Interview with Andrew Segal Author of THE LYME REGIS MURDERS @happyldnpress

A contract killer changed my life

The encounter inspired me to become a Crime Thriller writer.

He was a contract killer, and he was in my car!

I’d been lost, looking for West Thurrock in Essex, and asked a little old man in a shabby coat, on the opposite side of the road, the way. He offered to show me if I gave him a lift, and whilst I make it a rule never to give lifts to anyone I don’t know, I reasoned, he could hardly be a contract killer, could he. Could he? Of course not.

As we drove he casually informed me that he’d, ‘Done it for the Kray’s, mate.’ That would have been the notorious East London gangsters he was referring to, known to kill, or have killed, without conscience.

Once I’d dropped him off and recovered my composure, I realised I was looking at fodder for a short story. What then followed was a raft of short stories, including, ‘I am a Gigolo,’ something I told my wife when I first met her, and which almost ended our relationship before it had begun. That title is now the heading for a book of short stories.

Jokingly, over lunch, I told a fellow professional I’d once been a contract killer, and devised a story. He believed every word, and left me at some pains to disabuse him. That title, I am a Contract Killer, now heads a further collection of short stories.

Writer of scary short stories and full-length novels like The Lyme Regis Murders.

It’s been a fascinating journey… I hope you’ll want to share with me.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS

Website: http://andrewsegalauthor.com
https://www.happylondonpress.com/
Weekly Blog:https://happylondonpress.blogspot.com/
Twitter:https://twitter.com/HappyLDNpress
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/happylondonpress/
AnchorFM Podcast: https://anchor.fm/living-a-life-through-books/episodes/Author-Conversations-International—Andrew-Segal–Part-1-e4homt/a-aibjav
Podcast Reading: https://anchor.fm/happyldnpress/episodes/Lyme-Regis-Murders-Extract-reading-by-Andrew-Segal-e7r5df
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/happylondonpress/

Can you tell us a little about the main characters?

Tammy Pierre, my main character in The Lyme Regis Murders, is from a mixed race background. Her father, Matthew Pierre is an architect from Trinidad who met Tammy's mother Pascale Hirsch, a Parisian Jewish woman from a wealthy banking family, when she was on holiday in Trinidad. The French influence in Trinidad, is apparent in Matthew's surname. He was fluent in French, and when he and Pascale returned to France he did well in his chosen profession with the help of her contacts. Pascale died ten years ago from breast cancer leaving a considerable sum of money which Tammy used to buy her father an apartment in the North-West London region of Queen's Park.

Tammy lives in a luxury apartment in the same area as her father with her live in lover, Ginny Jones, also her PA. Part educated in France, Tammy entered the police force in the UK at graduate level and was fast tracked to Detective Inspector. She left the force about five years ago to establish her own private enquiry agency Pierre Search and Security, which operates just off London's Bond Street. Tammy herself is a wayweard character. Six feet tall, and mixed heritage, she has been brought up in the Jewish faith, is bi-sexual, preferring men, despite her present involvement. She drinks expensive vodka, smokes panatella cigars, does lines of coke and has the morals of an alley cat. She is in an on/off relationship with Dov Jordan, her Israeli coach in the martial art of Krav Maga, the israeli system of self-defence. Tammy likes classical music, good food and is fluent in several languages. She is aslo a maverick risk taker, who nearly got thrown out of the Met Police after totalling the car of a man who'd cut her up and then given her the finger.

Dov Jordan, is extremely tall, ginger haired, good looking and a coach in Krav Maga. He lives off London's Edgware Road, near Marble Arch, and deals in antiques and objets d'art, either on his own account or acquiring for clients. What Tammy doesn't know in this first book, is that Dov is also regarded as an occasional asset by Mossad.

They say all books of fiction have at least one pivotal point where the reader just can’t put the book down. Can you tell give us one of the pivotal points in your book?

Hopefully the pivotal point in my book is at the very start, where, in the prologue the first murders occur. Another pivotal point where I hope the reader will be snagged, comprises an event where Tammy is attacked by a knife wielding giant of a man called Bear, who cuts the side of her head in the fight that ensues.

Can you explain to us why it was important for you to write your story?

Having written the horror stories I have I wanted to put together a full length thriller, and I wanted to use a real individual. I chose Tammy as I saw her as not simply an heroic character, but also as a woman with female issues She has high levels of testosterone, but is clearly all woman. She is is often seen as beautifal, but is occasionally mocked as being too masculine. She is unpredictable, to the frustration of Dov, suffers with Endometriosis, and to her surprise finds herself with maternal feelings.

Final question (promise!): do you have any advice for the yet-to-be-published writers?

The only advice is, if you want to, and like to, then keep on writing. Playwrite, raconteur, author and journalist, Noel Coward said, there are thousands of people out there with real talent. The secret of success is simply, 'staying power.' William Golding saw his novel about schoolboys runnning wild, Lord of the Rings, turned down by several publishers, before it eventually found a market and earned him the Nobel Prize.

Can innocence ever be an incentive to murder?

A quiet seaside town is thrown into turmoil. Tammy Pierre, London based private investigator, accompanied by her sometime lover, Israeli art dealer and martial-arts coach, Dov Jordan, has just been brought close to tears by police photographs shown to her by an hysterical Eleanor Goldcrest, at the home of three innocent toddlers whose brutally murdered bodies have been found on the beach at Lyme Regis.

Wealthy financier, Eric Goldcrest, alarmed that his partner of three years, together with the local police has him nailed as guilty of murdering the children, now retains Tammy to prove his innocence and find the real culprit. But has his involvement in all this been misinterpreted?

In this investigation, with no apparant motive or forensic evidence, Tammy’s skills will be tested to the limit. In a twist that muddies the waters, Eric Goldcrest, laments that he’s simply never made it clear to Tammy about his position in the family and his relationship with the children, all of which have been assumed by the investigation.