Friday, 21 August 2015
The Girl Who Broke The Rules by Marnie Riches
Series: The Girl Who Wouldn't #2
Release Date:20th August 2015
Publisher: Maze
Publisher: Maze
Genres: Crime / Thriller / Mystery / Suspense
The pulse-pounding new thriller from Marnie Riches. For anyone who loves Jo Nesbo and Stieg Larsson, this book is for you!
When
the mutilated bodies of two sex-workers are found in Amsterdam, Chief
Inspector van den Bergen must find a brutal murderer before the
red-light-district erupts into panic. Georgina McKenzie
is conducting research into pornography among the UK’s most violent
sex-offenders but once van den Bergen calls on her criminology
expertise, she is only too happy to come running. The rising death toll
forces George and van den Bergen to navigate the labyrinthine
worlds of Soho strip-club sleaze and trans-national human trafficking.
And with the case growing ever more complicated, George must walk the
halls of Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, seeking advice from the
brilliant serial murderer, Dr. Silas Holm…
Marnie
Riches arrives with a fully formed narrative skill that suggests
decades of experience; she’s created a wonderfully idiosyncratic
heroine, prone to bad
judgement, and placed her in an artfully constructed novel that even
incorporates cogent discussions of sexuality and gender. Ms Riches is
clearly a name to watch!’ BARRY FORSHAW - author of Euro Noir and The
Rough Guide to Crime Fiction.
Extract
The jagged pain between
her shoulder blades was fleeting. Magool flinched. Breathed in sharply at the
unpleasant sensation. She loosened her seatbelt. Wriggled in the passenger seat
to look behind her.
In
the dark, there was nothing to see.
Then,
she tried to reach behind to feel the leather. But her hands would not move.
She stared down at them, bemused. They felt neither leaden nor numb. It was
simply as if they no longer existed. And yet, there they sat, chapped from the
cold, bitten nails, primly folded over her wringing-wet, jeans-clad thighs.
Frowning,
aware of her accelerated heartbeat, she tried to lift her legs, move her feet,
wiggle her toes. Nothing. Why was her body not obeying her brain? She looked
askance at the driver.
‘I
can’t move,’ she said in Dutch. ‘What’s going on?’
The
driver stared resolutely ahead. Peering through the windscreen of the car as
hail rattled onto the glass, accompanied by fat snowflakes. Swept by the
wiper-blades into thin white columns on the windscreen’s periphery that grew
thicker and thicker with every second that passed; white screens closing slowly
on the real world.
‘Hey!
Stop the car! Something’s wrong, I’m telling you. I can’t feel a thing.’ With
difficulty, Magool could still turn her head – enough to see the side of her
driver’s face. ‘Did you hear me?’
Silence
enveloped her, and she realised her words had not sounded at all except inside
her head. Through the windscreen, she could just about make out the white-dusted
cobbles of the road. The snow, illuminated by the bright, triangular shafts of
the streetlights, came down like yellow-gold icing sugar, falling through a
sieve. But where the hell were they going on this beautiful, foul night? Not
towards her apartment, she was certain. And what was happening to her?
She
started to loll forward, held in her seat only by the belt. The driver reached
out and with a large, strong hand, pushed her up against the window.
‘Don’t
want you to hit your head, do we? Try to relax, Noor. It won’t hurt.’ Her
captor had finally spoken in a kindly voice. ‘I’ve given you a very strong
spinal block. The syringe was rigged in your seat. But try not to worry. I
promise you, I know what I’m doing.’
Magool
wanted to scream. Her brain shrieked for help; phantom hands hammered on the
window each time they passed a figure on the street, huddled in dark winter
clothes, braving the blizzard. Unaware of the young girl who was imprisoned in
the same vehicle that had just splattered their work trousers with virgin
slush.
With
only her mind unfettered, she considered the sequence of events that had
brought her to this terrible place.
Standing
in her booth, she had watched with fascination when the flakes began to waft
down from the heavens. Pink sky overhead, as though the very neon lights of
Amsterdam’s red light district were reflected in the snow clouds hanging above
her in the night sky. It was the first time she remembered ever having seen
snow. The mangroves that clung to the coastline like grasping old men’s hands;
the turquoise splendour of the Indian Ocean; the baking heat of her homeland –
they were all half a world away. Now, the hail came down among the snow, making
the same musical rattling noise against the glass door of her booth that the
tropical rains of the Gu and Dayr wet seasons had made on the corrugated iron
roof of her family’s shack.
ABOUT MARNIE RICHES
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