Today I’m delighted to join the blog tour for A Silent Death, the latest thriller from Peter May. My thanks to Martina Ticic at Midas PR for inviting me to join the tour. I have a great extract from the book to share with you all just as soon as we’ve seen what the book is all about:
A Silent Death
Set in Southern Spain, A Silent Death is the scorching new thriller from worldwide bestselling author of The Lewis Trilogy, Cast Iron and I’ll Keep You Safe.
Available from: Amazon | Kobo | Waterstones | Googleplay | Apple Books
A SILENT VOW
Spain, 2020. When ex-pat fugitive Jack Cleland watches his girlfriend die, gunned down in a pursuit involving officer Cristina Sanchez Pradell, he promises to exact his revenge by destroying the policewoman.
A SILENT LIFE
Cristina’s aunt Ana has been deaf-blind for the entirety of her adult life: the victim of a rare condition named Usher Syndrome. Ana is the centre of Cristina’s world – and of Cleland’s cruel plan.
A SILENT DEATH
John Mackenzie – an ingenious yet irascible Glaswegian investigator – is seconded to aid the Spanish authorities in their manhunt. He alone can silence Cleland before the fugitive has the last, bloody, word.
Peter May’s latest bestseller unites a strong, independent Spaniard with a socially inept Scotsman; a senseless vendetta with a sense-deprived victim, and a red-hot Costa Del Sol with an ice-cold killer.
From the Book
CHAPTER TWO
Cristina sat in the interview room, elbows planted on the table in front of her, head tipped forward into her hands. She rubbed thumbs into her temples trying to alleviate the ache. Her eyes were stinging. Although they had sent her home after the initial debriefing, she had been unable to sleep.
Miguel the station chief – or Jefe as he was known to everyone – had been roused from his bed, along with her immediate superior, to take both Matías and her through separate debriefs. It mattered that their stories were in sync, and Cristina saw no reason why they wouldn’t be. Still, she had the feeling that somehow blame was being attached to her, and she had no idea what it was that Matías had told them.
After the debrief, she had written her report on the computer in the administration room. A blow-by-blow account of everything that had happened from the moment she and Matías left the building here in Marviñas to the shooting at La Paloma. She’d not had sight of the report turned in by her fellow officer.
A little after 08.00 a call at home asked her to return to the station. There, a ballistics expert from Malaga accompanied her downstairs to the gun room, where she unlocked and removed her gun from its drawer. It was routine, he told her. A check to ascertain whether or not her weapon had been fired.
‘I never pulled the trigger,’ she said. ‘There was no reason to.’
He had smiled and nodded, and placed the SIG Pro in a heavy-duty plastic envelope.
She had been at the station most of the day since. Much of the time spent here in the interview room. Senior officers were coming from Malaga to question her, the Jefe had told her. But they didn’t arrive until mid-afternoon. Two men in dark suits. One around fifty, with crisply cut steel-grey hair, the other younger, with hair that touched his collar and fell untidily across his forehead.
They were gone now, after what had seemed like hours. Cristina repeating the story she had already told in detail several times over. She had been exhausted, her mind starting to wander. To her row with Antonio over breakfast when she had told him he would have to drive Lucas to school. To the call she had made to her sister late afternoon, asking her to pick Lucas up at the end of the day. A call she’d been reluctant to make, given all the troubles poor Nuri faced herself.
Now, all these hours later, she was just numb, wondering who was watching her through the two-way mirror on the wall opposite. There would doubtless be further rows when finally she got home. Issues that could no longer be ignored, but which she had no desire to confront – especially after the events of the last twenty-four hours.
She sighed, and wondered why she was still here.
And where was Matías?
She turned her head as the door opened and a grim-faced Jefe strode in. He was a small man, inclined to portliness, with cropped silver hair that bristled across his scalp. He had a habit of standing with his thumbs hooked into his gun belt, or with his arms folded across his chest. He never pulled rank. Didn’t have to. The insignia on his shoulder, with its single baton and two stripes, spoke for his status. But he carried his own authority with the same ease he wore the cross around his neck, or the Ray-Bans dangling from his breast pocket. He had never been anything but scrupulously fair with Cristina, and courteous, verging on avuncular, and she liked him a great deal. She got to her feet.
‘What’s happening, Jefe?’
‘Sit down, Cristina.’
‘I’ve been sitting on my ass all day, sir.’
He forced a smile and folded his arms. ‘Malaga have come back to us with an identity on the man who shot the girl in the villa last night.’
Cristina frowned. ‘But we know who he is. Ian Templeton. The villa is registered in his name.’
The Jefe nodded gravely. ‘Yes. But that’s an assumed identity, Cristina. His real name is Jack Cleland, and he tops the fugitives list of the British National Crime Agency.’
Cristina couldn’t stop her mouth falling open just a little. ‘What’s he wanted for?’
‘Trafficking in Class A drugs – and the murder of a police officer.’
About the Author
One of Scotland’s most prolific television dramatists, he garnered more than 1000 credits in 15 years as scriptwriter and script editor on prime-time British television drama. He is the creator of three major television drama series and presided over two of the highest-rated serials in his homeland before quitting television to concentrate on his first love, writing novels.
Born and raised in Scotland he lives in France.
His breakthrough as a best-selling author came with The Lewis Trilogy. After being turned down by all the major UK publishers, the first of the The Lewis Trilogy – The Blackhouse – was published in France as L’Ile des Chasseurs d’Oiseaux where it was hailed as “a masterpiece” by the French national newspaper L’Humanité. His novels have a large following in France. The trilogy has won several French literature awards, including one of the world’s largest adjudicated readers awards, the Prix Cezam.
The Blackhouse was published in English by the award-winning Quercus (a relatively young publishing house which did not exist when the book was first presented to British publishers). It went on to become an international best seller, and was shortlisted for both Barry Award and Macavity Award when it was published in the USA.
Author Links: Website
Follow the tour:
Jen Med's Book Reviews 
One thought on “A Silent Death by Peter May”
Comments are closed.