The Blood Whisperer (55 page)

‘Did you think you'd be any safer here, Fox? Did you think anybody was going to stand up for you when they never did before?’

In the sweating heat of Louisiana, former Special Forces soldier turned bodyguard, Charlie Fox, faces her toughest challenge yet.

Professionally, she’s at the top of her game, but her personal life is in ruins. Her lover, bodyguard Sean Meyer, has woken from a gunshot-induced coma with his memory in tatters. It seems that piecing back together their relationship is proving harder for him than relearning the intricacies of the close-protection business.

Working with Sean again was never going to be easy for Charlie, either, but a celebrity fundraising event in aid of still-ravaged areas of New Orleans should have been the ideal opportunity for them both to take things nice and slow.

Until, that is, they are thrust into the middle of a war zone.

When an ambitious robbery explodes into a deadly hostage situation, the motive may be far more complex than simple greed. Somebody has a major score to settle, and Sean is part of the reason. Only trouble is, he doesn’t remember why.

And when Charlie finds herself facing a nightmare from her own past, she realises she can’t rely on Sean to watch her back. This time, she’s got to fight it out on her own.

One thing’s for sure − no matter how overwhelming the odds stacked against her, Charlie Fox is never going to die easy
. . .

‘Zoë Sharp is one of the sharpest, coolest, and most intriguing writers I know. She delivers dramatic, action-packed novels, with characters we really care about. And once again, in
Die Easy
, Zoë Sharp is at the top of her game.’
New York Times best-selling author, Harlan Coben.

‘Ill-tempered, aggressive and borderline psychotic, (Charlie) Fox is also compassionate, introspective and highly principled: arguably one of the most enigmatic − and coolest − heroines in contemporary genre fiction.’
Paul Goat Allen, Chicago Tribune.

‘I’d give anything to have a character of mine described in the way Zoë Sharp’s Charlie Fox, a former special-forces operative and present-day freelance lethal weapon, is described in the critical excerpt above. It’s high praise and it implies the complexity of what Sharp achieves. If I were asked to characterize her writing in a single adjective the one I’d choose would probably be “cool.” In a world where lots of people
act
cool, Zoë Sharp’s books
are
cool.

‘But as the review implies, they’re not only cool. They’re razor sharp, deeply felt, and heartbreakingly immediate. These are action thrillers about a woman who works as a bodyguard, frequently trying to protect women, and there’s no cheapening the central issue of violence (often against women) as a means to an end. In fact, by wrapping this societal cancer in noirish, kickass, often funny thrillers, written in coolly polished prose, Sharp can take societal violence farther and hit it harder than many so-called literary writers. And do it in language that’s almost poetic in its economy and impact.

‘Zoë Sharp is one of the writers whose books I open with a bit of reluctance in case the new one isn’t up to the earlier ones, because they’re that good. And Fox’s attitude is contagious. When a writer can get
The New York Times
to say, “The bloody bar fights are bloody brilliant,” she’s doing something very, very right.’
Edgar-nominee Timothy Hallinan, in his introduction to Making Story: Twenty-One Writers on How They Plot.

Absence of Light
is a novella featuring Zoë Sharp’s highly acclaimed ex-Special Forces turned bodyguard heroine, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox.

A major earthquake sees Charlie Fox on a transport plane headed for the scene of devastation.

The way things are coming apart at home with Sean Meyer, she welcomes the chance to get away.

Tasked as security advisor to the specialist team at the centre of relief efforts, Charlie knows it won’t be easy. The team members are willing to put themselves in constant danger as a matter of course. But what kind of other risks are they prepared to take? As Charlie soon discovers, it’s not just the ground beneath her feet that cannot be relied on. The members of the tight-knit group are suspicious of her presence and privately she admits they have every right to be.

Told that her predecessor died during their last outing in South America, she’s been instructed to quietly investigate if his death was as accidental as the official verdict suggests. If it was an accident, why are they so obviously lying to her?

