Click here to buy this book! Kindle Edition Lulu Merlin Fraser Amazon. Lulu Category:  Mystery/Suspense Publisher: A.I.G. Associates Type: Fiction Pages: 292 Copyright: June 2010 ISBN-13: 9781445751269 Story two of the Inner Space trilogy moves into the Paranormalworld where regression to past lives may hold the key to what is happing here in the present.   Sleep deprivation is considered by many Governments to be a legitimate tool of interrogation, applied scientifically it will ultimately overcome the strongest of mental ability. Taken to extreme or in an uncaring hand the mind can be damaged beyond repair.   Self inflicted… the destruction of the mind can be equally assured.     Imagine how you would feel waking up in a strange bed in a strange place and finding blood on your hands. Even worse, you have no idea of where you are, how you got there, or why!   Deborah Patterson doesn’t have to imagine such a nightmare… she’s living it. Something or somebody is taking over her mind and her body. With dreams so frightening she has to stay awake to avoid them.     Follow another case for newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Nick Burton.  Called back from leave to cover staff shortages due to a flu epidemic Nick soon discovers that there is no such thing as a routine murder.   As the bodies pile up he struggles to find a decent motive; could it be, as some suggest, just family rivalry…Or perhaps a hostile business takeover by the Russian Mafia.  Or is it something completely different?   His investigations lead him into inter departmental conflict and he crosses swords with Special Branch and falls foul of his own superior officers. The fact that he suspects corruption at the highest level of the police force doesn’t endear him to anyone.   Trouble mounts with every new step in his investigation leaving him with his finger pointing at the most unlikely suspect ever, much to the annoyance of the woman he loves and may lose if he is not extremely careful.         Excerpt Chapter 1 Unremarkable! I suppose if you were suddenly put on a spot and had to choose a single word to describe Deborah Patterson, that would be it. You would not have chosen the word in a cruel way, it merely meant that she didn’t stand out in a crowd. Now in her early fifties, for anybody that bothered to look there were telltale lines etched around the eyes on a face, pretty rather than beautiful, that foretold a life that had had its fair share of pain and sorrow. However, you could see pride and achievement there as well. It showed in her very bearing; the blue eyes were clear and sharp, the head held high above a petite body well cared for but well hidden under her every day clothes, which, it had to be said, were equally unremarkable. It was as if she deliberately went out of her way not to draw any unnecessary attention to herself. That said, for the most part she was exactly like the rest of us, merely placing one foot in front of the other from one end of life to the other in the vain hope that we may achieve something of meaning or at the very least have some fun along the way. She led an unremarkable life; long since divorced, she had created her own snug little world. She had her independence, her little house, a little car, and she had Buddy, her ginger tomcat. She had a wonderful daughter, whom she adored, now sadly away at a university and rapidly developing a life of her own; but to fill the loneliness, she had her little job at a local supermarket that helped pay the bills. Now thanks to an online dating website, she had met the first decent man she had had in a long time. Before signing up to the site, a friend had remarked, “Be warned my dear; you’ll have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.” The friend had been right, but things were definitely looking up… that was until today! Today was distinctly different. Today, the inner confidence was replaced with confusion tinged with more than a little fear. She found herself sitting naked on the edge of a strange bed looking at a strange image in the big mirror on the opposite wall. The face and the body were hers, but what the hell had she done to her hair? It had been cut short, badly, as if she had done it herself with a pair of blunt scissors. The colour was different too, it was much darker than it should be. But even more to the point; where the hell was she? In a hotel room, that much was obvious, a nervous glance in the mirror at the state of the bed told her that she had slept alone. This came as a great relief, losing your mind or your memory is one thing; but she hadn’t lost her memory, or at least not all of it. She knew her name and could think of a hundred related things about her life, her daughter, her job. “Oh Hell! My job, what time is it”, she looked for her watch and couldn’t find it. Her eyes tore round the room until settling on a battered old alarm clock on the far side of the bed. It said quarter to ten, but was that morning or night? She rose and wandered to the window, and pulled the curtain back a crack. The daylight hit her eyes, making her shut the curtains quickly as she staggered back into the darkened room. Well, that was that, nearly ten o’clock in the morning, late for work and the assured argument with that bitch of a supervisor to look forward to later. She wandered into the tiny bathroom and ran some water into the basin, but as she put her hands into the warm water the blood froze in her veins. The water was turning pink as she rubbed her hands together. Quickly, she pulled her hands out of the water and looked at them more closely. There was no cut or old wound, but there was a distinct dark red staining over much of her right hand and lower forearm. She tore at the wrapping covering the ridiculously tiny bar of soap in the wash hand basin and plunged her hands back into the water scrubbing at the dark stains. She started to feel sick as the water turned a deeper shade of pink and headed towards red. Suddenly, washing her hands was not enough, she looked at the shower unit in the corner and turned the water full on. Testing the temperature, she stepped under the hot flow of water and let it hit her full in the face. As she eased forward stooping below the showerhead, a new sensation hit her and she nearly screamed as this water too changed colour. Not, red, thank God, but brown as it streamed over her body. Some form of cheap theatrical hair dye flooded out of her hair, over her body and down the drain. Twisting and turning this way and that, she scrubbed every inch of herself with that stupid little bar of soap until the stains disappeared and the water ran clear. Drained emotionally, she towelled herself dry and went in search of her clothes; only these weren’t her clothes. These were the clothes