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The final version of the Barcelonoir trilogy, Diamond Boulevard, will be released in ebook on 30 April, with the paperback a couple of weeks later. Pre-orders should be up soon.
FLAWLESS STONES. FLAWLESS PLAN. FLAWED PEOPLE.
Sofía leans her buttocks against the safe, folds her arm and looks at me.
“Have you ever fired a gun, Rob?”
I can see black spots in front of my eyes. My tongue is a crisp parched twig.
“No.” I’m an office manager. How would I ever have done this before?
She punches in a combination I don’t see, flips the door open and pulls out dull black metal. It looks like a toy.
“You shove the pointed end at the person you want to shoot and pull the trigger.” She’s trying for hard-boiled but there’s a tremor in her voice. I reach out for the weapon, then pull my hand back. “This is a compact .380, short barrel, low recoil. Designed to fit in a woman’s handbag, but it kills you just as dead.”
Rob Jardine is the last man to take part in a diamond heist. Responsible, sober (if you ignore a little recreational cocaine) and an office manager. But then his new boss threatens to ship him back to England, and he meets diamond dealer Sofía. She has a plan - and Rob is just the man to help her with it.
The second volume of the Barcelonoir trilogy, Casanova Street, is now out in ebook. The paperback should be available around mid-May. You can buy the book here.
Rivas steps forward and punches me again, this time in the stomach, and hard. It’s as if I’ve been hit by a train. I don’t even try to get up. Instead I lie on my back, looking up into the cloudless blue sky. I think I can see vultures circling, but more likely it’s black spots on my vision where he’s hit me. Anton looks into my face incuriously. Ilya doesn’t even bother with that.
Grigoriev reaches out to clasp my forearm and pull me up. He brushes some dust from the Massimo Dutti suit I know I’ll never wear again.
“Sometimes a lesson gotta be painful so you remember it. You don’t freelance, OK? That’s the lesson.”
Things are looking up for Dexter. He’s in line for a promotion at the bank where he works, he’s found a new girlfriend, and life’s good. If his new client Viktor Grigoriev is a bit shady, well surely that goes with the job.
But before he knows it, he’s caught up in a murder investigation, and so deep into a money-laundering scheme that it looks like he might be the next victim.
How did it come to this?
Dark Canvas
Dark Canvas, the third volume in my steampunk Fractured Empire series, is out now in ebook and paperback. You can order them here. It's a standalone novel, but with plenty of call-backs to Bitter Sky and A Little Poison.
Lord Berendt set his expression. “I fear I did not appreciate either of my sons while they were alive. I thought one had ambition but no sense, the other sense but no ambition. Now I find I would give the world to have just one of them back.”
Magnus looked into his flinty face. “I am sorry—”
He stopped dead in the street, drawing a curse from a porter rolling a barrel of herring behind him.
“I did not bring you here for your pity, Magnus Scavenius. I brought you because you are now my heir, and however unsatisfactory that may be for both of us, I must train you in what you need to know when I am gone, if our heritage is not to be lost.”
Catfish Alley
I once had a girlfriend back in Scotland, Lorna, who was into astrology, karma, healing crystals and all that shite. She always said the universe had a way of knowing when you needed something and providing for you. In my experience, what it generally provides is a kick in the bollocks.
Tommy Chisholm is in trouble.
His dream life in Barcelona is unravelling. He’s broke, his writing career has stalled, and maybe it’s time to pack up and go home.
But then he’s recruited by an organised crime gang to help them rob an art gallery. His financial worries will be over at a stroke, and all he needs to do is seduce someone he’s never met.
Everything is going perfectly. Until he loses his head over the woman he is meant to be exploiting.
A Little Poison
Once the Fikingur sea-raiders of Haskilde were the most feared warriors on the continent. Now they are confined to a tiny duchy, ruled by a dying man whose heir is a depraved teenager.
Lothar von Schnusenberg has arrived in Haskilde to spy for the Empire, but his plans are overturned when he becomes the prime suspect in a grisly poisoning. Can he trust the enigmatic Asta and her prickly friend Edda, or are they luring him to disaster?
About Tim
Tim writes fantasy and science fiction as Tim Stretton, and crime as T. M. Stretton. He has been published by Macmillan New Writing and TOR UK, as well as his own BattleCat Press imprint. Since 2019 he has been a full-time writer.
Tim also produces a monthly Substack newsletter. You can sign up here.