The Mine Fields of White Crocodile

Today's guest blog is by debut author K T Medina whom we have managed to persuade to talk about her novel which is partly set in Cambodia and England.


Imagine that the country you live in is dirt poor, there is no social security and unless you can somehow make a living for yourself and your family you will, quite literally, starve.  Along with most other people you know, you survive off the land – growing crops, foraging for food, collecting firewood and bartering.  Some days you manage to scrape together just enough to eat; other days you don’t.

Now, imagine if, added to all this, scattered underground near to where you live there are explosive devices waiting silently to kill you.  They could be buried in your back garden, on the way to your work, or around your children’s school.  A kilogram of pressure is all it takes….  Even the weight of a newborn baby is enough to set one off.  And when the anti-personnel mine explodes, it will explode straight upwards, shredding the flesh of your leg, splintering your bones.

  

Hard to imagine, isn’t it?  But this is reality for many Cambodian families.

It was a visit to this beautiful, but dark and tragic country that inspired me to write my debut thriller, White Crocodile.  In Battambang, Cambodia, danger is not just confined to the lethal minefields.  Young mothers are being abducted from villages around the minefields, while others are being found gruesomely mutilated and murdered, their abandoned babies by their side.  And in this superstitious society people live in fear of the white crocodile, a creature that brings death to all who meet it.  Back in England, emotionally damaged mine-clearer, Tess Hardy, has found the strength to leave her abusive husband, Luke.  Then she receives a call from Cambodia where Luke is working and Tess realizes that he has changed.  But there is no opportunity for them to be reconciled because, two weeks later, he is dead.  Despite her better judgment, Tess travels to the killing fields of Cambodia to find out what has happened to him.  What she uncovers in her search for the truth is far more terrifying and globally wide ranging than she could ever have anticipated - a web of secrets and lies stretching from Cambodia to another murder in England and a violent secret twenty years old.

White Crocodile is very personal to me and however many novels I go on to write, it will probably always be my favourite.  I was fortunate enough to travel to the land mine fields of northern Cambodia, around Battambang, where White Crocodile is set, when I was responsible for land-based weapons at Jane’s Information Group, the world’s leading publisher of defence intelligence information.  My brief was to work with mine clearers to determine what information they needed to help them clear mines more quickly and safely in the field.  During that time, I was privileged to be able to get to know both Western and Khmer mine clearers and to meet Khmers, both adults and children, who had lost limbs to land mines.  I also visited many of the locations that appear in White Crocodile, such as the Red Cross Hospital for the victims of land mines.  There are huge numbers of amputees in Cambodia, including very young children who, in many cases, thought that the anti-personnel mine they found was a toy.  Off the tourist trail, Cambodia is a heartbreaking place to visit and left a huge and lasting impression on me.  It is also an unbeatable setting for a dark and disturbing thriller.

White Crocodile is also a story about families: love and hatred, kindness and cruelty, the

destructive nature of some families and the long-term damage these families can cause.  The fear and helplessness a child trapped in a severely dysfunctional family feels must be all consuming, and for me was a very powerful emotion to explore in a novel, as was its flip side, intense love and an overwhelming desire to protect.  When I had my own children, I realised how great a responsibility it is to be a parent, and I tapped into those feelings while writing.

White Crocodile is a fast paced thriller, but the novels that stay with me long after the last page are those such as Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, or Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44, novels that explore real life trauma and exploitation through the medium of story and unforgettable characters, and that was my aim with White Crocodile. 

You can find more information about K T Medina on her website. You can also follow K T Medina on Twitter @KatieMedina11 

WHITE CROCODILE by K.T. Medina is out now, £12.99 (Faber & Faber)

Books to look forward to from Faber and Faber

In nineteenth-century Istanbul, a Polish prince has been kidnapped.  His assassination has been bungled and his captors have taken him to an unused farmhouse.  Little do they realize that their revolutionary cell has been penetrated by their enemies, who use the code name La Piuma (the Feather).  Yashim is convinced that the prince is alive.  But he has no idea where, or who La Piuma is - and has become dangerously distracted by falling in love.  As he draws closer to the prince's whereabouts and to the true identity of La Piuma, Yashim finds himself in the most treacherous situation of his career: Can he rescue the prince along with his romantic dreams?  The Baklava Club is by Jason Goodwin and is due to be published in June 2014.

