*WIP NEW FICTION*
I have commenced a new novel - this time it is Domestic- Noir/Crime fiction. My working title is The Tattooed City and I have just registered the title on Instagram.
NOVEL OUTLINE
Premise: Clare is devastated after losing her husband, hitting his head on a rock at the beach, concussed and ultimately dies from bleeding on the brain, leaving her with four young children to raise. She is an ex-conveyancing clerk who worked for solicitors, Baldwin, Jones & Coulter. She misses working for them, but is unable to return to work as she cannot afford childcare, and mother and mother-in-law are either too busy with their lives, (Grace, her mother, is a cruise ship tragic and Eva runs a vintage upholstery business), William, her father-in-law can’t be trusted and so any of the three can’t mind the children. William is a country sales rep, always on the road and likes to dally with the ladies of small towns. Clare having attended and passed a Tafe Upholstery course has on occasions re-upholstered vintage (Georgian & Edwardian) furniture (mainly chairs) but the work is slow and laborious. Eva also uses Clare’s upholstery skills to revitalize some of her workshop’s vintage furniture paying only small fees, so Clare needs to continue her privileged lifestyle. She’s on the look-out for a new partner, someone with wealth, or is comfortably well-off or perhaps a professional earning a high income. As a gym junkie and to keep her already trim figure in shape she works out at the Lord Forrest Stadium three times a week. It is at the stadium that she meets Alistair, the Sports Manager, part basketball trainer and part-time barista. Clare falls for him big time – only to find out later that he is not separated but still married with two children. Talk has erupted around the stadium about their intimacy, their close liaisons, their joking and flirting and their coffee meetings together in the open foyer. A scene will show Alistair’s wife Joanna telling Clare to bugger off and leave her husband alone. The affair ends, leaving Clare ready to try ONLINE DATING!!! A series of bad dates, sexual deviants, unconventional men, badly-behaved men and ugly liars ensues. In a period of a pandemic shutdown,(another Covid), Clare dates Joel through online dating, meeting him secretly in his car, inviting him over for a beer and of course, they make love, often. He’s good looking, dark hair and beard, has beautiful teeth, is flirty and cheeky, However, he is only twenty-two and soon moves on to younger women. Clare then falls for José, a Spanish guy who promises her the world, until he starts asking for money. Clare talks to James Coulter (her old boss) who finds out for her that some of the money she has sent him will never be recovered. She reports him or whoever he is to the authorities to label him a scammer. Later, at the swimming pool, part of the Lord Forrest Stadium, she talks to a young guy named Brock, a treelopper, who owns his own garden-maintenance business. He hands her a business card seeking a job in garden maintenance. Seemingly innocent, although he’s covered in tattoos, Clare engages his services to help tidy her property. Brock, a person who is totally different to what he seems, becomes obsessed with Clare. He sends her text messages, pictures of his naked body and basically scares her with his persistent telephone calls and turning up personally in the front yard of her home. Later, he resorts to constant drive-bys. He stalks her incessantly. Clare buys a gun, joins a rifle range and practices each Saturday until she is so proficient shooting bullseyes at the target’s heart on a regular basis. She invites him over one afternoon after one of his persistent visits, something goes terribly wrong and at the end of the novel, the police drag his decayed body from the city’s muddy river. He is not shot, rather his head is decapitated!
In the novel, I create a parallel story of various murders. Men with all-over body or arm tattoos, ear & nose studs, unemployed, couch-surfers in particular, are being found floating in the Swan River, at the beach, in swampy lakes, like Lake Monger and Lake Goolellal with their right hand or other body parts decapitated. Sergeant Max Schultz and Detective Angela Macri are commissioned on the job to find the killer or killers. This by-story will be dragged out until the very end of the novel. Angela turns out to be an old high school friend of Clare’s. When they eventually meet, there is instant recognition, yet suspicion after finding Brock decapitated by his own whipper-snipper.
