Lethal Business

I learned at an early age that life on the ocean wave wasn’t for me. Not only do I have a healthy respect for the sea, but I’m also a poor swimmer who doesn’t enjoy being cold, wet and constantly afraid. I was brought up in Cowes on the Isle of Wight, the home of British yachting , and had daily visual confirmation of the perils of boating. It’s an eighty per-cent male occupation—something to do with that rogue macho gene they all seem to be born with that makes them do crazy stuff, because…well, I’ve never been able to figure out quite what it is that they need to actually prove.

It says much for the power of lurve that when my husband’s mid-life crisis hit and light aircraft and fast cars didn’t give him the adrenalin rush he craved, I agreed to turn to boats. Not those with a rag and stick (sails to the uninitiated)—I wasn’t prepared to go that far, even for him— but I’d give power boats a try. It was a phase I kept telling myself, an expensive one that would soon bring him to his senses.

In the meantime, I made the best of it and learned more than I ever wanted to know about floating tubs. Never waste an experience, that’s my mantra. Besides, my novelist’s brain had to do something to offset all those endless hours of starting at equally endless expanses of ocean.

And that’s how the Hunter Files came into being. I couldn’t help asking myself, ‘what if,’ at every turn, and I was away. Lethal Business is the third in a trilogy featuring my retired police inspector, Charlie Hunter. A budding jazz musician, his career in music was over before it started when, at age sixteen, his concert pianist mother was gunned down in front of him. Charlie joined the police, looking for answers. Ironically, it’s only when, disillusioned, he takes early retirement twenty years later that he starts to find them. Drawn back into some of his unsolved cases, the enigmatic Kara Webb helps him get over his neurosis with music, amongst other things, and he starts to come alive again.

The plot for Lethal Business came to me when I was watching the results of the last British election and commentators seemed surprised at how well the small parties who stood against Britain’s  ‘open door immigration policy’ had fared. Mind you, I’m sure British politicians wouldn’t really lower themselves to the extent that my fictional English Patriotic Party do in order to get noticed, would they…

Rewind to never wasting an experience. This series gave me a chance to re-enact real experiences. To save Kara from kidnappers, in Lethal Business Charlie is required to sabotage a boat in mid-channel. He does so by pouring water into a fuel tank. I knew this would work because someone accidently did that to our boat when we were in Croatia—at least I think it was accidental. Oh, and in case you’re wondering…it wasn’t me!

Here’s how Carina Press describe Lethal Business

 Why kill the survivors of a sinking ship?

A speeding boat rams a life raft, leaving no survivors. A man embroiled in an investigation of potential suicide bombers disappears...

Retired inspector Charlie Hunter's belief that the two events are related leads him to accept a job working a charter between England and France. The only way to find out the truth is to be the man on the inside.

But Charlie's life is at risk on the rough Channel. All is not as it seems on the shifting seas, and some players are holding secrets that will change the game...and the sunken life raft is the key.

Lethal Business is the third in the Hunter Files series, following on from Unfinished Business and Risky Business, all available as e-books from Carina Press and Amazon.com http://amzn.to/XtLvAF

Find out more about the series and my books generally on my website www.wsoliman.com

Wendy