If you’re going on holiday, it would be a crime not to take a book
to read. And what better than a crime mystery?
Once you get into Headline Murder, you’ll forget all about those delays at the airport, that lost baggage at customs, and the taxi driver whose English wasn’t quite good enough - so that you’ve ended up at the wrong hotel.
Holiday reading should be light, engaging, humorous and as fun as the holiday itself. It’s what I’ve tried to achieve with Headline Murder.
So join Colin Crampton, the hero and narrator, for the first few paragraphs - and decide whether you’d like to take Colin on holiday with you:
The phone call that set me on the trail of the disappeared golf man who left his balls behind came one scorching Saturday afternoon in August.
I was sitting at my desk in the newsroom of the Brighton Evening Chronicle feeling like a barbecued steak that’d just been flipped on the griddle. The window was open and the high summer’s heat oozed into the newsroom like boiled treacle.
I could hear a saxophonist playing a jazz riff in the Royal Pavilion gardens. Something slow and sultry in a minor key.
Even the long plangent notes seemed to be dripping with sweat.
I leant back in my chair, loosened my collar and tried to imagine I was Nanook of the North huddled in an igloo. But after a hard day, my brain was too tired to make the leap. The last edition – the Night Final - was on the streets and the newsroom was deserted. The other reporters had left for the beach. Or, more likely, the pubs. I should’ve joined them. I could almost taste the fizz in the gin and tonic. Hear the tinkle of the ice cubes. Smell the zest of the lemon.
But I had to work late. And the heat was doing nothing for my scratchy mood. My byline – Colin Crampton, crime correspondent - hadn’t been on the front page for more than two weeks. Worst of all, Frank Figgis, the news editor, had started to hassle me about the dearth of hard crime news in the paper. As if he thought I was Mr Big of the Brighton underworld. What did he expect me to do? Stage a payroll snatch? Mastermind a bank heist? Order up a body thoughtfully bludgeoned with a blunt instrument?
I picked up the Night Final from my desk, turned to page fourteen. The best I’d come up with for this evening’s paper was a vicar fined five pounds for cycling without lights. I was frustrated. Brighton’s more imaginative criminals seemed to have taken a vacation along with everyone else. Except me. I badly needed a holiday.
But I needed a front page headline – a splash - even more…
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