Kindle Edition Download to your Nook (eBook) Download from Smashwords (eBook) Amazon Category:  Crime Publisher: Self Published ISBN-10:  1523273127 Type: Fiction Pages: 470 Copyright: February 15, 2016 ISBN-13: 9781523273126 Price: $2.99 (eBook) It took some nifty planning but at long last Rudy and Bridget can reignite their love affair, this time on Elysian Island, an exclusive retreat for the superrich, right under her husband’s nose. Now all they’ve got to do is figure out how to get him out of the way. Bridget Tennyson is an incredibly gorgeous stockbroker who runs a multimillion dollar stock-trading firm on Elysian Island, an exclusive Caribbean retreat for the superrich. After seven years of marriage to the world-famous British aristocrat, Lord Edward Tennyson, she has grown frustrated with their relationship and wants out. From the first day she set eyes on Rudy Phillips, an incredibly handsome journalist from London who oozes charm and sports sexy-looking dreadlocks, Bridget falls fatally in love with him. Pretty soon she realises there’s no way she is going to let Rudy out of her life. Besides his charm and good looks, Rudy has one tragic flaw; he has always found the forbidden irresistible, especially when it comes to women. Never before had he come across such an enchanting woman like Bridget! She captures his heart like no woman has ever done. But she’s not the kind of woman he’s used to chasing. She’s independent-minded, calculating and ambitious and way out of his league. What’s more, the two of them come from completely different worlds. If they wish to be together they must figure out how to get Bridget’s husband, Edward out of the way. Bridget’s got a plan. To make sure Rudy goes along with it, she makes him a mind-blowing offer that she knows few men would refuse. If they slip up and Edward discovers what’s going down, all hell will break loose but it’s a chance they’re willing to take. Excerpt Chapter 5 Rudy found Sam sitting at the wheel waiting patiently. All throughout the fifteen-minute drive Sam remained quite taciturn. Rudy tried drawing him out but he grew cagey and kept dodging Rudy’s questions about Bridget and her whereabouts. Rudy felt like strangling him! By the time they reached their destination, he was so pissed he stormed out of the vehicle and ignored Sam. The sound of waves breaking on the seashore could be heard nearby. Facing him was a beachfront bungalow with a swimming pool and an enclosed wooden sundeck. He entered the patio and rang the doorbell. Bridget opened the door almost immediately. “Come in,” she said, smiling. Rudy entered a foyer and followed her into a vast sitting room complete with a mini bar, a butler's pantry and guest washroom. It was tastefully furnished in a relaxed island-style decor with a ceramic tiled floor. Its elegance left him unmoved. “Would you mind telling me what the hell is going on!” he demanded, scowling. “I feel like I’m caught up in a cat-and-mouse game like a character in a poorly written novel.” Bridget gazed at him with knitted brow. “What do you mean?’ “You set me up, didn’t you?” “Excuse me?” “Why did you invite me to this party?” “I did so on Bill’s behalf.” “Bullshit! The guy doesn’t even know me. Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s not the sort who would invite strangers to his son’s engagement party – unless he’s got an ulterior motive.” Bridget gave Rudy an indulgent smile. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” she said calmly. “The hell I am! Aside from spending half the night watching several goons drool over you while you kept your distance from me, I had to spend the rest of my time being lectured on the dangers of aiding and abetting your husband. Then, to top it off, I’m hustled away without explanation and dumped here at the behest of my puppet master - by a driver who mysteriously seems to have lost his tongue, as if he’s under a gag order! Frankly, I’ve never had a more bizarre experience in my life!” “Would you like a drink?” Rudy glared furiously at Bridget and was about to excoriate her further but then checked himself. He took a deep breath. “Yeah ... Come to think of it, I could do with a drink. A scotch, please.” Bridget went across to the bar to get Rudy’s drink and made herself a martini. Handing him the whisky, she said, “You sound stressed out. I’m really sorry about that. It’s been a long day. You’ll feel better once you’ve had some rest.” Rudy said nothing. “Let’s not forget how much you and I planned for this day,” Bridget continued, “and how much we wanted to be together again.” “Ah! But there’s the problem. The Bridget standing before me isn’t the same one with whom I plotted and planned, and dreamed of reconnecting with.” Bridget stared calmly at Rudy. She couldn’t recall ever seeing him so worked up. She actually felt a motherly tenderness towards him. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?” “Back in England I came upon this sweet, warm hearted soul, seemingly very charming and considerate but trapped in an Ice Palace, yearning to break free. I fell under her spell and she swept me off my feet, to the point where I was willing to do almost anything to free her from the cold clutches of the Ice Palace. I found a way to give her wings and for a while she managed to escape and rediscover the joy of being truly alive and free. It was like a fairy tale. I know this sounds clichéd but it’s the truth. Now I’m left to wonder if her heart is frozen because of all the years she spent trapped in the Ice Palace; whether all the sweetness, warmth and sensitivity I thought I had seen have been locked up inside that frozen heart ... I know we have been reunited for only a few hours, but still you are not the same Bridget I met back in England.” Bridget went and sat on the sofa. “God, Rudy! I know you’re a writer and an aspiring poet, and I’m sure you have great potential but can we come back down to earth and get real? That’s the only way you and I can get what we hoped for – by cutting out the melodrama and being pragmatic and sensible ... I meant it when I said I fell in love with you. I love you now, more than ever. I know that we’ve taken a tremendous gamble and I know what we’re up against. I also know what we must do in order to make things happen. You’re not so clear about that and this is probably where you and I differ.” “I suppose you conspiring with Thompson to pressure me into betraying your husband is one of those things you must do.” Bridget blushed hotly. “You’ve been betraying my husband from the very first time you fucked me, and you continue to betray him up until this very moment. We both do. So don’t you go getting self righteous on me!” There was a pregnant pause. Rudy avoided Bridget’s eyes. “Look at me Rudy,” said Bridget. Rudy glanced up. “Do you love me?” “You know I’m crazy about you.” “Then you’ve got to trust me.” Rudy flopped down onto the sofa. “Incidentally, where are we?” he said, glancing around the room. “You and your husband certainly have grandiose tastes.”

