Mark: A couple of people have said to me with regards to this book: "oh, you've rewritten Carla!" but no.
The review below, from someone I don't know, says the same thing. I am glad he saw the difference! I am returning to Carla next year, writing a book from the "Carla" character's perspective (as there is so much else to say), but this novel, while having loosely the same theme, is completely different.
This is a thriller. And a love story. And it's crime fiction that is probably happeniing within ten miles of you write now (well, except the ending, I hope.) It's a novel with real people and real situations.
And I think it's the best book I've written.
By Mr M.
Format:Paperback
Here's an extract.
It's an example of the type of writing you might find in any of the books.
Context: Terry Valentine could have made something of himself had it not been for an obsession with easy women, hard drugs, football violence, betting on horses and the dark side of life. Now, he's washed-up. A loser. A failed wannabe living an invisible life.
After being released from prison for a crime he definitely committed, the good times are over. On a fast road to nowhere, his obsessions alternate between suicide and the next fix of Doom, the latest designer drug, a highly addictive synthetic amalgam of crack, E and opium.
By some stroke of luck, he takes a casual, cash-in-hand job driving Chloe (a beautiful young escort who caters for Nottingham's rich businesswomen), to her appointments.
Here, a quarter way through the book, Terry is in his dingy one-bedroomed flat, recovering from a frightening incident where he protects Chloe from an attack carried out by the sex-crazed husband of one her clients. In his dream, Nottingham is annihilated by a nuclear attack, something he watches from a distance...
Later.
At home.
I
flop on my bed, turn off my phone. I am too wired to sleep and too depressed to
go out. The monkey I received for the Leicester horror was no comfort and I
throw the money clip on the sideboard.
Battering Blondie felt like a loss.
I
can’t sleep because of the voice inside me. I reach over to the top drawer of
the bedside table and take out a Temazepam. I only have one tablet left.
Omar. I’ll get Francis to call Omar. He’s got
the sweeties. Pricey, but you have to be in your sixties, demented and
half-dead to get jellies from the GP nowadays and they’re the only sweet that
works. They succeed every time. Exactly what it says on the box. A mental note
is etched and a jelly disappears with the remains of a can of Tango I cracked
open before Leicester. The pop is flat and I wince.
The
other night I had a nightmare, which may or may not have been caused by the
jellies (or the Doom, or the beer) and I get anxious. The dream was a bad one,
but the only element I can recall now is the nuclear explosion, in still life,
except deep, deep magenta, like wine and blood blended.
In the dream, I was
wandering the area where my Mum was born, in Basford, the old Shipstones
brewery and I could see people lined up on the road, staring into the distance. A cobalt sky, vast in
a way British skies never are, extending well past the horizon into a
singularity, the cosmic void.
There was no wind. I watched as the vista changed
and I was on top of a hill, under a bridge, well away now, as if I had walked
into a vortex, a shifting time lapse. Nottingham, now a hundred miles away.
The
atomic cloud: It’s torso thin and bloody, it’s mushroom apex enormous,
immeasurable in scale. No soaring wind, no fiery afterburn, no devastating
blast. The cloud stood in the distance, part of a still life.
I turned and
there was my son, next to me, someone I had not seen for a decade. Now a man.
He didn’t notice me or if he did, he had made the decision to ignore me. Marge
was there, or someone who looked like her. She also stared straight ahead
without engaging my attention and I was vividly aware of the need to touch
someone. To hold someone’s hand, someone I loved while the city of my birth
evaporated.
And
there was my mother, in her turquoise headscarf, almost muslin, concealing the
jet-black hair of her wondrous youth. All of us, together, in the midst of
scattered others, a minute, fragmented, population I didn’t know and would
never know, scrutinising a photograph of the apocalypse. The unimaginable blast
frozen in time, watching it all vanish into the abyss, with faces of
disinterest, the erased stares of the already dead.
I
awoke with a jolt which twisted my neck.
I
don’t want that again.
I can still see that cloud in my mind’s eye.
I
spent that morning considering the blast, its implications, its precursors and
its antecedents, but I was unable to unravel what it meant. I put the dream down to the jellies and
the recent stress of driving Chloe.
