New Books: Blood Diamonds

NEW BOOK: BLOOD DIAMONDS by Ed Lynskey
July 2012. Crossroad Press.

Digital List Price: $3.99

I’m intrigued by the idea of a criminal serving a long prison sentence and, after getting released, going back to their old stomping grounds. In Blood Diamonds, a thief named Jacquie Mantooth does a nine-year bit for a diamond heist. After she gates out of prison, she returns looking for Jonas Blades, her partner-in-crime who also happened to have given her up to the authorities to save his own hide.

Foolishly, he’s kept the hot rocks hidden away. Suspecting as much, Jacquie who’s kept quiet says she’s willing to let bygones be bygones, if Jonas coughs up all the diamonds for her. He agrees but needs some time to get them. She gives him twenty-four hours. Or else her goon brother Cullen will be coming to have a chat with Jonas. And the narrative takes off from there.

Blood Diamonds was a lot of fun to do. I set up the nuts-and-bolts of the heist based on a recent newspaper article I happened across on Google News. The diamond heist’s planning and execution take place in the middle, and also largest, section. I cast Jacquie as a 21^st-century femme fatale who is able to sucker Jonas into her ambitious criminal plans.

Of course to facilitate the hold up, she has to enlist the aid of an inside man, Mr. Buggs, a greedy diamonds courier. I used the third act to put the contestants in a savage four-way scramble to see who winds up with the diamonds.

Blood Diamonds is my second stand alone crime novel set in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. , after Ask the Dice appeared last November. Lately, I’ve used mostly fictional cities, and the area seems to have become my new favorite setting for my novels since I have a few more in the pipeline.

Ed Lynskey

Twitter: @edlynskey

Kindle users: http://is.gd/aMK9G3

Nook users: http://is.gd/k8gDRL