Kill Me Twice Blog Tour: Author Guest Post

Woohoo! Thrilled to have been asked by Imogen Sebba at Bonnier Zaffre to take part in Simon Booker’s KILL ME TWICE blog tour! Today I have a guest post on VILLIANS from the author to share. First though, lets find out a bit about Simon Booker and this book!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Follow me on Twitter @simonbooker. And thanks for checking out my Author Page. I’ve written many primetime dramas for BBC, ITV and US TV – everything from BBC1 murder mysteries like The Inspector Lynley Mysteries and The Mrs Bradley Mysteries starring Diana Rigg to US romantic comedies such as Perfect Strangers starring Rob Lowe and Anna Friel.

Without Trace was my debut novel, the first in a series of psychological thrillers featuring Morgan Vine, a single mother and investigative journalist obsessed with miscarriages of justice. She lives in a converted railway carriage on the beach at Dungeness, Kent.

I share Morgan’s interest in miscarriages of justice. My ex-wife married a man who spent 26 years in a US prison for a murder he didn’t commit. But that’s another story. I volunteer in UK prisons, running reading groups and working in the field of restorative justice. Although these experiences help to inform my writing, my principal aim is to produce a series of page-turning thrillers to keep readers guessing until the final page. Without Trace has already been optioned for TV, so watch this space for more news.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy getting to know Morgan Vine and her wayward teenage daughter, Lissa, and I look forward to your feedback via Amazon reviews.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Kill Me Twice finds investigative journalist Morgan Vine on the rise, her ‘one woman innocence project’ book become a bestseller, and she’s the go-to for everyone trying to overturn a wrongful conviction. But one of these cases catches her eye more than most…

Anjelica Fry is in prison for murdering her ex, Karl Savage, in an arson attack. Multiple forensic experts testified to finding his charred remains. Proving her innocence seems an impossible task. . It doesn’t matter that Karl was abusive. That Anjelica has a baby to care for. That she’s petrified of fire. The whole world knows Karl is dead.

Then he turns up outside Morgan’s window . . .

A compulsively gripping thriller with a truly kick-ass female lead in Morgan Vine, Simon Booker turns up the heat in this follow up to his critically acclaimed debut Without Trace.

What makes the perfect villain? — Simon Booker

As Jane Austen definitely didn’t say, it is a truth universally acknowledged that any investigator/cop/detective is only as interesting as his or her adversary/nemesis. There’s no point in writing a twisty-turny crime story or pacy thriller in which the villain is a wimp with the oomph of a wet paper bag. Where’s the challenge for the hero/ine? Where are the stakes? Where’s the jeopardy?

Think of Batman. If The Joker as played by Heath Ledger hadn’t been a terrifyingly manic, out-of-control character who stole a huge amount of money only to set it ablaze ‘for kicks’, we wouldn’t remember him at all, and Batman’s triumph wouldn’t have felt so, well, triumphant.

But villains don’t have to behave outrageously to be memorable. Take softly-spoken Harry Lime in Graham Greene’s classic The Third Man. Unforgettably portrayed by Orson Welles in the film adaptation, Lime is a charismatic sociopath who thinks nothing of contriving the deaths of people in a scam that involves peddling fake penicillin. Up on the Big Wheel, high above post-war Vienna, Lime is challenged by Holly Martins, an old friend who tries to act as his conscience.

MARTINS: “Have you ever seen any of your victims?”

HARRY LIME: “Victims? Don’t be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax – the only way you can save money nowadays.”

The low-key ‘dots’ speech is one of the most chilling ever written, and made all the more memorable by the charm and – as with the speech that follows – the wit with which it’s delivered.

LIME: “You know what the fellow said: in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

I wouldn’t put the villain of my new thriller KILL ME TWICE, Karl Savage, on a par with Harry Lime, but as with all writing, the devil is in the detail. When trying to find ways to convey just how callous a sociopath Karl Savage is, I came up with the following scenario. He’s driving in heavy London traffic. An ambulance is trying to push through the gridlock, siren blaring, lights flashing, but Karl deliberately blocks its path – knowing that whoever is in the ambulance is in a critical condition and could die at any minute – for no better reason than because he can and because it amuses him. He’s clever, reckless, conscienceless and fearless – just the sort of adversary worthy of Morgan Vine as she takes him on in her continuing quest to overturn miscarriages of justice and make sure the villain gets his comeuppance.

For your FREE 26-PAGE short story – in which Morgan Vine must somehow outwit a dangerous escaped prisoner who breaks into her isolated house on the beach at Dungeness – please go to simonbooker.com