Cut And Run by Alec Marsh BLOG TOUR #CutAndRun @AlecMarsh @RandomTTours #BookExtract

 

March 1916.

The Great War rages across Europe.

In the British Army garrison town of Bethune in northern France, a woman’s body is found in a park. Her throat has been cut.

Marie-Louise Toulon is a prostitute at the Blue Lamp, the brothel catering exclusively to officers of the British Army stationed in the area.

Wounded ex-soldier Frank Champion is brought in to investigate the crime - to find the killer believed to be among the officer corps.

But almost before his investigation gets underway another woman from the Blue Lamp is killed, her throat also cut. A third prostitute, meanwhile, has gone missing.

Then two more bodies are uncovered, including that of a British Army captain who appears to have taken his own life with his service revolver. But all is not what it seems…

Champion must face a race against time to save the life of another woman - at the risk of dying himself.

Cut And Run by Alec Marsh was published on 15 November 2024. As part of this #RandomThingsTours Blog Tour today,  I am delighted to share an extract from the book with you. 

Extract from Cut And Run by Alec Marsh 

Wivenhoe, Essex coast, England, March 1916

It was just past low water and the boats that lined the dried-out waterfront at Wivenhoe lay askew, their masts and idle rigging a confused bird’s-nest against the cold white sky. Several of the boats were held between taut ropes, braced like flies in a spider’s web. Others squatted in the soft muddy beds whichever way the receding waters had left them, their ropes sagging to the shore, draped in green

weed. Around them the riverbed was coated in marine and human detritus: the neck of a bottle protruded here, the iron hoops of a shattered barrel there. The damp air carried a pinch of salt that tickled the nose.

I pulled once more on the oars and the bow of my dinghy pushed through the water. For several minutes now I’d felt the change in the river; the tide was turning and the sea was once more claiming back the territory lost over the previous six hours. The tides made me think of the war: the constant advance and retreat of the sea not unlike like the frontline of battle where ground is taken and then yielded by well-matched opposing forces. A seagull swooped low over my head

– I ducked. Its flat call scraped the air like a violinist snatching his bow across his instrument’s sharp strings. The dinghy glided along under the power of the current...

I looked back out along the estuary towards the curve in the distance and the low line of trees on the horizon. As far as the eye could see the terrain was grey- brown; the low river banks, sprigged with tall grasses, giving way to the gentle incline of the exposed, glistening mud. Then, finally at the centre, the narrow channel: a chaotic, choppy sea of continuous undulations, where the shallow brackish waters remained a briny brown, no matter how blue the sky or brilliant

the sun. But the sun was not shining today; instead the whole seascape was leaden, dense, faintly forbidding. It was just as I liked it.

I pulled on my left oar, allowing my right blade to halt, and water to spill over it. The dinghy obediently turned to port, and with a heave of both oars, I arrived at the varnished stern of my boat Nancy. I shipped my oars and tied the dinghy to the bigger boat. A glance told me that Nancy was just as I had left her.

I unloaded the wooden tender; placing a pair of metal buckets, each piled high with oysters, onto Nancy’s teak deck, and depositing a hessian sack containing two good-sized soles that I had caught that afternoon beside them.

I arranged a pair of oily rags over the tops of the buckets to conceal their cargo and took them ashore. As I stepped down onto the jetty, a hot pain coursed through my left leg, stopping me mid-stride. The burning sensation was not unexpected; it sharpened and then dulled into a numbness, not unlike an episode of pins and needles, as I knew it would. I drew a breath, recovering myself, and looked across at the Rose and Crown, my destination. A glance told me that the

waterfront was clear – and pressed on

Alec Marsh was born in Essex. He is the author of the Drabble and Harris historical thriller series: Rule Britannia (2019), Enemy of the Raj (2020), Ghosts of the West (2021) and After the Flood (2024).

He graduated from Newcastle University with a first class degree in history.

Beginning his career on the Western Morning News in Cornwall, he went on to write for titles including the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, The Times and London Evening Standard.

In 2008 he was named an editor of the year by the British Society of Magazine Editors. He formerly editor of Spear's Magazine, a title focused on luxury wealth and lifestyle. He continues to have bylines in The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Express, The Times, The Spectator and elsewhere. 

He is married and lives with his family in North Essex.