Our first release of the year, Tango in Madeira by Booker Prize nominated author Jim Williams, is a romantic, mysterious and witty story of life, love and death on an exotic island. Now available in mobi/Kindle e-book and paperback on Amazon dot com and Amazon UK, e-pub on Barnes & Noble, Apple iBookstore and Kobo, and coming soon on other internet stores including Sony and Diesel.
Atmospheric, sensual and evocative, a murder mystery set in the 1930s. Skillfully written, amusing, entertaining and thought-provoking.
Tango in Madeira
A disillusioned soldier looks for love. An exiled Emperor fears assassination. Agatha Christie takes a holiday. And George Bernard Shaw learns to tango.
In the aftermath of World War I, Michael Pinfold a disillusioned ex-soldier tries to rescue his failing family wine business on the island of Madeira. In a villa in the hills the exiled Austrian Emperor lives in fear of assassination by Hungarian killers, while in Reid’s Hotel, a well-known lady crime novelist is stranded on her way to South Africa and George Bernard Shaw whiles away his days corresponding with his friends, writing a one act play and learning to tango with the hotel manager’s spouse.
A stranger, Robinson, is found murdered and Michael finds himself manipulated into investigating the crime by his sinister best friend, Johnny Cardozo, the local police chief, with whose wife he is pursuing an arid love affair; manipulated, too, by Father Flaherty, a priest with dubious political interests, and by his own eccentric parent, who claims to have been part of a comedy duo that once entertained the Kaiser with Jewish jokes. Will Michael find love? Will the Emperor escape his would-be killers? Will any of the characters learn the true meaning of the tango?
Here are a few choice quotes from Tango in Madeira to give a taste of Jim’s style:
From the ship’s rail I watched Madeira rise, green and improbable, out of the morning and a quiet sea.
‘The Emperor Karl is a descendant of Jesus Christ,’ said Pennyweight with the confidence of the amiably mad.
The English, when abroad, address foreigners by speaking more loudly and slowly, exaggerating the very points that make them incomprehensible,
For my part I think I might have behaved better if I’d been able to translate self-knowledge into action. But of all dark arts, learning from experience is the most esoteric.
I wondered if he had been a friend when I knew so little of him. Perhaps he was. I’d taken his wife, which seemed to be the hallmark of my friendship.
Believe me: as a human being I loved him: he was as fine and good-hearted a man as ever lived. But nothing much was to be expected of someone whose notion of happiness was to dance with his wife.
About Jim Williams
Jim Williams first hit the news when his early novels had the uncanny knack of coming true. The Hitler Diaries was published nine months before the celebrated forgery came out in 1983. Farewell to Russia dealt with a nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union months before the Chernobyl disaster. Lara’s Child, his sequel to Doctor Zhivago, provoked an international literary scandal and led to his being a guest speaker at the Cheltenham Festival. Scherzo, a witty and elegant mystery set in eighteenth century Venice, was nominated for the Booker Prize. All of his fiction has been published internationally. Tango in Madeira is his eleventh novel. http://www.jimwilliamsbooks.com
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