Ontreto
Page 39
Ric sighs, “My uomo integerrimo? My solid citizen? Well, Maso, I think we’ll let that sleeping dog lie. I know most people think there is nothing but silence to be found in a grave, empty or otherwise, but these past few days I’ve learned they are far from silent. After all, where better to keep secrets than a grave?”
About the Author
Peter Crawley was born in Chiswick in 1956. He was educated at Cranleigh School in England and at the Goethe Institut Freiburg-im-Breisgau in Germany. He spent much of his youth in Germany, Austria, France and Corsica. Upon leaving full-time education, and after a short period with the army in Germany, he worked in Stuttgart, as a translator, and on luxury motor-yachts in and around the Mediterranean and the West Indies. After further travels he started his own business dealing in Mercedes-Benz in London’s West End. He has now returned to writing full-time and his first novel, Mazzeri, a novel of Corsica, was published by Matador in July 2013. Boarding House Reach, his second novel, was published by Matador in June 2014. Peter Crawley is a former transatlantic yachtsman and historic motor racing driver. His interests include his family, his research and writing, and skiing. He lives in Chertsey, Surrey, with his wife, Carol. They have three daughters.
Mazzeri
Love and Death in Light and Shadow
A novel of Corsica
It is the last summer of the twentieth century in Calvi, Northern Corsica, and an old man sits watching the kites fly. The festival of the wind is a lively and colourful celebration, but the old man’s heart is heavy, he has heard the Mazzeri whisper his name. He accepts that people prefer to believe the dream hunters belong to the past and yet he knows only too well that at night they still roam the maquis in search of the faces of those whose time has come.
Ten years later in the high citadel of Bonifacio, in the southern tip of the island, Richard Ross, armed with only the faded photograph of a Legionnaire standing beneath a stone gateway, finds the locals curiously unwilling to help him uncover his family’s roots. He rents a villa on the coast and meets the singularly beautiful Manou Pietri, who enchants him with tales of the megalithic isle, its folklore and the Mazzeri – the dream hunters.
For a while Ric’s life beneath the Corsican sun is as close to perfect as he could wish. Then a chance encounter with a feral boy turns Ric’s life upside down, and he is drawn deep into a tangled web of lies and deceit. On an island where truth and legend meet, where murder is commonplace and most crimes go unsolved, only the Mazzeri know who will live…
Published by Matador June 2013
ISBN 9781780885384 (pb)
ISBN 9781780885814 (eBook)
Boarding House Reach
Five strangers come to spend the weekend in a guest house on the Norfolk coast. The Reach offers sanctuary for guests Hacker, Phoebe, Audrey, Philip and the landlady, Stella – all of them drawn together by the secrets of their past.
As the strands of their individual stories are woven together, each guest will confront the painful truths of their personal lives and, as the hours tick away, confess their sins. In a story which encompasses blackmail, rejection, infidelity, redemption and love, the characters of Boarding House Reach know they can run, but will they ever escape the stark reality of their tangled lives?
Published by Matador May 2014
ISBN 9781783063390 (pb)
ISBN 9781783065646 (eBook)