For all you Irish folk or descendants of Irish folk or anyone who likes to get together and listen to good music and drink green beer…
My the luck o’ the Irish be with you.
***** (five out of five)
Julie Chalmers leaves her home in Edinburgh, Scotland after a visit from the police telling her that her estranged husband was found dead in Dundee. Knowing that he left for another woman, she pulls up roots, reverts to her maiden name, Forbes, and moves to the city where he died planning on exacting her revenge on the “other woman”.
Little does Julie know that the Night Watcher has already arrived in Dundee and his Chosen One is the “other woman.”
Nicole’s reputation as a man-eater is well known within the store where she’s slept her way to the top and is currently having an affair with Ken, one of the senior managers.
Julie rents the flat above the one her husband had in the building where he died and puts her plans of revenge on Nicole into action.
Over the years, Nicole has amassed a number of enemies – Harry, the security guard at the store who she belittles at every opportunity, Ken – her lover who she dumps when it becomes clear he’s not about to leave his wife, Scott – her husband who has his own bit on the side who reminds him of Nicole when she was young, before she lost her innocence.
When Nicole thinks she’s being stalked and gifts mysteriously arrive for her – dead birds and animals – and just as mysteriously disappear, her husband doesn’t take her seriously. He tries to convince her that it’s her imagination. But does he have an ulterior motive?
After Scott has left for Paris on business, Nicole finds his passport and knows he can’t travel abroad without it.
When the police are called in, the head detective on the case doesn’t take Nicole’s accounts of her recent happenings seriously. Only when she ends up dead does he realize he’s made a grave error.
Things get even more complicated when he falls for Julie and they embark on a relationship only to discover that Julie – the estranged wife of the apparent suicide in the building she’s moved into – becomes the next Chosen One.
Even when you think you have it all figured out, Chris throws in one final twist to throw you off. Her descriptive narrative draws you in making the sights, sounds and smells come to life. The dialogue is natural and makes the characters seem like normal folk you would meet on the street or in your local.
For anyone who enjoys crime fiction, I highly recommend this as an addition to your must read list.
I’m back writing now after a few days of having my face stuck in someone else’s book rather than my own. It was actually quite refreshing.
Now, I’ve not gone back to my own manuscript but I did write a review on Night Watcher and have uploaded it to amazon.com. In addition, I’ve sent it on to Brian Henry to include on his Quick Brown Fox blog.
So we’ll see what tonight brings…
I loved every word of it. It kept me guessing until the end when she revealed ‘whodunnit’, and even then, there’s an unsuspected twist. It’s a fantastic read and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes crime fiction.
Now available at Amazon.com for their Kindle reader (or Kindle apps for other devices – ipod, iphone, BlackBerry, ipad etc) – Night Watcher by Chris Longmuir. I downloaded it last night (Kindle app for the ipad – which works great).
Congratulations Chris!
Now to get off this and go back to reading Night Watcher.
After a couple of lean nights, I’m happy to say I’m back on track and have added 850 words to my manuscript. Yeah me!!!
Nary a word written on my manuscript but I did manage to write 182 words for another photo prompt for my next writer’s meeting. Whether I finish it or not remains to be seen. I’ve already got two written and this current work-in-progress is extremely DRY! So I would have to re-write it anyway to make it more interesting rather than just the facts.
Not Monday after work, nor Tuesday either. That’s not good. Two days and no writing. Have to get my butt in gear and get back at it.
I ordered two books from Amazon.ca last night so maybe they’ll help me get back on track. Almost ordered a third but something about the cover niggled at my brain so I checked through my stash of books that I have no room on my bookcases for and sure enough, it was there so it was promptly deleted from the list.
I really need to catalog my books. It’s bad enough I purchase duplicate copies of magazines from time to time.
Well after getting up early this morning, seeing the snow removal grader get stuck and generally wasting time with assorted other Internet activities and mundane chores like laundry, I managed 1243 words on my manuscript. Yeah!!!