If you click on the image of Don DuPay’s homicide card you can read a review of Behind The Badge In River City, his no-holds-barred account of his time with the police department in Portland, Oregon. The book has attracted a huge amount of interest on our site, and elsewhere. Don pulls no punches with chapter headings such as:
THE STARDUST AND THE STRIP – Two burglars and a dinner show
THE ROOFTOP ASSASSIN – Everybody hated Him
MURDER ON THE RIVERBANK – I Just Poked Him A Little
PADDY WAGONS AND SHOTGUNS – Gimme A Minute, DuPay
THE ZEBEDEE MANNING DEATH – A Suicide It Was Not
By entering our prize draw you stand a chance of winning a signed copy of Don’s book. All it takes is an email, or a ‘like’ on our Facebook page. Participants’ names will go into the digital hat, and the winner will be notified in the usual way. Both the Fully Booked email address and a link to our Facebook page are below. The competition will close at 10.00pm GMT on Sunday October 22nd.
fullybooked2016@yahoo.com
Fully Booked on Facebook
OUR LATEST PRIZE DRAW COMPETITION is to win a copy of the latest in Norman Russell’s popular Inspector Antrobus mysteries, set in late Victorian Oxford.
Anthony Jardine is a successful and popular tutor at St. Gabriel’s College, and he finds his loyalties divided between his work, his wife Dora and his mistress Rachel. Unbeknown to Anthony, Dora is an advanced cocaine addict and he comes to resent her outrageous activities more and more, absorbing himself with the discovery of the remains of St Thomas a Becket in a hidden vault at the college. One rainy night Dora is found murdered in a tramcar out at Cowley and Jardine, who had been visiting Rachel in that area, becomes a suspect. The case is investigated by Inspector James Antrobus and his friend Sophia Jex-Blake, the pioneer woman doctor. A complex investigation follows and after Jardine’s mistress is murdered, the clues take Antrobus to London, when the mystery starts to unravel and the killer is revealed in a grand climax.
If you are a fan of the Golden Age style of mystery, and classic detective stories with an academic angle, then this is not one not to miss. And, even better, you could be getting your copy for free! There are two ways to enter: First, go to the Fully Booked Facebook page, and simply ‘like’ the competition post. Clicking on the image below will get you straight there.
If you prefer email, then send an email to the address below, putting the word Oxford as the subject. The competition closes at 10.00pm GMT, on Sunday August 20th.
fullybooked2016@yahoo.com
To celebrate the birthday of Charles Dickens on 7th February, we have a tasty quiz involving six of the great man’s most memorable villains. To enter the draw for the prize – Claire Tomalin’s highly regarded Charles Dickens – A Life – you need to look at the six photographs, taken from screen versions of Dickens novels. To be in with a chance of winning, identify three things. First, the name of the book. Second the name of the character. Third, the name of the actor pictured. For those of you who love a touch of the cryptic crossword, there are six fairly helpful clues to go with each picture, and folk who are adept at pub trivia questions should enjoy the references. Do the best you can – all entries will go into the hat, and the person most correct answers gets the prize!
To help you, there are six mildly cryptic clues.
A This slimy character – who was very humble – might be seen trotting around South London, particularly in Peckham! He was eventually exposed by Mr Micawber, and after that, it was Goodnight Sweetheart !
B This actor’s name might suggest that he was emotionally very up and down, but he found fame running a kind of children’s home in 19th century London.
C This vile fellow had a crush on a poor girl who tried to make a living selling antiques. Before he drowned in the Thames, he had time to reprise Captain Mainwaring in the remake of a popular TV series.
D These days, you are more likely to see this gravelly-voiced actor advertising betting on TV (but he bets responsibly!) Here he played a frightening jailbird who had a habit of leaping out from behind tombstones in misty graveyards. In the book, however, he died a happy man.
E This dreadful schoolmaster says,” I’ll spare you. I’ll flog you to within an inch of your life, and I’ll spare you then!” is played by an English character actor who featured in such films as Moulin Rouge and a couple of Harry Potter epics.
F He always liked a drink or three, a touch of on-screen nude wrestling, and actually played Debussy in a Ken Russell TV film. Here, he is one of the vilest men Dickens created – violent to women and dogs in equal measure.
When you have your answers, write them in the body of an email, put Dickens in the subject box, and send it to:
fullybooked2016@yahoo.com
Those who have answered the most questions correctly will have their names put in a hat, and a winner drawn out.
