Three for the price of one?
No, I’m not talking about my sci-fi bundle The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection this time, although that bundle is definitely a bargain for all sci-fi readers.
Instead I’m describing Intolerance, Book Seven in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series. Like Book Six, Defanging the Red Dragon, it’s another novel that’s a fee PDF download (see the list of free fiction on my “Free Stuff & Contests” web page at this website). Why? Here’s the summary:
Esther Brookstone, ex-MI6 spy and ex-Scotland Yard Inspector in the Art and Antiques Division, becomes involved in solving a cold case, a murder committed in Ireland years earlier; in thwarting a plot to kill immigrants and refugees; and in a murder case involving a famous Irish author. Her husband, Bastiann van Coevorden, an ex-Interpol agent and now a consultant for MI5, and various others help her in these cases. As one character proclaims, “God help me. She turns up everywhere.” Life after Brexit has become very dangerous in the British Isles!
So you have three cases then in one novel. Esther and hubby Bastiann are very busy. That in itself is unusual because most novels aren’t three-part stories. I’ll often include back story or a flashback to revisit Esther’s prior adventures, as you’ve seen by reading some of the previous novels, but that’s more to show she’s been obsessed with solving crimes perpetrated against innocents for a long time, even as an MI6 spy during the Cold War. I’ve experimented a bit here, though, giving Esther and Bastiann only secondary roles.
Esther’s not in danger in this one either. She’s involved in these cases because, at this stage in her life, she has a lot of friends who carry on her campaigning against injustice. Of course, she’s the common denominator for the cases. The first reflects her opinion that both bigotry and hatred are despicable, the second involves two newlyweds whose wedding led to the first, and the third involves one of those newlyweds more directly. So they are intertwined.
A question readers sometimes ask is why, with my love of Ireland, I don’t use that Emerald Isle as a setting for a mystery/thriller novel. This novel comes fairly close with two of the cases mentioned above. The first is about an Irish sculptor and the second about an Irish writer (two if you also count the murder victim). The amateur detective Declan O’Hara appeared in my novella “Poetic Justice” (now available as one of eight novellas found in Sleuthing, British-Style, Volume Three, also a free PDF download), and he and his new wife DI Margaret “Maggie” Bent received an encore in this novel. (These are independent stories, though.) Maggie has her hands full chasing the right-wing scrotes who are murdering migrants and refugees, while Declan tries to find his old author friend’s murderer.
Do you find all this too complex? Sorry, I don’t write fluff. All my stories are complex, even the short fiction. And this novel is free, so you don’t have any right to complain (chortle, chortle).
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“Clones and Mutants.” This series starts with my very first novel, Full Medical, as it paints a dystopian picture of what our healthcare system can become as greedy people get rich off innocent people’s health problems and unscrupulous politicians try to preserve their power. The clones here are also abused innocents. In Evil Agenda, the villain behind the conspiracy of the first novel, tries to give himself even more power; and, in No Amber Waves of Grain, he almost redeems himself by helping to thwart an even more insidious villain. These are “evergreen books,” as current and troubling sci-fi thrillers as the day I wrote them, and all three books in this trilogy are available wherever quality ebooks are sold.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
