A NOIR THRILLER. A DOOMED ROMANCE.Blood Rain in Trieste combines genres into a page-turning, action-packed drama, so fasten your seat belt and be carried along by the volatile relationship of two emotionally damaged souls that isn't a stairway to heaven but a scary rollercoaster.Let the story sweep you along from the assassination of a Taliban leader in Afghanistan through the simmering ethnic violence of the Balkans to the seedy underbelly of Trieste, the least-Italian city, tucked away where the Pope cannot find it on a map.A mysterious, seductive woman who disturbingly resembles Milo's dead wife, sashays her curves into his music club, flashes her sparkling, emerald eyes, licks her pillows of red lips, and offers him a lot of cash to make her blackmailer "disappear." He's intrigued but who is she? Why him? Does she know about his violent past?Milo, a former Canadian Intelligence agent, is hooked, and she reels him into Trieste's criminal underworld where he soon discovers she's big trouble: the catalyst for his confrontations with her insanely protective brother, other mob families, religious zealots, and the police.When he discovers her duplicity and his life is under threat from all sides, is the woman he's fallen in love with worth the trouble? I'm a fan of the noir novels of writers such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, in which self-destructive protagonists swim in a sea of corruption towards lose-lose situations on a distant dark shore. However, I'm far more optimistic than that: I add humour and the hope of love to my thrillers. Don't expect pat endings-I've noticed that life doesn't serve them up very often.Influenced by the Philip Kerr's hard Berlin detective, Bernie Gunther, Robert Wilson's fixer and debt collector, Bruce Medway, and Len Deighton's insubordinate spy, Harry Palmer, I paint morally pragmatic protagonists, such as the witty Milo Marchetti, into fast-paced thrillers with memorable characters, including disturbing women for love interest.I grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and after obtaining a PhD in neurophysiology at the University of Sheffield worked in research at the University of California. I became a professor at the University of Toronto, Canada, before settling into teaching for thirty years at a college in British Columbia. Retired, I reside with Janet on Vancouver Island.Well-travelled, I love the thrill of visiting foreign countries (about fifty so far) to experience their geography and cultures and write them into his stories. Blood Rain in Trieste (2015) was written after an exciting trip through Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Bosnia and Serbia. Recycled Love (2017) is based upon a trip across the fabulous mayhem of India to the calm of the sherpas in Nepal, including a trek up to Everest Base Camp.I began serious writing in 2010 after visiting Trieste in Italy. I knew little about the craft but I believe in learning by doing. Blood Rain in Trieste is really a project that evolved over five years into the story of an anti-hero in a doomed romance. I wanted to write something entertaining along the noir lines of Chandler and Hammett but in the more modern style of Philip Kerr-with more romance. After visiting India and Nepal, Recycled Love was a detour into a story less noir with more romance and a spiritual twist. Currently, I'm finishing a sequel (Trieste Series #2) to Blood Rain in Trieste which attempts to not only entertain but educate in the Philip Kerr style of his Bernie Gunther novels. Trieste Series #3 is planned for 2024 and a new thriller set in Vancouver and the West Indies for 2026.
