Publisher: Sharpe Books-UK (Sept 29, 2022)
Category: Crime Fiction, Family Life, Kidnapping
Tour dates: January 5-31, 2023
ISBN: 979-8361831937
ASIN: B0BGYG3HGX
Available in Print and ebook, 289 pages
Description Dead Reckoning by Lea O’Harra
Indiana, January 2010.
It’s a hot summer’s day in 1984 when twelve-year-old Gilly and her friend Sally find a dead new-born in a shoebox in the cemetery of their tiny town. Deciding to keep their discovery a secret, they bury the body in Gilly’s yard.
The results are disastrous. Flowers are mysteriously left on strollers. Two local children disappear and end up dead. A suspect is arrested and confesses, blaming the deaths on the girls’ having taken the dead baby.
Gilly grows up but is haunted by what’s happened. As a young woman, she flees the town and its memories, going all the way to Japan.
Returning with her Japanese husband Toshi to attend her mother’s funeral, Gilly finds the past is not past. She’s threatened, and someone is putting flowers on strollers again.
When another child is abducted, Gilly knows she must discover the truth about what happened all those years ago before more lives are lost.
Review Dead Reckoning by Lea O’Harra
Guest Review by Mark
Two young girls lives are changed forever in this entertaining thriller from Lea O’Harra. ‘Dead Reckoning,’ is a story about secrets, and the lengths that people will go to, to protect them.
Gilly Blackstone is only 12 years old when she and her friend, Sally, stumble across the body of a newborn baby buried in the grass of their local cemetery. More curious than frightened, the girls re-bury the baby in Gilly’s yard and resolve to discover who amongst the local women of their town might be the mother.
Meanwhile, strange things start happening in town, and the murders of two local children shakes the small Indiana town to its core. When the culprit of the murders is discovered, Gilly is left confused and unsure if the police arrested the right person.
Twenty years later, Gilly, now Gillian Kataoka, returns to the town to attend her late mother’s funeral, but is met with hostility and late-night threats from some of the residents. Worse than even that, however, is the news that the man who was accused of the murders all those years earlier has been set free, and now more strange things seem to be happening to the children in the town.
This novel took me entirely by surprise with its complexity and beautiful prose. Lea O’Harra’s writing is truly unique in its ability to constantly keep the reader guessing about what exactly is going to happen next.
Few thrillers really keep me on the edge of my seat like this, and for that I have to applaud this writer. I found this to be a really great story, with sympathetic characters (especially Gilly, I really felt for her) and brilliant story telling.
I can’t wait to see what O’Harra puts out next! I have added her to my must-read list!
Praise Lea O’Harra
“Lea O’Harra offers us a whodunnit set in a Japan labouring under the weight of cultural imperialism, a country where the characters find that their friends and lovers are really strangers and imperfect ones at that…-Nick Sweet, author of the Inspector Velázquez series
’With her deep knowledge of Japanese culture, superb writing, and sensitivity to human foibles. O’Harra has crafted a cross-cultural whodunnit sure to please Japanophiles and mystery lovers alike.”-Suzanne Kamata, author of Losing Kei
Awards Lea O’Harra
Autumn 2017 “Lady First” was awarded ‘finalist’ status in the crime fiction section of the Beverly Hill Book Awards.
‘Lady First’ was also a finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards in 2018.
About Lea O’Harra
Lea O’Harra has published three crime fiction novels set in rural modern-day Japan: Imperfect Strangers (2015); Progeny (2016); and Lady First (2017). These comprise the so-called ‘Inspector Inoue Murder Mystery’ series originally published by Endeavour Press (UK). She has also had a story included in Best Asian Crime Fiction published by Kitaab Press (Singapore) in 2020.
In the spring of 2022 Sharpe Books reissued the Inoue mystery series and, in September 2022, published Lea O’Harra’s fourth novel, Dead Reckoning, a stand-alone set in her tiny hometown in the American Midwest.
Website: http://leaoharra.com
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Giveaway Dead Reckoning by Lea O’Harra
This giveaway is for 3 print copies and is open worldwide. This giveaway ends on February 1, 2023 midnight, pacific time. Entries accepted via Rafflecopter only.
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