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Blog Tour/Feature Post and Book Review: The Last of the Seven by Steven Hartov

Hi, everyone!

Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE LAST OF THE SEVEN by Steven Hartov on the HTP Books Summer Historical Fiction Blog Tour.

Below you will find an about the book section, my book review, an excerpt from the book, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!

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About the Book

A spellbinding novel of World War II based on the little-known history of the “X Troop” – a team of European Jews who escaped the Continent only to join the British Army and return home to exact their revenge on Hitler’s military.

A lone soldier wearing a German uniform stumbles into a British military camp in the North African desert with an incredible story to tell. He is the only survivor of an undercover operation meant to infiltrate a Nazi base, trading on the soldiers’ perfect fluency in German. For this man is not British born but instead a German Jew seeking revenge for the deaths of his family back home in Berlin.

As the Allies advance into Europe, the young lieutenant is brought to Sicily to recover, where he’s recruited by a British major to join to newly formed “X Troop,” a commando unit composed of German and Austrian Jews, training for a top-secret mission at a nearby camp in the Sicilian hills. They are all “lost boys,” driven not by patriotism but by vengeance. Drawing on meticulous research into this unique group of soldiers, The Seventh Commando is a lyrical, propulsive historical novel perfect for readers of Mark Sullivan, Robert Harris, and Alan Furst.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59438962-the-last-of-the-seven?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=cCpCAFzThG&rank=4

The Last of the Seven

Steven Hartov

On Sale Date: August 9, 2022

Hardcover

$26.99 USD, $33.50 CAD

Fiction / Historical / WWII

368 pages

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My Book Review

RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars

THE LAST OF THE SEVEN by Steven Hartov is an emotionally intense WWII historical fiction story featuring the fictional portrayal of a member of the historical “X Troop” who were a group of European Jews trained for covert operations by the British Army and sent behind enemy lines.

Lieutenant Bernard Froelich stumbles upon a British military camp wounded, dehydrated and barely alive after having escaped a Nazi camp in North Africa. He has traveled across the desert on an unbelievable journey. He is the only survivor of an undercover operation.

This is the story of Froelich’s odyssey of survival, loss, love, and vengeance as a Jew of German origin during WWII. The author paints beautiful and at times stark word pictures of every location of Froelich’s journey. I felt as though I was right along with him in every location and in every harrowing scene were he could have been killed. The author’s extensive research is evident throughout the story. I felt this story is important for readers to realize that there were Jewish commandos fighting the Nazis even as they faced antisemitism from some in the British army they served bravely.

I highly recommend this historical fiction based on an amazing troop of men during WWII.

***

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

North Africa, Spring 1943

In the Sahara, the sun could make a man bleed.

It was hard to believe at first, especially if you’d ever trekked a frigid winter landscape somewhere, boots slogging through alpine snow, limbs shivering and aching bone deep. It was a challenge to imagine it, such a murderous sun, when December memory recalled teeth chattering like a Morse code key, toes and fingers numbed and raw, eyebrows stiff with frost, till all at once that blessed star emerged from charcoal clouds to save the day.

The sun was a holy thing then. The breath of God on your frozen face.

Ah, but in the vastness of that empty desert, when spring fell prey to cruel summer, when the cloudless sky was nothing but a silver mirror, the sand an iron griddle, and there was not a tree or cave or cactus to throw a shadow’s sliver. Nowhere to run from the sun. It was then that heaven’s jewel became a hunting thing, its furnace eye unblinking, merciless, and pounding.

You could shade your skull with a cap, drape your blistered neck with burlap, but still you had to see your path as your squinting eyes filled with flies who’d found the only liquid in the land. The lancing light bounced off the dunes to slowly broil your face, lips turned plaster white and split, and the oils of your nose and cheeks fried patches there like poultry on a spit. And then, the crow’s-feet wrinkles at the corners of your bleary vision turned to brittle parchment, until at last they cracked, and the most unnatural happened…

The man across the dunes was weeping tears of brine and blood. But they were not of sorrow or self-pity, for all of his emotions had hollowed out so many weeks ago. They were simply the last vestiges of all the fluid he had left, squeezed from the ducts by that relentless sun.

He was small there in the distance, and nearly weightless now, though from the way he moved it seemed he wore a yoke of iron. He was no more than an upthrust child’s thumb against the umber sands, shimmering in the steaming light of the fata morgana, an illusion where horizon met the sky.

He wore a Bedouin burnoose, tight about his oily blond curls and rough against his bristled jaw. His German staff sergeant’s tunic was girded with white salt lines of evaporated sweat, a single bandolier of ammunition, and the lanyard of a camel skin water bladder, now shriveled like an ancient’s scrotum, nothing left. One Feldwebel rank was on his collar, his Afrika Korps palm-tree shoulder patch was bleached into a ghost, and in one pocket were two lizard tails he’d chewed from time to time, though all the meat was spent. The right waist of his tunic was punched through with a bullet hole, its fringes black with dried blood, and in the left thigh of his trousers was another one just like it, the reason for his crooked limp.

