BAD TURN: Charlie Fox is on the loose in Europe by Zoë Sharp

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about writing the Charlie Fox books is that they are not tied to one location. A part of me can see the attraction of a familiar locale and I know it might be a good idea to do this. After all, tours of Rebus’s Edinburgh, Morse’s Oxford, or Aimée Leduc’s Paris are undoubtedly popular.

But every time I sit down to write the next instalment in this series, deciding where she’s going to be heading off to is one of the things that keeps me hooked. The very nature of Charlie’s job in close protection means she has to be minutely aware of her surroundings. I take it as a challenge to try to weave in as much of the ever-changing dynamic between Charlie and her environment as I can into the fabric of the story.

For BAD TURN, number 13 in the series, I wanted a real European setting. I took Charlie to a bodyguard training school in Germany for one of the early books, HARD KNOCKS, and on a bikers’ fast trip around Ireland in ROAD KILL, but this time out I decided it was high time she made a return to mainland Europe.

I’d driven down to the southern area of France just before starting BAD TURN, and the scarcity of both people and other vehicles once we got away from the cities really set my imagination going. Tailing someone without other traffic to use as cover, for example, would present its own difficulties for Charlie.

The open agricultural land around the Midi-Pyrénées, with its open fields of sunflowers and occasional stunning pieces of modern architecture like the Millau Bridge, took my breath away.

There seemed to be a lot of half-derelict farmhouses that made my DIY fingers twitch to get stuck into them but provided ideal places of cover and concealment, as did the swathes of woodland.

But when I visited several of the magnificent local chateaux, including castles that had been in the same family line for a thousand years, I knew I’d found one of my main locations for the book. I borrowed aspects of a couple of them and created the Chateau de Bourdillon, complete with French aristocrat in residence. The fact he happened to have a somewhat unusual occupation was beside the point…

And then, of course, there was Italy. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Tuscany and Umbria and couldn’t resist BAD TURN visiting some areas that were very familiar to me, as well as others where I had to wing it a little more.

I borrowed the small island of Isole Minore on Lake Trasimeno, for example. In reality, the island is state owned and uninhabited but when you create your own version of the world, you are allowed to bend the rules. I made it the home of a wealthy Italian with a particular wish for privacy. I placed on the island a combination of abandoned monasteries and palaces for him to be restoring. Of course, there would be more reconstruction work to be done after Charlie left than there was when she arrived…

With her love of big motorcycles, Charlie’s no stranger to high-speed chases but I thought I’d take a different tack this time. It didn’t mean I couldn’t have some fun—as well as adding tension—by putting her in a small and somewhat underpowered vehicle like a Fiat Cinquecento. (And if you’re a fan of Fiat 500s, you’d better read that bit with your eyes closed. Let’s just say it doesn’t end well for that poor little car.)

Reintroducing Charlie to a European setting for BAD TURN was quite a ride and I’m already planning book #14. Where will she be next time around? Well, having spent a number of books working overseas, I think she might be ready to return home to the UK. The only question is, will the UK be ready for Charlie Fox?

Bad Turn by Zoë Sharp

Charlie has quit her job in close protection, been turned out of her apartment, and is apparently out of luck.  House-sitting in rural New Jersey has to be the pits—TV and TV dinners. A far cry from Iraq... Bulgaria... Afghanistan. Unlucky or not, she happens to be around at the right time to foil a violent kidnap attempt on Helena, wife of billionaire arms dealer, Eric Kincaid.  Kincaid offers her a job looking after Helena. The rumours about Kincaid’s business empire say he’s gone over to the dark side, but Charlie is in no position to be fussy. And protecting people against those who want to do them harm is what she’s good at. But when the threats against the Kincaids escalate, and then follow the couple over to Europe, Charlie’s really going to have to up her game. It’s time to take the fight to the enemy.  Charlie’s at her best putting an end to trouble. Now she must learn to strike first. And hope that the Kincaids don’t discover the secret she’s been keeping from them, right from the start.

