Love Detective

Angela Dyson

Description

The first in a hilarious new series featuring a regular girl set down apath strewn with misadventures and murder to her destiny as 'The Love Detective'.Clarry is 26, attractive, funny - andon the road to nowhere. Living a makeshift existence as a waitress, she knowslife should be led with some sort of plan, but unfortunately planning issomething she needs to get around to. Enter her best friend Laura with aseemingly simple request: check out Simon, estate agent and new boyfriend, tomake sure he really is interested in Laura and not thesolicitor help she can provide. Clarry is no detective, unless you counttracking down where her next tip is coming from. Still, what harm could alittle amateur sleuthing do? With the aid of Flan, a glamorousseptuagenarian, Flan's lover, and a cast of colourful characters from therestaurant she works at, Clarry plunges into the investigation with a fewpitfalls, pratfalls and a dodgy moment where she's mistaken as a pole dancer(and not in a good way). It isn't until 1) she discovers that Simon's atwo-timing creep, and 2) in a sinister turn, she uncovers an evil criminalenterprise, that she realises amateur sleuthing is not for the faint of heart!Cynical and yet romantic, Clarry is anunlikely heroine that readers will both identify and fall in love with. Hermisadventures and comical outlook mesh brilliantly with a thrilling story thatwill appeal to readers of romance, crime and chick lit. Set to be the first inan entertaining new series, you don't need to follow the clues to know The Love Detective is one book you don't want to miss out on!

Sujets

• Love
• Love (disambiguation)
• Contemporary romance

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 septembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781789010992
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Love Detective
Angela dyson
Copyright © 2018 Angela Dyson

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


Matador
9 Priory Business Park,
Wistow Road, Kibworth Beauchamp,
Leicestershire. LE8 0RX
Tel: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
Twitter: @matadorbooks


ISBN 978 1789010 992

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd
The Love Detective is dedicated to the wonderful, strong, and charismatic women of my family:

My sister Claire
My aunts Frankie and Lillie
And in loving memory of my mother, Ann and my
grandmother, Mary Bridget.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four

The Love Detective: Next Level
Chapter One
Chapter Two
CHAPTER ONE
It hadn’t been a good night. Table six had sent back the chicken, table eight had slapped her boyfriend around the face before flouncing out of the restaurant, and table seventeen had just disappeared in the direction of the loos looking in rather a hurry. At eleven thirty I’d started mouthing polite we’re closing soon noises, but now, at past midnight, tables two and nine were asking for yet more coffee. Behind the bar, Dave was playing Adele for the third time in a row and Tara, my fellow waitress of the evening was bleating on about the pros and cons of a carb-free diet. I’m about ready to slit my throat. Tuning her out I positioned myself at the service station and resignedly scooped up another handful of cutlery to polish and allowed my gaze to wander over the room.
Standing apart from the trendy bars and restaurants lining the high street of Wimbledon Village, Abbe’s Brasserie is a curiously old-fashioned place but somehow very charming. The décor’s a bit tatty but the glow from the masses of candles dripping from wall sconces and flickering upon the tables, hide the worst of the wear and tear, and give it an intimate, inviting appeal. The food’s good too. There’s no nouvelle cuisine at Abbe’s. We serve classic dishes in generous portions. It would be, I decided spitting at a particularly stubborn water stain on a fish knife, just the type of restaurant I’d like to own one day, if I had any ambitions in that direction. I sighed and rubbed hard at the knife with a tea towel trying to distract my mind from the familiar but uncomfortable thought that by now, at twenty-six years old, I should at least be nurturing an ambition to do something.
I have four or five shifts a week at Abbe’s but this couldn’t, even by the most generous and supportive of my friends, be described as a proper career. And yes, there were occasional temping jobs, but they didn’t really count. I knew that no matter how much I wanted to put it off, sometime soon I was going to have to make some decisions. I couldn’t be a waitress all my life. Believe me it’s not all big tippers and interesting ways with leftover lobster. Tonight, my ankles were swollen, my cheek muscles ached from all those welcoming smiles, and the bra I’d bought to do justice to my white uniform shirt was a size too small and digging painfully into my sternum.
Later as I peeled it off and crawled under the duvet, I speculated on the jobs out there that I could possibly be fit for but soon gave way to sleep. In my dreams, I folded thousands of tiny white napkins into the shape of water lilies.

