Through April 27, 2009, buy Mick Herron's Smoke and Whispers
($9.99) and receive a free download of Down Cemetery Road
(normally $9.99) at no additional charge. The way it works is that when you buy the first book, both will download to your Kindle and both will show up in the Manage Your Kindle page for your account (don't one-click both of the titles or you'll be charged for both). This is at least the third such promotion that Amazon has run. You can also read an interview with the author (so long as it is up, these have been known to disappear from the Amazon Kindle Blog, along with these special offers).Synopsis (Smoke and Whispers)
When a body is hauled from the River Tyne, Sarah Tucker heads to Newcastle for a closer look. She identifies the dead woman as private detective Zoë Boehm, but putting a name to the corpse only raises further questions. Did Zoë kill herself, or did one of her old cases come back to haunt her? Why was she wearing a jacket a murderer had stolen years before? And what’s brought Sarah’s sparring partner, Gerard Inchon, to the same broken down hotel? Coincidence is an excuse that soon looks pretty unconvincing. Sarah can’t leave until she’s found the answers to her questions, however dangerous they might turn out to be.
Synopsis (Down Cemetery Road)
One quiet evening in Oxford a house near Sarah Tucker's suddenly explodes. The cause is later reported to be a gas leak, but when a child disappears in the aftermath, Sarah — a young married woman, bored and unhappy with her life — becomes obsessed with trying to find her. Very soon she's left wondering whether she has really ever known anybody or anything at all, as her attempts at investigation reveal that people long thought dead are still among the living, while the living are joining the dead. Her own life however, becomes distinctly less boring. What begins in this peaceful suburb comes to a compelling climax on a remote and unwelcoming Scottish island, as the hunt for the missing child takes Sarah out of her marriage and into a journey with a companion who himself is being hunted by murderous and apparently official forces. This acclaimed first novel sets a cracking pace with a satisfying denouement.
