5,000 readers can’t be bad

I’ve just seen this year’s Public Lending Right statement and it makes interesting reading. Not so much for the payments, which are most welcome, but mainly for the numbers of people who have read my books. I’ve said it before, we write to be read, not to attain riches.

This year’s figures are based on the British Library collecting loans data from a changing sample of UK public library authorities. This year’s payments are based on loans data collected from 36 library authorities across the UK during the year July 2014 – June 2015.

It was good to see that paperback Write a western in 30 Days and fantasy hardback Wings of the Overlord are now in libraries and have been borrowed. This is the first time they have shown up since being published.

 

The other loans are exclusively for my Robert Hale westerns:

The Magnificent Mendozas – 100

The $300 Man – 975

Old Guns – 1638

Blind Justice at Wedlock - 816

Last Chance Saloon – 785

Death at Bethesda Falls – 581

That’s a total of 4895 readers (unless some borrowed a book more than once!)

Of course that is only the tip of the readership iceberg; one must assume that libraries not in this year’s sample will also have loaned these books. That’s gratifying to a writer, to know that my books have been read by in excess of 5,000 readers. 

My latest western, The Magnificent Mendozas was only registered in 2014; it’s nice to know that my first book, Death at Bethesda Falls is still finding readers.

Now, if only libraries would stock my crime and suspense books!

Viz:

Spanish Eye

Catalyst

Blood of the Dragon Trees

Sudden Vengeance

Libraries can’t stock The Prague Papers, The Tehran Text, Catacomb or Cataclysm as these are currently only in e-book format.

New paperbacks and hardbacks should be registered with PLR before 30 June this year to be included in the 2017 sample: www.plr.uk.com.

Walking the streets in dread

Last August, a woman attacked a man she didn’t know with a broken glass in a pub. Tiny shards were removed from the left eye of her victim, who feared he would lose his sight. All praise to the medical staff who avoided that. The culprit was sentenced – 80 hours’ community service. Oh, and this was the culprit’s eighteenth conviction for crimes of assault and battery, described by the judge as ‘a breath-taking record of violence.’ Yet she still didn’t receive a custodial sentence. The culprit was ordered to pay the victim £1,000 compensation.

Walking the streets in dread are countless victims who have suffered trauma at the hands of unrepentant thugs who seem to be indulged at extraordinary lengths by the justice system.

It is no wonder that stories about vigilantes strike a chord with readers. 

Here’s an excerpt from Sudden Vengeance, pp95/96:

The Vigilante – Right Or Wrong?

The vigilante is not new in this country. They were around long before Robin Hood. We know why people turn to vigilantism: they see their world falling prey to anarchy; they feel the establishment cannot hold back the tide of evil. The forces of law and order will say that people cannot take the law into their own hands, for that way truly lies anarchy. Yet those who espouse the vigilante’s cause might argue that since the law enforcers are incapable of applying the law sensibly, then someone else must do it.

 But what drives this latest manifestation? What motivates The Black Knight? Has he suffered the tragic death of his parents at the hands of some criminal, some drunken driver? Perhaps he is consciously using a similar trademark name to those gaudy characters featured in violent American comics. Yet the pleasant south-coast town of Alverbank is no Gotham, surely?

Whatever his reasons for taking on this guise, he is intriguing. We are going to hear a great deal more from him.

A police spokesperson, who wishes to remain anonymous, states that the criminal fraternity is anxious about this vigilante. They want him caught, “before he kills somebody.” Me, I hope he stays loose, to instil fear in those black uncaring hearts!

– The Alverbank Chronicle Comment

***

Sudden Vengeance is available in paperback and e-book format. Published by Crooked Cat.

When justice fails, a vigilante steps forward.

In the broken Britain of today, faith in the police is faltering. Justice and fairness are flouted. Victims are not seen as hurt people but simply as statistics.

Paul’s family is but one example of those victims of unpunished criminals. In the English south Hampshire coastal town of Alverbank, many others are damaged and grieving. It cannot go on. There has to be a response, some way of fighting back.

A vigilante soon emerges and delivers rough justice, breaking the bones and cracking the heads of those guilty individuals who cause pain without remorse. Who is the vigilante?  He – or she – is called the Black Knight. The police warn against taking ‘the law into your own hands’. But the press laud the vigilante’s efforts and respond: ‘What law?’

Will the Black Knight eventually cross the line and kill?

Paul and his family seem involved and they are going to suffer…

Amazon COM –

http://www.amazon.com/Sudden-Vengeance-Nik-Morton-ebook/dp/B00KE1GTPA/ref=sr_1_9?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1431527522&sr=1-9&keywords=nik+morton

Amazon UK –

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sudden-Vengeance-Nik-Morton-ebook/dp/B00KE1GTPA/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1431527569&sr=1-3&keywords=nik+morton

 

FFB - Pieces of Justice

Continuing the theme of short stories, today's 'forgotten book' is Pieces of Justice, the first collection of Margaret Yorke’s short stories, twenty-three in all, ranging from 1977 to 1983. At time of this publication (1994) she had published 37 novels, five of them concerning Oxford don and amateur sleuth Patrick Grant. Her first book was published in 1957, her last in 2001.

The majority of the stories were published in the annual hardback series, Winter’s Crimes. A scattering of others appeared in magazines, among them Woman, Woman and Home, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

It’s inevitable perhaps that, considering the period of the writing, some themes and murder methods are repeated; even some character names are used again, as well as cruise ship names. This can’t be a criticism because at the time of their writing there was no conception of these tales being collected. It’s interesting to note, though, how certain names stick in the writer’s forebrain and insist on coming out more than once. Most writers have to watch out for this. By their nature, the stories are ‘tell’ rather than ‘show’ – certainly, some could have been developed into full length novels, with sub-plots.

Characterisation has to be limited since the stories are short. Within the word constraints, Yorke achieves a great deal, offering us widowers, widows, unhappily married couples, and virtually all have a grudge smouldering from some past event, misdemeanour or mistreatment.  A few are sad individuals who live a lie and might as well be dead. Space does not permit referring to each story, but I would single out a sample handful.

‘The Liberator’ is told in the first person; the elderly narrator is able to use her lethal skills to right what she considers to be wrongs. In ‘The Reckoning’ Ellen determines to do away with her seventy-year-old husband… and succeeds, but Nemesis has something to say about her fate. Indeed, hand of fate and deus ex machina endings pop up more than once in these stories.

A few tales are quite dark, notably ‘Anniversary’, when Mrs Frobisher plots to kill her rich husband, but things don’t quite go according to plan. ‘The Mouse will Pay’ is about a particularly nasty poison pen letter-writer.

In my view, the best of the bunch is ‘Means to Murder’, a period piece that evokes a past time and an injustice, viewed by a child who grows to adulthood.

Overall, a fascinating collection, best to be dipped into rather than read in one go. Yorke dredges up the sinister from the everyday, the unease from the normal, and certainly lets the past cast its shadow on the present for her protagonists.

 
Margaret Yorke died in 2012, aged 88.