HARD KNOCKS: Charlie Fox book three

by Zoe Sharp

  ‘Ill-tempered, aggressive and borderline psychotic, Fox is also compassionate, introspective and highly principled: arguably one of the most enigmatic – and coolest – heroines in contemporary genre fiction.’ Paul Goat Allen, Chicago Tribune

  In A Bridge Too Far, we meet Charlie before she’s become a professional in the world of close protection. When she agrees to hang out with the local Dangerous Sports Club, she has no idea it will soon live up to its name.

  Postcards From Another Country has Charlie guarding the ultra-rich Dempsey family against attempted assassination – no matter where the danger lies.

  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.

  Buy from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

  ‘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 Ellie Foreman/PI Georgia Davis novel from award-winning author Libby Fischer Hellmann.

  DOUBLEBACK

  by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  Little Molly Messenger is kidnapped on a sunny June morning. Three days later she’s returned, apparently unharmed. Molly’s mother, Chris, is so grateful she’s willing to overlook the odd circumstances. A few days later, the brakes go out on Chris’s car.

  An accident? Maybe. Except that it turns out that Chris, the IT manager at a large Chicago bank, may have misappropriated three million dollars. Not convinced that his daughter is safe, Molly’s father hires PI Georgia Davis to follow the money and investigate Chris’s death.

  DOUBLEBACK reunites PI Georgia Davis with video producer Ellie Foreman. The two women track leads from Northern Wisconsin to an Arizona border town, where illegal immigrants, smuggled drugs, and an independent security contractor all come into play. Georgia and Ellie go to great lengths to find the truth, and Georgia discovers that you can cross a line, but sometimes you have to double back.

  Praise for Libby Fischer Hellmann:

  “Teaming up two strong, intelligent lead characters makes for a rich, suspenseful story.” Oline Cogdill, Mystery Scene

  “Hellmann's new book is one tough cookie. She has combined her two protagonists into a strong and moving novel.” Dick Adler, January Magazine, The Rap Sheet

  “Libby Hellmann knows how to reel in a reader, and she does it expertly in DOUBLEBACK. One of the tensest opening scenes ever written is just the introduction to a true puzzler of a thriller.” Tess Gerritsen, NYT Bestselling author of THE KEEPSAKE

  “Moves with twists, insightful juxtapositions, and many layers. Hellmann doesn't need to ‘doubleback.’ She's indisputably crossed the line into the realm of great crime fiction writers.” Crimespree Magazine

  “A high-octane rocket ride through ripped-from-the-headlines issues and across the country . . . Let's hope we see much more of the tough-as-nails PI Georgia Davis and her relentless partner Ellie Foreman.” C.J. Box, author of BELOW ZERO

  www.LibbyHellmann.com

  DOUBLEBACK

  excerpt

  Chapter One

  Panic has a way of defining an individual. It scrapes the soul bare, strips away pretence, reveals the core of the human spirit. It’s hard to dissemble when fear crawls up your throat, your heart stampedes like a herd of wild animals, and your skin burns with the prickly-heat of terror. For the six people thrown together in a Loop office building elevator on a hot June day, the moments they shared would reveal parts of themselves they had not known existed.

  It was early afternoon in Chicago, the kind of day that made people want to ditch the chill of air conditioning and head to Wrigley Field. The first man who stepped into the elevator on the sixty-fifth floor might have been doing just that. He was a florid-faced, doughy man with gray at his temples. His jacket was hitched over his shoulder, and his shirt gapped between buttons, calling attention to his belly. He moved to the left side of the car and kept his gaze on the floor, as if by doing so, he – and his early departure – might escape notice.

  The elevator descended to the sixty-second floor, where two women who didn’t know each other got on. One was slender and small, with mousey brown hair pulled back at her neck. She wore a heavy sweater over a flowered dress. She went to the back of the car and leaned against the metal railing, trying to look inconspicuous. The other woman, in a gray pinstriped pantsuit over a sleeveless black tank, wore her hair in a chin-length bob. She positioned herself on the right side of the car and kept her eyes on the car’s indicator panel. The faint aroma of coconut shampoo drifted over her.

  On fifty-seven a young man got on. Wearing shorts and a ratty T-shirt, he clutched a large manila envelope in one hand and a bicycle helmet in the other. The envelope bore the logo of a prominent Chicago messenger service. He kept shifting his feet, and his mud-caked sneakers left tiny pellets of dirt on the tiled floor.

  Three floors below a middle-aged man in khaki chinos entered. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, and he wore his hair in a sparse comb-over. Another man entered the car on the fifty-first floor. Dressed in a suit, tie, and crisp white shirt, he wore wrap-around Oakley sunglasses. He kept one hand in his pocket, but through the shades appraised everyone in the car.

  As the elevator descended past the fiftieth floor, it gathered speed. It was one of three express cars from the upper floors; the next stop was the lobby. Both women star
ed at the overhead panel lights.

  The messenger squeezed his eyes shut. Comb-over Man hugged the back wall. Florid Face shot the man with the Oakleys a sidelong glance, but whether from envy or trepidation, it was hard to tell.

  No-one expected the elevator to lurch to a sudden stop.

  When it did, the force threw everyone to the floor. The lights blinked out, plunging the car into darkness. One of the women screamed. So did a man. The messenger shouted, “What the fuck?” Florid Face moaned. So did Comb-over Man. The man in the Oakleys kept his mouth shut.

  “Please, please, don’t let me die,” one of the women cried out. It wasn’t clear who she was addressing: someone in the elevator? Jesus? God?

  “I think my leg is broken!” Comb-over Man screamed. “Help me!”

  The messenger tried to get up. The weight in the car shifted. The elevator rocked.