Charlie must move with care through a shifting landscape to find the answers before there are more than just earthquake victims buried in the rubble. And when disaster strikes she will learn not only who she can trust, but if she can she survive the darkness that comes with a total absence of light.

‘Ill-tempered, aggressive and borderline psychotic, Fox is also compassionate, introspective and highly principled: arguably one of the most enigmatic – and coolest – heroines in contemporary genre fiction.’
Paul Goat Allen, Chicago Tribune

‘This five-pack collection of short stories [FOX FIVE] is about as good as it gets in the crime thriller genre. Protagonist Charlie Fox is a truly memorable – not to mention formidable – heroine. Author Sharp writes cleanly, cleverly, and convincingly.’
Wayne D Dundee, author of the Joe Hannibal series

‘If you don't like Zoë Sharp there's something wrong with you. Go and live in a cave and get the hell out of my gene pool! There are few writers who go right to the top of my TBR pile – Zoë Sharp is one of them.’
Stuart MacBride

‘Anyone with a brain wants Charlie Fox for the girl next door. Funny, compassionate, and with moves that can – and do – kill, Charlie is the indelible creation of the remarkable Zoë Sharp.’
Gayle Lynds

‘Sharp deserves a genre all her own – if you are just discovering Zoë Sharp then you are in for a real treat.’
Jon Jordan, Crimespree Magazine

FOX FIVE
is a collection of stories by the highly acclaimed crime thriller writer, Zoë Sharp. All feature her ex-Special Forces soldier turned self-defence expert and bodyguard, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox.

‘Ill-tempered, aggressive and borderline psychotic, Fox is also compassionate, introspective and highly principled: arguably one of the most enigmatic – and coolest – heroines in contemporary genre fiction.’
Paul Goat Allen, Chicago Tribune

In
A Bridge Too Far
, we meet Charlie before she’s become a professional in the world of close protection. When she agrees to hang out with the local Dangerous Sports Club, she has no idea it will soon live up to its name.

Postcards From Another Country
has Charlie guarding the ultra-rich Dempsey family against attempted assassination – no matter where the danger lies.

A finalist for the CWA Short Story Dagger,
Served Cold
puts another tough woman centre stage – the mysterious Layla, with betrayal in her past and murder in her heart.

Off Duty
finds Charlie taking time away from close protection after injury. She still finds trouble, even in an out-of-season health spa in the Catskill Mountains.

And finally,
Truth And Lies
puts all Charlie’s skills and ingenuity to the test as she has to single-handedly extract a news team from a rapidly escalating war zone.

‘The author, who has written, among other things, nine books in the acclaimed Charlie Fox series, has now published in e-book form what she terms an “e-thology” a collection of five short stories, and an excellent addition it surely is . . .

‘The reader is treated to author notes prefacing each short story, giving insights into its origins, as well as bonus material at the end, with biographical details on the author and her masterful creation, Charlie Fox, all of which just makes the reader look forward to the next novel in the series that much more. Highly recommended.’
Gloria Feit, Crimespree magazine

‘This five-pack collection of short stories is about as good as it gets in the crime thriller genre. Protagonist Charlie Fox is a truly memorable – not to mention formidable – heroine. Author Sharp writes cleanly, cleverly, and convincingly as she spins these tales of Charlie . . . as she progresses from a time just prior to becoming a bodyguard to a point where her professional skills are honed to their finest – and must be, as they are put to the test in circumstances as explosively dangerous and up-to-the-minute as today's headlines.

‘This range and growth allows us to see Charlie in a quieter, almost sleuth-like mode early on and then evolve into the calculating, ultimately cool – yet compassionate – protector she was born to be.

