W. Soliman's Lethal Business

My guest today is W. (Wendy) Soliman  -

About Wendy:

W. Soliman divides her time between Andorra and the west coast of Florida, sharing her life with her husband and a rescued mutt of indeterminate pedigree. She also writes historical and contemporary romance for Carina Press and erotica for SirenBookStrand as Zara Chase.

When not writing she enjoys walking for miles with her dog, reading other people’s output, eating too much chocolate and is on a one-woman mission to save the wine trade from the global economic downturn. Well, someone has to do it!

Wendy tells us how her book, Lethal Business, came to be:

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 describes 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

I can be found on twitter @wendyswriter and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wendy.soliman.author (Wendy Soliman – author)

Thanks so much for having me here,

Wendy Soliman

Please leave a comment to welcome W. (Wendy) Soliman to Make Mine Mystery.

Please Welcome W. (Wendy) Soliman, Author of The Hunter Files Series

W. Soliman was brought up on the Isle of Wight in Southern England but now divides her time between Andorra and West Florida. She lives with her husband Andre and a rescued dog of indeterminate pedigree.

THE HUNTER FILES 
When my husband got tired of trying to kill himself in racing cars, light aircraft, helicopters and all the other stuff men turn to in a futile attempt to offset the inevitable mid-life crisis, he suggested that we try boating. We were at home in Andorra, up to our ears in snow and the heating was on the blink, so pretty pictures of sleek motor cruisers cutting through the calm, crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean seemed rather appealing.

And safe.

We fell for the hype and before we knew it, we were the owners of an ancient boat in need of a considerable amount of tlc. For Andre, that was the start of an on-going love affair with the sea and all things nautical. For me it was more a hate-love-hate thing. When the sea is actually as calm as they make it out to be in those glossy ads then boating is a dream. But those days are few and far between. Most of the time you’re tossed about like a loose coin in a washing machine, feeling sick and wondering what the hell you think you’re doing.

Still, never waste an experience, that’s my motto, and one good thing to come out of hours of staring at endless expanses of sea was The Hunter Files, my series of marine crime mysteries, published as ebooks by Carina Press and also by Audible. The first two, Unfinished Business and Risky Business, written under my other persona, W. Soliman, are already avilable. Lethal Business joins them next March.

Charlie Hunter is, like me, a Brit. He shares my husband’s passion for boating and, at forty, having taken early retirement from the police, plans to live aboard his trawler yacht in Brighton marina and spend his days restoring it to its former glory.

Charlie’s dream life doesn’t get off to a good start when a woman involved in one of his first cases as a detective accosts him, trying to persuade him to look for her missing sister. Charlie, a soft touch when a pretty woman turns on the tears, reluctantly agrees. Mind you, if he’d known his investigation would lead to a gang of ruthless Russians, leaving him and Kara fighting for their lives, he probably would have stuck to boating!

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Writing this book was a departure for me, since it’s in the first person, obviously from a male perspective. Andre came in useful here, both with technical boating issues and likely male reactions in given situations. Can’t say more than that!

Here’s how Carina describe the books.

                                                             

UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Charlie Hunter has retired early from the police, looking for an alternative lifestyle aboard his trawler yacht. But his past won’t leave him alone and he finds himself being dragged back into an unsolved case when Kara Webb persuades him to look for her sister who’d gone missing fifteen years previously. The search leads them to Weymouth, where Jasmine Webb is living, married to a Russian Mafia boss.

Charlie and Kara discover that Jasmine’s husband is involved in cyber crime on a massive scale and try to extricate her and her children, only to discover that Jasmine’s involved as well. A deadly fight ensues, and Charlie and Kara are now in fear of their lives because they know they can’t be allowed to walk away…

RISKY BUSINESS

Charlie always doubted that Mike Kendall killed bookie Jeff Spelling. Persuaded by Mike’s daughter to reinvestigate, Charlie is drawn into the murky world of race fixing. When the solicitor acting for powerful gaming club magnet Peter Garnet is also murdered, Charlie is forced to confront dormant family issues when his estranged step-brother appeals to him for help.

His old nemesis, Inspector Gillian Slater, is out for Charlie’s blood. Charlie was one of the last people to see the solicitor alive so she’s convinced he knows more about his death then he’s prepared to admit and is determined to pin the crime on him.

Charlie and Kara, suspecting a drug connection, are caught in a life and death situation, fighting against the odds to uncover the truth…

Stop by my website if you get a moment. It’s at http://www.wsoliman.com. You can read the entire first chapters of both books there. They are available from Carina Press or Amazon.com http://amzn.to/PAjHKE

Thanks for having me here.

Wendy

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