A Sort of Caribbean Noir

Between Two Fires is the first novel in the planned trilogy Dread Desires from Toni Williams. This debut is a murder mystery set in the Caribbean on the fictional Elysian Island off the coast of St. Lucia as well as in the city of Soufriere on Saint Lucia. While presented at first as the story of a man getting entangled and overwhelmed by a smart, independent-minded woman, the story quickly takes a turn into more familiar thriller territory. In fact, Williams creates a sort of Caribbean crime noir novel which manages to not just fit the genre well but open up a lot of interesting possibilities with the storytelling.

It’s not rare to encounter escapist island fiction, a species of the thriller/romance novel that appeals to the vacationing sensibilities of casual readers. But there is a rather strong Caribbean literature that is at once literary and generalist that isn’t as nearly as well known as it should be. For me, the genre has always been on the periphery yet ever present. I’d find an old Stuart Hall article in my files and go on a binge or decide I needed to read more Jamaica Kincaid, but it always needled me that I was merely rehashing and not discovering new, contemporary writers from Barbados, Trinidad, Haiti, Jamaica, etc. Just because you read Derek Walcott doesn’t mean you understand the richness and variety of the literature of the Caribbean.

It was after I had finished Roxane Gay’s novel An Untamed State (a challenging work of fiction), that this really hit home with me. There was a whole field of English literature of which I had only the most superficial grasp. Enter Toni Williams’ novel Between Two Fires that takes as its setting the island of St. Lucia.

