Front Page Fridays Week-10

Diary Entries

26 Apr

Welcome to Front Page Fridays Week-10. Every Friday I highlight a new or soon-to-be-published book by showcasing the first page.

My Front Page Fridays Week-10 guest is Julie Anderson with the opening of her new novel, The Midnight Man. I had the privilege of reading an early copy and loved it. My review will be up on my blog next week.

Prologue

The blackness was complete.She closed her eyes, then opened them again, but it made no difference. No light at all, no paler black, no grey, no moon or starlight encroaching on the dark. Nothing.

As she clenched her fists to halt the rising wave of panic, her nails bit into her palms. That hurt. So. She was still alive.But where was she? Inside. It wasn’t cold. And somewhere completely without light. A total blackout.

She felt rough fabric beneath her hands, she was lying on it. Tentative, afraid of what her fingers might find, she explored to either side of her. Her left hand hit an obstruction, a wall. Not rough brick, but smooth and cold. Stone? Her right hand came to the edge of what she realized must be a bed, a camp bed, a thin mattress lying on a metal frame supported by springs.

She raised her right arm and, feeling nothing above her, sat up.Too quickly. Her head thudded and bile rose into her throat. For a second, she thought she would collapse back on to the bed, but she took deep breaths and waited for the pain to recede. What was going on? Had she been knocked out? Her seeking fingers could find no headwound. She couldn’t remember what had happened.

She swung her feet around and over the edge of the bed. They scuffed the ground; the bed was a low one. Maneuvering onto all fours on the floor, she swept her hand in an arc around her. The surface was hard and dusty, it felt like concrete. There was a staleness to the air, too. Wherever she was, it had been closed up for a long time. Slowly, she began to crawl forwards, her hands feeling her way.

She tried to recall the series of events before she got here. She remembered finishing work and leaving the hospital, but she didn’t go to her lodgings, she was sure. Then where? And why? She had a vague memory of a train then, nothing. She had no idea how she’d come to this place.What was that?

She paused. A noise in the distance. Traffic?

No, it was a continuous sound, a growling, rumbling, growing louder, coming closer. Then it ceased. She held her breath and waited for the noise to begin again, but all was silent. Machinery? Maybe. She continued onwards.

Ow!

She recoiled; she’d hit her head. Smack up against something flat. Her fingers felt a metal cabinet or cupboard. It was on legs, that’s why her sweeping hand hadn’t found it Laying her palms flat against it, she stood. There were handles, it was a cupboard. Locked. There was another to the left of it and one to the right. A row of cupboards. She could be in a storeroom.

A flash of memory. She recalled crossing Balham Hill, towards the Odeon Cinema. Terror by Night was this week’s film, it had a train on the poster; that was why the train was in her mind. But she couldn’t remember seeing the film.

The Midnight Man by Julie Anderson. Published 30 April 2024 by Hobeck Books.

Purchase Links

Amazon: The Midnight Man: BY 2023 IAN FLEMING CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION DAGGER LONGLISTED AUTHOR (The Clapham Trilogy Book 1) eBook : Anderson, Julie: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Hobeck Books: The Midnight Man by Julie Anderson | Hobeck Books

About The Midnight Man

One cold dark night, as a devastated London shivers through the transition to post-war life, a young nurse goes missing from the South London Hospital for Women & Children. Her body is discovered hours later behind a locked door.

Two women from the hospital join forces to investigate. Determined not to return to the futures laid out for them before the war, the unlikely sleuths must face their own demons and dilemmas as they pursue - The Midnight Man

About the Author

Julie Anderson is the CWA Dagger long-listed author of three Whitehall thrillers and a short series of historical adventure stories for young adults. Before becoming a crime fiction writer, she was a senior civil servant, working across a variety of departments and agencies, including the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Unlike her protagonists, however, she doesn’t know where (all) the bodies are buried.She writes crime fiction reviews for Time and Leisure Magazine and is a co-founder and Trustee of the Clapham Book Festival. Julie lives in south London where her latest crime fiction series is set, returning to her first love of writing historical fiction with The Midnight Man, to be published by Hobeck.

Website: Julie Anderson – Writer and author (julieandersonwriter.com)