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His Favourite Graves

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
300 Seiten
Englisch
Orenda Bookserschienen am09.11.2023
Desperate for reward money - and to rescue his marriage - an embattled sheriff takes incalculable risks to find a missing boy. An edge-of-your-seat, twisted and twisty thriller from New Zealand´s King of Crime. `Moves at a furious pace, even as the walls close in ... everything you want from a thriller and it leaves you gasping´ Helen Fields `Paul Cleave is an automatic must-read for me´ Lee Child `Electrifying´ Crime Monthly magazine `Our sympathies to swing one way and then the other, and the final twist is clever´ Literary Review _____________ To catch a killer... Maybe you`ve got to be one... Acacia Pines, USA. Sheriff Cohen`s life is falling apart - his father accidentally burned down the retirement home, his wife has moved out, and his son is bullying other kids at school. When high-school student, Lucas Connor, is abducted, Cohen sees a chance to get his life back on track - to win back his wife and scoop the reward money offered for Lucas`s safe return. But as the body count rises, it becomes clear that Cohen`s going to have to make the kind of decision from which there`s no coming back ... a decision with deadly consequences... A furiously paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller exposing the dark underbelly of small-town life, His Favourite Graves is also a twisted and twisty story of father-and-son relationships, and the one last gamble of a desperate man to save everything... _____________ `Uses words as lethal weapons´ New York Times Praise for Paul Cleave `Cleave writes the kind of dark, intense thrillers that I never want to end´ Simon Kernick `A true page-turner filled with dread, rage, doubt and more twists than the Remutaka Pass´ Linwood Barclay `Smart and twisty, this book will get under your skin´ Liz Nugent `Merits comparison with the work of Patricia Highsmith´ Publishers Weekly `The sense of dread builds unstoppably´ Gilly Macmillan `Genuinely haunting and lingers in the memory´ Daily Mail `Full of ideas and intelligence´ Literary Review `A true page-turner´ Guardian `Nerve-shredding´ Crime Monthly `Tense, thrilling, touching´ John Connolly `This very clever novel did my head in time and again´ Michael Robotham `This thriller is one to remember´ New York Journal of Books

Paul Cleave is an award-winning author who often divides his time between his home city of Christchurch, New Zealand, where most of his novels are set, and Europe. He's won the New Zealand Ngaio Marsh Award three times, the Saint-Maur book festival's crime novel of the year award in France, and has been shortlisted for the Edgar and the Barry in the US and the Ned Kelly in Australia. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He's thrown his Frisbee in more than forty countries, plays tennis badly, golf even worse, and has two cats - which is often two too many. The critically acclaimed The Quiet People was published in 2021, with The Pain Tourist following in 2022.mehr
Verfügbare Formate
TaschenbuchKartoniert, Paperback
EUR13,00
E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
EUR9,59

Produkt

KlappentextDesperate for reward money - and to rescue his marriage - an embattled sheriff takes incalculable risks to find a missing boy. An edge-of-your-seat, twisted and twisty thriller from New Zealand´s King of Crime. `Moves at a furious pace, even as the walls close in ... everything you want from a thriller and it leaves you gasping´ Helen Fields `Paul Cleave is an automatic must-read for me´ Lee Child `Electrifying´ Crime Monthly magazine `Our sympathies to swing one way and then the other, and the final twist is clever´ Literary Review _____________ To catch a killer... Maybe you`ve got to be one... Acacia Pines, USA. Sheriff Cohen`s life is falling apart - his father accidentally burned down the retirement home, his wife has moved out, and his son is bullying other kids at school. When high-school student, Lucas Connor, is abducted, Cohen sees a chance to get his life back on track - to win back his wife and scoop the reward money offered for Lucas`s safe return. But as the body count rises, it becomes clear that Cohen`s going to have to make the kind of decision from which there`s no coming back ... a decision with deadly consequences... A furiously paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller exposing the dark underbelly of small-town life, His Favourite Graves is also a twisted and twisty story of father-and-son relationships, and the one last gamble of a desperate man to save everything... _____________ `Uses words as lethal weapons´ New York Times Praise for Paul Cleave `Cleave writes the kind of dark, intense thrillers that I never want to end´ Simon Kernick `A true page-turner filled with dread, rage, doubt and more twists than the Remutaka Pass´ Linwood Barclay `Smart and twisty, this book will get under your skin´ Liz Nugent `Merits comparison with the work of Patricia Highsmith´ Publishers Weekly `The sense of dread builds unstoppably´ Gilly Macmillan `Genuinely haunting and lingers in the memory´ Daily Mail `Full of ideas and intelligence´ Literary Review `A true page-turner´ Guardian `Nerve-shredding´ Crime Monthly `Tense, thrilling, touching´ John Connolly `This very clever novel did my head in time and again´ Michael Robotham `This thriller is one to remember´ New York Journal of Books

