As many of you know, my favourite writerly quote was brought to us by the late, great genius of Douglas Adams: I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. It always makes me snort with laughter.
When on deadline, the idea is to keep butt in chair and nose to grindstone, right? Right.
Yesterday, I skived off for the whole day. Nick was off work so we threw the dog in the car and took her to the beach. Wonderful. There's nothing like the salty tang of the sea and a good stiff wind to blow the cobwebs away. So today, I've returned to the desk suitably refreshed and raring to go.
First, however, I had to get my hands on this:
As a follower of Clarissa's blog, I heard about this book some time ago and I've been dying to read it ever since. The blurb sucked me in:
All across London, single mothers are vanishing. Margaret Hill, mother of two, walked out of her house two months before, never seen again. A month later, Carrie-Anne Morgans takes her two-year-old son for a walk in the park and disappears, leaving him alone in his stroller. Lorna McCauley leaves her London flat in the early hours of the morning to buy medicine for her sick child and does not return.
Newly promoted Detective Inspector Theophilus Blackwell is assigned the case of Lorna McCauley, which on the outside seems to be a simple case of mid-life crisis and child abandonment. Elsewhere in London, MI5 analyst, Sophia Evans, is working undercover to catch an animal rights group responsible for targeted bombings. As Sophia's case (and her personal life) fall to pieces, she receives a strange envelope in the mail. It contains a picture of Lorna McCauley's lifeless face along with a daunting code.
Now the police and MI5 are forced to work together to stop the murders, and Sophia must find her way into the terrifying mind of a serial killer.
So, this morning, I downloaded my copy. I won't start reading it today … no, really, I won't … because I have a deadline. Ahem.