A Sickness In The Soul by William Savage

Please welcome William Savage author of A Sickness in the Soul

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A Sickness in the Soul: An Ashmole Foxe Georgian Mystery

by William Savage 

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GENRE:  Historical Mystery

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INTERVIEW:

What are four things you can’t live without?

My wife, my computer, my access to books, and time alone in silence.

What is your favorite television show?

I like old BBC sitcoms like “Dad’s Army” and “Open All Hours”; David Attenborough’s nature documentaries, which I began to watch when they were all in black and white; the best of the murder mystery series (but only real mysteries, not thrillers). I loathe anything that smacks to be of being a soap opera, which pretty much includes everything most popular today, like “Game of Thrones”. I’m an intellectual old fogey — and proud of it!

If you could be any character, from any literary work, who would you choose to be? Why?

Sherlock Holmes. I’m endlessly curious and would love to have a brain the size of a planet.

What have you got coming soon for us to look out for?

I’ve just published the sixth Ashmole Foxe mystery, “A Sickness in the Soul”, which takes the protagonist into a mass of simultaneous problems, while he grapples with some major changes in his own attitude to life. Next will probably be another Adam Bascom mystery, which is still in an early stage of development. I’ve alternated books in the two series so far, so I’ll probably do that again.

What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?

I read all the time, and nearly 80% of my reading consists of whodunnits and murder mysteries of all kinds. The rest covers non-fiction used for research. I have no idea where any particular influence or idea comes from in all of that. Writers I admire are Georges Simenon: no-one has ever written such satisfying stories in such short books. Not a word is wasted. For humour I enjoy Terry Pratchett. For vivid recreation of a world long past and quite different to today, you can’t beat Robert van Gulik’s “Judge Dee” books, set in the China of around 600 CE. I very rarely read anything that could be termed a classic. I have read all of Jane Austen, but can’t imagine doing so again. I have read modern classics like Tolkein, but don’t feel the need to do it again. Dickens I cannot stand at any price. Most modern classic novels like those of Waugh, Auden or Orwell bore me to tears. Please tell me if a book has won the Mann-Booker prize or anything like that. Then I’ll know to avoid it like the plague.

BLURB:

“Many people wear masks. Some to hide their feelings; some to conceal their identity; and some to hide that most hideous plague of mankind: a sickness in the soul.”

Ashmole Foxe, Norwich bookseller, man-about-town and solver of mysteries will encounter all of these in this tangled drama of hatred, obsession and redemption.

This is a story set in the England of the 1760s, a time of rigid class distinctions, where the rich idle their days away in magnificent mansions, while hungry children beg, steal and prostitute themselves on the streets. An era on the cusp of revolution in America and France; a land where outward wealth and display hide simmering political and social tensions; a country which had faced intermittent war for the past fifty years and would need to survive a series of world-wide conflicts in the fifty years ahead.

Faced with no less than three murders, occurring from the aristocracy to the seeming senseless professional assassination of a homeless vagrant, Ashmole Foxe must call on all his skill and intelligence to uncover the sickness which appears to be infecting his city’s very soul.

Can Foxe uncover the truth which lies behind a series of baffling deaths, from an aristocrat attending a ball to a vagrant murdered where he slept in a filthy back-alley?

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EXCERPT:

All might have continued on its stable course had not a day arrived when a stranger came to the house. Earlier that morning, Dr Danson informed Archibald Gunton, the butler, to his considerable surprise, that he was expecting a visitor. When he arrived, the butler was told, he must be admitted immediately and without question. He would await the man in his library.

The man came and spent barely twenty minutes with Dr Danson. No one saw or heard him leave. It was not until the butler entered the library about an hour later that he found the reason. His master lay slumped back in his chair, his mouth and eyes wide open. On his face, there was an expression that the butler later described to his mistress as being ‘as if he had looked into hell itself’. At his feet were his wig and a small dagger; the one which he usually kept on his desk. There was blood on the left side of his chest. It was obvious at once that the Reverend Dr Jonathon Danson, scholar of the occult and seeker after hidden knowledge, was dead.

As the news spread in the neighbourhood, two schools of opinion formed. The majority, considering Dr Danson’s circumstances, announced that it was plainly a domestic crime. An elderly rich husband takes a pretty, young wife, who was penniless before he married her. ‘Murder!’ they whispered amongst themselves. ‘Stands to reason, don’t it?’ A sizeable number reached a different conclusion; one based on rumours of the man’s strange interests. ‘Witchcraft!’ they muttered, or ‘devilry!’ Either way, that group were certain the powers of evil had come to claim one of their own.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

I started to write fiction as a way of keeping my mind active in retirement. Throughout my life, I have read and enjoyed hundreds of detective stories and mystery novels. One of my other loves is history, so it seemed natural to put the two together. Thus began two series of murder mystery books set in Norfolk, England.

            

All my books are set between 1760 and around 1800, a period of turmoil in Britain, with constant wars, revolutions in America and France and finally the titanic, 22-year struggle with Napoleon. 

            

The Ashmole Foxe series takes place at the start of this time and is located in Norwich. Mr Foxe is a dandy, a bookseller and, unknown to most around him, the mayor’s immediate choice to deal with anything likely to upset the peace or economic security of the city. 

            

The series featuring Dr Adam Bascom, a young gentleman physician caught up in the beginning of the Napoleonic wars, takes place in a variety of locations near the North Norfolk coast. Adam builds a successful medical practice, but his insatiable curiosity and  knack for unravelling intrigue constantly involve him in mysteries large and small.

            

I have spent a good deal of my life travelling in Britain and overseas. Now I am more than content to write stories and run a blog devoted to the world of Georgian England, which you can find at http://www.penandpension.com. You can also follow me on Twitter as @penandpension.

https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00RZBGQ0K

The Ashmole Foxe Mysteries

All https://penandpension.com/my-writing#foxe

The Ashmole Foxe Mysteries http://bit.ly/2Abn1Ks

The Fabric of Murder http://relinks.me/B00W3SDJW8 

Dark Threads of Vengeance http://relinks.me/B01FPQ2Q1Y 

This Parody of Death http://relinks.me/B06XDNY81B

Bad Blood Will Out http://relinks.me/B079RCVQ4X

Black as She’s Painted http://relinks.me/B07H1SZN37

A Sickness in the Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WF3Y4VJ

Getbook.at/SoulSickness

The Dr Adam Bascom Mysteries

All https://penandpension.com/my-writing#bascom

The Dr Adam Bascom Mysteries http://bit.ly/2k43dSQ

An Unlamented Death http://relinks.me/B00RXGWIY0

The Code for Killing http://relinks.me/B01A2BY1LU 

A Shortcut to Murder http://relinks.me/B01M1R78L3

A Tincture of Secrets and Lies http://relinks.me/B075LM2TZP

Death of a Good Samaritan https://relinks.me/B07NLCGK2Y

Blog

Pen and Pension: http://bit.ly/1Kb1Q4k

Author Page

Amazon Author page:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00RZBGQ0K

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $50 Amazon/BN.com gift card.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f3161