Paul Cleave is an award-winning author who often divides his time between his home city of Christchurch, New Zealand, where most of his novels are set, and Europe. He's won the New Zealand Ngaio Marsh Award three times, the Saint-Maur book festival's crime novel of the year award in France, and has been shortlisted for the Edgar and the Barry in the US and the Ned Kelly in Australia. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He's thrown his Frisbee in more than forty countries, plays tennis badly, golf even worse, and has two cats - which is often two too many. The critically acclaimed The Quiet People was published in 2021, with The Pain Tourist following in 2022.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9781914585890
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2023
Erscheinungsdatum09.11.2023
Seiten300 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse985 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.12751653
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe



Day Two

Chapter Thirty

By seven a.m., I´m heading to Saint John´s with my dad, a church that once used to be in the centre of town, until town started being pushed and pulled in different directions as it expanded. The church can fit a few hundred people, but I can´t imagine it ever filling all those seats in one go again unless Jesus himself showed up to run the meat raffle. The weatherboards have been freshly painted and the gardens freshly watered, the whole thing looking picture perfect. I used to come here as a child, dragged along by parents who tried to instil a sense of religion in me, but it didn´t take. They kept on coming, and my dad´s faith never wavered, not even when Mom dropped dead of a brain aneurysm at the age of fifty-six. Nor did it waver when the doctors told us to brace ourselves because things were going to get tough.

We park in the lot out front, and walk around to the back, Dad shuffling a little. I did manage to get a couple of hours of sleep after I got back from the Kelly farm last night, but it was fitful. Right now I´ve got both painkillers and Adderall helping me put one foot in front of the other.

We enter the small community space where nativity plays are organised and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings take place. The mesh blinds are down to soften the sunlight, and a window has been opened, but by tonight this room will be uncomfortably hot. I wouldn´t be surprised if the folks at this evening´s AA meeting will end up knocking back a few beers just to stay cool. Father Barrett is putting out the chairs - more than are needed, and I don´t know if that´s him being optimistic or pessimistic. Barrett is big and bald, with a lumberjack´s beard and an undertaker´s kind smile. He was posted to Acacia Pines early last year after God didn´t remove the previous priest´s cancer. Dad walks over to the wall and looks at the flyers for cake sales and charity lawn-bowling matches, reading them out loud to himself.

I really appreciate this,´ I tell Barrett, which is what I said on the phone earlier when I called to ask for his help. Like I said, I wouldn´t have asked, but ...´

But I have a man locked up in my basement and can´t have Dad wandering around while I question him.

It´s understandable that you have your hands full right now, and of course I´m happy to help. Your dad is always welcome here.´

Sure, until he burns the place down.

My dad has been going to Saint John´s for most of his life, and had become close friends with Father Frank Davidson, the former priest. When Father Barrett arrived, he seemed eager to step into the same friendships Father Davidson had had. After Dad burned down the care home, Father Barrett reached out, offering the help and support of the church if we needed it. I didn´t think we would, but over the months, as the money got tighter, and our options became fewer, we took Barrett up on his offer, with him filling in the blanks if Deborah was busy, or other family couldn´t help. I try not to see him as a last-minute babysitter, but if you had to put a label on it...

How about we get you some breakfast,´ Father Barrett says to Dad, walking over and putting an arm around his shoulders. Then we can walk the gardens a little?´

Fuck the gardens,´ my dad says, shrugging the hand off his shoulder and going back to reading the flyers aloud.

Unperturbed, Father Barrett carries on. Does the same go for breakfast?´

What breakfast?´

Father Barrett is offering to make you breakfast, Dad.´

Father Barrett is dead.´

I assure you I´m very much alive,´ Father Barrett says.

Bullshit. You´re not Father Barrett.´

Father Barrett smiles an it´s going to be one of those days smiles at me, and follows it up with, We´ll be okay if you want to get back to it.´

I can try to find somewhere else if-´

Don´t be silly. We´ll be fine here, won´t we, Randolph?´

Dad doesn´t answer, but he does stop reading the flyers.

I´ll be back as soon as I can,´ I say.

