How far would you go to protect yourself if the truth is too hard to swallow?
Title: Vanity Project
Author: Andre Spiteri
Pages: 500
Genre: Crime/Police Procedural
How far would you go to protect yourself if the truth is too hard to swallow?
DI Brian Brandon’s first murder investigation after a forced leave of absence seems open and shut. A love triangle gone horribly wrong.
But, the more he digs into the life of the victim — freelance cybersecurity consultant Ray Higgins — the deeper he’s drawn into a complex web of greed and betrayal.
With bodies piling up and the press baying for blood, Brian faces a race against the clock. What he hasn’t planned on is that his own demons are also hot on his heels.
Can he uncover the killer’s true identity before they catch up with him, or is he doomed to pay the ultimate price?
Vanity Project is available at Amazon UK and Amazon US.
Book Excerpt
Three weeks of forced leave, and he didn’t recognise himself anymore. His wavy salt-and-pepper hair was frizzy, thinning on top, and appeared far heavier on the salt than it had been that morning when he’d checked himself in the hallway before leaving for East Strathburgh Police Station to plead his case. His face was pasty and puffy. Careworn. The face of a man who has had too much time on his hands and far too little to fill it with for much longer than is healthy. The knot of his blue paisley tie constricted his fleshy neck, which was spilling over the collar of his white poplin shirt. A shirt with a tailored fit that, through some process he vaguely understood but couldn’t quite fathom, had become too tailored in all the wrong places.
He closed his eyes and held onto the sink with both hands, a captain steering his ship through a thicket of fog.
‘I’m fine, sir. I assure you,’ he’d told – practically begged – DCI Lowe five minutes earlier. ‘Champing at the bit. Raring to go.’
What he hadn’t told Lowe was that he wasn’t sure how much longer he could trust himself to keep his head without work to occupy him. His thoughts were racing at breakneck pace, taking him places he’d rather not visit for fear he’d want to remain there. Permanently.
Lowe had given him a long, appraising look from beneath his legendarily bushy black eyebrows and leaned forward in his faux-leather office chair. Brian, standing in front of Lowe’s cluttered glass and brushed-aluminium desk, had shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, like he needed to go to the lavvy.
‘It’s too soon, Brian,’ Lowe had said, steepling his fingers under his non-existent chin.
‘It’s been long enough,’ Brian had insisted. ‘I’m polis. It’s what I do. This kind of thing… it’s…’ He’d waved his hand around, looking for the right words. ‘It’s par for the course in our line of work,’ he’d ended flatly.
Lowe had raised his eyebrows. One of the hairs was sticking out at an obtuse angle, giving him an oddly comical look.
‘Have you spoken to somebody?’ Lowe had asked. His tone was gentle. Fatherly. But there was steel in his eyes. ‘It helps. What you’ve been through—’
‘I’m fine,’ Brian repeated, a tad more forcefully than he’d intended.
He’d stopped, then. Taken a breath. Held Lowe’s eyes with an earnest gaze.
‘Look,’ Brian had said. ‘Try me. That’s all I’m asking. If I can’t hack it, I’ll be the first to tell you. No need to worry about that. We’re understaffed as it is. So what do you have to lose?’
Lowe had sighed then. A deep, heavy sound that Brian hadn’t been sure what to make of. Was Lowe about to relent? Had he managed to wear him down?
‘Let me think about it,’ he’d said at last, weighing every word.
‘But—’
‘I said, let me think about it,’ Lowe snapped. ‘Take the win.’
Brian had pushed down several smart retorts and nodded deferentially.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he’d said finally, trying not to grit his teeth.
Now, standing in front of a rust-spotted mirror in the lads’ lavvy across the hall from Lowe’s office, a grey shadow toyed with the edges of his field of vision, and he opened his eyes before it could take on a more substantial form. His thoughts turned to home. To the bottle of Monkey Shoulder in the cupboard under the sink. He pushed them away. Opened the cold tap. Splashed his face. The freezing water jolted him.