The prize will be sent to the winner direct from Amazon, so we can offer the competition to Fully Booked fans all over the world.
THE COMPETITION CLOSES at 10.00pm GMT on Tuesday 7th February – Charles Dickens’s birthday
Here’s your chance to win a crisp mint copy of Emma Kavanagh’s hit thriller The Missing Hours. Thanks to those generous people at Arrow/Penguin Random House, there’s a paperback edition (out on 17th November) up for grabs.
How do you enter? Pretty simple, really. Just solve the anagram Ah, pimplier owl – clue, he is perhaps the most celebrated PI in crime fiction – then put your answer as the subject of an email to Fully Booked:
fullybooked2016@yahoo.com
There’s no need to put any further details. There will be a draw of all the correct answers, and the winner will notified in the usual way. This time, the competition is worldwide, so we will post the USA, Australiasia or wherever. The competition closes at 10.00pm GMT on Sunday 6th November.
RULES
- Competition closes 10.00pm London time on Sunday 6th November 2016.
- One entry per competitor.
- All correct entries will be put in the proverbial hat, and one winner drawn.
- The winner will be notified by email, and a postal address requested
The good people from Penguin Random House
made an inspired choice of the venue for last Wednesday evening’s drinks ‘do’ to introduce Romanian author Eugen O Chirovici (pictured above, with Francesca Russell from PRH) and his forthcoming crime mystery The Book of Mirrors.
The Ten Bells in Spitalfields is a pub steeped in criminal – and literary – history. It takes its name from the bells in the tower of the adjacent Christ Church, which in turn featured strongly in Peter Ackroyd’s atmospheric 1985 novel, Hawksmoor. Allegedly, the pub was frequented by the victims of Jack the Ripper, and legend has it that Mary Jane Kelly, who was the subject of the final and bloodiest assault, plied her trade on the pavement outside.
So, in a spookily lit upper room we met the writer, who is not only an award winning economist and has penned best-sellers in his native Romania, but also the author of a stunningly good new novel – the first he has written in English. The book is set partly in the present and partly in 1987, and it tells the story of the murder of a controversial professor of psychology at New Jersey’s Princeton University. His death is observed by different narrators, and Chirovici (left) has constructed an ingenious literary version of the old fairground attraction of distorting mirrors, so that we reach the final pages still not really sure who is giving us the correct image of events on the fateful night.
Not only is Chrirovici a very gifted writer, but he is also a very engaging person to talk to, and my colleague and I spent forty minutes or so with him, dissecting European politics and generally putting the world to rights.
Thanks to Century, we have two copies of The Book of Mirrors – which will not be generally available until January 2017 – to give away. Entering couldn’t be simpler. Just email Fully Booked at:
fullybooked2016@yahoo.com
– and write The Book of Mirrors in the subject box. The competition will close at 10.00pm GMT on Sunday 9th October, when the first two names out of the proverbial hat will win the books. Due to postage costs, the competition is open to UK and Irish Republic readers only.
RULES
- Competition closes 10.00pm London time on Sunday 9th October 2016.
- One entry per competitor.
- All correct entries will be put in the proverbial hat, and one winner drawn.
- The winner will be notified by email, and a postal address requested
THE QUESTION WAS …..Which world famous novelist became Walter Mosley’s mentor, and encouraged him to start writing?
The answer is – Edna O’Brien. She was one of his tutors while he was taking a course in creative writing at City College in Harlem, New York. Her words:
“You’re Black, Jewish, with a poor upbringing; there are riches therein.”
– inspired him and convinced him that he could become a great writer. Thanks to all those who took part in the competition, and the lucky person who was drawn out of the hat of correct answers was DOUG KLEIN Jr, of Leesburg, Ohio. Your prize is on its way, Mr K!
OUR COMPETITION couldn’t be more simple. The prize is a lovely hardback copy of Walter Mosley’s latest novel – Charcoal Joe. All you have to do is answer one question, which is:
Which world famous novelist became Walter Mosley’s mentor, and encouraged him to start writing?
Send your answer via email to fullybooked2016@yahoo.com
RULES
- Competition closes 10.00pm London time on Saturday 20th August 2016.
- One entry per competitor.
- All correct entries will be put in the proverbial hat, and one winner drawn.
- The winner will be notified by email, and a postal address requested.
BEST OF LUCK!
