by Zoe Sharp
A finalist for the CWA Short Story Dagger, Served Cold puts another tough woman centre stage – the mysterious Layla, with betrayal in her past and murder in her heart.
Off Duty finds Charlie taking time away from close protection after injury. She still finds trouble, even in an out-of-season health spa in the Catskill Mountains.
And finally, Truth And Lies puts all Charlie’s skills and ingenuity to the test as she has to single-handedly extract a news team from a rapidly escalating war zone.
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‘The author, who has written, among other things, nine books in the acclaimed Charlie Fox series, has now published in e-book form what she terms an “e-thology” a collection of five short stories, and an excellent addition it surely is . . .
‘The reader is treated to author notes prefacing each short story, giving insights into its origins, as well as bonus material at the end, with biographical details on the author and her masterful creation, Charlie Fox, all of which just makes the reader look forward to the next novel in the series that much more. Highly recommended.’ Gloria Feit, Crimespree magazine
‘This five-pack collection of short stories is about as good as it gets in the crime thriller genre. Protagonist Charlie Fox is a truly memorable – not to mention formidable – heroine. Author Sharp writes cleanly, cleverly, and convincingly as she spins these tales of Charlie . . . as she progresses from a time just prior to becoming a bodyguard to a point where her professional skills are honed to their finest – and must be, as they are put to the test in circumstances as explosively dangerous and up-to-the-minute as today's headlines.
‘This range and growth allows us to see Charlie in a quieter, almost sleuth-like mode early on and then evolve into the calculating, ultimately cool – yet compassionate – protector she was born to be.
‘It is Charlie Fox and the stiletto-sharp (no pun intended) writing skills of Zoë Sharp that will stick with you after reading these stories. I was unaware of this excellent series before now; but you can damn well bet I will be seeking out more. Highly recommended!’ Wayne D Dundee, author of the Joe Hannibal series
‘If you've never read any of Charlie Fox thriller series, these short stories are a great way to meet Charlie Fox at her best. My favourites were Served Cold, Off Duty, and Truth And Lies, where we see the gamut of Charlie's reactions as she handles each situation to a necessary conclusion. This tension-filled and suspenseful collection is a thrilling read that will have you clamouring for more.’ Dru Ann Love, GoodReads.com
Meet Zoë Sharp
Zoë Sharp was born in Nottinghamshire, but spent most of her formative years living on a catamaran on the northwest coast of England. After a promising start at a private girls' school, she opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve in favour of correspondence courses at home.
Zoë went through a variety of jobs in her teenage years. In 1988, on the strength of one accepted article and a fascination with cars, she gave up her regular job to become a freelance motoring writer. She quickly picked up on the photography side of things and she has worked as far afield as the United States and Japan, as well as Europe, Ireland and the UK. Since her fiction writing career took off, she dovetails her photography with working on her novels.
Zoë wrote her first novel when she was fifteen, but success came in 2001 with the publication of KILLER INSTINCT – the first book to feature her ex-Special Forces heroine, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox. The character evolved after Zoë received death-threat letters in the course of her photo-journalism work.
Later Charlie Fox novels – FIRST DROP and FOURTH DAY – were finalists for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel. The Charlie Fox series has also been optioned for TV.
As well as the Charlie Fox novels, Zoë's short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines, and have been shortlisted for the Short Story Dagger by the UK Crime Writers' Association. Her other writing has been nominated for the coveted Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, the Anthony Award presented by the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, the Macavity Award, and the Benjamin Franklin Award from the Independent Book Publishers’ Association.
Zoë lives in the English Lake District, and is married. Her hobbies are sailing, fast cars (and faster motorbikes), target shooting, travel, films, music, and reading just about anything she can get her hands on. She and her husband, Andy, who is a non-fiction author, have recently self-built their own house. Zoë blogs regularly on her own website – www.ZoeSharp.com – and on the acclaimed group blog, www.Murderati.com.
Meet Charlie Fox
The idea of a tough, self-sufficient heroine who didn't suffer fools gladly and could take care of herself is one I had lying around for a long time before I first wrote about Charlotte 'Charlie' Fox. The first crime and mystery books I ever read always seemed to be populated by female characters who were only any good at looking decorative and screaming while they waited to be rescued by the men!
I decided early on that Charlie Fox was going to be very different. She arrived almost as a full-grown character, complete with name, and I never thought of her any other way. At the start of the first book I wrote about Charlie, KILLER INSTINCT, she is a self-defence instructor with a slightly shady military background and a painful past.
In RIOT ACT, Charlie has moved on to working in a gym, and comes face to face with a spectre from her army past – Sean Meyer. Sean was the training instructor she fell for when they were in the army together and she's never quite forgotten or forgiven him for what she saw as his part in her downfall. Sparks are bound to fly.