In his dangling right hand, below a ragged sleeve, he clutched a German MP40 Schmeisser machine pistol, barrel down, its leather strap dragging through the sand. His left hand held nothing, the nut-brown fingers capped with broken nails with which he’d tried and failed to dig some water from the heart of a dying oasis. His breaths rattled like an asthmatic’s, yet he came on, another half an hour, another mile.

A pair of British soldiers from Montgomery’s Eighth Army watched him. They knelt behind a berm of sandbags, Tommy helmets buckled tight, sleeves rolled up and neat, shorts revealing sun-browned thighs above knee socks and tanker’s boots. They were alone, the western guards of a garrison south of Medenine, Tunisia, and they raised their bayoneted Enfield rifles to bear down on the stranger, like twins who often read each other’s minds.

At twenty feet the German sergeant stopped, unmoving, only breathing. The Cockney Tommy on the left aimed the rifle at his chest.

“Drop the bloody Schmeisser.”

The German jolted, as if surprised to hear a voice aside from his own mutterings to himself, unsure if these two Brits were real or cruel mirage. Yet he obeyed, as after all he knew it didn’t matter. The machine pistol was choked with grit and only the first shell would have fired. He opened his fingers and let the gun slip, like the hand of a dying lover, and it fell to the sand and was still.

The Tommy on the right said, “Hände hoch.” Hands up. He was a Scot and it came out as “Handerr hook.”

The German tried, but he couldn’t raise his arms higher than his waist, and his leather palms fluttered there above the sand like a maestro urging his musicians to play the passage pianissimo. His cracked lips formed a trembling “O,” though no sound emerged, and he mouthed Water, and then again—a goldfish with its face pressed to the glass of an aquarium. The Scot, keeping his Enfield trained, pulled a tin canteen from his battle harness.

“Don’t go near him, Robbie,” warned the Tommy on the left.

The Scot pitched the water bottle, cricket-style, where it pinged against a rock before the German’s boots. But the man could hardly bend his wounded leg and leaned in half a fencer’s lunge, snatching the canteen two-handed. He unscrewed the cap and brought it, shaking, to his mouth, and raised his face to heaven as the water gushed into his swollen gullet and dribbled from his filthy beard. His body trembled, and he looked at the two men and said, in nearly perfect British English, “I am not a German.”

The Tommies glanced at one another, then back at their intruder.

“You don’t say, Klaus?” the Cockney said to him.

“Looks like a bleedin’ Jerry to me, Harry,” the Scot growled to his partner.

“He’s bleedin’ all right, mate,” said Harry sideways. “Got a couple of nicks.”

“Nicks?” Robbie snorted. “Coupla hefty caliber holes. Can hardly see `em for the flies.”

Cockney Harry craned his neck to peer beyond the German’s head.

“You all alone, mate?”

“Six others,” the German managed in a brittle whisper.

“Don’t see ’em.”

“All dead.”

“Right,” said Robbie. “And where’d ye come from then?”

The German dropped the canteen. His fingers wouldn’t hold it.

“Borj el-Khadra, by way of Tobruk.”

“Bollocks,” Harry spat. “That’s three hundred miles.” He thrust his buckled chin above the sea of endless dunes. “Across that.”

For a long moment, the trio regarded one another like drunkards sizing up opponents for a brawl. The Tommies watched the German’s hands, for they hadn’t searched him yet, while for his part he struggled to stay upright. Cockney Harry gestured at Robbie the Scot, but only with his head.

“Fire the Very pistol, Robbie. Green flare, not red. Let’s have the captain up here for a chat.”

Aside from Robbie’s flare, which arced into the silver sky and fell to earth somewhere, the trio stayed immobile until at last a throaty engine loomed. A four-wheeled open command car appeared from the north, its peeling fuselage bristling with petrol jerrycans, pickaxes, and Bren light machine guns snouted at the sky. It spewed a cloud of dust as it hove to and an officer dismounted, his captain’s cap stained with sweat, Webley pistol lanyarded to a holster. His left hand tapped a swagger stick against his muscled calf while his right fingers smoothed a short mustache. His large driver followed close, hefting a Thompson submachine gun.

The captain ambled up and stopped, his bloodshot eyes squinting at the strange tableau. Robbie the Scot turned and dipped his helmet brim, but Harry kept his rifle trained, and there were no salutes.

“What’s all this then, lads?” the captain said.

“Captured us an Afrika Korps infiltrator, sir,” said Harry.

“Sneaky desert serpent,” Robbie sneered.

“Good show then.” The captain nodded and scanned the prisoner head to foot. “Right. Summon a firing party.”

Harry turned and looked at his commander.

“Execution, sir?”

“Affirmative, Corporal.” The captain flicked his stick toward a distant rise. “And let’s stake his corpse on that hill. Perhaps it shall keep the other vultures at bay.”

“Yessir,” said the captain’s driver, and he turned back for the car to muster up a firing squad.

