Dead in Dubai by Marilynn Larew Giveaway, Interview & Excerpt

Dead in Dubai

by Marilynn Larew

on Tour April 27 - May 31, 2015

Book Details:

Genre: Thriller, Espionage
Published by: Artemis Press
Publication Date: April 30, 2015
Number of Pages: 283
ISBN: 978-0-9910912-4-9
Purchase Your Copy:

Synopsis:

Why is CIA officer George Branson dead?

Out of the Agency and looking for work, former CIA analyst Lee Carruthers accepts the request of George's wife that Lee go to Dubai and find out what really happened. When she arrives, she walks into a deadly war between rival Merchants of Death for market share. She learns that George had worked for each man under a different name, one in Dubai and one in Istanbul. With his own, that gave George three identities. Which man was murdered? Had George really been working for the Agency, or had he sold out and, if so, to whom? Who are the men following her? And why does she keep finding diamonds?

Read an excerpt:

Is there life after the CIA? I wondered as I stamped my foot into the bindings of first one ski and then the other. I was among the few early birds on the slopes; we were hoping to avoid the rush of celebrities modeling their designer ski togs. The view was spectacular! Snowy hills covered with pine trees stretched away and away. I lowered my goggles and pushed off. As I gathered speed I laughed aloud at the awesome feel of the wind in my face, the best antidote to my time in the Algerian desert I could think of. Halfway down the piste, something buzzed past my face. Then I heard a crack. Somebody was shooting at me? I bent as far down as I could and snowplowed to the side of the run, stopping just before I got to the trees. Great! Nothing. Not even a knife.
I ripped off my goggles and kicked out of the bindings. Stepping carefully into the woods, bent almost double, I advanced with a ski pole in each hand. I wish my gear wasn’t burgundy, I thought. On the other hand, I hadn’t expected to have to channel the Fourth Mountain Brigade that morning. I heard steps crunching toward me in the snow and ducked behind a tree. A man in black wearing a black face mask, his rifle held lightly in his right hand, slipped carefully forward, scanning to the left and to the right. He was looking too high to see me. When he was half a meter away, I yelled and launched myself at him with the ski poles thrust forward, but he deflected them with the rifle. He raised the rifle for another shot. I threw myself at him again, and he dropped the rifle. I grabbed it, and swung it hard, hitting him in the left shoulder. I reversed the rifle, backed up and fired. Off balance. Tried again.
He turned and ran. Should I follow him? What would I do with him if I caught him? I considered the rifle. I could hardly take it back to the ski lodge with me. I dropped the clip and whacked it up against the side of a tree, sending a jolt all the way down to my toes, and buried it in the snow by the side of the trail, throwing the clip as far as I could into the woods. I retrieved my ski poles and stood panting, heart pounding. I started to tremble and told my body it would have to wait until I got to the bottom of the slope, but it paid no attention, so I trembled.
“Who?” I asked myself. “Who?” I sat down with my back against a tree for a count of five hundred before I stopped shaking. Blowback from Morocco?
I stomped the snow off my boots and slipped them into the ski bindings. I couldn’t find my goggles, but I wanted to be in cover as soon as possible so I didn’t spend much time looking for them. With a shooter in play, I felt terribly exposed. Maybe the shooter had a friend. Unarmed. I was unarmed. Not even a nail file. I wanted a gun and badly. Where could I get a gun in the peaceful countryside of Switzerland? Breaking into a gun shop was always an option.
At the bottom of the slope, I kicked my way out of my skis and carried them back into the rack. I felt cold deep down inside, and gin seemed advisable. A drink in the lounge? Too public. Back in the room I made one of my very dry martinis—gin and a cube of ice. Maybe that would help me unscramble my brain. I looked at my watch. Ten thirty. Drinking in the morning was a sure sign of something or other. I finished the drink, but I was still cold. I took a long, hot shower and lay curled up under the duvet remembering.
I had been sent to Morocco to find a missing colleague and wound up fighting my way out of a terrorist camp. They killed Kemal. I touched the bloodstained pearl hanging around my neck. I killed his killer, but Kemal was still dead.
Would the Pure Warriors of Islam send an assassin all the way to Switzerland to get me? Possibly, but it seemed unlikely. Whoever he was, he knew me, and I didn’t know him. I went to sleep listing the people who might want to kill me.

