Blog Tour | Book Extract: Cast Iron by Peter May @riverrunbooks

Hey bookworms, today’s my stop on the blog tour for Cast Iron by Peter May – the sixth book in The Enzo Files series. I’ll be sharing an extract of the book with you today, after reading this extract I now have another crime series to add to my list!

Book Description:

THE GIRL IN THE LAKE

In 1989, a killer dumped the body of twenty-year-old Lucie Martin into a picturesque lake in the West of France. Fourteen years later, during a summer heatwave, a drought exposed her remains – bleached bones amid the scorched mud and slime.

THE MAN ON THE CASE

No one was ever convicted of her murder. But now, forensic expert Enzo Macleod is reviewing this stone-cold case – the toughest of those he has been challenged to solve.

THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET

Yet when Enzo finds a flaw in the original evidence surrounding Lucie’s murder, he opens a Pandora’s box that not only raises old ghosts but endangers his entire family.

Book Extract:

PROLOGUE

WEST OF FRANCE, 1989

It smells of animal here. Dead animal. Something that has been hung

to ripen before cooking. Hundreds of years of fermenting grapes have

suffused the earth with odours of yeast and carbonic gas, stale now,

sour, a memory retained only in the soil and the sandstone and the

rafters. Like all the forgotten lives that have passed through this place,

in sunlight and in darkness.

It is dark now and another life has passed.

Dust hangs in the pale light that angles through the open door, raised

by the act of pulling her dead body from dark concealment to the wash

of cold, colourless moonlight that bathes a face once beautiful and animated

by youth. A face made ugly now by the blood that has dried in

her golden hair, on her porcelain cheek, a tiny river of it following the

contour from her temple to her ear. By the eyes that stare in unnatural

stillness into the deep shadow that hangs overhead like a shroud. Blue

eyes, lit once by the light of life, turned milky and opaque by death.

His tears fall like the first raindrops of a summer storm to splash

heavy and hot on her cold skin. His shadow falls over her as he kneels

by her side, and for a moment obliterates the sight of what he has done

– a consequence of love and anger, those two most volatile of emotions.

To gaze upon her is almost unbearable. But regret is useless, for of all

the things in life that cannot be undone, death is the most immutable.

He reaches into his jacket pocket to pull out the blue plastic bag he

has brought to hide his shame. Carefully, as if afraid he might damage

it, he lifts her head from the dust and pulls the bag down over her face,

hiding at last the accusation, recrimination and the sense of betrayal

he imagines in the gaze he cannot bear to meet.

He ties it at the base of her neck with the short length of plastic string

that came with it, and now tears fall on plastic to punctuate the silence.

A moment of madness, a lifetime of lament, and he can never tell her

now just how much he loved her.

His hands are trembling as they close around her neck, and he closes

his eyes tight shut as his thumbs sink into soft flesh and he feels bone

breaking beneath them.

***

Woah, what a fantastic prologue! If you want to continue reading, this book is available to buy now from: Amazon UK / Book Depository

About the Author:

Peter May is the multi award-winning author of:
– the Lewis Trilogy set in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland;
– the China Thrillers, featuring Beijing detective Li Yan and American forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell;
– the Enzo Files, featuring Scottish forensic scientist Enzo MacLeod, which is set in France. The sixth and final Enzo book is Cast Iron (January 2017, Riverrun).

He has also written several standalone books, most recently:
– Entry Island (January 2014, Quercus UK)
– Runaway (January 2015, Quercus UK)
– Coffin Road (January 2016, Riverrun)

May had a successful career as a television writer, creator, and producer.

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.

The Blackhouse won the US Barry Award for Best Mystery Novel at Bouchercon in Albany NY, in 2013. [Source: Amazon.co.uk]

Author’s website: www.petermay.co.uk

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