The captain wasn’t barbarous, but more than worn and weary, and his men were not quite sure if he was serious or bluffing. In the past few weeks, despite the routing of the Germans in the westward push for Tunisia, spies of every kind had probed his lines, including one Bedouin woman. They were often followed by marauding Stuka fighter-bombers. He’d lost four men, most painfully his major whom he’d buried and replaced, and had a fifth now dying in a tent, legless and weeping for his mother. So much, he thought, for Erwin Rommel’s “Krieg ohne Hass,” war without hate.

“I am not a German.” The intruder spoke again, and his voice spasmed with the effort.

The captain raised his chin. His driver stopped and turned. The prisoner’s accent was British, yet with a certain Berlin curl.

“That’s quite a claim,” the captain said, “given your costume.”

“He told us that shite too, sir,” said Robbie.

“Says he hoofed it from Borj el-Khadra,” Harry said. “By way of Tobruk, no less.”

The captain raised a palm to hush his men and squinted at the prisoner.

“What are you, then?”

The prisoner tried to swallow. The water hadn’t been enough. It would never be enough. His body quaked in feverish ripples now, his ragged clothing fluttering like gosling feathers. It was the proximity of rescue, now turned to sudden death, coupled with his famish, thirst, and wounds.

“SIG,” he said, tunneling in his delirium for the words. “Combined Operations.”

The captain raised an eyebrow. Harry asked him, “What’s ess-eye-gee, sir?”

“Special Interrogation Group.” The captain stroked his mustache corners. “Top secret commando unit, attached to LRDG and SAS. Mostly German Jews, but they were all killed at Tobruk, and that was many months ago.”

“Not I,” the prisoner croaked. His right hand reached into his tunic. The captain fumbled for his Webley and the Tommies’ Enfields stiffened, as the prisoner fetched a pair of British identification disks, one green, one amber, like autumn leaves on a threadbare lanyard, and they fell against his chest.

The captain glanced at them, and at the hollow bearded face again.

“Tobruk, you say. And where’ve you been since then…allegedly?”

“Captured. Escaped a month ago, or two, perhaps, I think.”

“You think.” The captain closed his fists and put them to his garrison belt. “And why, pray tell, if you were in this uniform, were you not executed as a spy? Those are Hitler’s orders, after all.”

“Because I had tea with Erwin Rommel,” the prisoner said, yet without a hint of irony that the German field marshal would have thusly intervened.

“Had a pint meself with Churchill just last week,” the captain’s driver quipped. The Tommies laughed, but the captain didn’t. There was something in the prisoner’s eyes—a sincerity of madness, or truth.

“What’s your name and rank?” he asked.

“Froelich, Bernard, second lieutenant.” He pronounced his given name as “Bern-udd” and his rank as “left-tenant.” Then he added, “Six seven two, four five seven.”

The captain produced a small pad and pencil from his tunic pocket—ink was useless in the desert. He wrote the details down, tore the page off and flicked it over his shoulder for the driver, his eyes never leaving the desperate gleaming blue ones there before him. They were bleeding from the ducts, but he’d seen that once or twice before.

“Sergeant Stafford,” he ordered, “take this to the wireless tent and have Binks get onto Cairo. Tell them we’ll need our answer double quick.”

The driver sped off amidst a cloud of dust, but his return was far from quick. A grueling fifteen minutes passed, while the prisoner teetered on his feet. He could no longer keep his head erect, and he fought to stay awake and straight. He told himself he’d stood this way before, for hours in formations, and he dredged up images of bucolic pleasures, the Danube and the Rhine, and even Galilee. He longed for rain and felt its kisses on his face, while rivulets of something else crawled down his beard and touched the corners of his mouth. But he tasted only brine, and then the armored car returned.

He raised his chin as the driver handed back the paper to the captain, who perused it, then spoke again.

“Lieutenant Froelich, if that’s you,” he said, “do you remember your last passwords?”

“I shall try,” the prisoner whispered as he stumbled through his memory, unsure if he could find the thing to save him from a bullet.

“If I said Rothmans cigarettes,” the captain posed, “what would you say?”

The prisoner’s sunburned brow creased deeply like a cutlass scar.

“I’d tell you I don’t like them, sir…that I fancy Players Navy Cut instead.”

The captain nodded, and offered his first thin smile of the week.

“That is correct.”

And Froelich slumped to his knees in the sand, a collapsed marionette, strings cut. And then he slipped from consciousness and toppled forward, knuckles in the desert, his palms turned up to the sun he hated.

“Fetch a stretcher, lads,” the captain said. “It’s him. He’s the last of them. He’s the seventh.”

Excerpted from My Last of the Seven @ 2022 by Steven Hartov, used with permission by Hanover Square Press.

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About the Author

Steven Hartov is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller In the Company of Heroes, as well as The Night Stalkers and Afghanistan on the Bounce. For six years he served as Editor-in-Chief of Special Operations Report. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, FOX, and most recently the History Channel’s Secret Armies. A former Merchant Marine sailor, Israeli Defense Forces paratrooper and special operator, he is currently a Task Force Commander in the New York Guard. He lives in New Jersey.

