Grave Island
Today I am pleased to be able to
participate in the blog tour for Grave Island by Andrew Smyth. My thanks go to @SarahHardy and @BloodhoundBooks
for my spot on the tour.
About
the Book
A fast-paced and
explosive new thriller
When Philip Hennessey is thrown out of army
intelligence after evidence is fabricated against him, his ex-wife’s school
friend asks him to investigate the sudden death of her father, who she thinks
has been murdered.
Philip soon discovers a far larger problem: a lethal
trade in the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit drugs.
Using his contacts within the intelligence
agencies, he follows the trail across the world, chasing counterfeit vaccines
that could kill thousands.
Pitted against an international conspiracy, can
Philip prevent the fake medicines from getting through, and who can he really
trust?
What everyone is
saying about Grave Island
"I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes a
fast-paced thriller." Peggy Beaver- Reviewer
"An immensely good thriller, that will keep
you wondering where the plot is going to take you next." Alexina Golding -
Bookstormer
Grave Island is a
globe-trotting thriller which will appeal to fans of best-selling, big-hitting
books like I Am Pilgrim and Nomad as well as fans of best-selling authors like
Rob Sinclair, Mark Dawson & David Baldacci.
Guest
Post
Join me today on my blog where I share
the reason why Andrew Smyth called his book Grave Island. Settle down and grab a few minutes with a
nice relaxing drink and curl up and enjoy.
It’s fascinating and sounds like a lovely place to visit in all honesty!
😊
Zanzibar
and the real Grave Island
We visited Zanzibar when we were
sailing around East Africa in 2008.
Zanzibar has had a chequered history to say the least, and we were
warned that it wasn’t entirely safe. Being on an anchored boat at night can
make you feel very vulnerable and so instead of anchoring off the town we went
in search of somewhere more secluded.
The nearest bay away from the Stone
Town foreshore was a little island called Chapwani Island and we had to admit
it didn’t look very promising as we approached. It was low-lying with a coral
fringe on its north west shore which dried out at low tide, but it was out of
sight of Stonetown and seemed reasonably remote. I could see that there was
some kind of building on the island and not all of them allow you to land, but
there was a dhow anchored off the beach with someone working on it so I took
the dinghy over to ask. There was a woman on board, talking to what must have
been the skipper and she seemed surprised that I should ask. “You’ll be very
welcome,” she said. “We always encourage yachtsmen to visit.”
Later that afternoon we went ashore
and the woman from the dhow came out to greet us. She told us she was called
Maria and that she was the owner and offered us a drink on the terrace. It was
a large open building, made up with a roof of reeds with timber supports in the
local style. We looked out across the bay as Maria brought us our drinks and,
to our surprise, sat down with us. ‘I’ve always wanted to go sailing,’ she
said. ‘It’s my dream to sail around the world but the nearest I get is welcoming
the people who’re actually doing it.’
I looked around us in astonishment. If
ever there were a dream this was it. A perfectly sized tropical island with
dense forest inland and encircled by cobalt-blue waters – and that was before I
knew about the wildlife. We asked how she came to own such a place. ‘I trained
as an engineer in Italy,’ she said, ‘and came out here to work.’ This
astonished us even more. An Italian female engineer is one thing, but an
Italian female engineer working in Tanzania – and Zanzibar at that – was
something else. ‘I built many of the roads on the island but when the
millennium approached I thought I’d do something really special, so I took out
a lease on this island and put up some shacks on the beach and invited everyone
here to see in the new century.’ She shrugged and looked around her. ‘It seemed
so nice here that I decided to stay and build it up as a resort.’
She asked about our sailing and the
places we’d been to but was interrupted by one of her staff asking for instructions
about the kitchen garden. When we adopted our now permanent expression of
surprise – what else did this island have to offer? – Maria explained that in
addition to their normal duties, she insisted that they take on responsibility
for another aspect of the island’s mini-economy (and for which they received
all the profits). Hence some of them looked after the vegetables, some went
fishing while others made up cotton dresses which were for sale to the guests.
Our friend, Di, was so taken with them that she ordered one to be sent to her
back home in the UK. By now the sun was setting and Maria looked at her watch
and stood up. ‘Follow me,’ she said and led us around the shoreline to the tip
of the island to see the bats. I describe them in detail in the books, so won’t
spoil it here, but it was a sight like no other.
Maria’s hospitality didn’t stop there,
and she insisted we stay for dinner – at the end of which she wouldn’t accept a
penny in payment. ‘It’s the closest I get to sailing around the world,’ she
said. She also told us to come back in the morning and she’d get the island
boatman to take us into Stonetown. ‘You can leave the boat here where it’s
safe,’ she said. ‘I can also show you the graves when you get back.’
Graves? What else was on this island?
When we landed the next day, we tracked down one of the dikdaks – tiny
antelopes barely a foot high – and then almost tripped over the most
extraordinary coconut crab, which have to be seen to be believed. They walk
almost upright on very long pincers which they use to wrap around the trunk of
the palm trees as they climb to the top to knock of the coconuts. We came back
to collect our tender after visiting Stonetown and Maria showed us the graves.
At the outset of the First World War, the German battleship, Königsberg, found
itself in the Indian Ocean and quickly engaged the aging British cruiser, HMS
Pegasus which was undertaking repairs in Zanzibar harbour. With her engines
shut down, she was a sitting target and was incapacitated within minutes.
Although its commander struck her colours to avoid further bloodshed, she sank
later that day with thirty-one lives lost – twenty four of whom are buried in
the naval cemetery on Chapwani, which remains to this day under the care of the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
As we took to our dinghy, I thanked
Maria for her amazing hospitality and told her that if one day I wrote a novel,
I’d call it after her island. I’d call it Grave Island.
About
the Author
After graduating from Fitzwilliam College,
Cambridge, Andrew spent a couple of years attempting to break into the film
industry (including an unenviable job as Michael Winner’s assistant). When not
working in films, he started up a building business and carried out work both
in the UK and later in the South of France.
On returning to the UK, he
established a company to manufacture a range of public transport seating, which
won the 1980 Design Council Award. Eventually the seating was installed in bus
stations and shelters throughout the country with licensees in Japan and the
USA. Over the next twenty years the company diversified into the manufacture of
architectural glazing and by the time it was sold, it had a workforce of some
60 people.
Andrew then concentrated on his main
interests: sailing and writing. With his wife he explored the Mediterranean
extensively in their catamaran, moving on to the Red Sea, East Africa and the
Far East, returning to the Caribbean and the USA. He has written frequently
about his travels for all the main yachting magazines. He also wrote and
published an Introduction to the Canal du Midi, which was the
inspiration for Rick Steins’ TV series. His first novel, Caesar’s
Passage, was short-listed for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel award. His
second, a thriller called Grave Island, is due out in the summer of
2018.
Andrew
is married with two adult children.
To
buy from:
Check out the rest of the blog tour
with these fabulous blogs:
My thanks to Andrew Smyth for joining me on my blog and providing the lovely guest
post to explain how he came up with the title for his new book Grave
Island. I would also like to thank the
publishers Bloodhound Books and also Sarah Hardy for my spot on
the blog tour.
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