The Pact by Sharon Bolton - Reviewed by Gwent Moffat

  

THE PACT, Sharon Bolton

Trapeze.  Hbk £14.99. Publ. May 27, 2021

Waiting for exam results which will secure them places at favoured universities six friends while away the long summer nights beside the pool of Talitha’s indulgent parents. All six are ensured success, and in more than exam results; five are from privileged backgrounds, and if Megan is a scholarship girl she balances the scales with brains and drive, even status. She is head of their elite Oxford school.

So where are the challenges when suddenly there is nothing to do and the future is guaranteed: gilded but – dull? On the cusp of ennui they have invented a game which five have played already. They emerged unscathed but shocked and frightened and gloriously exhilarated. It’s a dare: to drive the wrong way down the M40. It’s Russian roulette – and now Dan, the quiet one, is cajoled and bullied into taking his turn.

Of course it goes wrong. Again the friends escape physically undamaged but they have forced another car to take avoiding action and crash and while they argue whether they should try to rescue the screaming occupants it catches fire and explodes and they flee, leaving two children and their mother to die. 

An image of their car’s registration plate is caught on camera. They panic and while they wait for the police to find them they concoct crazy alibis against a rolling background of exam results – which are as they’d anticipated except  that Megan has failed across the board. But the immediate concern is their dread of murder charges and they are close to hysteria when Megan comes up with a solution. She will confess to driving the car even in the face of life imprisonment. In return the others must sign a document committing each to grant her some unspecified service when she has served her term.

Eventually the others agree to sign; they have all their lives ahead of them, but Megan is only a scholarship girl and she fluffed her finals. Besides, she volunteered. They assure her they will keep in touch. 

Twenty years later those on the outside have, individually and predictably, achieved success. Amber is a junior minister in the cabinet, Xavier a banker, Felix a millionaire industrialist, Talitha a lawyer. Only Dan (who had been driving the car) is unmarried. He has joined a religious order but he too has climbed the ladder and is master of their old school. And now, having served extra time for bad behaviour, Megan is released and comes back to remind them of the pact.

The book proper begins. So far, in the first few pages, there was a group of careless adolescents who played a silly game to produce horror that has haunted them ever since.  Reactions have run the gamut as they tried to repress guilt by means of new lives with intense professional involvement bolstered by easy living and comfortable domesticity. Whereas in prison Megan has had to contend with violence, failing health and isolation. No one visited. No one wrote. But she has the whip hand; she holds the signed document and photographs dating from the night of the fatal crash, evidence that proves all six people were responsible, not one: the ultimate blackmail weapon. She has nothing to lose, she has served her time.

The situation has been artfully contrived. With every participant possessing hostages to fortune, there are heart-breaking dilemmas to be resolved, lines to be crossed. If murder was done on the motorway nothing short of murder can balance the books. But who and whom and how? All six were guilty: five passengers in the car were accessories even if only one was at the wheel, but how is it going to work out?

A remarkable novel: part puzzle, part morality play. Despite the bizarre premise of that outrageous dare, perhaps because of it, this one is a page-turner.

Sharon Bolton (previously S. J. Bolton) is the critically acclaimed author of some of the most bone-chilling crime books ever written. She has been shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Novel of the Year and the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. In 2014 she won the CWA Dagger in the Library for her whole body of work. 

Gwen Moffat is a British mountaineer and writer, whose novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. 

Top Five Books Set in Northern England

Today's guest blog is by author Rachel Abbott. Here she is talking about her top five favourite novels set in northern England.

I love reading books that are set in places I know well, and even better when they get transferred to the TV and I am glued to the screen, trying to recognise places!  I’ve chosen a few of my favourite thrillers/crime novels, and maybe cheated in a couple of places!

Sacrifice by Paul Finch

Paul Finch’s detective, Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg is actually based in London, but he has a bit of a roving remit, it seems. The first book of Paul’s that I read was Stalkers, and a reasonable amount of the action takes place in Salford, which – for those who don’t know – lies close to Manchester. But here I have mentioned his second novel in the ‘Heck’ series – Sacrifice.