Social Media Links

Author website: https://stevenhartov.com/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StevenHartovAuthor 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Steven_Hartov 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenhartov_author/ 

Purchase Links

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Seven-Novel-World-War/dp/1335050108/ 

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-last-of-the-seven-steven-hartov/1140465637?ean=9781335050106

Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/books/the-last-of-the-seven-a-novel-of-world-war-ii/9781335050106 

IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781335050106 

Books-A-Million: https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Last-Seven/Steven-Hartov/9781335050106

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-last-of-the-seven 

AppleBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-last-of-the-seven/id1584482821 

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Steven_Hartov_The_Last_of_the_Seven?id=0S5BEAAAQBAJ 

Libro.FM: https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781488214332-the-last-of-the-seven?bookstore=ggpbooks 

Indigo: https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/the-last-of-the-seven/9781335050106-item.html

Book Tour/Feature Post and Book Review: The Shadow of the Mole by Bob Van Laerhoven

Hi, everyone!

Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE SHADOW OF THE MOLE by Bob Van Laerhoven on this Black Coffee Book Tour.

Below you will find an about the book section, my book review, an excerpt from the book, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!

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About the Book

1916, Bois de Bolante, France. The battles in the trenches are raging fiercer than ever. In a deserted mineshaft, French sappeurs discover an unconscious man, and nickname him The Mole.

Claiming he has lost his memory, The Mole is convinced that he’s dead, and that an Other has taken his place. The military brass considers him a deserter, but front physician and psychiatrist-in-training Michel Denis suspects that his patient’s odd behavior is stemming from shellshock, and tries to save him from the firing squad.

The mystery deepens when The Mole begins to write a story in écriture automatique that takes place in Vienna, with Dr. Josef Breuer, Freud’s teacher, in the leading role. Traumatized by the recent loss of an arm, Denis becomes obsessed with him, and is prepared to do everything he can to unravel the patient’s secret.

Set against the staggering backdrop of the First World War, The Shadow Of The Mole is a thrilling tableau of loss, frustration, anger, madness, secrets and budding love. The most urgent question in this extraordinary story is: when, how, and why reality shifts into delusion?

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60422637-the-shadow-of-the-mole?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Oitac44BjW&rank=1

The Shadow of the Mole

By Bob Van Laerhoven

  • Genre:  Literary fiction; historical fiction
  • Print length: 422 pages
  • Age range: This is an adult book
  • Trigger warnings: Realistic wartime violence and death
  • Goodreads Rating: 4.5 *

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My Book Review

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars

THE SHADOW OF THE MOLE by Bob Van Laerhoven is a dark and intriguing historical fiction/mystery set in France during WWI featuring a man found with amnesia and the young psychiatrist who wants to uncover his identity.

As the French tunnel beneath the German lines in the Argonne during WWI, a group of diggers discover an unconscious man in a connecting abandoned mining shaft. He is taken to the hospital at the front and when he wakes up, he claims he has no memory. The staff refer to him as “The Mole”.

Michel Denis is a young psychiatrist who volunteered to work at the front and in an explosion loses his arm. He continues to help as much as possible and he becomes intrigued with the man brought in from the tunnel called The Mole. He is determined to uncover his identity and discover how he ended up in the tunnel. The Mole asks for paper and pen and writes his story, but what is the truth?

This story is an intriguing look at the psychological impact of war on the psyche. Everyone in this story deal with the horrors of war but continue to have a grain of hope for the future. I feel this is more literary fiction with the continual psychiatric analysis of The Mole, his writing, and Michel’s thoughts on the self. That is not a negative criticism, just a heads up to readers who are looking for more of a genre style historical mystery. The settings are descriptive and the emotions palpable in both the story as told by Michel in present day and The Mole’s writing of his life. An interesting read.

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Excerpt

Part I

Prologue 

 
’      ’, they murmured, with their heads bowed, a prayer to La Sainte Vierge1. Their voices were soft and solemn, like when they were chil‐ dren. In the shadows, their lanterns sparked the dust into a golden mist, as they hacked their way into the earth. 

Jean Dumoulin used to hum softly but melodically during his work in the tunnels. His fellow diggers had nicknamed him ‘the canary’. Of late, he had taken to murmuring the bawdiest beer hall songs he knew, for the frankly insane reason that his regiment, the 13th French Infantry, had received the audacious orders to dig tunnels under the German tunnels at the spot that everybody in the Argonne-region called Fille Morte2. 

That day, February 26, 1916, Jean Dumoulin had turned to inventing his own songs. Faced with the threat of German tunnels above him, he sang only in his mind. Dumoulin liked to surprise himself with whatever words came to him. The words made him feel different: not a twenty-six-year-old French soldier clawing away in near darkness, but more like a classic Greek poet, posing with a lyre on a mountain top overlooking a shimmering sea. 

3

Dumoulin was crooning Ma bouche sera un enfer de douceur/tu crias ton armée de douleur3, while he used his pick-axe to clear the rubble around the entrance of an old mine gallery they had discovered. He pondered which verse would come next: ton amour armé or ton amour blindé?4 

It was then he saw the body lying in the gallery. From time to time, when they were grubbing in the earth, a shovel would uncover a half-buried body. They couldn’t always tell if the stiff was German or French. Often, all that was left was a rotten lump of meat. In spite of the stench and their revulsion, the sappers would try to identify it. Who else would do so? They thought of all the missing men and their anxious relatives and loved ones and they searched the body for anything that could lead to its identification. 

