A pair of shoes at the side of the road, how weird can that be?
Newcastle Detective Inspector Jonah Kirby, called ‘old school’ by his junior colleagues ends up with the cases other officers don’t like to handle, the weird ones. When a young girl is reported missing Kirby investigates. All he has to go on is the pair of shoes. It’s only been a few hours, but to Kirby it doesn’t feel right and in his experience things not feeling right often lead to things not being right.
He’s confronted on the street by a grey cardigan wearing, elderly lady, who’s eyes hold more history than the local library. She tells him to visit local shopkeeper Harold Longcoat.
Little does Kirby realise that his weirdness scale – weird, very weird and extremely weird – will soon need extending. Magic is spread thin in our world. However, as Kirby finds out, just because we’ve forgotten about it doesn’t mean magic isn’t there for someone intent on using it.
A contemporary mystery with a touch of the paranormal and supernatural.
I’m Ian Martyn, science fiction and fantasy writer. I live in Surrey in the United Kingdom. One long hot summer as a teenager (they were all long hot summers then, weren’t they?) I visited a friend’s house. Her Dad had a collection of sc-fi and fantasy paperbacks. The covers looked great. I picked one at random, started to read and I’ve been hooked ever since. Now, I’m writing them.
The "she" in question is Edna, an elderly lady in a grey cardigan who is so much more than she appears. This is Kirby's first contact with world of Edna and Harold Longcoat and suggests this case may not be quite so straightforward.
Book Excerpt
Inspector Kirby balance book edited 1 MASTER 2
She fixed him with a stare. ‘Will you stop skipping around for a minute like a demented goat and listen.’ He was about to reply along the lines that he was in a hurry and that he never acted like a demented goat, when her eyes made direct contact with his. Those eyes gave him no choice but to stay where he was. As an experienced detective, he could read eyes better than most, and these had such stories to tell. ‘You looking for a girl who’s gone missing.’ It was a statement rather than a question.
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