New Contest

Tor Publishing is offering a lucky reader of Meritorious Mysteries a free copy of Linda Davies' new Ark Storm. 

There are five Bouchercons currently scheduled across the US and Canada. The first person to email me (mystery heel at Mac.com) with the correct order (by year) of these Bouchercons will be the winner. I will email the winner requesting his/her snail address. Tor will mail the copy directly to the winner. I'll also post the winner's last name and state on this site.

Good Luck! 

Ark Storm

Linda Davies

“A plausible and stormy eco-thriller that might presage future events…. an exciting and enjoyable book.”

—Kirkus

“Ark Storm is a winner. It draws you in and thrashes you about like a hurricane. It’s plausible and terrifying. The writing is crisp, the pacing is breakneck, and the characters are vivid. I highly recommend it.”

—Douglas Preston, New York Times bestselling author of Impact

“This vivid, exciting and original tale turns a very real superstorm possibility into one of the most exciting stories I’ve read in a long time. I was going to say that I got blown away by Ark Storm, but I’m afraid to! So I’ll say that I got caught up in it, loved it and had wonderful time reading it!”
—Whitley Strieber, New York Times bestselling author of The Grays

Linda Davies’ first novel, Nest of Vipers, has been published in more than thirty countries, selling over two million copies. She is also a winner of the Philip Geddes Prize for journalism. Her latest novel is ARK STORM (A Forge Hardcover; $25.99; August 19, 2014), a stylishly written thriller that tackles the relationship between high finance and extreme weather events.

The Ark Storm is coming—a catastrophic weather event that will unleash massive floods and wreak more damage on California than the feared “Big One.” One man wants to profit from it. Another wants to harness it to wage jihad on American soil. One woman stands in their way: Dr. Gwen Boudain, a brave and brilliant meteorologist.

When Boudain notices that her climate readings are off the charts, she turns to Gabriel Messenger for research funding. Messenger’s company is working on a program that ionizes water molecules to bring rain on command. Meanwhile, Wall Street suits notice that someone is placing six-month bets on the prospect of an utter apocalypse and begin to investigate. Standing in the shadows is journalist Dan Jacobsen, a former Navy SEAL. War hardened, cynical, and handsome, Jacobsen is a man with his own hidden agenda.

ARK STORM brings together the worlds of finance, scientific innovation, and terrorism in a fast-paced thrill ride that will leave readers gasping.

LINDA DAVIES is a graduate in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from Oxford University, and worked for seven years as an investment banker before escaping to write novels. Davies is married with three children. She lives by the sea in Suffolk, United Kingdom.

Dear Reader,

It was the summer of 2010.  I was living in Dubai, and I had read that dramatically heavy rains were falling in the deserts of neighbouring El Ain in the United Arab Emirates.  The historical average number of rainfall events for June through September is two.  The National Weather Service forecasted zero rain events over that period.  But it did rain. On fifty-two separate occasions. And it hailed and galed and thundered.  It made the international news. 

There were rumors of masts in the desert, of scientists and computer models, and it sounded like something out of a James Bond movie. And then I read an article which explained what had been going on.

It was the work of scientists.  Technicians were mounting ionizers on masts, producing electrons which attached to dust particles in the atmosphere. These dust particles rose by convection until they reached the right height for cloud formation where they attracted water molecules floating in the air. Those molecules then started to condense around them.  Billions of droplets of rain formed and fell….

So far, so Bondian.  Then I heard about the latest twist where the ionisers are sent up on drones, which made me think of terrorists, and I had myself a novel. It had all the things I love to write about—science, terrorism, financial shenanigans counterterrorism—and in the midst of it, a wonderful heroine.

Welcome to Ark Storm.

Sincerely,
Linda