I am excited to have Liz today with a guest post ~ thanks to Rachel’s Random Resources for organizing.
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Genre: Crime fiction police procedural
Publication Date: November 21, 2024
Publisher: HQ Digital
Standalone Second Book in the The Solanki and McQueen crime series
Estimated Page Count: 360
The Pact
‘Wagers and pacts are made with angels – or with devils.’ Paulo Coelho
It’s such a delight to be here on Heather Adores Books blog to celebrate the launch of The Revenge Pact which is Book 2 in my Solanki & McQueen series set in Scotland. Of course, the title of my book led me to choose the ‘The Pact’ as the title for this article and when I found the Paulo Coelho quote I thought it was very appropriate. I’m not going to talk about national or international pacts in this article, but limit myself to more personal pacts in the context of narrative in The Revenge Pact.
There are quite a few pacts made in The Revenge Pact. Some of them are made between friends, some between work colleagues, some between criminal gangs or fellow criminals and some are even historic pacts.
The act of making a pact with another person, be it friend or foe, involves a degree of accountability. Someone else knows you have made the commitment and so there is a pressure to fulfil the terms of the pact. As ‘Queen of Neo Soul’ Erykah Badu says ‘If you make a decision, a pact with someone, your friend, you should say, ‘I’m gonna do this,’ and you should stick to it.’ This applies equally to those pacts between antagonists and in The Revenge Pact, a few agreements are made between criminals who may or may not upkeep their side of the bargain. In these instances, the pact becomes a very fragile treaty which, if one party breaks it, could unleash a deluge of repercussions with devastating effects. Guess what? That’s exactly what happens in The Revenge Pact.
No-one realises, let alone the criminals involved, that a broken pact decades earlier, will lead to the eruption of violence between Edinburgh and Glasgow organised crime gangs today. Nor do they, or the police for that matter, understand what is really at stake.
Which of course leads to additional new pacts being made and those in turn have their own consequences for many innocent and some not so innocent people.
However, what I want also want to talk about in this blog post is those pacts we make, not with anyone else, but with ourselves. A promise we make internally in our own heads that noone else is aware of. I’ve made loads of them over my lifetime – ‘if the baby stops crying for two minutes I’ll go for an extra long walk today’, ‘if I beat rush hour traffic I’ll go on the treadmill’. ‘if I get home first I’ll cook tea today. Some of them I’ve kept and some of them I’ve broken, but either way, the consequences of my decision to keep or break my promise to myself usually has no wide-reaching consequences – sometimes a momentary feeling of guilt or frustration at my weakness, or a slight shrug and its forgotten.
What though, if the promise you’ve made to yourself is your Revenge Pact? What if you promised yourself that you would take revenge for an awful act by committing an equally awful act? And what if you were determined to carry out your pact no matter the cost to yourself?
That is exactly what one character in The Revenge Pact decides to do. I hope you enjoyed reading this post and that this tempts you to have a read of The Revenge Pact. I started with a Paulo Coelho quote and I’m going to leave you with another ‘Angels are visible to those who
accept the light and break the pact made with darkness.’
Book blurb:
TWO DEATHS
Tommy and Markie Jones are found dead at the side of a main road in Scotland.
TWO RIVALS
Detectives Jazzy Solanki and Annie McQueen are on the scene where the bodies are identified
as the nephews of Jimmy Nails, head of a notable gang in Glasgow. The turf war between the gangs of Glasgow and Edinburgh
has existed for years, but these murders are seen as an escalation in violence.
ONE UNFORGIVABLE BETRAYAL
As the investigation unfolds, there’s suspicion about a leak within the police force,
and to her dismay Jazzy is asked to keep a watchful eye on someone close to her.
With distrust mounting on all sides, can the pair uncover the truth before someone else is killed?
Purchase Links
Author Bio –
Liz Mistry moved to West Yorkshire in the late 1980s. Her gritty crime fiction police procedural novels set in Bradford embrace the city she describes as ‘Warm, Rich and Fearless’ whilst exploring the darkness that lurks beneath. Yet, her heart remains in Scotland, where childhood tales of bogey men, Bible John and grey lady ghosts fed her imagination.
Her latest work, The Solanki and McQueen crime series is set around West Lothian, where she uses the distinctive landscape, historic heritage and Scottish culture as a backdrop to her gritty yet often humorous stories.
Struggling with clinical depression and anxiety for many years, Liz often includes mental health themes in her writing. She credits her MA in Creative Writing from Leeds Trinity University with helping her find a way of using her writing to navigate her ongoing mental health struggles. The synergy been creative and academic writing led Liz to complete a doctorate in creative writing researching the importance of representation of marginalised groups within the genre she loves.
Her husband, three children and huge extended British Indian family are a constant support to her. In her spare time, Liz loves visiting the varied Scottish and Yorkshire landscape, travelling, listening to music, reading and blogging about all things crime fiction on her website blog, The Crime Warp.
Social Media Links –
Website: lizmistry.com/
X (Twitter): LizMistryAuthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LizMistrybooks
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lizmistryauthor
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A revenge pact with yourself could certainly be a moral dilemma.