Close protection – the perfect choice
It's Sean who asks Charlie to go undercover to the bodyguard training school in Germany where the events of HARD KNOCKS take place. Charlie agrees as a favour to him, but gradually realises that close protection work is the perfect choice for an ex-Special Forces trainee who never found herself quite in step with life outside the army that rejected her.
By the time we get to FIRST DROP Charlie is working for Sean's close protection agency and he accompanies her on her first assignment in Florida. By now she has come to terms a little with her violent abilities – or so she thinks. But then she's plunged into a nightmare in which she has to kill to protect her teenage principal.
Which is why, at the start of ROAD KILL, Charlie was a little in limbo about her life and her career in close protection. Until, that is, one of her closest friends is involved in a fatal motorcycle crash and she agrees to take on an unpaid bodyguarding job. She and Sean are soon drawn together to protect a group of thrill-seeking bikers on a wild trip to Ireland.
The second book to be set in the US, SECOND SHOT, starts with a bang – or rather, two of them – when Charlie is shot twice and seriously injured in the course of her latest bodyguarding job in New England. The events of this novel strip away Charlie's usual physical self-assurance and leave her more vulnerable than ever before as she tries to work out what went wrong and still protect her client's four-year-old daughter from harm. Charlie is also forced to confront how far she's prepared to go in order to save the life of a child.
By THIRD STRIKE, Charlie and Sean are living in New York City and working for Parker Armstrong’s exclusive close-protection agency, where Sean has become a junior partner.
In this book, I really wanted to finally explore Charlie’s difficult and often destructive relationship with her parents – and in particular with her father. Charlie has to protect her mother and father from harm at all costs, but is hampered by trying not to let them witness just how cold-bloodedly their daughter must act in order to be effective at her job. It puts her in an often impossible situation, brings her relationship with Sean to an explosive head, and causes her father to reveal a side of himself everyone will find disturbing.
Not only that, but the story ends with big questions over Charlie’s entire future.
By the start of FOURTH DAY, where Charlie, Sean and Parker
Armstrong are planning a cult extraction in California, Charlie has still not solved the problems that arose during the previous book – nor has she found the courage to explain it all to Sean. When she volunteers to go undercover into the Fourth Day cult, she’s looking as much for answers about her own life as about the man who died.
It's this battle with her own dark side that is one of the most fascinating things for me as a writer about the character of Charlie Fox. I wanted a genuine female action hero, but one who had a convincing back story. I've tried to ensure she stays human, with all the flaws that entails – a sympathetic character rather than just a 'guy in nylons' as someone described some tough heroines in fiction.
In the latest instalment, FIFTH VICTIM – involving a deadly kidnap plot among the jet-set of Long Island – there are complications with Sean’s ongoing condition, and Charlie’s increasing awareness that her boss, Parker, views her as so much more than a mere employee. Charlie is forced to make decisions this time out that will change her life forever . . .
The instinct and the ability to kill
Characters who live on the fringe have a certain moral ambiguity that we find seductive, I feel. Charlie has that obscurity to her make-up. She discovers very early on that she has both the instinct and the ability to kill. And although she does it when she has to and doesn't enjoy what it does to her, that doesn't mean that if you push her in the wrong direction, or you step over that line, she won't drop you without hesitation.
Dealing with her own capacity for violence when she's put under threat is a continuing theme throughout the books. It's not an aspect of her personality that Charlie finds easy to live with – a difficulty she might not have if she was a male protagonist, perhaps? Even in these days of rabid politically correct equality, it is still not nearly as acceptable for women to be capable of those extremes of behaviour.
But Charlie has evolved out of events in her life and, as you find out during the course of the series, things are not about to get any easier. I do rather like to put her through it! She's a fighter and a survivor, and I get the feeling that if I met her I'd probably like her a lot. I'm not sure she'd say the same about me!
Although I've tried to write each of the Charlie Fox books so they stand alone, this is becoming more difficult as time goes on and her personal story overlaps from one book to the next. I'm always expanding on her back story, her troubled relationship with her parents and her even more troubled relationship with Sean, who was once her training instructor in the army and, when she moves into close protection, he then becomes her boss. He continues to bring out the best and the worst in her.
And their relationship is becoming ever more complicated as the series goes on. In the next outing, Charlie is struggling to deal not only with the dangers faced by her client, but also from the one person she should be able to trust with her life . . .