Read the first three chapters of BAD TURN

https://www.zoesharp.com/books/bad-turn-opening-chapters/

BAD TURN is published in ebook, mass-market paperback, hardcover and Large Print editions on September 27 2019. For more information visit www.ZoeSharp.com

Why Charlie Fox by Zoë Sharp

When I was asked why I write about Charlie Fox, why I enjoy it, and what lies behind the latest book in the series, FOX HUNTER, it didn’t take much time to come up with the overriding answer.

I write what I like to read.

It sounds selfish when I put it like that, but I think most authors write for their own enjoyment first, and the enjoyment of others second. After all, if you don’t get some kind of a kick out of opening up last night’s file and reading those words you scribbled down so furiously, trying to do justice to the images swirling around inside your head, why do it at all? There are certainly easier and less painful ways to make a living.

I used to love reading thrillers years ago, but couldn’t help noticing that most of the female characters spent half the book swooning into the hero’s arms, being carried off by the baddies thus necessitating rescue, screaming at inopportune moments, tending the wounded, or cooking.

Even at that early age, I knew I wanted to read about the kinds of role-model women who didn’t need a man to complete them and were more than capable of doing their own rescuing, thank-you-very-much. And when I couldn’t seem to find what I was looking for, I decided my only option was to write my own.

Right from the start, I didn’t want Charlie Fox to be some kind of caricature superwoman. I tried to make her believable and human, with all the flaws that entails. But, she also has the ability to kill when the circumstances dictate, which is still not a readily acceptable trait in female characters. Those who do so are often portrayed as ice-cold assassins, deranged serial killers, or a thinly disguised ‘guy in nylons’.

Instead, I saw Charlie as having a very distinct line in the sand, which you crossed at your peril. She will go a long way to avoid conflict, but once something kicks off, you can bet she’ll be the one to finish it—hard and fast. I’d already learned a good many self-defence techniques, cherry-picking among different disciplines, when my day-job as a photojournalist led to death-threats, and I used this knowledge to provide Charlie with a background teaching those same tricks of survival to others.

And why had she learned them in the first place? It had to come as a result of bitter experience. At the time, the scandal of trainees being brutally hazed at the Deep Cut army camp was hitting the headlines. It provided the perfect reason for someone like Charlie, who seemed to be the ideal candidate for the military, to be hiding out in a northern English city and passing on those skills to other women.

I added to that mix parents who seemed incapable of showing affection to their only child—a nervy mother and a clinical father—and who had not approved of their daughter’s choice of profession to start with, never mind when it all went to hell around her.

The vicious attack she suffered back when she was in the army colours Charlie’s thoughts and actions to a large extent in the early books. Although the effects do lessen over time, they are never entirely forgotten. Neither does she allow them to define her—it is just something that happened to her, not all of who she is. And I started the first book in the series, KILLER INSTINCT, at the point when Charlie turns the corner, stops running, and begins to discover just how strong her life experience has made her.

But for this latest instalment, FOX HUNTER, I knew I was going to have to return to the original crime and lay out not only what had really happened to Charlie, but also who really was responsible, and why. I tried to do this in a way that did not wallow in the details. I don’t enjoy reading gore-porn and certainly had no desire to write it.

I try in all the books to take Charlie on a personal journey as well as that connected to the main story thread. For that part, I took as my starting point a news report about modern terrorist funding, details of the private military contractor (PMC) circuit, and information about honour killings.

Added to that was my knowledge of the bits of the Middle East I’d visited, and also the landscapes of Saddleworth Moor in the UK and Borovets in Bulgaria, with its overland route from the Black Sea via Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania. All fascinating areas with their own character to try to get across in the course of the story, but without turning it into a travelogue.

As always, it’s a fine balance, but nobody ever said things would be easy …

Zoë Sharp wrote the first in her crime thriller series featuring former Special Forces trainee turned bodyguard, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox, after receiving death-threats in the course of her work as a photojournalist. She has given occasional workshops on self-defence, and how to improvise weapons out of ordinary household items, but is otherwise remarkably normal in most respects. FOX HUNTER is book twelve in the award-winning Charlie Fox series. www.ZoeSharp.com

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