“Nom de Dieu,” Dumoulin hissed over his shoulder to his companion Guillaume. “Another stiff. Hope this one doesn’t break in half like the other one.” Neither had actually seen the mummified corpse of a miner, perished years ago in the coal mines, who was said to have cracked in half when tunnel diggers brought it to the surface, but the story was legendary and if you denied it, you were just a cynic. 

Cursing under his breath, Jean moved forward. When his hands touched the body, he jerked away as though someone had stabbed him. 

4

Chapter One 

So softly treads the night. 

Standing behind my right shoulder. No breath reaches my skin. 

5

Chapter Two 

‘ ‘, at the horizon. The Meurisson Valley, home to the field hospital which served the whole region, lay in Bois de Bolante, a low-lying part of the great Argonne woods. Dr Michel Denis walked there through the trenches. The recovery area was crudely constructed – a semi-underground complex harboring medical provisions, ammunition and food storage, bathhouses and a sickbay. Like everyone else who worked there, Denis was curious about the infamous ‘Mole’, and he wanted a closer look. The sappers digging tunnels under the German lines had found the unconscious man, dressed in civvies, in the tunnel of an old charcoal burner. A day later, the man was still unconscious. 

In the sickbay, Denis went to the patient’s bed and studied his facial features. Wide ears, a somewhat beaked nose and jowly cheeks, perhaps Semitic. Denis guessed The Mole’s age at about forty-five. Baggy blue skin under the eyes. As he made these observations, Denis came closer and now he stood at the bedside. Startled, he glanced at where his own right arm, severed by a piece of shrapnel, should have been. Involuntarily, he was reaching out with his phantom limb to touch the man’s left leg. All at once, a hail of shells 

6

The Shadow Of The Mole 

passed over, as though the memory of that shrapnel had provoked the Germans at the north side of the Meurisson Valley. The shells drummed the basement walls with their deafening low thunder. Denis pictured the men in the icy trenches at the front, frantically seeking shelter. Since February 12th, after heavy snowfall, a light thaw had set in. It drenched the trenches with cold, gurgling mud, and inundated the mine corridors, used to infiltrate enemy territory, with melted ice: sluggish, foul-reeking, and copper-coloured. 

An explosion shook the basement. Denis looked around him. Rumour had it that the Germans, being technically advanced, had electric lighting in their shelters. The French hospital had to make do with candle lanterns. As a result, bizarre shadows waved on the walls in a slow, undulating rhythm. No wonder the wounded called the hospital le pot de chambre de la France. At the moment, the chamber pot of France was a dazzling phantasmagoria of shapes chasing each other on the walls and the floor. Light and darkness played on The Mole’s face. 

In the shadows, the man opened his eyes.

***

About the Author

Bob van Laerhoven is a Belgian writer and traveller whose work has been translated into most European languages, as well as Russian and Chinese.

He made his debut as a novelist in 1985 with “Nachtspel – Night Game.” He quickly became known for his colorful, kaleidoscopic novels in which the fate of the individual is closely related to broad social transformations. His style slowly evolved in his later novels to embrace more personal themes while continuing to branch out into the world at large. International flair has become his trademark.

As a travel writer he has explored conflicts and trouble-spots across the globe from the early 1990s to 2004. Echoes of his experiences on the road also trickle through in his novels. During the Bosnian war, Van Laerhoven spent part of 1992 in the besieged city of Sarajevo. Three years later he was working for MSF – Doctors without frontiers – in the Bosnian city of Tuzla during the NATO bombings.

All these experiences contribute to Bob Van Laerhoven’s rich and commendable oeuvre, as the versatile author of novels, travel stories, theatre pieces, biographies, non-fiction, letters, columns, articles…

His work has received many accolades.

  • The Hercule Poirot Prize for best crime-novel of the year with “De Wraak van Baudelaire – Baudelaire’s Revenge”
  • Also for Baudelaire’s Revenge, the USA BEST BOOK AWARD 2014 in the category Fiction: mystery/suspense.
  • “Dangerous Obsessions” was voted “best short story collection of 2015 in The San Diego Book Review.
  • “Heart Fever” was one of the five finalists – and the only non-American author – of the Silver Falchion Award 2018 in the category “short stories collections.”
  • “Return to Hiroshima”, was listed in the top ten of international crime novels in 2018 in the British quality review blog “MurderMayhem&More”
  • “Alejandro’s Lie” was named the best political thriller of 2021 by BestThrillers.com

Social Media Links

Website: https://www.bobvanlaerhoven.be/en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bob.vanlaerhoven/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/bobvanlaerhoven

Purchase Link

http://mybook.to/ShadowOfTheMole

Book Review: The Secret Witness by Victor Methos

RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars

THE SECRET WITNESS (Shepard & Gray Book #1) by Victor Methos is the exciting start to a new crime thriller series set in Utah and featuring a former prosecutor and the new female county sheriff. This book starts off with a bang and keeps the chills and twists coming.