If you’re a fan of Charlie Fox, you may well enjoy this standalone crime thriller from bestselling author, Lee Goldberg:
KING CITY
by Lee Goldberg
Tom Wade was a cop in the elite Major Crimes Unit . . . who discovered that his fellow detectives were corrupt. He turned them in to the Justice Department and his testimony sent the detectives to prison. But instead of being decorated for his actions, he is reviled by his fellow cops, busted down to uniform and banished to a three-man substation in the deadliest neighbourhood in the city . . . with no back-up, no resources, and no hope of survival. Somehow he must tame a lawless, poverty-stricken hell-hole . . . while investigating a string of brutal murders of young women that the police have ignored for years.
Praise for Lee Goldberg:
“You'll finish this book breathless!” NYT bestselling author Janet Evanovich
“As dark and twisted as anything Hammett or Chandler ever dreamed up . . .” Kirkus starred Review
“Lee Goldberg is known for his cleverness and sense of humor. He shows how a masterful plotter can take a character in a comic situation and lead him into unexpected danger in an eye-blink.” NYT bestselling author Thomas Perry
“Approaching the level of Lawrence Block is no mean feat, but Goldberg succeeds.” Publishers Weekly
“With books this good, who needs TV?” Chicago Sun Times
“You'd be hard-pressed to find another recent work that provides so many hip and humorous moments.” Bookgasm
“Can books be better than TV? You bet they can – when Lee Goldberg's writing them. Get aboard now for a thrill ride.” NYT bestselling author Lee Child
www.LeeGoldberg.com
KING CITY
excerpt
Chapter One
Tom Wade was asleep in bed beside his wife when the call came. He had a pretty good idea what the call was about before he answered the phone. He’d been dreading it for the last few days.
“Yeah,” he whispered, rolling over onto his back. Alison stirred and grumbled something unintelligible.
“We moved on all of them thirty minutes ago,” It was Carl Pinkus, the prosecutor Wade had been working with at the Justice Department.
Wade checked the alarm clock. It was 2:00 a.m. The green glow of the numbers glinted off of his badge on the nightstand.
He could guess how it went down. All across the city, strike teams made up of FBI and ATF agents kicked down the doors at the homes of all seven men at precisely the same instant, hoping to surprise them in bed, naked and defenceless.
It was standard operating procedure in situations like this, designed to minimize risk and prevent any of the targets from being warned that the law was coming for them.
It usually worked.
“You could have waited until morning to tell me,” Wade said, sitting up.
“It is morning,” Pinkus said.
“What went wrong?” Wade asked. His wife was wide awake now, he could tell from her breathing.
“I’m outside of Roger Malden’s place. He wants to see you, Tom.”
“I’ve got nothing to say to him.”
“He must have something real important to say to you,” Pinkus said. “He’s holding his wife and kids hostage and if you don’t get your ass down here now, he’s going to kill them.”
“I’ll be there in four minutes,” Wade said and hung up the phone.
Roger lived two miles away in a tract home with the same floor plan as Wade’s. They even had the same pool man. That wasn’t all that they had in common.
He threw back the sheets, stood up naked, and went to the easy chair where he’d draped the clothes he’d been wearing last night, a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. He could feel Alison’s eyes on his back. He pulled his sweatshirt over his head.
Wade was six feet tall, fit and lean. He had the hands of a man who worked with them – wielding an axe, a shovel, or a pick – but that came more from heredity than it did from hard labour, though he’d done his share of that before he became a cop.
“What is it?” she asked.
Alison was used to the late-night calls but not the troubled undercurrent that was in Wade’s voice during the short conversation. He knew that she’d pick up on it.
“A hostage situation,” he said, turning to look at her as he pulled up his pants and buckled his belt.
Alison was sitting up, not bothering to cover her nakedness. Wade couldn’t have a discussion naked and uncovered but she was totally comfortable with it. In the semi-darkness, she looked just the way she did the first night that they’d slept together twenty years ago.
“You’re not a hostage negotiator,” she said.
He hadn’t planned to tell her about it like this. For weeks, he’d been rehearsing exactly what he was going to say, how he would explain the two long years of subterfuge.
“It’s Roger. He’s threatening to kill his family.”
Her breath caught in her throat. She shook her head. “No, I don’t believe that. Not Roger.”
“The FBI raided his house tonight, Ally. He’s been indicted on corruption charges.”
“That’s crazy,” she said. “He’s a good man.”
“They’ve arrested the entire Major Crimes Unit.”
She stared at him, realization slowly dawning on her. “But they didn’t come for you.”
He reached for his badge. “We’ll talk about this when I get back.”
Wade hung the badge on a lanyard around his neck and hurried out. It felt like he was running away from her. He’d never run away from anything before.
***
Detective Roger Malden’s two-story tract home was illuminated like a movie set, bathed in harsh white glow from portable arc-lights that were brought in on trailers.
The residents of the adjoining homes had been cleared out and were being kept behind a police line at the end of the block.
