BAD TO THE BONE
The long-awaited conclusion to the Barclay & MacDonald trilogy
I hear a siren. I look in the rear-view mirror and there’s a flashing blue light racing down the street. I floor the pedals, playing them like a drummer on speed, racing through the gears before executing a brutal handbrake turn and taking us on the sharpest of lefts and into the thundering traffic of a dual carriageway. Nought to sixty in fractions of a second.
I’m panting rather than breathing, all animal, wild, unstoppable. I’m in my element. I jump a set of red lights and miss a dog walker by inches.
I haven’t got time to blink. I grip the wheel so tightly it might well snap under the pressure. In and out of the lanes I thread the Sierra. It’s the most exciting car I’ve ever driven. Left. Right. Left. It’s me and the car, as one, in perfect harmony. I snap a wing mirror off a driving instructor’s creeping Micra. That’s a lesson someone will never forget. Bloody learners.
I check my mirror. The blue light’s gone. Can’t hear no siren either. I slow down and work my way into the slow lane. At the first opportunity I take a left, then park up outside a school.
I drop my head, panting, small rapid breaths keeping time with my heart.
‘Wow,’ he says. ‘That was something.’
Without looking in his direction I take my hands off the wheel, grasp the gun in my left hand and smash him in the face with its butt. Something cracks. My fingers throb from the impact. His nose is streaming blood.
‘Bitch!’ he cries, trying to cover his face with his hands to stem the flow.
That nose looks broken to me. Good. It’s about time something went right for me today. I smile and cherish the moment.
Available as paperback and on Kindle
Also available:
Barclay & MacDonald 1:
When She Was Bad
Shortlisted for the 2018 'WRITE HERE, RIGHT NOW' prize
Life was passing 25-year-old Claire MacDonald by. Okay, so she had a steady office job (but paying barely minimum wage), a too-perfect steady boyfriend (a ‘keeper’, as Mum constantly reminded her) and a roof over her head (albeit in Deptford), but surely there had to be more in life for her than that? Then she found a bag, an expensive Prada rucksack abandoned at Waterloo station. She couldn’t believe her luck. Not just expensive but ridiculously so, a little ray of luxury on that cold winter morning. And she’d been looking for a new bag and the overdraft was growing out of control. So she took it. And, once she’d met the bag’s owner, the enigmatic Barclay, Claire’s predictable, routine life became more thrilling and deadly than she had ever dreamed it could be as she embarked on a career as the getaway driver for a man seemingly out of control.
Barclay & MacDonald 2:
Bad For Good
The sequel to the acclaimed When She Was Bad
It had been fun. It had been dangerous. But it was no longer fun and it had become far too dangerous. Claire MacDonald’s life as a getaway driver for the enigmatic Barclay and his mountainous bodyguard Thug Number Two was spiralling seriously out of control, and someone was watching their every move...
Welcome back to fun and games with Barclay & MacDonald, an even more perilous world than Claire had ever imagined possible
Also from Neil Bailey
A Necessary Murder
The stunning thriller from the acclaimed author of The Woman at Twenty-six and the Barclay & MacDonald novels
The car smashed into him hard, shattering his spine and hurling him high into the dark sky, the air exploding from his lungs as his rib cage concertinaed. Bones snapped and cracked. Up he flew, already broken, spinning skywards, soaring in slow motion before gravity reclaimed him and he hit the road with a crunching, heavy thud.
He couldn’t move. He heard the engine rev again and the sound of the massive tyres rumbling towards him as the car reversed. He screamed as the rubber crushed his skull, his bones splintered and his organs burst. One last wave of agony racked his body and it was over, ending everything.
The police tried to tell her it was just an accident, but newly-widowed Jo Greaves didn’t believe them. No, this had been murder, and if they weren’t going to help her she was just going to have to prove it and find Alex’s killer herself. Because there was every chance they’d be coming after her next.
“Once again Bailey has written a thriller with unpredictable twists and turns all the way to the very end. The delivery of his prose is never without intertwined subtle humor - adding substantial depth to exploring the strengths and flaws of the characters, while also tempering the necessary dark texts of the thriller genre. His writing is on a level with so many of the more well-known authors of this genre (Patterson, Connelly and Baldacci to name a few), who are consistently seen at or near the top the NY Times Bestseller list.
“All in all this is yet another extraordinary work following the Barclay and MacDonald novels and The Woman at Twenty Six. How refreshing it's been to have such a thoroughly entertaining book arrive at a time when our current reality is so troubled. Bravo Mr Bailey!”
The Woman at Twenty-six
A ghost story that will chill you to the core
'It was as if whoever or whatever was in there knew I had arrived and at last had what they wanted. Something was waiting for me and I shuddered and felt a cold trickle of sweat run down my spine.'
It had all started so perfectly, but life never turns out quite as you planned. ‘Our new home,’ Beth whispered. ‘Our dream house. New beginnings.’ But she couldn’t have been more wrong…