A warm welcome to author Isobel Starling joining us today on Love Bytes to share a little story about her new release “Detective Fox and the Christmas Caper”.

Isobel also brought with her a fantastic giveaway, so don’t forget to check it out!

Welcome Isobel 🙂

Christmas with a dash of criminality: A recipe for M/M shenanigans

“Detective Fox and the Christmas Caper” is set in a London Department store, Hambling’s. The store is designed to be like the over-privileged offspring of Harrods, Selfridges, and Liberty all rolled into one. Anyone who has visited London and particularly Regent Street during the pre-Christmas season will know Thar be dragons! Where the high-end department stores go into competition to try and pull shoppers in. Ordinarily, the West End of London is renowned as shopping heaven, with theaters, restaurants, and bars aplenty, it would be many people’s ideal weekend getaway location. However, at Christmas, London, like all major cities, goes a bit retail crazy. And where there is retail, there is criminality.

For a season that is supposed to be about love, togetherness and giving Christmas is a boon time for criminals. For my book research, I looked into the subjects like retail theft and shoplifting techniques. I was fascinated to learn that the majority of theft from department stores is carried out by employees and not shoplifters. Shocking, I know! This research helped me greatly in writing a scarily plausible heist that one early reviewer said made her doubt my morality.

The hero of the hour, Detective Fox is actually a character in a murder mystery television series played by Tom Lewis. When we meet Tom he is down on his luck. After years of presenting as straight, Tom’s private life was revealed to the tabloid media, who milked his ‘shocking gay sexploits’ for months. The social media furor and negative press led to the next season of Tom’s show ‘Malmesbury Murders’ being put on hold. Tom is unemployed, bored and feels like a failure until his agent offers him a seasonal job as Santa in ‘Hambling’s Department Store’ in Regent Street.

So here we have a delightful mix. A TV Detective starring as Santa in a lavish store grotto, throw in a very sexy elf, and then a dastardly seasonal scam and we have M/M Christmas magic. I wanted this book to make people smile, laugh, and even blush when they find out Tom’s kinky secret, but I also wanted to write a heist that was credible. I hope I have succeeded at that. The seasonal elements are also important and I believe I have fleshed out the West End of London with its illuminations, lavish window displays, and shoppers with more money than sense.

I hope that picking up this book will give readers a lovely Christmassy feeling and an escape from the stress of the world. What’s not to love about an elf giving Santa a good stuffing?

© Isobel Starling 2016

Detective Fox and the Christmas Caper

by Isobel Starling

Blurb:

Every good Dick needs a sidekick…

Actor Tom Lewis’s world came crashing down when a honey trap and tabloid expose outed him and put pay to his flourishing career. The housewives favorite was most well-known for his role as ‘Detective Fox’ in the quaint British series ‘Malmesbury Murders’. But after the media speculation about his sexuality, the show is in hiatus and Tom hasn’t worked six months.

 

Now things are getting serious, money running out and Tom needs a job desperately. So when his agent offers him a seasonal acting job, he reluctantly agrees… and takes on the role of Santa for a top London department store.

 

This decision changes Tom’s luck. When Tom overhears two unidentified store workers discussing a “job to get a little Christmas bonus”. He realizes the ‘job’ is of the illegal sort. Now, Tom could call the police, but then again, wouldn’t it be great for his flagging career if Detective Fox saved the day?

 

So Fox is on the case, and as every good Dick needs a sidekick, Tom decides a sexy young elf named Eli Mason will fit the role, in more ways than one.”

Buy Links

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Born in Germany, Isobel Starling spent most of her twenty-year professional career making art. She relocated to the UK and, faced with the dreaded artist’s creative block, Isobel started to write and found she loved it more than making art.

Isobel’s first novel “Fall Together” was a bestseller in the GLBT-Bisexual genre on the ‘All Romance e-books’ site. Her second novel “As You Wish”(Shatterproof Bond #1) is an Amazon bestseller, and its sequel “Illuminate the Shadows”(Shatterproof Bond #2) was awarded a bestseller star on All Romance too. She has just completed her eighth book and signed French and German, translation and publishing rights deals for the whole Shatterproof Bond series.

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Isobel brought with her 4 copies to 4 winners of her new release!

Enter the rafflecopter to participate, Good luck 🙂
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

If readers are interested in sampling the first couple of chapters I have a free giveaway on instafreebie until 20th November.
https://www.instafreebie.com/free/qLuMO