*
I
get off the bed and strip down to my boxers, go to the bathroom and turn on the
shower. I luxuriate in the (should have
killed him) pounding, superheated jets and I watch (battered him) my shoulders and arms flush and sizzle (cut him up) in the heat. It’s not hot
enough (rape Chloe, rapist deserved a
kicking, a bad, bad kicking) and I turn it up to eight. It scalds my
forehead and I grit my teeth (you’re
soft, soft, soft) but it’s no good and I turn it off, towel down.
I lie
back on the bed and the phone rings. It’s Chloe and I answer straight away, my
heart doing a somersault like some sixteen year old kid with his first crush.
Thank
you, Mr Valentine, she says and her voice is like the smoothest marble lathered
with all the ointments in the east. The Sultan never had a concubine who talked
like Chloe.
S’okay.
It’s what you pay me for.
No,
I mean for not seriously hurting him. You didn’t just save me but, like, the
whole situation. Your quick thinking.
I
must be getting diplomatic in my old age.
There
is a gap, a slight gap, almost imperceptible and I notice straight away. I
wonder whether she’s on her computer. But
then she says, you’re not old, and yawns and I know she’s in bed because I can
hear her pillows ruffle.
Thanks,
I reply. I feel it (you should have
fucking battered him)…right at this very moment.
I
wanted to tell you that and stuff. You were awesome.
Being
complimented is not my thing and I blush slightly. Luckily, I don’t have to
answer because she continues.
Shall we go to the Tranquility for a beer? My
treat.
Without
even thinking I say yeh, sure.
Awesome.
We can have a natter about books and stuff.
Great,
I reply, not quite believing it, not quite registering what was happening.
Disconnected. Dissociating.
I
like the Tranquility, she mused. Comfy and nice beer. I had a pint of that
Thor’s Hammer Special Edition last week.
That’s
lethal, I say.
Tell
me about it. I was, like, well out of it after one pint.
It’s
point eight.
What?
Eight
gravity. Lethal, especially if they’ve had it in the barrel for a while. It
develops. Gets stronger.
Chloe
ignores that bloke bit and continues.
Kinda quiet too. Good for a quiet chat. I was
there last week with a couple of mates from Uni but they’re all away this
weekend. Except for Jaden, who is, like, well out of my good books and Brian,
who I don’t normally mix with without his partner, Kate. Don’t know him all
that well, so I don’t know why I called him one of my mates. Um, besides, I
want to know about what books you read. We could sit outside. In the back yard.
That would be totally cool.
It
would be, I reply.
Yeah,
she says. Is seven okay?
I’ll
be here. Probably sleep till then.
Me
too! I’m sha…tired out. Must get some actual sleep. Laters, mate.
Until the end of October all my books are 99p/99c including this one.
Amazon UK Readers - BUY HERE for 99p ebook
and £6.49 in paperback
Latest review from Amazon UK
TOP 1000 REVIEWERon 14 September 2015
This is a tale of lawlessness and lesbians. There are fun times then bleak times.
It’s a better love story than Twilight or Fifty Shades Of Grey.
It’s for crime fans and is as gritty as the bottom of a fish tank.
The author’s academic Psychology background shows through and
makes for characters that are believable in their choices of violence as a way of life.
It’s edge of the seat stuff towards the end and not for the faint hearted.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Amazon.Com readers Buy HERE for 99c ebook
and $8.99 in paperback
Latest from Amazon.com
on September 10, 2015
If you're looking for gritty and raw with wounded characters and an ending that leaves a hole in your heart
for having an oddly happy resolution, this is your book. I'm still getting over my girl crush on Chloe,
and wondering if I'll ever read a book by Mark Barry with an ending that ends how I want it to end.
To that end, I won't stop reading his books. His books subject matters are often harsh with more than a thread of
violence, more like steel cables in some of them! But the books I have read by Mark Barry
(The Night Porter, Carla) there's something endearing, that can be found in the male lead that you don't
expect to feel, but you can't help yourself.
His male protagonists are not swash-buckling, muscle-bound millionaire heroes.
In this case, Terry Valentine is a wise-guy, a middle-aged gangster who's not exactly done well for himself, and yet
the role of driver to a young prostitute becomes his best role, because in the course of carrying out his duties,
we see the man he is inside - a courageous protector, and loyal and devoted friend.
This story is told in what I'd almost call his trademark style of
narrative.
It is different, quirky, engaging. 5 solid stars for the British gangster.
Latest Review
on 24 September 2015
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