who would
exploit the vulnerable most tend to be someone they already know.
I always find it interesting how authors decide whether characters introduced in what would otherwise be a stand-alone novel are strong enough to support a series. Thanks so much for introducing us to this author's new mystery!
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