There´s no hurry.´

I head back home, not looking forward to what is waiting there for me. Last night, before I dragged Grove out of the freezer I had stuffed him into at the Kelly farm, he had asked me the question why? Yesterday it was a very easy question to answer.

Why? Because my dad burned down a retirement home. Because a rightfully upset family are unrightfully chasing me for every cent I have. Because my wife moved out, and the bank is going to take my house away, leaving me homeless, and my son needs counselling.

Because Simon Grove was the only lifeline I had left.

Of course I regret everything that´s happened since he swung that rebar at me. He was trying to kill me, but he messed up, probably because beating on a kid is different from beating on a grown man, especially one in law enforcement, and he wasn´t used to anybody fighting back. I wrestled the rebar off him and hit him in the head with it. I was worried I had cracked his skull, but if he was dead, then so be it - it was him or me, and if one of us was going to get zippered into a black bag and driven to the morgue, shouldn´t it be him?

But he wasn´t dead, just unconscious, and as I stood looking down at him, it hit me that this guy was more useful on the run than in handcuffs. Even now it seems like it was a different James Cohen who dragged him and stuffed him into the back of his cruiser, a different James Cohen who put him into the chest freezer with a hose keeping the door cracked open and some old furniture on top so nobody would check it. It was a different James Cohen who returned last night to get Grove, who carried him up the basement stairs. It was a different James Cohen who was frightened he was going to fall, treating each step as a landmine, knowing if one went off he´d be found down there with a broken back and Grove either dead or long gone. It wasn´t me who carried Grove through the rubble - more landmines - to his SUV. I´d gone out there last night in my own car instead of my cruiser, because I couldn´t return to the sawmill and risk the dogs figuring out Grove had been in it. Even then I thought I was done for when we found the camera - but thank God the room had filled with smoke before I carried Grove past it.

All of that wasn´t Yesterday Me´s problem. That son of a bitch made a bad decision in the heat of the moment, without any regard for how we were going to deal with any of that today. But we must. We must follow a God-awful decision with some even worse ones - I can either turn myself in, which is a bad decision, or I can stay the course. Which is worse? Both are.

By the time I get home from the church, I´m no closer to making a decision. The kitchen doesn´t look any better in the light of day, nor has it fully let go of the smoke, despite the effort Cassandra made last night to clean it up before taking Nathan back to her place. I close the curtains and put some music on, a live album that I crank up enough to fill the house with vocals and guitar and an amped-up audience, but not loud enough for the neighbours to complain - particularly Mrs Larson further down the road, whose first name I can never remember, even though she´s on my doorstep every few months complaining about something. I change into my gardening clothes, examining myself in the process. The line where my chest meets my stomach is tender and puffy, the bruise having both spread and darkened. The blow to my head from Grove has swollen, and my jaw where Allan Holt hit me has the early signs of a bruise. I head down into the basement. I can hear the music from upstairs. The walls pulse in time with it. Or maybe it´s the headache making that happen, because it´s coming back.

Not only did I swap one basement for another with Grove, but I swapped one chest freezer for another too. I open my one up. He´s on his back, all folded up and sedated, thanks to the shot I gave him earlier this morning - I palmed a few needles and vials from the hospital last night. I don´t know what is a good amount or a bad amount to give him, so I´ve been guessing. It was either that or keep hitting him in the head. I check his pulse. It´s slow, but steady.

He starts to come to as I go about pulling him from the freezer. He grunts and grumbles, but doesn´t seem bothered when he spills heavily onto the floor. I check the cable ties binding his wrists and ankles. The blood coming from the side of his head has dried, but the wound looks raw.

I get him upright into a chair and tie him to it. I take the tape off his mouth then crack open a phial of smelling salts and wave it under his nose to bring him all the way around. He jerks upward. One eye opens wide open, and one stays swollen shut. The swollen one is all messed up. Lucas Connor really did a number on this guy.

He tries to talk, but can´t, his mouth is...

mehr

Autor

Paul Cleave is an award-winning author who often divides his time between his home city of Christchurch, New Zealand, where most of his novels are set, and Europe. He's won the New Zealand Ngaio Marsh Award three times, the Saint-Maur book festival's crime novel of the year award in France, and has been shortlisted for the Edgar and the Barry in the US and the Ned Kelly in Australia. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He's thrown his Frisbee in more than forty countries, plays tennis badly, golf even worse, and has two cats - which is often two too many. The critically acclaimed The Quiet People was published in 2021, with The Pain Tourist following in 2022.