The man standing at the funeral in bubble-gum pink hair
is P.J. Crowe. His career as a detective is in tatters - he's facing dismissal,
vilified by the press and his wife's about to leave. Lying low in a
small seaside town he spots a ‘Help Wanted’ ad in the kitchen of a local
café. It offers him an escape from the public and his spiralling mental health
- and it's where Thea Farrell worked – until she was found dead at sea.
And herein lies the problem: Thea was an Olympic
medallist, silver for swimming and Crowe’s burned-out synapses are starting to
join the dots – it wasn't his case, but his cop’s senses tell him that Thea
wasn’t the drowning kind.
And the suspect may well be in the congregation.
A KIND OF DROWNING is a big departure for me
both in subject and style. I put the main character, P. J. Crowe in a small seaside
town, off the beaten track in the midst of a mental and professional crisis. He
is isolated in a small town where a tragedy occurs, and despite everything he’s
going through he’s not convinced it’s an accident.
For the technical aspects, I contacted Sue Procter at
ThinkForensic in the UK. I sketched out my ‘crime / tragedy’ and within weeks,
she was back with the science of what I was looking for. I built an entire
chapter around this and sent it back for approval. A few tweaks and several rewrites
later, Sue validated it. I now had a ‘hub’ around which the story would
revolve.
I had my protagonist, I had my ‘incident’ (or supposed
crime with the technical nous behind it), I had my location. Now I could
tap into the key Lockdown themes of this Covid-19 Crisis: Isolation, mental health,
and survival.
A KIND OF DROWNING is a noir novel – a Chandleresque, Ken
Bruen, Hammett, and Spillane dark in its concept. I wanted the characters to
grow through dialogue rather than actions and I wanted to stay clear of the
technical and procedural jargon and let the story evolve through Crowe’s eyes.
I think its my best novel to date; a culmination of 14
years of writing that has finally come together in this book.
But I will let the reader decide on that.
A KIND OF DROWNING will be released in early May on Amazon
& Kobo platforms
Sample chapter
“Where
to, Boss?”
It was Crowe’s kind of
ride, neither he nor the taxi driver spoke. The sporadic bursts from the Satnav
punctuated the silence. Dublin’s suburbs gave way to the northbound motorway.
But long distances abhor
a vacuum,
“I know you,” she said.
Crowe flicked his eyes
across the laminated ID – the driver’s name was Abosede Akande O’Hare. He spied
the small camera on the mirror behind a thick-beaded wooden rosary hanging from
the mirror.
“I don’t
think I’ve had the pleasure,” he replied.
“You look
done in,” she said.
He drew his hand across
the week long stubble then pulled it away; he studied it. The knuckles still
had faint traces of bruising. He covered them with his other hand. Sometimes
the tremors arrived unannounced. The scratches had healed in coarse diagonal
lines. A faint indentation on his finger hinted where a wedding band used to be.
Crowe had gone
twenty-four hours without sleep. He had the kind of sour hangover that felt
like a vice squeezing in on either side of his skull.
The white lines of the
road were hypnotic. A passing truck flicked its lights like a flashgun sending
lightening forks across his prefrontal cortex.
A lot could change in a
fortnight, he thought.
“You
police?” asked Abosede.
“No,”
Crowe replied.
Abosede made a clicking
sound with her tongue, rolling the words “PJ, PJ, PJ..” like a rolodex.
She turned her flawless
profile scanning him up and down. She saw a man in an unwashed fleece; a man
whose entire existence was stuffed into pockets and bags.
“You
look like police,” she murmured.
“It’s Gardai
in this country,”
“Gardee.
Guarding what?” she snorted.
Guarding what indeed, he
thought.
“I’m
paying you only to drive,” said Crowe.
The clicking continued,
she mumbled something under her breath. It sounded like “Stronger air
freshener,”
He couldn’t be sure.
The cab smelled exotic. A
gold watch glowed on her ebony skin; its glass was covered in a faint meshwork
of cracks.
“Not paying me enough,” she said.
Crowe slunk further into
his seat.
Twelve junctions later,
the northbound motorway siphoned off to a dual carriageway that dog-legged onto
a secondary road. The silence stretched out to forever. The first signposts for
his destination appeared.
“Well,
don’t expect any sunshine in Roscarrig, man. The forecast for the summer is
terrible,” said Abosede.
“Suits me, I’ve been told to rest,” said Crowe.
“You cannot rest in Dublin?”
“No-one
seems to think so,” he paused, pressing his forehead against the window. The
faint vibrations of the road coursed through his temples, “I thought I’d get away,”
“Why?
The city is where the money is, the money is boss; it crisp, it nice,”
He closed his eyes,
“I could
tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” he said.
“I do
know you. Brutality, man. Brutality,” said Abosede.
Like her photo, her
braids were piled gloriously high on her head.
“Roscarrig, thanks. No more talk or I will definitely
kill you,” he replied.
Crowe’s gaze fell onto
the glove compartment, an adhesive 3-D Jesus doled out a plastic benediction.
Abosede glanced sideways at him,
“Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved,”
she intoned,
“I never trust anyone who’s read just one book,” said
Crowe.
The silence descended
between them like a pall.
Dilapidated lines of
greenhouses amid large tracts of grass, yellow gorse and seas of ragwort sailed
past,
“Jacobaea
Vulgaris,” he muttered.
He thought about Googling
the word ragwort, but like his watch, the blood stained mobile phone was
sealed tight and locked away in an evidence bag.
He folded his arms.
Abosede’s tongue started
clicking again.
Two bedraggled roundabouts
later, they passed a peeling, dirty reflective welcome sign that requested
everyone to please drive slowly. The Satnav announced that they had reached
their destination. They were on the narrow main street of Roscarrig town.
It was a town dismal and
forgotten; out of time and out of luck, thought Crowe. The ragged end of
nowhere.
Last
stop, he thought.
