Published by SpellBound Books on 23rd June 2022
Amazon UK
“2016: the year Bowie died, the year that Britain voted to leave the EU, and the year that Trump came to power. Enter the world of Twenty Sixteen, Bullman’s terrific debut novel: a precisely imagined, beautifully written, compelling crime story that will have you turning its Soho-cocktail-soaked pages with relish. Its vividly realised characters will live on long after you have finished reading. Pyretic, louche, sexy: this is a cool book. British crime novels are rarely, if ever, this cool.” - Michael Stewart - Multi award winning writer
Two murders, committed over three decades apart, set in motion a modern noir detective story that plays out against the chaos of a Britain at odds with itself.
As Brexit bites and Britain begins to tear itself apart, DI Reider returns from a manhunt in Europe with a bullet hole in his shoulder and decides it’s time to retire from the force. But Reider hasn’t counted on his first case coming back to haunt him. He hasn’t counted on his career going full circle and he definitely hasn’t counted on Sasha Haye.
Angry and heartbroken, Sasha is seeking answers about the death of her boyfriend and Reider might just be the only person who can help her find them.Against the backdrop of the referendum and its aftermath, the pair embark on a journey that brings them into contact with extremism, celebrity, politics and the world of vintage porn, as they attempt to unravel a murderous knot with threads that lead into the dark heart of the establishment, and a past which has a cold and unrelenting grip on the present.
Today I am doing something I haven’t done in a LONG time and that is share an exclusive extract from a book! I’ve not had the time to get this book finished, but let me tell you it’s a cool one so far!
Without further ado!
There are four rooms leading off the landing at the top of the stairs and she’s in the last on the left. Patricia Peterson is laid out like she’s sleeping on a sheepskin throw on a rusting wrought-iron bedframe. I stop for a beat in the doorway and scan the room. Her head rests against the faded blue of a cotton pillowcase.
She has dark brown shoulder length hair with a straight fringe and open, brown eyes still fixed on the arrival of her own death from the middle distance. She has on pale pink lipstick and her eyes are heavy with black kohl. She’s wearing faded blue Wrangler jeans, red sports socks and a red long-sleeved Simon shirt. The large green paint spatters on the shirt still look wet and match the paint on the easel downstairs. The painting of the peroxide blonde downstairs was a self-portrait, but it was painted a while ago, before she let her hair return to its natural hue and became this. Lying there dead she looks more object than person, a shop dummy carved from a block of yellowing marble. Silent, calm and beautiful but for the fear still captured in her gaze.
On the floor next to the bed is a blue and grey Dansette record player, a record spins on it but with the needle removed. A Tommy James and the Shondells 45, on the Roulette label, Crimson and Clover. I drop the needle back onto the start of the record and the room fills with hypnotic yearning, drenched in reverb. I, well I don’t hardly know her…
The whole room though, is wrong. Hinky. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Crime scenes tell a story, and this one is lying. What though? Why? I drop down to my haunches to quiet the alarm bells ringing in my psyche. At the far side of the bed the thick nylon carpet still bears a feint but definite impression of a size 9 shoe. Anderson said he hadn’t even been to look, Meena took size 5 at most. At the victim’s neck are three slight but perceptible parallel red marks, small welts left there just prior to death, like someone had her by the throat and pulled their hand away quickly. There are small pulls and tears in her shirt where the sleeve meets the cuff. Someone had hold of her wrists and she pulled back, a small almond shaped bruise colours each wrist. The record begins again. Over and over. There are feint drag marks leading from the bed to the chair leaning against the wall on the other side of the room from me. It’s an old green velvet chesterfield armchair smudged in three places by the same green paint visible on her shirt.
The room’s story starts to form. Someone has tried to hide what happened here. The chair is where she died, impressions of where her nails dug into the fabric are still visible, as is the mark left by whatever was used to tie her down. The padding beneath the velvet holds the indentations left by her forearms. I check the pills at the bedside. There are enough missing to kill her, but that would have taken time. Her left hand is splattered with paint while her right is much cleaner. I roll up her left sleeve and find nothing. On the right is a small puncture mark, recent but fading, where an injection has been administered, but not by her. I check every surface and drawer in the bedroom and find nothing that could have left the mark.
Well there you go, did this whet your appetite to find out more?
Until next time xxx
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