It’s hard not to like a book that starts off with a young man being burnt alive on a bonfire and builds the body count from there! Moving from Liverpool to Yorkshire and then to the Midlands, it has all the grim humour of that region and Finch’s ingenious plot rings with the authentic voice of the ex-policeman he is. ‘Heck’ is against the clock to find my favourite kind of bad guy, a killer with a deadly plan! Gripping stuff!

 

The Mermaid’s Singing by Val McDermid

My first cheat – because I have named two Val McDermid’s in my list and because this book – like all of the Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series – takes place in the fictional town of Bradfield. I have always thought of this as being northern, or possibly north midlands? But hopefully close enough, and I do love Tony Hill. He is so well written as a character, and so consistent.

This book introduces Tony Hill to readers. He is a criminal profiler who has spent years exploring the psyches of madmen. McDermid turns up the suspense by revealing Hill’s damaged past which qualifies him to solve the series of mutilation sex murders even while it condemns him to being the perfect victim. The fictional town of Bradfield sits silently behind visions of torture and terrifying fantasies like a muse. So, it has very element I like, dark psychology and susceptible heroes being torn between good and evil!

Blood Harvest by SJ Bolton

This author, now more usually know as Sharon Bolton, is one of my favourite writers. I have loved all her books, from the early stand-alone novels to the detective series featuring Lacey Flint. I think Blood Harvest was the first of her books that I read, and I immediately bought every other novel by this author that I could find, but I particularly remember Blood Harvest.

The story is set in a remote corner of the Pennines and fairly rings with the claustrophobic atmosphere of rural village life. A woman has lost her little girl but she is not the first to have gone missing. Soon, voices from the graveyard start to haunt them. How can they be heard? Yes, Bolton has had her family build their shiny new house right in the middle of the graveyard! It’s not long before the rotten heart of the village is exposed but it may be a lot longer before you go trekking again across the backbone of England!

A Place of Execution by Val McDermid

My second Val McDermid, but a very different book. This one really resonated with me, because the story references the murderous careers of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, and I used to live on Saddleworth Moor – where some of the bodies of the children they murdered were buried. It’s actually a wild and lovely place – but now with a terrible reputation.

The story starts in the winter of 1963 when two children disappear off the streets of Manchester. A third child goes missing and McDermid paints in the insular community, dead ends and distrust with such skill that one immediately feels the pain of her young detective George Bennett. It’s a book and a plot that spans decades and in so doing takes over the life of another character who is also forced to re-investigate the past. Anything which drags up the dark roots of that time is always welcome.

The Moth Catcher by Ann Cleeves

I think everybody has come to love Vera since the TV series by the same name was first aired. This is a bit further north than my home town of Manchester, but Northumberland is a beautiful area that I have visited on several occasions. This book has only recently been released, but is getting some excellent, well-deserved, reviews.  In this story, Vera Stanhope finds a dead body in the beautiful lanes around Valley Farm in Northumberland. But there’s another body in the attic, and the only connection is the victims’ fascination with moths. The detective has to try to find out what happened in this idyllic looking place only to discover that Valley Farm is hiding a wealth of horror behind its pretty façade.

Kill Me Again by Rachel Abbott is out now on Amazon.

When your life is a lie, who can you trust.  When Maggie Taylor accepts a new job in Manchester, she is sure it is the right move for her family.  The children have settled well although her husband, Duncan, doesn’t appear to be so convinced.  But nothing prepares her for the shock of coming home from work one night to find that Duncan has disappeared, leaving their young children alone. His phone is dead, and she has no idea where he has gone, or why.  And then she discovers she’s not the only one looking for him.   When a woman who looks just like Maggie is brutally murdered and DCI Tom Douglas is brought in to investigate, Maggie realises how little she knows about Duncan’s past. Is he the man she loves?  Who is he running from?  She doesn’t have long to decide whether to trust him or betray him. Because one thing has been made clear to Maggie – another woman will die soon, and it might be her.

