LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
An intricate and entertaining debut crime thriller set in Los Angeles. Mandy, a male, British, ex actor, ex cop, now private investigator has little regard for the sanctity of crime scenes and all too easily falls in love with a pretty face but, as you get to know him you will warm to him. With a large number of characters to get to grips with, it does initially feel as though you've entered half way through a series as for the most part you are kept in the dark as to their background story. A particularly knotty plot line ensures your brain has a strenuous workout yet inspite of that it's a page turning read. But be prepared, with an almost old-time sleuth feel to the tale laced with dark humour, you need to take a break from reality and hit the ground running in this enjoyably diverting read.
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The Santa Monica Suicide Club Synopsis
A powerful and complex debut crime novel, revealing a glamorous city, with a dark
underbelly where people are purely a commodity and everyone is disposable.
Notes on The SMSC. Episode One: Setting and Places. from Blue Baltic Press on Vimeo.
A drowned man with a UK passport between his teeth is discovered inside a suitcase on Santa Monica beach, with both his eyes and tongue cut out. One week earlier, the 28 year old son of a wealthy Mexican is found butchered in his Ocean Avenue apartment.
The local Santa Monica crime rate may have dropped but not the one for homicide. Ex-cop, ex-pat, ex actor, Private Investigator Mandy (lover of junk food, an old Volvo, black cat and his young tenant) never expected to be hired by the murdered Mexican man’s family. There was no way they wanted the local police involved but why choose him? And why did the less than friendly Police Chief agree to give him a ten-day head start on his own men?
Then a significant witness turns up hanged, the corpse yielding a disturbing clue. Mandy soon realizes that his investigations have only uncovered the tip of an iceberg, and made him the target of perpetrators far more sinister and powerful than he could have ever imagined…
The Santa Monica Suicide Club is a real institution but one where it’s members try to stay alive.
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Press Reviews
Jeremy C. Thomas Press Reviews
’The SMSC is a thoroughly enjoyable detective race across LA, with bodies and dames and all the human wreckage. Old-school hardboiled gumshoe, meets CSI. There are even Sternwoods thrown in for the afficionados. And a red Volvo Amazon.' A.L. Kennedy
'What happens when a failed British actor reinvents himself as Los Angeles private eye? In Jeremy Thomas’s thrilling page-turner/ hugely entertaining novel the answer is murder, mayhem and darkly comic misadventure. Bring on the inevitable TV series. "A terrific idea brought vividly to life with a cast of dubious but highly entertaining characters. A cracking thriller that recalls Michael Connelly.' Henry Fitzherbert. Sunday Express
'Jeremy Thomas’s Santa Monica Suicide Club is an intriguing modern crime story within an homage to Raymond Chandler that works on both levels. When he writes the quick, incisive story of the English private dick Mandy, he brings the reader both the excitement of an LA crime novel as well as a tongue-in-cheek Hi to a genre that is best imitated with such self-knowing or not at all. That he succeeds in writing an excellent story while at the same time playing us with an inside joke is nothing short of superb”
‘A racy LA crime story in a witty pastiche of Raymond Chandler.’ Alex Dryden, author
'A page-turning and darkly humorous thriller, Jeremy Thomas' Santa Monica Suicide Club exposes the corrupt heart of the Pacific coast. Too often thrillers these days are ploddingly procedural or pornographically obsessed with the minutiae of violence, but there's real character, here- and thank God- humour. And you can see the potential for Mandy to be a strong serial character.' Sean O’Connor. Author of ‘Handsome Brute’- a biography of murderer Neville Heath, screenplay writer and Editor of the BBC Radio 4 The Archers.
Author
About Jeremy C. Thomas
Jeremy Thomas was educated at Downside, and lived in London for a number of years with a large variety of noteable jobs before becoming a full time writer . On his 24th Birthday, a long suffering girlfriend gave him a colour pictorial atlas of forensic pathology-a book you could only obtain if you were in the Police force or the Medical profession. It had an inscription “if this doesn’t put you off, nothing will.” His interest only increased! Jeremy's interest in crime always been rooted in actual British murderers. Pathologist Keith Simpon’s 40 Years of Murder was a hit, as was a book by his predecessor Bernard Splisbury. Real murderers such as Heath, Christieand Hague, all the way up to the Manson killings in Los Angeles. Weirdly, working in the music business gave him unusual crossovers, one of which was working with Terry Melcher, famous for producing The Birds and being Doris Day’s son but far more interesting to Jeremy was that having turned down Charlie Manson’s demo tape, he was the intended victim of the Charlie Manson gang...
Jeremy's love of crime fiction was always rooted in writers like P.D James, Patricia Highsmith, Colin Dexter and most importantly Raymond Chandler. Film has always played a massively important role since he was 9 years old and watching The Great Escape through to films like Godfather. The key British crime films are Brighton Rock, Get Carter and The Long Good Friday, and Jeremy believes they are the only films that really matter in terms of UK crime material. US films have been an inspiration to Jeremy such as On the Water Front, The Pawnbroker, Chinatown, The Godfather, Casino, Donny Brascoe, Goodfellas, Hitchcock, Crash, Shortcuts, Fargo, Mulholland Drive, LA Confidential, Before the Devil Knows you are Dead.’
Before becoming a writer full time Jeremy's notable jobs included: working in the operating theatre of the National Heart Hospital (which has ironically now closed down), a cheese waiter in a big hotel, a slave at J Walter Thompson, ‘a great place to work providing your father can afford to send you there.’ He then worked for 20 years in the music business, starting as a record plugger and ended up running all sorts of independent labels. Worked with a wide variety of artist and musical genre including Caravan, Camel, Rupert Hine, ZZ Top to Guana Batz, The Cramps, John Williams, James Brown and The Levellers. Whilst waiting for his first book to be published, he ran a bric a brac in Portobello and Spitalfields market that later buying and selling paintings- something he wishes he could still do.
In 1988 Jeremy moved to Patmos to write full time - a baptism of fire to see if he could cut the mustard as a writer. By 2000, he had moved to LA to live in the Palisades, finished his first novel Taking Leave and gave up smoking which nearly killed him. After a trip to Vancouver resulted in him being refused re-entry to US, he stayed in Vancouver and watched Los Angeles from afar. Since 2003 he had divided his time between London and Patmos. His new book The Santa Monica Suicide Club will be out October 2015.
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