She's ex-MI5.
MI5 wants her dead.
Who can she trust?
False Connections
by Steve Sheppard
Genre: Thriller, Action
"Thriller
addicts won't be disappointed"
"Steve Sheppard has created another great character in Mel Milano."
Three years ago, Mel Milano was an MI5 intelligence officer
with a promising career. Then, during a routine protection and surveillance
operation in Wales, things went drastically wrong and three people died,
including Mel’s partner and fiancé, Liam Webster.
Drummed out of the service on trumped-up charges by MI5 Deputy Director, Sarah
Brook, Mel lost her career, her self-respect, her confidence and her fiancé.
Nothing made sense.
Three years on, she is rebuilding her life, working for a private security
outfit.
But she’s never forgiven the way she was dumped by MI5. One day she’ll discover
the truth about Brook and what was really going on.
Now, though, it’s clear that Mel’s not the only one still holding a grudge.
Suddenly everybody seems to want her dead. But why?
On the run from MI5, is there anyone Mel
can trust to help her uncover the past?
The door opens noisily, bringing with it a gust of
chilly air. I turn on my stool, expecting to see Adam. I’m formulating some
sort of suitably sarcastic barb. It’s not Adam, however. Instead, two men have
entered. Strangers. Adam once said he found it odd that so many people he
didn’t know came to The Crown but the place is his choice and I don’t come here
so often that I’m going to know all the regulars. I look away from the new
arrivals but immediately feel a tap on my shoulder. I’m never happy when strange
men think they have the right to touch me and I tense, my hand gripping the
whiskey glass slightly more tightly.
Still, it isn’t the time and place to make
a scene so I relax again and look at the man who’s tapped me on the shoulder.
He’s about forty, similar height to me, dark suit and tie, blond hair trimmed
to within an inch of its life, and he’s holding a warrant card. I may not know
all the regulars of The Crown but I thought I knew all the local coppers. There
aren’t many and I’ve had dealings with most of them during the past year, one
way or another. This guy is not an East Hampshire plod though. Behind him and
to one side, his colleague, younger, bigger, also fair-haired, is staring at me
with tight little eyes. A bully’s eyes. He looks like he’s itching for a fight.
In other circumstances, I might have been happy to oblige but Kaylee had
clearly been round the bar with a cloth and cleanser before opening and I
wouldn’t want to bloody her handiwork. Nor would the subsequent paperwork have
appealed.
Detective Sergeant Aaron Walcott, I read on
the warrant card. Metropolitan Police. He’s off his patch. He says nothing so I
say nothing right back at him. It’s definitely up to Walcott to start the
conversational ball rolling so I pick up my glass and drain it. I don’t want to
waste any bourbon if this plays out as I’m beginning to think it might.
Eventually he speaks. Maybe he was
rehearsing his lines. ‘Miss Melanie Marie Milano?’ he says.
Steve
Sheppard was born and grew up in Surrey before moving to Buckinghamshire and
then to Oxfordshire, where he spent a quarter of a century living in an
idiosyncratic village that was the affectionate inspiration for his fourth
book, Lazytown. He now lives
in Hampshire. He spent forty years starting to write books but not finishing
them, until belatedly realising that the key is not to give up. The other thing
he has since learned is that he should have become a celebrity before writing a
book, as this would have made selling it much easier.
False Connections is Steve’s fifth book, but the first one written as a straight thriller and not primarily as a comedy, although it does contain humour. He hopes it will be the first of a series featuring feisty, funny but flawed ex-MI5 agent, Mel Milano. He also has three spy thrillers with laughs to his name, all published by Claret Press: A Very Important Teapot (2019), set in Australia, Bored to Death in the Baltics (2021), not set in Australia, and Poor Table Manners (2024), which takes place in Cape Town. These feature an initially fairly hapless hero, Dawson, and a considerably less hapless heroine, Lucy, together with varied supporting casts, most of whom are not who they claim to be. Steve’s fourth book is an out-and-out comedy-murder-mystery, Lazytown (2025).
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