After three vicious murders, Tooele County Sheriff Elizabeth Gray believes she is facing the same serial killer her father, the former sheriff was never able to catch. The Reaper was responsible for a string of vicious murders without leaving any evidence. Elizabeth calls on the friend and retired prosecutor her father trusted while working The Reaper case.

Former prosecutor Solomon Shepard knows about psychopathy. He wrote a preeminent reference book on the subject. He is retired from the Major Crimes prosecutor’s office after a courtroom attack and has become almost a hermit in his apartment. Elizabeth asks for help on the one case that has always haunted Solomon and is the only one with the ability to pull him back into his old life.

As Shepard and Gray investigate the body count grows and they are not sure if they are dealing with the return of the original serial killer or a copycat. They soon find themselves face-to-face with a killer neither expected.

I loved this thriller! The main characters were fully drawn with interesting backstories and a chemistry that worked as well as their partnership. I am very glad this is the start of a series because I really am invested in these characters and looking forward to following them in future books. The subplot with Solomon’s neighbor was heartbreaking and I hate to say realistic. The killer was a surprise, but believable even without the surprise twist at the end. I am always interested in the Nature vs. Nurture psychological arguments in serial crime books. The plot moves at an even and fast pace throughout with plenty of twists and surprises to keep the reader turning the page.

I highly recommend this new crime thriller and I am looking forward to more books in this series!

***

About the Author

At the age of thirteen, when his best friend was interrogated by the police for over eight hours and confessed to a crime he didn’t commit, Victor Methos knew he would one day become a lawyer.

After graduating from law school at the University of Utah, Methos sharpened his teeth as a prosecutor for Salt Lake City before founding what would become the most successful criminal defense firm in Utah.

In ten years Methos conducted more than one hundred trials. One particular case stuck with him, and it eventually became the basis for his first major bestseller, The Neon Lawyer. Since that time, Methos has focused his work on legal thrillers and mysteries, earning a Harper Lee Prize for The Hallows and an Edgar nomination for Best Novel for his title A Gambler’s Jury. He currently splits his time between southern Utah and Las Vegas.

Social Media Links

Website: https://www.victormethos.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/victor.methos

Twitter: https://twitter.com/VictorMethos

Book Review: The Nurse’s Secret by Amanda Skenandore

RATING: 5 out of 5 Stars

THE NURSE’S SECRET by Amanda Skenandore is a historical fiction novel with romantic elements featuring a young female protagonist set in 1880’s New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. This is a standalone novel with great characters, a bit of sweet romance and a suspense murder mystery plot intertwined throughout.

New York City’s Bellevue Hospital is the first hospital in the U.S. to initiate a nursing school based on the principles of Florence Nightingale. The young ladies must be of high moral character, educated and from upper class homes. There is a strict code of decorum, discipline and work ethic that must be followed to remain in the program. Una Kelly is none of these things. Una is a con artist, pickpocket and thief who is found at the scene of a murder, arrested, and then escapes. She cons her way into the nursing program with the help of a friend to hide from the police.

With the help of her roommate, Una finds she is capable of pulling off this deception and even finds she is good with the patients. A young doctor in training is interested in the unique nurse probationer, but Una is afraid to admit she is not who she seems. But when a woman from her past shows up and threatens Una’s ruse, she is killed in the same method as the man Una is accused of killing.

Una knows someone is killing in Bellevue and it is like the murder she is accused of. She sets a trap, but she may end up the victim of this serial killer.

I loved this book and all the characters. Una is street smart and thick skinned due to her upbringing, but she also knows how to use her natural intelligence to get along in her ruse and she begins to really care about her patients. Una’s gradual change in caring for her roommate, Dru and the step-by-step acceptance of her friendship really emphasized her emotional changes. The sweet romantic elements worked to also show a side of Una where she is slightly vulnerable. I felt all the secondary characters were fully fleshed and believable for the historical period. The descriptions of 1880 New York display the research involved in this story along with all the historical medical treatments and techniques for both doctors and nurses. The suspense plot of this story is paced well throughout and has a believable ending.

I highly recommend this engaging historical fiction!

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About the Author

I’m lucky. I come from a family of diehard scientists—the kind who tell jokes about irrational numbers and use the Vulcan salute instead of waving goodbye. But there was always room in our house for the arts too. My sisters—one a conservation biologist, the other an astrophysicist—paint and play the flute. My father, a physicist, is also a movie buff. My mother, a mathematician, dabbles in everything from theater to stained glass. Me, I’m an infection prevention nurse. But first and foremost I’m a writer. Even when my pen is still, my mind is aflight with stories.

I’m lucky. I come from a family of readers. Books filled our shelves and trips to the library were routine. Even though I struggled with dyslexia and was slow to learn, my parents insisted I not give up. Now, I don’t read fast but I read often and wide—fantasy, scifi, paranormal romance, YA, literary, and of course, historical fiction.

I’m lucky. I married a man of great character and enduring flexibility. When I told him at thirty I wanted to quit my job and try to be a author, he said go for it. When I’d gone five years without selling a book or finding an agent, he said try a little longer.

