by Rob Sinclair
And Dani couldn’t agree more with those words.
Next year. Next year would surely be her year. The year where she’d finally lay all her demons to rest, once and for all. Her’s and Jason’s both.
A Letter From Rob
Thank you for reading Echoes of Guilt, and I really do hope you have enjoyed DI Dani Stephens’s latest adventures and trials! I also want to say a big thank you to everyone at Hera, Canelo and Darley Anderson who helped to get this book from concept to final product.
Dani is a character who continues to intrigue me, and I’ve had a lot of fun developing her over the last few books, even if she would probably not describe the experience as ‘fun’ for herself! People often ask me how I come up with my ideas for characters and plots, and a lot of the time I find it really hard to answer, because the reality for me is that a character or book rarely comes in one single eureka moment. Rather, I’ll have multiple sparks over a period of time, which I slowly play with in my head until I feel I have the sufficient bare bones of a book to make a start on drafting.
Often those bare bones are very bare indeed, sometimes they’re a little more fleshed out. Echoes of Guilt, though, was a little different for me, because I can very firmly pinpoint where I had the conceptual idea.
With two young sons, me and my wife rarely get holidays just for the two of us anymore, but last autumn we managed a much needed childfree break to Bucharest in Romania. Neither of us had ever been to Romania before, and the few days we spent there were absolutely fascinating, both in terms of the people we met and the place and its incredible history (particularly the rise and fall of communism, the relative recency of which is still such a big and relevant event in the country’s history).
It was on that holiday that I decided I wanted to bring a bit of Romania into my next Dani book, and while sitting in the hotel lounge one afternoon I began to develop the plot for Echoes of Guilt while I read up on Dracula. Now, of course everyone knows of Dracula, but I wanted to bring this element out in a crime thriller without it descending into schlock horror, without it descending into the overtly supernatural. I hope you enjoyed these elements of the story, and that you found them as creepy as I tried to make them - and if you did, then you’ve got our trip to Romania, and the multiple measures of Romanian plum schnapps I had there to thank for the inspiration!
Once again, thank you for taking the time to read my work (and this letter). I’m always grateful for reviews, if you could spare a few minutes to write and post one online. I also welcome direct comments and feedback, and you can reach me via my website (where you can also sign up to my newsletter), and on social media, links as follows:
Website: www.robsinclairauthor.com
Twitter: @rsinclairauthor
Facebook: fb.me/robsinclairauthor
All the best
Rob Sinclair
Books By Rob Sinclair
The Sleeper series:
Sleeper 13
Fugitive 13
Imposter 13
The Enemy series:
Dance with the Enemy
Rise of the Enemy
Hunt for the Enemy
The James Ryker series:
The Red Cobra
The Black Hornet
The Silver Wolf
The Green Viper
The White Scorpion
The Dani Stephens series:
The Essence of Evil
The Rules of Murder
Echoes of Guilt
Others:
Dark Fragments
First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
31 Helen Road
Oxford OX2 0DF
United Kingdom
Copyright © Rob Sinclair, 2020
The moral right of Rob Sinclair to be identified as the creator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Ebook ISBN 9781788639002
Print ISBN 9781788639019
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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