The dynamics are set immediately from the outset. When cruise ships come in and tourist flood the island revving up and sustaining the weirdly managed neo-colonial economy, it’s all too easy for the sun-seeking white faces to dismiss the island’s everyday inhabitants as merely hospitality stewards. Williams sets his novel squarely in the face of not so much the tourist aspect as the ultra-privileged and disconnectedly wealthy British colonial past.

Rudy Philips, a native from St. Lucia who has been living in England for most of his adult life, encounters the femme fatale of Bridget Tennyson, the age inappropriate wife of Lord Edward Tennyson. At the novel’s opening the two have already embarked on an affair. Rudy arrives on the fictional Elysian Island off the coast of St. Lucia to further pursue the romance with Bridget under her husband’s nose. Elysian Island is Lord Tennyson’s private Eden or, at least, was until the British aristocrat squandered his wealth. In a bid to get back on track financially, Tennyson hires Rudy on Bridget’s recommendation to ghost write his memoirs. It’s a lucrative opportunity for the struggling journalist Rudy as well as a means to further his tryst with Bridget.

Bridget is no pure woman of leisure or kept trophy bride, she owns and manages a highly successful stock-trading firm on the island. That firm deals heavily with the Elysian Island Company, the corporation that has essentially bought out Lord Tennyson to create a hideaway for the mega-rich. The marriage between the Tennysons is all but dead, and it feels as though Rudy enters into this world to be the final nail in the coffin. Tension is inescapable as Tennyson’s insistence to write his tell-all memoir sets him (and Rudy by proxy) against the Elysian Island Company and Bridget.

But soon enough what appears to be the major plot of the novel–can Rudy juggle an affair and the lucrative freelance opportunity without getting bogged down in the melodrama of the ultra-rich—vanishes. A murder of a local Elysian Island celebrity changes the tone of the novel. Soon Rudy is being framed for the murder and feels compelled not only to investigate to clear his name but to somehow bring justice to the dead woman.

It feels odd that a freelance journalist would feel the drive to not just wash his hands of the entire ordeal once his name is cleared. As the novel points out, “There’s a big difference between being an investigative reporter and a crime investigator.” Rudy soon discovers this fact and while it seems strange that he time and again refuses each and every opportunity given to him to leave this drama behind (and there are several), Williams shows us Rudy’s motivation by constantly providing a rich psychological monologue within his hero. Rudy’s internal narrative is given to us warts and all:

“Rudy was bewildered by it all. What confounded him the most was that he couldn’t tell where or not it was all being done in jest or if perhaps there was some sort of parodic subtext to the whole serio-comic farce.”

And again when Rudy finds himself at a party hosted by his mistress and patron:

“He felt like an outsider, which was somewhat unusual for him. He was normally at ease in social gatherings and mingled freely. He took pleasure in seeing people warm up to him. No, for the first time, he felt inhibited and emotionally detached from the people around him. They made him feel inadequate, despite their cordiality. He wasn’t sure if they were the problem or if it was him and this was what irritated him.”

When the murder takes place and Rudy begins to dig into it, he soon realizes that he is well out of his element. Suddenly the story is no longer about an affair and the machinations of the wealthy on their private island, but a tour through the seedy crime world of St. Lucia. Paradise is abandoned as Rudy discovers not just murder, but human trafficking, drug cartels, and cybercrime on an international scale.

When the story moves from the fictional Elysian Island to the ‘mainland’ town of Soufriere, the action and suspense get revved up. It is here, also, that the narrative acquires the characters I hope will show up in later Dread Desires books. There’s Trini the ex-detective and St. Lucia insider, Ras Isley a deft and fearless cabby, bored playboy Aaron Ashdown, Lord Tennyson’s personal assistant Vernon, and Amin a computer wiz kid. The eventual conclusion of Rudy’s investigation and his attempt to exonerate himself gives us so many more pieces to play with that future books from Williams should be quite fun.