I’m lucky. I finally found an agent, the wonderful Michael Carr, and sold my book, along with three others yet to be published, to Kensington Publishing.

My husband and I live in Las Vegas, NV with our pet turtle, Lenore.

Social Media Links

Website: https://www.amandaskenandore.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmandaSkenandoreAuthorPage/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ARShenandoah

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16747144.Amanda_Skenandore

Book Review: Nightwork by Nora Roberts

Book Description

Harry Booth started stealing at nine to keep a roof over his ailing mother’s head, slipping into luxurious, empty homes at night to find items he could trade for precious cash. When his mother finally succumbed to cancer, he left Chicago—but kept up his nightwork.

Wandering from the Outer Banks to Savannah to New Orleans, he dons new identities and stays careful, observant, distant. He can’t afford to attract attention—or get attached. Still, he can’t help letting his guard down when he meets Miranda Emerson. But the powerful bond between them cannot last—because not all thieves follow Harry’s code of honor. Some pay others to take risks so they can hoard more treasures. Some are driven by a desire to own people the way they own paintings and jewels. And after Harry takes a lucrative job commissioned by Carter LaPorte, LaPorte sees a tool he can use, and decides he wants to own Harry.

The man is a predator more frightening than the alligators that haunt the bayou—and when he strongarms Harry into robbing a Baltimore museum, Harry abandons Miranda—cruelly, with no explanation—and disappears. But no matter what name he uses or where he goes, LaPorte casts a shadow over Harry’s life. To truly free himself, he must face down his enemy once and for all. Only then can he hope to possess something more valuable than anything he has ever stolen.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58724963-nightwork?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=hv4JgTG1H2&rank=1

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My Book Review

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars

NIGHTWORK by Nora Roberts is a unique romantic suspense with a young hero who grows up to becomes a gentleman thief with his own set of rules and moral code. This is a standalone that that is mainly told from the viewpoint of the hero.

Harry Booth never knew his father, but he always had the love of his mother and aunt, Mags. When Harry is 9 years old, his mother has her first fight with cancer. The sister’s cleaning company cannot keep up with the bills and Harry begins to pick pockets to help with money. By the age of 12, he was breaking into homes, only taking a few things of value and never with a weapon. When Harry graduated from high school, his mother died after two remissions, he set out on his own. He went south and his aunt went west.

This is the start of a tale that follows Harry, Silas, Booth, Sebastian (different identities) all over the U.S., Europe, South America and then back to the U.S. I loved the flamboyant family of thieves and cons he kept as a pseudo family in New Orleans even though that is where his trouble with the antagonist, LaPorte in this story meet. I also loved how he always stayed in touch with Mags no matter what. When he first meets Miranda Emerson, you just knew it wouldn’t last, especially if you remember his taro reading, but when they come back together as adults it works.

This is a very enjoyable book. Booth’s travels and escapades are interesting, Miranda is his perfect match, and all the other secondary characters are colorful and entertaining. The sex scenes are explicit, but not gratuitous and quick. There are ups and downs in the plot that keep you turning the pages.

I enjoyed Harry and his story very much.

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About the Author

Nora Roberts is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than 200 novels, including Hideaway, Under Currents, Come Sundown, The Awakening, Legacy, and coming in November 2021 — The Becoming — the second book in The Dragon Heart Legacy. She is also the author of the futuristic suspense In Death series written under the pen name J.D. Robb. There are more than 500 million copies of her books in print.

Book Tour/Feature Post: Evita and Me by Erika Rummel

Hi, everyone!

Today I am sharing my Feature Post for EVTIA AND ME by Erika Rummel on this Virtual Author Book Tour.

Below you will find a book description, an exclusive excerpt, an about the author section, the author’s social media links and a Rafflecopter giveaway. Enjoy!

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Book Description

Evita Peron’s jewels are missing. Only three people know that they are in a vault in the Swiss Alps; Evita’s corrupt and brutal brother Juan, her bodyguard Pierre, and a teenaged girl Mona, her newest protegee. What happens if two of them team up?

Like Eva herself, Mona comes from a broken family and has to make her own way. Perhaps that’s why the two women feel close. Evita is at the pinnacle of success but already in the grip of a fatal illness. We see her life through the eyes of Mona and Pierre, two people she trusts — and who betray her in the end. Or can theft and murder be justified?

A story of love, adventure, and murder.

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Excerpt

[Juancito, Evita’s thuggish brother, shows Mona the underbelly of Buenos Aires.]

We were passing through the narrow streets of the Boca. Juancito slowed down and stopped at the back of a two-story house painted mustard yellow. The lower part of the wall was solid like a bunker. The second floor had a row of tall windows. Two of them had balconies with old-fashioned ornamental railings, the one in the middle was a Juliet balcony. The house had a look of decay and abandonment about it. The iron railings were rusty, and the wooden shutters on some of the windows had come off and were stacked against the balcony railings. We walked around to the front of the building. The entrance was lit up by a garish sign with a palm tree and a hula dancer and the word “Bar” flicking on and off. Inside, the place was dimly lit and quiet. It smelled of old carpet. A band was playing Latino music and a small dance floor, but no one was dancing. The little tables surrounding the empty oval were occupied by single girls or girls in pairs sipping drinks and playing cards, waiting – for customers, I assume…

[Mona is right. It’s a brothel, and Juanito takes her and one of the “girls” upstairs. They don’t get far.]

