It’s Launch Day! An Empty Vessel by Vaughan Mason is out now.
Hang on a minute. By Vaughan Mason?
Yes, you read that right. For those of you who read The Beatrice Stubbs Series, you may remember some references to a fictional author, famous for his 1950s novella An Empty Vessel. Critics lauded Vaughan Mason’s insight and sensitivity regarding the role of women in society. He became the darling of the London’s literati and lived off his reputation for decades, until he was murdered in a Devonshire village. Only in do we learn the true provenance of An Empty Vessel.
After eight contemporary crime novels featuring Beatrice Stubbs, I was itching to try something different. The story within a story of An Empty Vessel appealed to the writer in me.
Why not experiment with literary/historical fiction and try out a new voice?
So here it is.
An Empty Vessel
Today’s the day Nancy Maidstone is going to hang.
In her time, she’s been a wartime evacuee, land-girl, slaughterhouse worker, supermarket assistant, Master Butcher and defendant accused of first degree murder. Now she’s a prisoner condemned to death. A first time for everything.
The case has made all the front pages. Speculation dominates every conversation from bar to barbershop to bakery. Why did she do it? How did she do it? Did she actually do it at all? Her physical appearance and demeanour in court has sparked the British public’s imagination, so everyone has an opinion on Nancy Maidstone.
The story of a life and a death, of a post-war world which never had it so good, of a society intent on a bright, shiny future, and of a woman with blood on her hands.
This is the story of Nancy Maidstone.
“From its chilling opening as a death sentence is passed, this book had me gripped. The 1950s setting, the entirely believable characters and the tight plot all held me as, fully engrossed, for the first time I went in the wrong direction on the Tube. Thoroughly recommended”. – Dr Alison Baverstock, Associate Professor of Publishing, Kingston University, London
Introductory ebook price of £2.99. Paperback due out in April.
PS: The next in The Beatrice Stubbs Series will be released in June 2019.