Yvonne
For all you ‘First Page Browsers’
FIRST LINES – CHAPTER ONE – PAPERBACK EDITION
Was she being followed?
It was hard to tell at that time of night on the motorway. There was plenty of traffic, lorries for the most part, and people driving home from the pub just a little too carefully, red BMW’s coasting up the fast lane, doing a hundred or more, businessmen in a hurry to get home from late meetings.
She was beyond Newport Pagnell now, and the muggy night air blurred the red tail lights of the cars ahead and the oncoming headlights across the road.
She began to feel nervous as she checked her rear-view mirror and saw that the car was still behind her.
She pulled over to the nearside lane and slowed down. The car, a dark blue Mondeo, overtook her. It was too dark to glimpse faces, but she thought there was just one person in the front and another in the back. It didn’t have a taxi light on top, so she guessed it was probably a private hire car and stopped worrying
…
THE BLURB
A bullet to the brain abruptly halted a terrified young woman’s desperate flight. In her pocket is the name of a policeman whose own life was brutally invaded, mercilessly shaken, and very nearly erased—a policeman who has since gone missing.
The dead woman in the car had been running from something—but she didn’t run far or fast enough. Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot would like to question the man the victim was apparently racing to meet: Annie’s superior—and former lover—Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. But Banks has vanished into the anonymous chaos of the city, drawn into a mad whirl of greed, inhumanity, and death, by a frantic phone call from the brother he no longer knows.
Banks is unaware that the threads connecting a sinister kidnapping with a savage slaying are as thick as rope . . . and long enough for a haunted and broken rogue cop to hang himself.
…
So you have taken a look, will you read the book?
Let me know what you think in the comments section below.
You might also like to visit Gilion, over at ‘Rose City Reader‘, where you can share links to the book beginnings from her own reading schedule and that of many of our fellow bloggers. There are always plenty of new authors and titles to be discovered.
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The thought of being followed is creepy, so this does grab my attention and make me want to read on. I’m not sure I would know if someone were following me or not. I like to think ‘yes’, since I live in a small town without a great deal of traffic…. but I’m sure in a big city or on a highway, it might be difficult to tell.
I’m zipping right through my current book (one I picked via Tracy’s blog, some time back) so perhaps I’ll have a review up next week. 🙂
Hope you’re having a lovely weekend. We had major storms overnight, but the sun is out this afternoon.
Hi Kelly,
This weekend is set to be two glorious days of sunshine, although with chilly breeze and cold nights. Great for all those celebrating UK Mother’s Day on Sunday!
I would be completely ‘creeped out’ if I thought someone was following me and I was driving alone, especially around here, where the night-time traffic is relatively light and there aren’t too many places to stop for help – Would I even take the risk of stopping? – I really don’t know and hope never to have to find out!
My reading is going as slowly as ever, my ‘down’ time seems to be getting less and less!
Enjoy your Sunday and thanks for stopping by 🙂
Gosh, what a frightening intro. Very compelling. I would read on. I’ve not read anything by Peter Robinson so I must look into the author.
Hope you’re having a nice weekend. I saw my daughters on Friday night and yesterday so it’s a nice quiet reading day for me.
Hi Cath,
I really thought you would have dipped into the Inspector (later DCI) banks series, especially as there are now already 23 books in the series, with a 24th due out in 2017.
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/r/peter-robinson/
I must admit that I haven’t followed the series sequentially, but have dipped in and out from time to time, as the back story is always just that, background information, which in no way detracts from the excellent stand alone storylines.
Similarly, I didn’t watch all 5 series of the television adaptation, which ran from 2010 – 2016, but the episodes I did catch were very authentic to the books and Stephen Tompkinson made a very credible Inspector Banks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCI_Banks
I must admit that the older I am getting, the more nervous I am about driving too far from home alone and I hate going into cities alone, as I don’t like it when people crowd me and walk too closely behind me. Perhaps there is a touch of paranoia in that statement, or perhaps I have lived in a relatively small town for too long. I guess that I should try and adopt a more cosmopolitan approach to life, although when I read creepy book openings like this one, I always wonder – “what if”?
Thanks for stopping by and Happy UK Mother’s Day 🙂