More information about Rachel Abbott and her books can be found on her website.  You can also follow her on Twitter @RachelAbbott and find her on Facebook.  You can also read her blog.

The trailer for Kill Me Again can be seen below.

Smash Hit Thrillers, Noir Nightmares, Secret Agents 2013 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of The Year Longlist Revealed.

A debut novelist muscles up against giants of the genre as the longlist is announced for the 2013 Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, one of the most prestigiouscrime writing prizes in the country.

 

Lee Child who won the Award in 2011 returns to the longlist with The Affair, dubbed‘his best book yet’. Sizing up to the phenomenal Jack Reacher is the master of the race-against-time thrillers, Simon Kernick, with Siege.

 

Other giants of the genre on the long-list are Stuart MacBride with Birthdays for the Dead, and two-time award-winner Mark Billingham for his stand-alone novel, Rush of Blood, said to be his most ambitious and accomplished work to date.

 

Irish authors Gene Kerrigan’s The Rage and Stuart Neville with his nightmare noir Stolen Souls also feature alongside last year’s winner Scottish author Denise Mina who seeks to defend her title with her Glasgow thriller Gods and Beasts.

 

The list is dominated by powerhouse authors, but there are a few dark horses. Lisa Ballantyne is the only debut author on the longlist with her first novel The Guilty One which caused an international stir and was a runaway success at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

 

SJ Parris’s historical thriller, Sacrilege, featuring Giordano Bruno, the radical philosopher and secret agent reveals the breadth of the genre alongside Stav Sherez’s A Dark Redemption, an unflinching, intelligent detective novel exploring the underworld of illegal Ugandan immigrants.

 

Now in its ninth year, the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, in partnership with WHSmith, was created to celebrate the very best in crime writing and is open to British and Irish authors whose novels were published in paperback from 1 May 2012 to 30 April 2013.

 

The long list, comprising 18 titles, is selected by an academy of crime writing authors, agents, editors, reviewers, members of the Crime Writing Festival Programming Committee and representatives from T&R Theakston Ltd and WHSmith.

 

The longlist in full:

The Guilty One Lisa Ballantyne (Piatkus)

Finders Keepers Belinda Bauer (Transworld)

Rush Of Blood Mark Billingham (Little Brown)

Dead Scared S J Bolton (Corgi, Transworld)

The Affair Lee Child (Transworld)

A Foreign Country Charles Cumming (Harpercollins)

Safe House Chris Ewan (Faber and Faber)

Not Dead Yet Peter James (Macmillan)

Siege Simon Kernick (Bantam Press)

Prague Fatale Philip Kerr (Quercus)

The Rage Gene Kerrigan (Vintage)

The Dark Winter David Mark (Quercus)

The Lewis Man Peter May (Quercus)

Gods And Beasts Denise Mina (Orion)

Stolen Souls Stuart Neville (Vintage)

Sacrilege S. J. Parris (Harper)

Birthdays for the Dead Stuart MacBride (Harper)

A Dark Redemption Stav Sherez (Faber and Faber)

Longlisted titles will feature in a four-week campaign until 6 June across 600 WHSmith stores and 80 library services, representing a total of 1645 library branches. The longlist will be whittled down to a shortlist of six titles which will be announced on 4 July.

 

The overall winner will be decided by a panel of experts which this year comprises of Executive Director of T&R Theakston Ltd. Simon Theakston, Festival Chair Val McDermid and Head of Fiction at WHSmith, Dave Swillman, as well as members of the public. A fourth judge is to be confirmed. The public vote opens on 4 July and closes 16 July at www.theakstons.co.uk

 

Previous winners of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award include Denise Mina, Lee Child, RJ Ellory, Val McDermid, Allan Guthrie, Stef Penney and Mark Billingham (twice).

