Today I’m joining the blog tour for Death On The High Seas. I’m sharing an extract from the book with thanks to Rachel Gilbey at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me on the tour and to the publisher for providing the extract.

Blurb:

Maggie and Sam take a break from the murder and mayhem of Bishops Well and embark on a relaxing mid-winter cruise across the northern seas. The brochure promises smooth sailing, good food and dazzling entertainment. Sam is hoping to sprinkle the mix with romance.

But nothing goes to plan.

Maggie runs into an old lover, the mesmerising Benedict Rawbotham, who goes out of his way to sweep her off her feet. Sam is left seething with jealousy.

A mayday signal sent by a fishing boat forces the cruise liner off course. But there is something fishy about the rescued crew and Maggie insists that two young women have died on that boat. Alas, no one believes her.

Soon one of the alleged fishermen is also dead and so is one of the cruise passengers. Cordelia Conti Lang, nicknamed the Bitcoin Queen, with links to London’s criminal underworld, is found in her cabin, stabbed to death.

In pursuit of the killer, Maggie hurtles from one disaster to another and Sam begins to fear for her life. Has he taken her on a cruise to hell?

BOOK FOUR IN A GRIPPING WHODUNNIT SERIES BRISTLING WITH GOOD HUMOUR, FOR FANS OF FAITH MARTIN, MERRYN ALLINGHAM’S FLORA STEELE MYSTERIES, THE BELINDA PENSHURST NOVELS AND JOY ELLIS.

Extract:

A quick introduction to the victim: Cordelia Conti Lang

I let my eyes shift to her: an older but still beautiful woman with shiny black hair, sculpted thick eyebrows, a Roman nose and sensual lips (possibly surgically enhanced – the lips. The nose seemed like the authentic article). That was it – I had it!

‘What a small world!’ I interrupted Samuel’s drivel. ‘They are from Bishops Well.’

‘Who?’

I pointed them out to him. ‘Oh, what’s her name? It’s on the tip of my tongue.’ I meandered through the smoky corridors of my fallible short-term memory. ‘Oh, damn it! She lives in Forget-Me-Not – bought the house last year. I forget her name. A very rich woman – an internet banking queen, or something to that effect… Oh, come on, Maggie, try to remember!’

‘Cordelia Conti Lang, of course!’

‘You know her?’

‘Everyone does. At least everyone has heard of her. Especially if you’re a Londoner.’

‘Why is that?’

Samuel proceeded to enlighten me about Cordelia Conti Lang, our fellow Bishopian. He seemed fully coherent all of a sudden. I gathered that the effects of the drugs he had ingested in his cake were wearing off. I was amazed at the extent of his knowledge of the woman, but as he went on I realised why. Cordelia Conti Lang was famous – or more to the point: infamous. 

She had been married to the notorious East End mobster, Lenny Lang. That was when everything fell into place for me: the cigar-puffing spectre, his pinstriped suit and wide-brimmed hat. The apparition was that of Lenny Lang.

He had met Cordelia in a seedy Soho bar when he was in the twilight of his illustrious criminal career and she was an up-and-coming escort. It had been love at first sight despite the thirty years age gap between them. 

Cordelia Conti wasn’t just a pretty face and loose morals. She was a well-educated woman. She had a degree in economics from the University of Padua. She also had a sharp mind and a ruthless heart. She had the scruples of an alley cat. Under her influence Lenny had graduated from violent to white-collar crime: organised, untraceable and much more profitable. 

Lenny had half of the Metropolitan Police in his pocket, and the other half were too scared or too hapless to do anything about his and Cordelia’s activities. From the mid-nineties onwards, they had built an impenetrable world of fraudulent pyramid schemes and fake investment scams. The early noughties had seen them inducing unsuspecting victims to invest their life savings, pensions and bonds in the bubble of the property boom which had burst in 2008 sending most of those victims to their early graves. 

Auspiciously for Cordelia, Lenny had joined his victims by suddenly passing away in that same year, at the age of seventy-three. He left Cordelia well provided for, her fortune estimated (for no one would ever know the exact figure) to oscillate in the region of half a billion pounds sterling.

***

Death On The High Seas is available from Amazon.

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