Voices from the Dead blog tour through Rachel’s Random Resources includes a guest post from the author . Meet the writer, share, engage with the author, follow.
Book Details
Voices From The Dead
The brand-new gripping crime thriller in the popular Detectives Roy and Roscoe series.
A murdered beauty influencer. A buried secret waiting to surface. A killer who’s already one step ahead.
In the picturesque Warwickshire town of Queensbridge, a retired nurse escapes to her hotel room looking for peace from the chaos of her great-nephew’s rowdy thirtieth birthday party. But to her horror she witnesses a brutal crime from her balcony — a young woman strangled in the room opposite.
Detective Sergeant Sunita Roy — staying at the same hotel after attending a nearby wedding — is first on the scene, and quickly realises this isn’t a random attack. The victim, glamorous beauty influencer Candy Goodhope, was living a double life — and everyone close to her has something to hide.
Roy’s boss, DCI Gavin Roscoe, takes charge of the investigation, and as the pair follow the trail, another brutal killing tears through the town. Roy is sure there’s a link between both murders, but Roscoe isn’t convinced.
But as Roy digs deeper, she closes in on a secret so dangerous someone will kill to protect it.
Because in this town, the past never stays buried — and even the dead still have a voice.
Purchase Links
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0G2MB79M9/
Author Bio
Tony Bassett is a former journalist who worked on regional and national newspapers in Britain for more than 40 years. He mainly reported on crime, show business, human interest and consumer topics. Now retired, he writes crime fiction.
Tony is best known for his series of novels set in the West Midlands featuring Detective Chief Inspector Gavin Roscoe, an experienced detective and family man, and his sergeant, law graduate and resourceful problem-solver Sunita Roy.
His latest novel, VOICES FROM THE DEAD (Book 8) begins in the picturesque Warwickshire town of Queensbridge where a retired nurse escapes to her hotel room from a rowdy birthday party, looking for peace. But to her horror, through a window, she witnesses a brutal crime — a young woman being strangled in the new wing of the building.
Detective Sergeant Sunita Roy —attending a wedding in the same hotel — is first on the scene, and quickly realises this isn’t a random attack. The victim, glamorous beauty influencer Candy Goodhope, was living a double life — and everyone close to her has something to hide.
The fifth book in the series, HEIR TO MURDER, was judged first in the Mystery and Suspense (Police Procedurals) category in the American Fiction Awards in June 2024.
Other books in the series (in order) are: MURDER ON OXFORD LANE; THE CROSSBOW STALKER; MURDER OF A DOCTOR; OUT FOR REVENGE; and IT NEVER RAINS.
A collection of the first three books was published in May 2024 under the title THE MIDLANDS MURDERS: Detectives Roy & Roscoe box set (Books 1 – 3). The whole series has been released by London publishers The Book Folks, part of Joffe Books.
Tony has also written a stand-alone thriller, SEAT 97, about a man shot dead at a London concert hall (published by The Book Folks) while two further works (the crime novel Smile Of The Stowaway and the spy novel The Lazarus Charter) were published by The Conrad Press.
Tony first developed a love of writing at the age of nine when he produced a junior school magazine. A few years later, his local vicar in Tunbridge Wells staged his play about Naboth’s Vineyard. At Hull University, Tony was judged Time-Life Magazine student journalist of the year in 1971.
Tony, who has five grown-up children, is a Life Member of the National Union of Journalists. He lives in South-East London with his partner Lin.
Social Media Links –
https://twitter.com/tonybassett1
https://www.facebook.com/tony.bassett.92505
https://www.instagram.com/tonybassettauthor
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-bassett-380baa237
Guest Post
Readers have been asking why I set the murder of Candy Goodhope in a hotel in my latest book, Voices From The Dead.
My initial idea was to have the main character, DS Sunita Roy, attending a conference in Birmingham to learn about new policing methods or new technology. While staying at a hotel, an elderly fellow-guest would have reported finding a corpse in a corridor. Could the sergeant come quickly and have a look? But, by the time Sunita arrived, the body would have disappeared.
I felt it was an intriguing concept, up to a point, for the opening of a novel. But, the more I thought about it, the more dissatisfied I became. The setting in Birmingham wasn’t right. Sunita’s Heart of England CID would have no jurisdiction there and the investigation would have been taken out of her hands. Developing the plot in the aftermath of such an event seemed too complicated.
Instead, it occurred to me that it would be simpler to set this initial murder in a hotel in Queensbridge – the fictional Warwickshire town which regularly features in the Detectives Roy and Roscoe series. I also decided it would be better to have the elderly guest who alerts the police actually witnessing the murder taking place herself. For one thing, it creates a far more dramatic incident.
So that’s how the first chapter of Voices From The Dead came to be written and how hotel guest Cynthia Ecclestone is found telling the receptionist at the end of the chapter, ‘I think a woman’s being murdered.’
The next twelve chapters practically wrote themselves. They cover the reaction of various characters to news of the murder and show the results of police interviews. The storyline then branches out with the introduction of fresh characters and, ultimately, the discovery of a second murder.
Following my decision to depict a woman actually watching the murder taking place, my working title for several months afterwards was Window On A Murder. It was only when I was nearing the end of writing the first complete manuscript that, like Sunita herself, I realised the significant role that messages from the departed were playing in the story. As a result, I abandoned the original title and replaced it with Voices From The Dead.
Since taking up writing novels ten years ago, I have become more and more fascinated by the idea of false identities; of people disappearing and being presumed dead before miraculously resurfacing many years later; of people leading double lives; and of secrets from the past being unearthed many years after they were thought to have been forgotten.
I have worked some of these ideas into the book, hopefully adding a touch of mystery to the story.
Another question I’m often asked is why, when I live in the South East of England, did I set my crime series in the West Midlands.
The reason is that, before turning my hand to writing novels, I was a journalist for more than forty years.
Some of my happiest times in the profession occurred towards the start – when I was a general news reporter on an evening newspaper in Worcester.
So when I launched into my second career as an author, I knew at once the region of England where I wanted to set my storylines. In and around Worcestershire and Warwickshire.
There was never any uncertainty about the path the rest of my life would follow after journalism. I had always dreamt of writing crime fiction.
So, after bringing my journalistic career to an end in 2015, I sat down and began planning the book that would eventually become Murder On Oxford Lane.
A variety of thoughts passed through my head. The decision about the book’s setting was an easy one. I never forgot the happy times I spent in Worcestershire and Warwickshire.
This beautiful region of England was known to me. It experienced its fair share of rural crime and, being close to Birmingham and the Black Country, its fair share of urban crime.
Because so many crime novels are set in London and the South East, I thought the area in and around the UK’s second city would make the perfect location.
