Kerry was born in Dublin. He spent most of his life in the UK, and now lives in Brittany with his wife of thirty-seven years. He has three children and three grandchildren, all of whom live in England and all of whom think he’s nice (strange the way that works out). An absentee granddad, Kerry praises the advent of video conferencing.
I former lives, Kerry has been a furniture designer/cabinet maker, a research scientist, a house restorer, and now spends all.most of his time writing crime thrillers and what he likes to call adventure yarns. He recently topped the Amazon UK bestseller genre list for his paranormal thriller, The Transition of Johnny Swift.
There are currently two book in his DCI Jones Casebook series and a new addition is due out in the New Year.
EMAIL: kerryjdonvan@yahoo.co.uk
When I was fourteen, way back in the time before mobile phones, home computers, and the Interweb, a new headmaster took control of our school. He came in with all sorts of radical ideas, one of which was insisting that every pupil visited the library at least once a week. Not only that, but we had to take out a book and read it too.
In our own time.
Over and above our normal school homework.
I mean the cheek of the man.
What self-respecting fourteen-year-old boy wants to spend his free time reading when there are footballs to kick and a cricket bats to wield? Not me, that’s for sure.
Thought I was being so smart by choosing the smallest book in the place—blue of cover and well thumbed. I didn’t even read the title, just plucked it from the shelf, and walked it to the librarian’s desk. She stamped it and I took to the desk. Boy was I miffed when I opened the book to find the tiniest text I’d ever seen. Seventy years old and written by some old fossil called Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s title? Sherlock Holmes - Selected Short Stories.
Read that book cover to cover in about a week. I was blown away by the writing style and the scope of the characters. The stories were a little dated and a tad naive, but wonderful nonetheless. The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Speckled Band, all were classics of the criminologists’ art.
I still have the book, bought for 15p at the end of the term. It hasn’t left my side ever since. Need a magnifying glass these days to read the font, but I take it out occasionally to remind myself what a good detective story is all about. That little blue book is one of the reasons I write crime fiction.
A recent BBC series, Sherlock, has ‘rebooted’ Holmes and Watson into a modern setting. It is a testament to Doyle’s writing class that his lead characters, first written well over a century ago, stand the test of time.
This is stunning fiction, trend setting. If only I could write something that extraordinary.
Summary:
A psychological thriller in 96,000 words, set in present-day England.
Racing driver, “Fiery” Frank Brazier has a problem. He keeps seeing a grey figure he calls Shadow-man. The silent Shadow-man appears in times of stress, but things are worsening. Frank would seek medical help, but racing drivers aren’t supposed to feel fear, and how would his sponsors react?
The novel opens at the start of the final race of the season. Frank is only one win away from sealing the F2500 Championship and earning a place on a Formula 1 team for next season. When Frank’s blood pumps hard and adrenaline heightens his senses, he sees Shadow-man again, sitting on the nosecone of his car, brooding, still, and silent.
Frank survives a front tyre blowout, wins the race, and is offered a contract with the best team in the Formula 1 Series. The next day, he accompanies his sister, Paula, to London by train, but a senseless act of vandalism results in an horrific rail crash.
When he wakes in hospital three days later, with eyes bandaged, bones broken, and head aching, Frank hears two words that throw him into a world of terror and confusion.
“Save her!”
When the doctors remove his eye bandages, Frank sees the owner of the voice—Shadow-man, who repeats the words, “Save her.”
“Save who?”
“Paula...”
Summary:
An empathetic detective and his Swedish-born colleague hunt for the abductors of a teenage schoolgirl—a police procedural set in England and France.
When their daughter fails to return from school, Hollie Jardine’s parents are terrified. Is she a runaway, or the victim of something more sinister?
Veteran Detective, David Jones, head of the Midlands Police, is tasked to find her. His team soon discovers a link to convicted sex-offender, Ellis Flynn, whom Jones suspects of grooming the naive teenager. A difficult case is made more personal when Jones sees a photo of the missing girl, Hollie Jardine. She is the spitting image of his God-daughter! Jones can't separate the two in his head.
With Hollie's chances of survival fading, Jones and his Swedish-born colleague Alexandra Olganski, risk their careers and their lives when they ignore protocol to follow Flynn’s trail across the Channel into France. What they discover in an idyllic backwater will stretch Jones' detection skills to the limit, and Alex's loyalty to heartbreak.
As he closes in on the abductor, Jones faces an impossible decision - give himself up or the girl dies—do nothing and the girl dies.
The Transition of Johnny Smith
The DCI Jones Casebook: Ellis Flynn
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Thanks for posting. I'm excited to be here.
ReplyDeleteThank you for hosting today!
ReplyDeleteThanks for hosting this interesting post. Great story about Kerry's reading his first book.
ReplyDeleteGreat guest post, Kerry! Love your books :-) xx
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