Aye, that was better. Once he got back to his flat and peeled off this ill-fitting suit, maybe he’d go for a run. Clear the cobwebs. Put himself on the road to well-being and prove to Lowe he was walking the talk.
He turned the tap off, pulled a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser and patted his face dry. Then he took a deep breath. Steeled himself. Walked out of the lavvy, through the corridor, toward the carpeted stairs that led to the station’s entrance, and the parking area outside.
‘DI Brandon!’
Lowe’s voice, calling him from his office doorway, stopped him mid-stride. Brian’s heart skipped a beat.
‘Come back here, will you?’ his senior officer added and strode back into his office without waiting for a reply.
Brian followed, his stomach clenching. ‘Sir?’ he asked from the doorway.
Lowe gave him another one of his appraising looks. His unblinking stare made him feel vulnerable. Naked.
‘Fine,’ he said, after a pause that felt like it had gone on for hours. ‘You’re right. We’re stretched thin and I can’t spare one of my more experienced DIs.’
Brian’s knees almost buckled with relief. His lips curved into a smile.
‘Does that mean—?’
Lowe lifted a hand, palm outward, in a silencing gesture.
‘Just so we’re clear,’ Lowe continued, ‘I’ll be watching you like a hawk. The second I sense you’re not up to the job, I’m putting you back on forced leave, you hear?’
‘Loud and clear,’ Brian said, with feeling.
A brief memory flashed. 3 a.m. Two days earlier. A half-empty bottle of Monkey Shoulder standing on the coffee table. Hunched on the sofa in a frayed terry-cloth robe, counting out how many Nytol one-a-day tablets he’d managed to scrounge from his medicine cabinet and wondering what would happen if he took them all. Washed them down with long gulps of the water of life.
Something prickled behind Brian’s eyes.
‘I won’t let you down, sir,’ he said, hoping his voice didn’t sound as shaky as he felt.
‘Let’s hope so, Brian,’ Lowe said, turning his gaze to his laptop – a sign Brian was being dismissed. ‘Let’s hope so.’
– Excerpted from Vanity Project byAndré Spiteri, Maverick Words, 2024. Reprinted with permission.
André Spiteri is the author of award-nominated crime thriller Back From The Dead and other novels featuring struggling characters with troubled pasts. He was born on the sunny island of Malta in 1982 and lives in Edinburgh with his wife, their two daughters, and two cats.
Interview:
Where are you from?
I'm based in Edinburgh, Scotland, but grew up on the Mediterranean island of Malta. Which, despite being a country, is the size of a small city.
Growing up in a small, overcrowded, hot, and rather conservative and sheltered place has definitely had an impact on how I view the world. At the time — this was the 80s and 90s — Malta was also newly independent, so there was lots of upheaval, rapid political, economic, and social change, and a search for identity after centuries of colonisation. I think this is reflected in my work. My stories are set in a typical Scottish city and the vernacular is very Scottish, but there isn't such a strong sense of place and many of my characters are unsettled, in the sense that they tend to be somewhat uncomfortable in their skins.
Tell us your latest news?
Well, I have a new book out called Vanity Project, a police procedural with a very troubled and introspective Detective Inspector. It's pretty good, you should check it out :)
When and why did you begin writing?
I'm not sure of the why, but it's something I've always done. When I was very young, seven or eight years old, I copied out Enid Blyton stories by hand, for fun, in exercise books. I used to make covers for them and tell my cousins they were books I wrote (they played along, ha ha). Then I tried my hand at writing my own stuff, but I suppose I was too young and immature so it didn't really work. So I put my writerly ambitions on the back burner and had all but given up on them until 2022, when I finished my first novel.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Aside from being an author, I've been freelancing as a copywriter, full time, for 10 years. So I guess you'd say I'm a professional writer. But, if I'm honest, I consider myself a creator, not a writer. Writing is just the medium I happen to be most comfortable using to express myself at this point in my life.