‘It is Charlie Fox and the stiletto-sharp (no pun intended) writing skills of Zoë Sharp that will stick with you after reading these stories. I was unaware of this excellent series before now; but you can damn well bet I will be seeking out more. Highly recommended!’
Wayne D Dundee, author of the Joe Hannibal series

‘If you've never read any of Charlie Fox thriller series, these short stories are a great way to meet Charlie Fox at her best. My favourites were Served Cold, Off Duty, and Truth And Lies, where we see the gamut of Charlie's reactions as she handles each situation to a necessary conclusion. This tension-filled and suspenseful collection is a thrilling read that will have you clamouring for more.’
Dru Ann Love, GoodReads.com

Zoë Sharp was born in Nottinghamshire, but spent most of her formative years living on a catamaran on the northwest coast of England. After a promising start at a private girls' school, she opted out of mainstream education at the age of twelve in favour of correspondence courses at home.

Zoë went through a variety of jobs in her teenage years. In 1988, on the strength of one accepted article and a fascination with cars, she gave up her regular job to become a freelance motoring writer. She quickly picked up on the photography side of things and she has worked as far afield as the United States and Japan, as well as Europe, Ireland and the UK. Since her fiction writing career took off, she dovetails her photography with working on her novels.

Zoë wrote her first novel when she was fifteen, but success came in 2001 with the publication of
Killer Instinct
– the first book to feature her ex-Special Forces heroine, Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox. The character evolved after Zoë received death-threat letters in the course of her photo-journalism work.

Later Charlie Fox novels –
First Drop
and
Fourth Day
– were finalists for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Novel. The Charlie Fox series has also been optioned for TV.

As well as the Charlie Fox novels, Zoë's short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines, and have been shortlisted for the Short Story Dagger by the UK Crime Writers' Association. Her other writing has been nominated for the coveted Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, the Anthony Award presented by the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, the Macavity Award, and the Benjamin Franklin Award from the Independent Book Publishers’ Association.

Zoë lives in the English Lake District. Her hobbies are sailing, fast cars (and faster motorbikes), target shooting, travel, films, music, and reading just about anything she can get her hands on. In what she laughingly refers to as her spare time, she and her husband self-built their own house.

The idea of a tough, self-sufficient heroine who didn't suffer fools gladly and could take care of herself is one I had lying around for a long time before I first wrote about Charlotte 'Charlie' Fox. The first crime and mystery books I ever read always seemed to be populated by female characters who were only any good at looking decorative and screaming while they waited to be rescued by the men!

I decided early on that Charlie Fox was going to be very different. She arrived almost as a full-grown character, complete with name, and I never thought of her any other way. At the start of the first book I wrote about Charlie,
Killer Instinct
, she is a self-defence instructor with a slightly shady military background and a painful past.

In
Riot Act
, Charlie has moved on to working in a gym, and comes face to face with a spectre from her army past – Sean Meyer. Sean was the training instructor she fell for when they were in the army together and she's never quite forgotten or forgiven him for what she saw as his part in her downfall. Sparks are bound to fly.

Close protection – the perfect choice

It's Sean who asks Charlie to go undercover to the bodyguard training school in Germany where the events of
Hard Knocks
take place. Charlie agrees as a favour to him, but gradually realises that close protection work is the perfect choice for an ex-Special Forces trainee who never found herself quite in step with life outside the army that rejected her.

By the time we get to
First Drop
Charlie is working for Sean's close protection agency and he accompanies her on her first assignment in Florida. By now she has come to terms a little with her violent abilities – or so she thinks. But then she's plunged into a nightmare in which she has to kill to protect her teenage principal.

Which is why, at the start of
Road Kill
, Charlie was a little in limbo about her life and her career in close protection. Until, that is, one of her closest friends is involved in a fatal motorcycle crash and she agrees to take on an unpaid bodyguarding job. She and Sean are soon drawn together to protect a group of thrill-seeking bikers on a wild trip to Ireland.

The second book to be set in the US,
Second Shot
, starts with a bang – or rather, two of them – when Charlie is shot twice and seriously injured in the course of her latest bodyguarding job in New England. The events of this novel strip away Charlie's usual physical self-assurance and leave her more vulnerable than ever before as she tries to work out what went wrong and still protect her client's four-year-old daughter from harm. Charlie is also forced to confront how far she's prepared to go in order to save the life of a child.