All Day and a Night  is by Alafair Burke and is due to be published in July 2014.  When psychotherapist Helen Brunswick is murdered in her Park Slope office, the entire city suspects her estranged husband - until the District Attorney's Office receives an anonymous letter.  The letter's author knows a detail that police have kept secret: the victim's bones were broken after she was killed, echoing a signature used twenty years earlier by Anthony Amaro, a serial killer serving a life sentence.  Now, Amaro is asking to be released from prison, arguing that he was wrongly convicted, and that the true killer is still on the loose.  Ellie Hatcher and her partner JJ Rogan are tapped as the 'fresh look' team to reassess the original investigation that led to Amaro's conviction.  The case pits them against both their fellow officers and a hard-charging celebrity defence lawyer with a young associate named Carrie Blank, who has a personal connection to the case.  As both the NYPD and Amaro's legal team search for certainty in years of conflicting evidence, their investigations take them back to Carrie's hometown, and to deadly secrets left behind.  In her first series book for Faber, the author returns to one of the most memorable characters in contemporary US crime writing, NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher.

When Claire Cooper was eight years old her mother mysteriously vanished during Hop-tu-naa, the Manx Halloween.  At fourteen, Claire is still struggling to come to terms with her disappearance when she's befriended by a group of five teenagers who mark every Hop-tu-naa by performing dares.  But Claire's arrival begins to alter the group's dynamic until one year a prank goes terribly wrong, changing all their futures and tearing the friends apart.  Six years later, one of the friends is killed on Hop-tu-naa in an apparent accident.  But Claire, now a police officer, has her doubts.  Is a single footprint found near the body a deliberate taunt?  As another Hop-tu-naa dawns, bringing with it another death and another footprint, Claire becomes convinced that somebody is seeking vengeance.  But who?  And which of the friends might be next?  If she's to stop a killer and unlock the dark secrets of her past, Claire must confront her deepest fears, before it's too late.  Dark Tides is by Chris Ewan and is due to be published in October 2014.

The White Crocodile is fate.  Tess Hardy thought she had put Luke, her violent husband, firmly in her past.  Until he calls from Cambodia, where he is working as a mine-clearer, and there's something in his voice she hasn't heard before.  Fear.  Two weeks later, he's dead.  Was it really an accident, or was Luke murdered?  Against her better judgment, Tess is drawn to Cambodia, taking a job at the same humanitarian mine clearance charity Luke had been working for.  The White Crocodile is judgement.  What greets her is a country full of strange beliefs, where danger is all around.  Teenage mothers are disappearing from villages around the minefields, while others are being found mutilated and murdered, their babies abandoned.  The White Crocodile is death.  Tess hears whispers of the White Crocodile, a mythical beast that brings death to all who meet it.  Caught in a web of secrets and lies that stretches all the way from Cambodia to another murder in England, and a violent secret twenty years old, Tess must find out the truth, and quickly - because the crocodile is watching...  White Crocodile is by K T Medina and is due to be published in August 2014.

Smoke and Mirrors  is by James Carol and is due to be published in September 2014.  A Dead Lawyer, Eagle Creek, Louisiana.  Lawyer Sam Galloway is burned alive in an apparently motiveless attack.  The local sheriff's department calls in former FBI profiler Jefferson Winter to consult on the case.  A Serial Killer So far there's just one body, but there are going to be more.  A deadline has been set, the clock is ticking, and Winter has just thirteen and a half hours to track down the killer, before he strikes again.  A Dark Secret Winter knows all about secrets.  His father, one of America's most notorious serial killers, had everyone fooled for years.  Winter also knows that the problem with secrets is that they have a nasty habit of turning against you when you least expect it. 

Blood Whispers is by John Gordon Sinclair and is due to be published in June 2014.  'Truth

is, it's all lies.’  Teresa Gow is under arrest for a string of offences ranging from prostitution to attempted murder.  Lawyer Keira Lynch wants the charges dropped and her client taken into protective custody.  The CIA and a Serbian drug trafficker by the name of Fisnik Abazi, want Teresa dead.  Keira's cool head and laid-back approach has earned her the respect of most of the big-time players on the Glasgow crime scene.  She doesn't tell lies, she 'stylises the truth', and they trust her with their darkest secrets.  In a room full of murder suspects, Keira will finger the culprit every time.  They put her uncanny ability down to luck, but there's a more sinister explanation.  Keira has a dark secret of her own - when she was eight years old she killed a man.  It takes one to know one.  In a deadly game where nothing is what it seems and no one is who they say they are, Keira Lynch finds herself facing the biggest challenge of her life.  The question is not will she kill again, but when...