The winner of the prize will be announced by title sponsor Simon Theakston at an award ceremony hosted by radio broadcaster and Festival regular Mark Lawson on 18 July on the opening night of the 11th annual Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. The winner will receive a £3,000 cash prize, as well as a handmade, engraved beer barrel provided by Theakstons Old Peculier.

--Ends--

For further information please contact Ann Chadwick at Cause UK

07534892715 / Ann@causeuk.com

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. KEY AWARD DATES

4th July: shortlist announced and titles on promotion for four weeks in 600 WHSmith stores nationwide

16th July: public voting closes for the shortlist

18th July: winner announced

2. PREVIOUS WINNERS

2005 – Lazy Bones by Mark Billingham

2006 – The Torment of Others by Val McDermid

2007 – Two Way Split by Allan Guthrie

2008 – The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

2009 – Death Message by Mark Billingham

2010 - A Simple Act of Violence by RJ Ellory

2011 – 61 Hours by Lee Child

2012 – The End of the Wasp Season by Denise Mina

3. ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

The Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival is Europe’s largest event dedicated to the celebration of crime fiction. Taking place annually over four days each July (this year: 18-21 July), the Festival programmes over 80 best-selling UK and international crime authors and over 20 events. It is organised and promoted by the north of England’s leading arts festival organisation, Harrogate International Festivals. Ranked in the top three literary festivals in the UK by The Guardian, it is also featured in the Independent ‘50 Best Festivals’.

4. ABOUT THEAKSTONS

Title sponsor of the Festival since 2005, Theakstons Old Peculier ale is produced by T & R Theakston Ltd. It is one of the country’s most famous and highly regarded traditional ale brewers. Theakstons was established in Masham, North Yorkshire in 1827 by Robert Theakston. After a brief period in the 1980s when the company was acquired by Scottish & Newcastle plc, the company has been back under family ownership since autumn 2003. It now operates as an independent brewer producing five permanent brands in the Theakstons range including the iconic Old Peculier – its best-known beer with a rich, dark flavour, celebrated by ale enthusiasts all over Britain and around the world. Theakstons Old Peculier is now available in the United States again thanks to an agreement between the brewer and Latis Imports of Connecticut.

 

The 2013 Edgar® Award nominations are out!

Today the 2013 Edgar nominations were announced.  The Edgar® Awards will be

presented to the winners at the 67^th Gala Banquet on 2 May 2013 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York banquet.

The nominations are as follows –

Best Novel:

The Lost Ones by Ace Atkins (Penguin Group USA - G.P. Putnam's Sons)
The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye (Penguin Group USA - Amy Einhorn Books/G.P. Putnam's Sons)
Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn (Crown Publishers)
Potboiler by Jesse Kellerman (Penguin Group USA - G.P. Putnam's Sons)
Sunset by Al Lamanda (Gale Cengage Learning - Five Star)
Live by Night by Dennis Lehane (HarperCollins Publishers - William Morrow)
All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley (Penguin Group USA - Riverhead Books)

Best First Novel:

The Map of Lost Memories by Kim Fay (Random House Publishing- Ballantine)
Don't Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman (Minotaur Books - Thomas Dunne Books)
Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal (Random House Publishing- Bantam Books)
The Expats by Chris Pavone (Crown Publishers)
The 500 by Matthew Quirk (Hachette Book Group - Little, Brown and Company - Reagan Arthur)
Black Fridays by Michael Sears (Penguin Group USA - G.P. Putnam's Sons)

Best Paperback Original:

Complication by Isaac Adamson (Soft Skull Press)
Whiplash River by Lou Berney (HarperCollins Publishers - William Morrow Paperbacks)
Bloodland by Alan Glynn (Picador)
Blessed are the Dead by Malla Nunn (Simon & Schuster - Atria Books - Emily Bestler Books)
The Last Policeman: A Novel by Ben H. Winters (Quirk Books)