By
Third Strike
, Charlie and Sean are living in New York City and working for Parker Armstrong’s exclusive close-protection agency, where Sean has become a junior partner.

In this book, I really wanted to finally explore Charlie’s difficult and often destructive relationship with her parents – and in particular with her father. Charlie has to protect her mother and father from harm at all costs, but is hampered by trying not to let them witness just how cold-bloodedly their daughter must act in order to be effective at her job. It puts her in an often impossible situation, brings her relationship with Sean to an explosive head, and causes her father to reveal a side of himself everyone will find disturbing.

Not only that, but the story ends with big questions over Charlie’s entire future.

By the start of
Fourth Day
, where Charlie, Sean and Parker Armstrong are planning a cult extraction in California, Charlie has still not solved the problems that arose during the previous book – nor has she found the courage to explain it all to Sean. When she volunteers to go undercover into the Fourth Day cult, she’s looking as much for answers about her own life as about the man who died.

It's this battle with her own dark side that is one of the most fascinating things for me as a writer about the character of Charlie Fox. I wanted a genuine female action hero, but one who had a convincing back story. I've tried to ensure she stays human, with all the flaws that entails – a sympathetic character rather than just a 'guy in nylons' as someone described some tough heroines in fiction.

In
Fifth Victim
− involving a deadly kidnap plot among the jet-set of Long Island − there are complications with Sean’s ongoing condition, and Charlie’s increasing awareness that her boss, Parker, views her as so much more than a mere employee. Charlie is forced to make decisions this time out that will change her life forever.

Sean is very much a key element in the events of
Die Easy
, which sees him and Charlie in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina guarding an attendee at a glittering charity fundraiser. The idea of this book was to put Charlie in a situation where she was very much at a disadvantage. She finds herself unarmed and handicapped not only by having two civilians to protect but also worrying about a still way-below-par Sean, and coming face-to-face with an unpleasant reminder of their army past. It tests Charlie’s moral compass as much as her courage and resourcefulness.

Between book ten,
Die Easy
, and the next in the series I wanted to fill the gap with another outing for Charlie, and also to explain what was happening to the relationship between Charlie and Sean. Initially I thought a short story might suffice but the idea grew until it became a novella,
Absence of Light
. This sees Charlie tasked as security advisor to a specialist team sent in to lead rescue and recovery efforts after a major earthquake. Meanwhile, the events of
Fifth Victim
have come back to haunt her − and Sean. For the resolution to that, readers will have to wait until the next instalment . . .

The instinct and the ability to kill

Characters who live on the fringe have a certain moral ambiguity that we find seductive, I feel. Charlie has that obscurity to her make-up. She discovers very early on that she has both the instinct and the ability to kill. And although she does it when she has to and doesn't enjoy what it does to her, that doesn't mean that if you push her in the wrong direction, or you step over that line, she won't drop you without hesitation.

Dealing with her own capacity for violence when she's put under threat is a continuing theme throughout the books. It's not an aspect of her personality that Charlie finds easy to live with – a difficulty she might not have if she was a male protagonist, perhaps? Even in these days of rabid politically correct equality, it is still not nearly as acceptable for women to be capable of those extremes of behaviour.

But Charlie has evolved out of events in her life and, as you find out during the course of the series, things are not about to get any easier. I do rather like to put her through it! She's a fighter and a survivor, and I get the feeling that if I met her I'd probably like her a lot. I'm not sure she'd say the same about me!

Although I've tried to write each of the Charlie Fox books so they stand alone, this is becoming more difficult as time goes on and her personal story overlaps from one book to the next. I'm always expanding on her back story, her troubled relationship with her parents and her even more troubled relationship with Sean, who was once her training instructor in the army and, when she moves into close protection, he then becomes her boss. He continues to bring out the best and the worst in her. And their relationship is becoming ever more complicated as the series goes on . . .