Exciting news! I have received the design for Dancing with Spies, my new mystery adventure novel, from Kelly Walsh and you can see it below. I think Kelly does brilliant original designs and this lives up to the standard she had set on my other book covers.

We wanted the sun-drenched setting of Dubrovnik to be shown, as it is by this photo-extract of a coastal view from the Old City walls. But overhead hangs the gloomy threat of the Yugoslav Civil War about to break on this beautiful part of the world. In the background is the shadowy figure of the heroine involved in the conflict of spies and the dance which she has in Chapter 18 with two of the spies in contention.

I attach an extract from Chapter 11 which I hope captures the heat and the confusion that Caroline feels as she gets dragged into the hostilities:-

 The ground seemed to be moving slightly under her feet. Did they have seismic activity in this area? There was a crack in the rendering not twenty feet in front of her. The crack seemed to twist and move upwards. She closed her eyes again.

“Am I going mad or is it just the heat?”

When she looked again, what she saw made her smile. The moving crack was a long green lizard. It undulated onto a window cill and paused. She turned to call Brian. At that second the shutters were pushed half-open.

From the corner of her eye as she turned away Caroline had the impression of a woman at the window. Her mouth was open in a soundless scream. In the room behind her a man was seated on a chair. He was sitting stiffly upright as though he was tied to its back. There was blood on his mouth and his hair was disheveled. Another man stood in front of him – short, swarthy, with iron-grey hair. As Caroline turned back to look at the scene the woman disappeared, the shutters were banged shut and it was as though nothing had been there. Even the lizard had disappeared.

 If you want to contact Kelly Walsh to discuss this cover or her approach to design in general she can be reached at keleonie@gmail.com.