Best Fact Crime:

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French (Penguin Group USA - Penguin Books)
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King (HarperCollins Publishers - Harper)
More Forensics and Fiction: Crime Writers' Morbidly Curious Questions Expertly Answered by D.P. Lyle, MD (Medallion Press)
Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre (Crown Publishers)
The People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo - and the Evil that Swallowed Her Up by Richard Lloyd Parry (Farrar Straus & Giroux Originals)

Best Critical/Biography:

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: The Hard-Boiled Detective Transformed by John Paul Athanasourelis (McFarland and Company)
Books to Die For: The World's Greatest Mystery Writers on the World's Greatest Mystery Novels edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke (Simon & Schuster - Atria Books - Emily Bestler Books)
The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics by James O'Brien (Oxford University Press)
In Pursuit of Spenser: Mystery Writers on Robert B. Parker and the Creation of an American Hero edited by Otto Penzler (Smart Pop)

Best Short Story:

"Iphigenia in Aulis" - An Apple for the Creature by Mike Carey (Penguin Group USA - Ace Books)
"Hot Sugar Blues" - Mystery Writers of America Presents: Vengeance by Steve Liskow (Hachette Book Group - Little, Brown and Company - Mulholland Books)
"The Void it Often Brings With It" - Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Tom Piccirilli (Dell Magazines)
"The Unremarkable Heart" - Mystery Writers of America Presents: Vengeance by Karin Slaughter (Hachette Book Group - Little, Brown and Company - Mulholland Books)
"Still Life No. 41" - Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Teresa Solana (Dell Magazines)

Best Juvenile:

Fake Mustache: Or, How Jodie O'Rodeo and Her Wonder Horse (and Some Nerdy Kid) Saved the U.S. Presidential Election from a Mad Genius Criminal Mastermind by Tom Angleberger (Abrams - Amulet Books)
13 Hangmen by Art Corriveau (Abrams - Amulet Books)
The Quick Fix by Jack D. Ferraiolo (Abrams - Amulet Books)
Spy School by Stuart Gibbs (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage (Penguin Young Readers Group - Dial Books for Young Readers)

Young Adult:

Emily's Dress and Other Missing Things by Kathryn Burak (Macmillan Children's Publishing Group - Roaring Brook Press)
The Edge of Nowhere by Elizabeth George (Penguin Young Readers Group - Viking)
Crusher by Niall Leonard (Random House Children's Books - Delacorte BFYR)
Amelia Anne is Dead and Gone by Kat Rosenfield (Penguin Young Readers Group - Dutton Children's Books)
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (Disney Publishing Worldwide - Hyperion)

TV Episode Teleplay:

"Pilot" - Longmire, Teleplay by Hunt Baldwin & John Coveny (A&E/Warner Horizon Television)
"Child Predator" - elemeNtarY, Teleplay by Peter Blake (CBS Productions)
"Slaughterhouse" - Justified, Teleplay by Fred Golan (Sony Pictures Television/FX Productions)
"A Scandal in Belgravia" - Sherlock, Teleplay by Steven Moffat (BBC/Masterpiece)
"New Car Smell" - Homeland, Teleplay by Meredith Stiehm (Showtime/Fox21)

Mary Higgins Clark:

Dead Scared by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur Books)
A City of Broken Glass by Rebecca Cantrell (Forge Books)
The Reckoning by Jane Casey (Minotaur Books)
The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge Books)
Sleepwalker by Wendy Corsi Staub (HarperCollins Publishers - Harper)

Other awards to be given at the banquet are –

Robert L Fish Award - "When They Are Done With Us" - Staten Island Noir by Patricia Smith (Akashic Books)

Grand Masters – Ken Follett and Margaret Maron

Raven

Oline Cogdill
Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, San Diego & Redondo Beach, CA 

Ellery Queen Award

Akashic Books

The nominations can also be found here.

Congratulations to all the nominees!