of an old woman, they were rough country clothes and they were not too clean; they smelled of… well, she didn’t want to dwell on what they smelled like. She found a bag of sorts pushed slightly under the bed, and was somewhat relieved to at least find her car keys and a small purse that she recognized as hers. In the purse there were a few pounds in cash and her credit cards. No problem when checking out then. She checked the room thoroughly looking in every drawer, nook and cranny for what? Well, anything, but she came up empty-handed. That rough bag and these clothes was it, all she had in the world; well this world anyway. With a mighty intake of breath, it was time to face the other world, the one outside that door. Picking up the room key, one final glance around the room and she let herself out and into the dimly lit passage beyond. There was a small green illuminated EXIT sign on a doorway to her left, and that was the way she went. As she walked, nothing looked remotely familiar, she pushed the heavy door open and walked into a small brightly lit reception area, where a disinterested young girl sat flicking through a magazine while filing her nails. The girl looked up and the bored expression never changed ,and in between chewing gum she said in a distinctive Irish accent, “You leaving us today then, Mrs. Weaver?” Deborah’s mind raced, who the hell is Mrs. Weaver? “Err! Yes; yes I’ll be checking out, thank you, Err! Can I have my bill?” The girl’s expression hardly changed, the slow constant chewing reminded Deborah of a cow chewing the cud, and she wanted to say so but didn’t. “And what bill would that be then? You paid for your room when you checked in, don’t you remember? It’s one of the rules.” Deborah didn’t remember, but in sheer relief she said, “Yes, yes of course. It’s old age, my dear; forgive me, well if there’s nothing more, I’ll be on my way; good day to you.” The girl said nothing more; the rhythm of her chewing continued unhindered as she watched Deborah’s back disappear out through the front door. With a slow shake of her head, the one reserved by the young when confronted by anything beyond their comprehension or anyone over the age of thirty, she went back to the serious business of filing her nails and reading the latest gossip in her magazine. Deborah, on the other hand, was extremely alert; she scanned the parking lot until she spotted her little car. She found it parked in a far corner under a big ugly sign that read ‘Barge Inn B & B,’ and there was a picture of a canal barge just in case the reader was too dumb to get the play on words. She moved quickly to her car and got in, appearing a lot more confident than she felt given the circumstances. Her first impulse was to get as far away from here and go home as quickly as possible. But at the same time, her natural curiosity was to find out where the hell she was. It might be important in helping to establish the whys and wherefores later. She thought of calling work, but couldn’t face the ‘tut tutting’ and teeth sucking noises that would accompany the explanation for her absence that morning, which was… what, exactly? Yet another good reason to wait and face the music head on tomorrow. She drove out of the parking lot and stopped at the road, more decisions; left or right? She looked for clues, a main street or a sign of some shape or description. But the only thing she could see was a half-hidden board announcing the Canal View Tea Rooms and directions as to how to get there from the Pay & Display car park. She waited for a car to pass, and then turned left and drove down the narrow road. The road seemed to be going somewhere. There was the Car Park and sure enough the advertised Tea Rooms, looking a bit sad and in need of a lick of paint. Around a sharp bend, the road narrowed, and she came to an abrupt halt faced with a set of traffic lights. When they turned green, she drove on as the road rose sharply up and over the canal, but shortly after that was the end of her journey. All of a sudden, the road stopped at what looked like a tiny boatyard on one side, and on the right it doubled back on itself into a gravel covered area with a jetty and a set of wooden lock gates beyond. Tied up alongside, she could just see a couple of brightly painted narrow boats moored on the far side, waiting presumably to go through the lock. Well! She thought to herself, that explains the Barge Inn, there’s the canal, but which canal? Should she get out and inquire…but at this very moment in time did, would she really want to draw attention to herself? Probably not. She turned the car around and drove back the way she had come, back past the Barge Inn and onwards to civilization; and home.

Merlin Fraser's second novel.
The Reluctant Nemesis.
Book Two in the Merlin Fraser Inner Space Murder Mystery Trilogy.

There is nothing quite like the warm feeling of smugness when you work out the why’s and the wherefore’s in a book before the writer brings the story to a conclusion. However, there is nothing worse than the instant deflation of knowing you got it hopelessly wrong. Don’t you just hate it when that happens ?
Of course wrong footing the reader is a necessary talent when writing murder mysteries and Merlin Fraser seems to have this talent in Spades!
I was intrigued when in his first Inner Space book, Fraser told us who ‘Dun It’ within the first few pages, intrigued enough to read on if only to find out what the rest of the book was about, I was not disappointed. The introduction of a paranormal twist to the storyline brought a whole new dimension to what otherwise might have been just another crime related pot boiler and leads the reader on a rollercoaster of twists and turns to a surprising conclusion.
I’m pleased to say that you will find book number Two, ‘The Reluctant Nemesis’ no less captivating. In this story Fraser plays with both us and his central police detective Nick Burton by blending a fascinating mix of bizarre murders with the most unlikely suspect you could ever imagine.
It could of course just be pure coincidence, only Nick Burton hates coincidences, doesn’t believe in them and besides it’s the only suspect he has.
The paranormal theme this time delves into the phenomena of regression to past lives and to Nick’s girlfriend the clues and solution to this mystery may lie there and suddenly being a simple policeman out to get the bad guys is no longer enough.
This book is genre blending at its finest, there is something here for everyone, when modern science hits reality head on there is bound to be conflict. Nick Burton down to earth policeman is again out of his depth in a supernatural world he knows nothing about and is not sure he believes any of it.
However, people are dying and someone must be brought to book!