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A high-speed train. A deadly game. Three hours to save your family.

A father and daughter are caught in a deadly game of ‘I Spy’ on a train journey from Paris to London in this brand-new claustrophobic thriller from C. M. Ewan, author of The House Hunt and One Wrong Turn.

Whilst queuing for the Eurostar in Paris, Mark’s four-year-old-daughter points out a fellow traveller – a ‘Bad Man’ – during a game of ‘I Spy’. As they board the train, he realizes her description may not have been wrong, as the man now carries a different suitcase – and is sitting very near to them.

This new high-octane thriller weaves an emotional family survival plot and will leave readers shuddering.

C. M. Ewan is a pseudonym for Chris Ewan, the critically acclaimed and bestselling author of many mystery and thriller novels. Chris’s first standalone thriller, Safe House, was a bestseller in the UK and was shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.

He is also the author of the thrillers One Wrong Turn, The House Hunt, The Interview, Dead Line, Dark Tides, Long Time Lost and A Window Breaks, as well as the Good Thief’s Guide series of mystery novels. The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam won the Long Barn Books First Novel Award and has been published in thirteen countries.

Chris lives with his wife and their two children in Somerset, where he writes full time.

Find Chris on twitter/X: @ChrisEwan and Instagram: @c.m.ewan

My thoughts: Travelling with children is stressful enough without one of them being kidnapped on the Eurostar between Paris and London, but that’s what happens to Mark as he returns from a solo parenting holiday with his young daughter and stepdaughter, teenager Freya.

He looks away for a few minutes and Freya’s gone. With his toddler in his arms, he can’t search as thoroughly as he’d like, but then a stranger tells him to sit down. If he does as he’s told then Freya will be fine. But if he doesn’t, she dies.

His wife Claire isn’t stuck at work dealing with IT chaos, she’s meeting someone, someone they all believed had died six years before. And the people who have Freya would like to talk to that someone. Mark has to make that happen. But with no way to talk to Claire due to the huge underwater tunnel he’s in, he’s stuck begging for the life of his teenage daughter and keeping his other daughter occupied. It might not be a long trip but for Mark it’s the longest train ride of his life.

It’s a really compelling and fascinating concept, they’re stuck on a train, there’s nowhere to go, no way to get help, but also super limited places to stash a teenage girl. Even when they arrive at St Pancras, with the millions of CCTV cameras everywhere, they still can’t rescue Freya from her captors without problems. And when you learn what it is the kidnappers want, and how totally beyond Mark and Claire’s normal life things have become, it’s jaw dropping.

Utterly gripping, very clever and filled with so many twists, you’ll be up all night!

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Winter came for the pancakes. Hollowvale fed him the dead.

Dane Winter is unemployed and on a lonely road to nowhere. Riding his motorcycle west from New  York, he spots a sign on the Interstate: Hollowvale, Pennsylvania. A place he hasn’t visited since his  Redwind Security days. Back then, the town was known for its coal mines and the best pancakes he ever tasted.

A chance encounter with a distraught local woman pulls him into investigating her friend’s disappearance. When Jacob Rhodes’ body is found at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft, the local authorities are quick to label it an accident. Winter isn’t convinced…

Between the death of Jacob and the unexplained illnesses spreading through the local population, it’s clear that nothing is as it seems in the town of Hollowvale. Worse still, Winter thinks it might have something to do with his time there two years earlier.

What starts as a quest for answers becomes a fight to expose a conspiracy that reaches far beyond the small town.
But Winter is never one to give up, and he’s willing to burn it all down in order to uncover the horrific truth.

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Sam Cogley is the author of popular action thrillers, melding suspense-laden espionage plots with the mesmerising world of high-tech innovations. He writes the high-octane Dane Winter thrillers for
Boldwood Books.
Sam lives in Victoria, Australia with his wife and children.

Facebook: @SamCogleyAuthor
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Bookbub profile: @samcogley

My thoughts: Stopping off for what he remembers as excellent pancakes, Dane Winter finds himself embroiled in a murder case and some dodgy dealings at the local plastic recycling plant after a teacher knocks him off his motorbike. 

Her friend is missing, having gone camping in the woods, and she fears the worst. Dane offers to help her search for him, but what they find will send shockeaves through the local community when the truth is exposed.

Gripping, full of twists and turns, bent cops, evil corporations and one man with the skills to stay alive and shine a light on the misdeeds of others.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.