I have but two major negative criticisms of the novel. First, throughout much of the novel the point of view is through Rudy’s perspective. There are times that Williams shifts perspective to another character (Bridget or Trini) in order to move the story along before returning to Rudy. Yet this maneuver feels forced and out of joint with the rest of the narrative. I like the idea and think it would work better if it was used with more regularly as does George RR Martin, but to simply do it haphazardly weakens the storytelling. Second, the story does a good feint like most solid detective fiction does with its initial plot. All noir gives you the surface tension underneath which the real story is taking place. However, Between Two Fires felt like it became the novel it wanted to be only by its last third.


I certainly believe that Williams will provide an even stronger follow-up. There’s no reason not to read Williams’ novel if you are a fan of crime thrillers or murder mystery. It’s wonderfully refreshing to have a new locale and a new take on a tried and true formula.


A Review by Rosaliene Bacchus for Three Worlds One Vision
Between Two Fires by Caribbean author Toni Williams is the first book in his crime noir trilogy, Dread Desires. Williams takes us to the fictitious Elysian Island off the coast of Saint Lucia. Driven by desire for another man’s wife, Rudy Phillips, a struggling black British journalist, pursues her to their exclusive paradise.

Rudy is no stranger to the region. Born in Saint Lucia, he was nine when he migrated to England. Still single at thirty-four, he sports shoulder-length dreadlocks and a pencil mustache and beard. Oozing sexy charm, he’s a success with the ladies. No woman before has captured his mind, heart, and body like Bridget – the beautiful, white American wife of a British aristocrat, Lord Edward Henry Tennyson, thirty-two years her senior.

After meeting the couple in London during an assignment for a local tabloid, Rudy had a two-week-long liaison with Bridget. Believing that he could free Bridget from her unhappy marriage and claim her as his own, Rudy accepts her husband’s invitation to spend two months, all expenses paid, on Elysian Island.

Author Toni Williams is a master at submerging us into life on the privately-owned, three-square-mile island bought and developed by Edward. Among its residents are rich and famous Americans, European nobility, and upper-class Brits. In contrast to the affluence of “the fairy-tale land of ineffable beauty,” the village where the local workers live takes Rudy “back in time about a hundred years.”

Rudy soon realizes that Bridget isn’t the vulnerable and helpless type of woman he could control and dominate. A stockbroker by profession, she’s a highly successful entrepreneur with personal wealth. Her condescending treatment makes him feel like “some glorified poodle.” She placates him with affirmations of her love and tells him to trust her. She knows “what [they] must do in order to make things happen.”

Having agreed to ghostwrite Edward’s memoir, Rudy is frustrated in not getting face time with the sixty-seven-year-old, eccentric, and unpredictable aristocrat. To make matters worse, Edward’s announcement about writing his memoir has caused great consternation among some of the island’s privileged residents…including Bridget and her close American friends.

When an attractive, young, local woman is found brutally murdered, Rudy’s surreal lavish lifestyle is shattered. Framed for the murder, he sets out to find her killer to clear his innocence and salvage his image and reputation.

In Rudy’s quest to find the murderer, the author peels back Elysian’s veneer of beauty and respectability. The underbelly of the island paradise is laid bare: cyber-crime, drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking for commercial sex and prostitution. The two worlds feed each other.

Williams captures all the nuances of navigating both worlds and the complexities of human interactions. People are not always what they appear to be. Financially independent women are not easily tamed. Entrapped by his desires like a crab in a crab-hunting bamboo trap, Rudy has a lot to learn about women and their wiles.



Between Two Fires
First of all I would like to thank Goodreads, the author and publisher for awarding me this book. Thanks
I looked at my to be read list on Saturday and decided I should get started reading this novel ( I do not like to wait to long after I received the novels in the mail). I sat on my veranda and read the whole thing in one sitting all 466 pages. It has been years since I have done that. What a great summer read .
The book flowed and obviously kept me interested. What an enjoyable story. Again thanks so much