We heard a truck pulling into the yard. Doors slammed, a rough voice barked a command.

“A police raid!” the girl said.

“Get her out,” Juancito said pointing to me. “I’ll talk to them.”

The whore took me by the hand like a little girl, leading me down the hallway. There was a window at the end of it, overlooking the parking lot. It was the window with the Juliet balcony I’d seen earlier. Juancito’s car was below. The girl pushed up the sash of the window, wangled a leg over the sill, and dropped down to the ledge outside. She did it so smoothly that I suspected it was a practiced routine.

“Come on,” she said in a hard, impatient voice, and I climbed up and let myself down on the other side, standing next to her. She took stock of the situation. We were only a little distance from the nearest window, which had a regular, wide balcony. She climbed up on the railing, steadied herself against the wall, and jumped across to the larger balcony with the agility of a trapeze artist. She stood still for a moment, then took one of the shutters that had come off the French doors and were leaning against the wall. She shoved it across to the Juliette balcony where I was standing, making a narrow bridge between the railings.

She whispered another “Come on”, and I tried not to think, not to be afraid of falling, as I climbed up on the plank spanning the two balconies. I didn’t look down, I shimmied across on my hands and knees. I could feel my nylons snagging on the slats and ripping. The girl reached for me and pulled, making me land hard on the other side and scraping my knee. We could hear another commando shout and the voices of people coming out of the bar, but we couldn’t see anything. It was all happening around the corner, on the front side of the building.

The whore forced open the balcony door. We passed through a shadowy room, stepped into the corridor, and sneaked down the stairs to a backdoor opening up into an alley. I breathed relief until I saw that the alley dead-ended on one side, barred by a chain-link fence. We could have climbed it, but it was lit up by a streetlight. Too risky, the whore said. They’ll spot us. We couldn’t sneak out on the side that wasn’t gated because that’s where the cops were. We’d run directly into their arms.  So we sat on the ground with our backs pressed against the wall, knees drawn up tight to stay in the shadow of the eaves as much as possible. The alley was strewn with broken crates, rags, bottles, and the rotting remains of food. Directly under the streetlamp, in the cone of light on the ground was a seething mass of flying and crawling insects, the largest beetles I had ever seen. We heard more shouting and commotion around the corner. A cop appeared at the mouth of the alley and shone a flashlight our way. The jig was up. He pointed his gun at us.

“What have we got here?” he said, closing in and looming over us.

After that, everything happened too fast for my understanding. I saw the flash of a knife, I heard him scream. A slit opened up along his thigh. He staggered back and dropped to his knees, cursing, as we scrambled up, ran to the other end of the alley and clambered over the fence. We dropped down on the other side and ran out to the parking lot. Juancito’s car was close by.

“Get down,” the girl said, and we slid under the car on our bellies and stayed there, lying very still.

The guy she slashed had probably gone for reinforcement. We heard the cops coming out of the bar, rough voices, boots hitting the pavement. From our vantage point we couldn’t see the men. Someone approached the car. He stopped right beside it, and I recognized Juancito’s polished shoes.

A few moments later, a pair of scuffed boots appeared beside Juancito’s shoes.

“I don’t carry much cash,” Juancito said to the man in boots. “I’ll get something to you tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t take bribes,” the man said.

“Of course you don’t take bribes, che, I know that,” Juanito said pleasantly. I didn’t know he could sound that way, as if he was really nice and considerate. “But one of your men has been stabbed. He deserves compensation. I’ll get the money to you.”

A charged silence hung in the air. Nothing further was said, but there was no need for words. They understood each other.

The heels of Solara’s boots clicked together in a salute.

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About Erika Rummel

Award winning author, Erika Rummel is the author of more than a dozen non-fiction books and seven novels. Her seventh novel, ‘Evita and Me’ is being published on May 24, 2022.

She won the Random House Creative Writing Award (2011) for a chapter from ‘The Effects of Isolation on the Brain’ and The Colorado Independent Publishers’ Association’ Award for Best Historical Novel, in 2018. She is the recipient of a Getty Fellowship and the Killam Award.

Erika grew up in Vienna, emigrated to Canada and obtained a PhD from the University of Toronto. She taught at Wilfrid Laurier and U of Toronto.  She divides her time between Toronto and Los Angeles and has lived in Argentina, Romania, and Bulgaria.

Social Media Links

Erika’s Website: http://www.erikarummel.com/
Erika’s Blog: http://rummelsincrediblestories.blogspot.ca/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/historycracks

Purchase Links

Amazon
DX Varos Publishing

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RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY

This giveaway is for 2 print copies and is open to Canada and the U.S. only. This giveaway ends on July 23, 2022 midnight, pacific time.  Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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