What inspired you to write your first book?
I came across a writing prompt on the internet — what if you woke up next to a random dead stranger — in the depths of the Covid pandemic. It spoke to me, so I took a note of it on my phone, but didn't really think about it again until 2022, when I learned about a thing called #2badpagesaday on Twitter (never X, sorry). This is exactly what it says it is: you write two pages a day until you finish. That did the trick, because two pages are short enough to be doable, but they add up fairly quickly. I finished the first draft of my first novel, Back From The Dead, in two and a half months, and now I can't stop.
Do you have a specific writing style?
That's not for me to judge. I do like to keep it real, though. And I tend to make it a point to zoom in on details others might gloss over. The literary equivalent of the horrendous motorway pileup you can't tear your eyes away from ha ha
How did you come up with the title?
Initially, the title of the book was Weapon of Vanity, and the boring truth is that it came about out of practical necessity. I needed to name the file I was writing the story in so I could save it, couldn't think of anything, and went with the name of the first song that popped into my head: Weapon of Vanity by the Swedish death metal band Soilwork.
I knew it didn't quite work as a title, but I reckoned I'd worry about that later. I did like the ring of it, though. And then, without going into too many specifics because I don't want to reveal too much about the story, I realised that what my killer was doing was essentially a vanity project — an attempt to make themselves feel better about something they'd been through because they couldn't handle an unpalatable truth. And denial is kind of the central theme of the book. All the major characters are in denial. So I thought it worked nicely and it stuck.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Vanity Project is an exploration of denial and the damage it does to you and those around you. But there's no overt message or moral. It's a story, written for enjoyment and escapism.
How much of the book is realistic?
I'm sure most of the stuff that happens in the book has happened multiple times in real life. The sad reality is that people suffer trauma and do horrible things to each other all the time. That's not new. What I've tried to do with this book is explore how we deal with this. What drives our actions? And, more to the point, what do we tell ourselves to justify our negative emotions and bad behaviour?
Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?
I think every work of fiction blends or is inspired by real-life experiences. That's inevitable. What a character does tends to be what the author would or wouldn't have done in that situation. Many of the events in my books are worst case scenarios. So, here's this experience I've been though. What if it had gone completely wrong? What would that have looked like?
What books have most influenced your life most?
The book that had the biggest impact on me was probably a non-fiction book called If You Want to Write: a Book about Art, Independence and Spirit by Brenda Ueland. It's not an exaggeration to say I wouldn't be writing professionally today if it weren't for it.
If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
I'm loath to pick somebody specific, because I learn something useful from every book I read, whether it's factual information, how to make a character more / less sympathetic, how to elicit certain feelings from the reader, or even what not to do.
What book are you reading now?
I've just finished The murder after the night before by Katy Brent, which was absolutely fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would 100% recommend it. Now just started The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving. I always seem to gravitate to John Irving in Winter. It must be something to do with the atmospheres he evokes in his books.
Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?
Not all of them are new. But authors I discovered and got really excited about over the past year are SJ Parris — I devoured all seven of her historical crime novels featuring real-life heretic Giordano Bruno. CJ Skuse, who's written the Sweetpea series, and Monika Kim. I loved The Eyes Are The Best Part.
What are your current projects?
I'm currently working on the second draft of a sequel to Vanity Project. Only 10k words in and my editor's expecting it by 3 March, so wish me luck.
Name one entity that you feel supported you outside of family members?
I genuinely couldn't do this without my fab editor Rebecca Millar. She's integral to my process and makes me sound like a much better writer than I am.
What would you like my readers to know?
Buy my book. Buy my book. Buy my book.
Too much? ha ha
Website & Social Media:
Website ➜ www.andrespiteri.com
Instagram/Threads ➜ https://www.instagram.com/andrespiteri_
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