Welcome to my spot on the tour for The Kidney Killer by M. M. Hudson! Thanks to the author and Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for a chance to feature this on my blog.
The Kidney Killer by M M Hudson
Publication: Penfold Books, November 2020
Genre: Police Procedural
A kidnap, a theft, and a murderous moon-worshipping cult: Detective Sergeant Milburn has his work cut out to solve several cases that all appear at once.
Milburn’s job is trickier as both victims are friends with his girlfriend. He desperately needs to solve the cases but has to keep his personal involvement secret. With the clock ticking down on the fate of the second missing woman, the pressure ramps up.
Penfold, the detective’s enigmatic surfer friend, is called on to help investigate. His puzzle-solving genius helps sift real clues from red herrings. The struggle for leads is constant, until it becomes clear that Penfold and Milburn are, in fact, central to all the crimes.
This is the second Penfold mystery novel, set in Durham in the north of England. (From author’s website)
From The Kidney Killer:
Milburn parked at the top corner of the Passport Office’s car park, where the River Wear bends to the north-east as it escapes from Durham City. He looked upriver and then up onto the city’s central peninsula. Durham’s iconic landmarks climbed darkly towards heaven. The Norman cathedral stood high and mighty on the hill within a river loop. It gazed down with an air of haughty strength, as if it might be saying, ‘What is a dead body in the river when I have looked down on that bank for a thousand years?’ Huge and simple, as if it were the construction of a giant infant with monstrous blocks, the cathedral couldn’t be ignored. From anywhere in the city, it attracted the eye and gripped the attention. And yet it did nothing. It stood there looking massive and important, but also seemed mute and impotent.
More interested was the adjacent 11th century castle: a complex and sprawling variety of towers, keeps, walls and battlements. With a slightly darker brown hue and muted corners, it was a much more concerned building than its ecclesiastical colleague. Tony could sense the castle saying, ‘It’ll be all right, son. You concentrate carefully and work hard and everything will come out fine in the end. You just see if it doesn’t.’
A large crowd was up against the railings and, beyond, a couple of PCs were trying to keep them off the riverbank itself. Tony pushed through the mob to the bars against which the people were crushing themselves. It would be quite a jump down to the mud at the side of the river where the fishermen’s gear had been discarded. Diane Meredith was talking to them. She’d moved them away from the crowd about 20 yards downriver. The wind was tousling Meredith’s black bob where it descended from her round hat. Occasionally, she put her hand on top of her head to hold the hat against the wind.
Bob Smith, a great big beast of a copper, was standing beside a green plastic groundsheet, which seemed to be hovering six inches off the ground like a magic carpet. Except at the four corners which were held down with big stones.
It was occasionally sunny, but Penfold had been right about the wind. It had turned more towards the north-west and brought grey clouds in quickly but chaotically. The sky seemed uncertain whether it wanted to be overcast or clear. The resulting melee in the sky mirrored the crowd’s moving and shoving, as if the clouds were also vying to get a look under the fisherman’s groundsheet.
Across the river, perhaps only 30 yards away, the professional news photographers had a clear view of the scene, and there wouldn’t be a chance to block it until the scene examiners turned up with a tent. It was lucky that Sue had been found by people who carried a corpse sheet with them. Milburn wondered if the anglers realised the morbidness of this.
He made the jump down to the muddy bank and walked slowly over to the sheet. The thought of looking underneath scared him – seeing a young woman he’d known mutilated was not why Tony had joined up. He knelt at a corner of the sheet away from the crowd, leant his head right down to the ground, shifted the stone, and lifted the sheet perhaps only an inch. It was only when he could see nothing that he realised that he’d shut his eyes.
With a deep breath and a grimace that would put him on the front page of the tabloids, Milburn forced one eye open and peered into the dark green muddy void. Like a full moon, he saw a white blob. He relaxed a little and opened the second eye. It was a big toe: clean, white, and not at all cut up. This anticlimax eased Tony, and leaning down further, he pulled the sheet higher to look over the length of the body. From that corner, there wasn’t too much to see. A naked female body with blood spattered over most of the torso. He couldn’t make out anything further north than the breasts and didn’t want to take the chance of lifting the sheet any higher.
Replacing the corner, he put the rock back on it and continued squatting to try to think of the next move. His brain suggested it might not be Sue, as he couldn’t make out the face. Tony made a conscious effort to eradicate this submission. He had to be ready for the worst, and if by some miracle it did turn out to be some other poor woman, that would be a personal relief.
Buy the book!
www.amazon.com/Kidney-Killer-Penfold-Detective-Story-ebook/
About M. M. Hudson
Notionally, I’m a school physics teacher. I’ve worked in a variety of schools in north-east England and started recently as the PGCE Physics tutor at Newcastle Uni. I also write a whole load of textbook materials for schools, my biggest titles being A Level Physics books for Edexcel exam board courses.
And I’m the inventor of the Best Fit Line Ruler. I ran a small business making and selling those but after ten years and 50,000 rulers, I’ve stopped making them.
I have a major passion for writing fiction. My future-set series of novels, starting with 2089, is about a gently post-apocalyptic, Orwellian future England. You could say ‘sci-fi’, but it’s not really lasers and spaceships; ‘dystopian’ catches the themes well.
I’ve also developed a great series of detective novels featuring the duo Penfold and DS Tony Milburn. Based in Durham City CID, DS Milburn and his civilian foil, the kiwi surfer, Penfold, solve cases that take in high stakes such as murder and big heists, but in a very cerebral way. Holmes and Watson for the 21st Century, if you will. (from author’s website)
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