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they eat a pizza. Some attack it savagely from various angles; others dissect it neatly into mathematically precise portions and some, like Laura, start from the middle and work their way out to the crust. It was one o’clock on the following day and we were in the aggressively cool new pizzeria down on the Broadway. It was busy and very noisy, the buzz of conversation bouncing off hard bright surfaces. I shifted uncomfortably on my over-designed ironwork stool, as Laura started at the heart of the matter and worked her way out to the details. “It’s not that I doubt him, it’s just that…” she began.
And immediately memories of countless he-done-me-wrong tales sat down to join us. Laura is unbelievably unfortunate with men. Is it that she just happens to be particularly unlucky? Or, is it that she’s way too trusting? This, she considers rich coming from me. Perhaps she has a point. This is how it goes. She meets what she describes as the Perfect Man. The sex is mind-blowing. They have a real connection. It’s absolute heaven. Then three weeks later, he disappears off to a commune to find himself or goes back to his oil rig/country of origin/wife. This last one crops up with wearying regularity. Now, I’ve nothing against affairs with married men. After all a girl has not matured until she has had at least one regrettable hair straightening experience and has been lied to by at least two misunderstood husbands. These things happen and later we laugh and we cry about them over many bottles of rosé with our friends, but Laura, wonderful warm-hearted Laura, is always knocked sideways with surprise and disappointment. Now she was telling me about her latest.
“He’s attractive, he’s successful, and he’s charming. And yes Clarry, before you ask, I did remember to check this time, he’s single. There is definitely no wife in the background. He’s great, he really is. It’s just… well it’s probably nothing.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “What? Come on. Spill.”
She rested her elbows on the table. “It’s just that he’s asking a lot of questions about my work.”
“So? That’s a good thing isn’t it? A man who’s interested in your life and not just his own, that’s rare in my experience.”
She took a swig of wine “True. But no matter what we start talking about, he always seems to steer the conversation back to the business I’m doing.”
She shook her head and picked up her knife and fork. “Forget it, I’m probably imagining it.”
“Back up. Start at the beginning.”
She took a deep breath, her eyes shining. She wore a look that I know of old. Oh dear, I thought, she’s got it bad this time.
“OK. He’s Simon Napier. I met him at the Local Luncheon Club two weeks ago.”
“God. What’s that?”
“It’s just this boring monthly lunch that I have to attend. Lots of solicitors go and other business people as well. The food’s always terrible and I usually end up sitting next to some old chap from a building society rabbiting on about interest rates and the credit crunch.” She flicked back her long brown hair and took another slug of her wine. “Anyway, there I am looking at my place card and suddenly there he is. Simon Napier, newly appointed manager of Dunstan Stead estate agents. Over six-feet tall, blonde hair, totally fit, bloody gorgeous in fact and he’s sitting next to me at lunch.”
She’d got my attention. “So, what happened?”
“We’ve been out for drinks and dinner twice and it’s great. He’s funny, he’s bright, we have a lot in common, and he’s unbelievably sexy but…” Her voice trailed off and her shoulders slumped.
“But what?”
She shrugged. “I suppose that I just want to be sure that it’s me he’s really interested in. That he doesn’t just see me as a source of business for his firm.”
“And are you?” I asked picking up my glass.
She nodded. “Remember I told you that I’m heading up the conveyancing division and handling all the probate sales? I gave Simon two quite large houses to sell sole agency. He got offers on them straightaway and the buyers wanted a really quick exchange, which was great. And I’ve just instructed him on another one, a huge old place off Wimbledon Hill.”
I thought for a moment. “Did he get good prices for the houses?”
“Well actually no. But you know what the market is these days and a quick sale is always what the beneficiaries want anyway, especially if there are a lot of them. Some nephews and nieces scattered all over the country for example, all wanting their share of the profits of some rundown old house, most of them never having visited Great Aunt Dolly or whomever for years. They don’t care if she’s dead, they just want the money.”
“Charming. So, have you slept with him yet?”
“Not quite, but the rev-up’s been fun.” She took a bite of her pizza.
“I bet. Look you probably don’t have anything to worry about, but we both know that it never does any harm to keep your eyes wide open.”
She beamed at me. “I’m so glad you feel like that because that’s just where you come in Clarry.”
I shot her a look, not liking where this was going. “Come in where?”