Today it's my turn on the BlogTour Silent Money by G.D. Harper.
About the Author
I was placed third in the 2015 Lightship Prize for first-time authors, won a 2016 Wishing Shelf Award Red Ribbon, been shortlisted at the UK Festival of Writing for Best First Chapter, longlisted in the 2017 UK Novel Writing Competition.
In 2017, I was one of twelve authors selected for Authors in the Spotlight at the Bloody Scotland book festival in Stirling, showcasing who they considered to be the best emerging talent in crime fiction, and was the only self-published author to be chosen. I have spoken at numerous other book events, including Blackwells' Writers at the Fringe at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe; a stand-alone slot at the Byres Road Book Festival in Glasgow, and the Aye Write! Book Festival, also in Glasgow.
I went to Glasgow University in 1975 and lived in the city’s West End, the time and place for the setting of the majority of Silent Money.
Glasgow, 1972. Michael Mitchell is ambitious, talented and determined to succeed. But he learns the hard way that he will never achieve his goals in life – unless he plays by a different set of rules.
He partners with a small-time crook to help the Glasgow underworld launder the proceeds of their crimes. As the operation grows, Michael is forced to become more and more ruthless to protect what he has built.
Shocked by who he has become, he vows to leave the criminal world behind and start a new life. But the past has a way of catching up. Finally, he gambles everything on one last desperate attempt to break free.
Review
This is the prequel to Love's Long Road, which tells the story of Michael's lover Roberta. This story is all about Michael Mitchell, and the third part in the trilogy, A Friend in Deed, features the story of Duncan. Although all three books in the trilogy are intertwined when it comes to the characters and the environment, each one of them can be read as a standalone novel.There are certain career paths that are made easy and scattered with gold-plated nepotism and class snobbery. Where you come from, which school you went to and which social class you belong to matters more than talent and experience. Imagine being on the short end of the stick regardless of how hard you work and how much you deserve to climb up into the upper echelons of the career ladder.
That's exactly where Michael finds himself. Passed over again and again for promotions he deserves, and treated as if he were someone inferior and unworthy. The fact he can run rings around the privileged men who are handed the career opportunities that should be coming his way - well it makes him think twice about where he belongs.
The rejection makes him wander off the path of respectability and straight into the path of the criminal world. If his employers aren't going to embrace his talents then he will find someone who will.
Harper makes some intriguing points in this urban crime series. The way class structure works in a discriminatory way towards everyone below the upper and middle upper class. When there is no realistic option to rise to the top for said lower classes does that equal a valid excuse to take the road into criminal activity, or rather do they think it does?
It's an urban crime story with determined and driven characters. Harper keeps his characters realistic and down-to-earth, whilst giving the reader a gritty plot.
Buy Silent Money at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Matador; pub date 28 Sept. 2019. Buy at Amazon com.
Read my review of Love's Long Road by G.D. Harper
No comments:
Post a Comment