Pimping
Outrageous. Mr Random has been persuaded that he ought to read Dead Run, the latest thriller by mother-and-daughter writing team PJ and Traci Lambrecht. So I got it out of the library for him, and he’s enjoyed it and now he’s resolved to read Want to Play and Live Bait and I’m glad that my recommendation didn’t fall flat and everyone is happy.
[Buy from Amazon
But my point lies elsewhere. At the back of Dead Run is no less than a prologue and TWO chapters of the next in the series, Snow Blind. Now, on one hand this is no bad thing. I am a huge fan of these books and so are a lot of other women I know. But, two chapters? And a prologue? What absolutely shameless pimping this is.
The most annoying thing about this habit of publishers is the way it throws out your expectations. You’re expecting a centimetre or so of action before the end of the book and then, suddenly, you’re looking at the words THE END and feeling mightily discomforted. These days I always check where the story actually finishes.
To be fair, you have to read a fair bit before you meet any familiar characters. But still. Anyway, it looks promising so here’s a brief extract before the book goes back…
This was the story Emily was remembering on her last day, and it amazed her that she could remember it at all. She’d only heard it twice in her life – once from her Aunt Laura, who’d told her on the sly when Emily had turned thirteen, as if it were a strange and secret birthday present; and again from her mother on the day Emily had left the home farm to marry Edward and make her own life. Her mother had giggled during telling, which her aunt had never done, and that had frightened her a little. And then she told her to remember the tale, that it wasn’t really so funny, in case a day should come when she would need it.Today she needed it, Emily thought, wondering if she could finally do it, after all these years. And if she did, what would all those wasted years have been for?It was the last day; the last day of secrets. She lay on her back in bed, right hand pressed against her flat stomach; pushing, pushing the pain back inside; holding the evil, growing mass that writhed inside with hungry tentacles reaching for open nerves. God, it hurt.
A perfect, thin line of light pushed up the black curtain on the horizon outside her bedroom window and the quality of dark began to change inside the room. This room, where love and hell had happened, all in the same lifetime.
Emily’s feet were on the floor before the first chirp of the earliest rising bird had sounded, and the rush of agonizing pain pushed her head to her knees. She squeezed her eyes tightly closed and saw rolling, sparking pinwheels of light.
Old, ravaged huddle; tiny woman; folded into a small package of gray hair and sharpened knees, alone in a chamber of agony where, inexplicably, birds welcomed the morning in gay, sporadic disharmony.
She did things that seemed odd, considering her chore list for the morning. Prepared and ate her oatmeal; drank her precious single cup of coffee; carefully washed the bowl and cup and saucer with their faded, rose patterns, knowing those patterns had always been there, amazed at her years of indifference. Everything seemed sharper, clearer, as if she had seen the world for years through a lens just barely out of focus.
And then she walked to the old gun cabinet in the dining room.