Author Bio:

MARILYNN LAREW is a historian who has published in such disparate fields as American colonial and architectural history, Vietnamese military history, and terrorism, and has taught courses in each of them in the University of Maryland System. Before settling on the Mason-Dixon line in southern Pennsylvania, she lived in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Georgia, Wisconsin, Ohio, South Carolina, Maryland, in Manila, and on Okinawa. It’s no surprise that she likes to travel. When she’s climbing the first hill in Istanbul to Topkapi Palace, strolling around Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi, or exploring the back streets of Kowloon, she is not just having fun, she’s looking for locations for her next novel. When she’s not traveling, she is writing or reading. She writes thrillers and likes to read them. She also likes to read Vietnamese history and Asian history in general, as well as military history. She lives with her husband in a 200-year-old farmhouse in southern Pennsylvania. She belongs to Sisters in Crime, the Guppies, and the Chinese Military History Society.

Interview

Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?

All writers get their ideas from the world around them and from their life experience. I write international thrillers. Many of my ideas come from the daily news – articles about crime, terrorism, human trafficking will give me a plot line or a character. I have files of clippings from the internet news that I mine for ideas. I taught history in the University of Maryland System for a number of years – everything from US history and American architectural history and the history of terrorism to the history of the Vietnamese war. From that reservoir of knowledge I draw building descriptions, the way terrorist groups operate, the way terrorists behave, bits and pieces of plot. My knowledge of history helps me analyze current events and know what they mean for us today. I have lived in six US states and in the Philippines and on Okinawa. I graduated from high school on Okinawa – my twelfth school. (I went to three more before I finished my PhD.) I’ve traveled in Europe and Asia, and, from those life moves and those travels, I write about foreign places and foreign cultures. I like to read about places I’ve been or places I would like to go, so I write books set in far away places.

When did you write your first book and how old were you?

I was a reader before I was a writer. I read everything I could get my hands on, and, in my many moves, my library card was often my best friend. I started writing short stories when my children were small, with a crashing lack of success. I wrote my first novel when I was in my thirties after I finished my PhD in history. A PhD program is grueling, and everybody who goes through one plans to write a book exposing how awful it is. Not me. I wrote a hard-boiled detective story with a female protagonist. It’s really too bad it didn’t sell, because I would have been one of the first to write that kind of a book. After that, I settled down to teaching and writing about history. Perhaps my most unusual publication is an article about the construction of a citadel near Hanoi, Viet Nam, in 300 B.C.  In my work, I learned how to write non-fiction. It wasn’t until I retired that I returned to my desire to write fiction. My first book, The Spider Catchers, was my learning piece. It went through many incarnations as I learned to forget everything I knew about writing fact and learned how to write from my imagination.

What do you think makes a good story?

For me, a good story is one with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I’m afraid being a historian has made me think chronologically. Stream of consciousness literary fiction makes me nervous. I like to have a story about something that happens to a person, an event that will make that person ask questions and find answers to those questions. This means I like to read mysteries, books with problems that can be resolved.

As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?

When I was a child there were very few things a girl could be when she grew up other than a wife and mother. A nurse, a teacher, and, since I was Catholic, a nun. I went through the desire to be each, and finally became a wife, mother, and a teacher. Today there are many more jobs for a woman than there were when I was a child. The woman I write about deals with problems like terrorism, arms and drug smuggling and human trafficking, topics that only men took on in the old days.

What would you like my readers to know?

About the world:

There have always been evil people in the world. There have also always been good people, and sometimes the good people can triumph for a while.

No triumph is permanent, but you have to keep trying.

There has always been evil in the world. There is not more evil in the world today. It just seems so because of the twenty-four hour news cycle.

About my work:

I want to take you to far away places.

I want you to feel safe and warm in someone’s arms.

I want you to watch as your lover bleeds out in the sand.

I want you to see his killer die at your hands.

I want you to see, feel, and smell the aftermath of a suicide bomb.

I want you to feel what it’s like to drive at high speed between two massive tractor trailers on a snowy highway in Bulgaria.

I want you to feel the sweaty-palmed fear of being locked in a very small closet or waking to find yourself nailed into a crate you feel being lifted onto a ship.

I want you to feel the satisfaction when the Bad Guys lose.

Catch Up:

Tour Participants:

Giveaway:

This is a giveaway hosted by Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours for Marilynn Larew. There will be TWO winners of an ebook copy of Dead in Dubai by Marilynn Larew. The giveaway is open to US residents only. The giveaway begins on April 27th, 2015 and runs through June 2nd, 2015. Visit the tour stops for additional giveaways!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Get More Great Reads at Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tours