Mummy?: The Mother by Jaime Raven @JaimeRaven1 @Sabah_K @HarperCollinsUK #BlogTour #GuestPost

Today I am over the moon to be able to share with you a special guest post from the author of the anticipated book The Mother, Jaime Raven!

I would like to thank Harper Collins and Sabah Khan for inviting me to be a part of this blog tour. My review of the book will follow shortly, so stay tuned!!

I’ve taken your daughter, as punishment for what you did…

Prepare to be gripped by the heart-stopping new thriller from the author of The Madam, the read that taps into every mother’s worst fear. 

South London detective Sarah Mason is a single mother. It’s a tough life, but Sarah gets by. She and her ex-husband, fellow detective Adam Boyd, adore their 15-month-old daughter Molly.

Until Sarah’s world falls apart when she receives a devastating threat: Her daughter has been taken, and the abductor plans to raise Molly as their own, as punishment for something Sarah did.

Sarah is forced to stand back while her team try to track down the kidnapper. But her colleagues aren’t working fast enough to find Molly. To save her daughter, Sarah must take matters into her own hands, in a desperate hunt that will take her to the very depths of London’s underworld.

A gripping new voice in crime fiction, this book is perfect for fans of Martina Cole and Jessie Keane.

 

Blog for Chocolate ‘n’ Waffles

By Jaime Raven, Author of The Mother

The fun and fascination of research.

Carrying out research for a novel can be fun, fascinating and full of surprises. I like the fact that every time I put pen to paper I learn something new and interesting.

As a writer of crime books I want my stories to be as factually accurate as possible.

It means seeking answers to a multitude of questions relating to the plot, the characters and the locations.

It’s easier now than it’s ever been thanks to the internet and search engines like Google.

There was a time not so long ago when authors had to trudge along to libraries and spend hours looking through books for information.

The same applied to locations. In order to describe a particular street or park or town centre you had to visit it. Not so now. You only have to click on the computer mouse and you’re there. It saves a huge amount of time and expense.

It never ceases to amaze me how the web comes up with answers to the most obscure questions. Here are some of those that I’ve typed into Google recently.

• What are the various stages of body decomposition?
• What is the extent of corruption inside the Metropolitan Police?
• What does it take to survive a bullet to the brain?
• How many prostitutes are there working in the UK?

I spent a long time researching information for all three Jaime Raven books – THE MADAM, THE ALIBI and the latest, THE MOTHER. Plus, I’m now working on a new book for which I’ve had to find out as much as I can about the Mexican drugs cartels.

The Mother is about every parent’s nightmare – the abduction of a small child. When I started writing the book I had no idea how often it happens. And so I did some research and I have to say I found the answers to my questions quite disturbing.

One question was: How common are child abductions?

I was shocked to read that during 2013/14 over four hundred children were abducted by people other than their parents. More than three hundred were kidnapped, rather than abducted, which means the crime involved the use of force or fraud against the victim which includes a demand for a ransom.

Needless to say I refer briefly to these statistics in The Mother and I like to think they add weight and credibility to the story.

My book The Madam is about a prostitute named Lizzie Wells who goes to jail for a crime she didn’t commit. I wanted background information on the sex trade so I went in search of it.

Once again the statistics I came across were fascinating. A major study into the UK’s sex industry, published in 2015, estimated that there were more than 72,000 sex workers in the UK and 88% were women. So as well as helping in the construction of The Madam’s storyline, the research I carried out opened my eyes to a huge issue I’d known nothing about.

In the book I’m now working on the characters appear in various locations, including Acapulco. I’d always understood the beach resort on the Pacific coast of Mexico to be a favourite destination for the rich and famous. Frank Sinatra was a regular visitor, along with John F Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered through my research that these days it’s considered one of the most dangerous places on earth. That’s because of the violence that takes place between the various drugs cartels. In 2015 alone there were almost a thousand murders in the town!

Armed with this information I’ve had to rewrite part of the book because I’d originally painted Acapulco in a very different light. So this taught me a valuable lesson – do the research before committing anything to paper!

Jaime Raven

 

Jaime Raven is an award-winning journalist who has worked for newspapers including the Sun and the Daily Mail, as well as a former script writer and TV producer. She is the author of The Madam, and lives in Southampton.

Check the different blog tour stops!

I hope you enjoyed this guest post as much as I did! Research is such an important part of writing, especially with this genre. I love it when authors take the time to truly dive in and go deep into their subjects. Learning through reading is the best feeling. I was appalled by the stats in this post, but I just admire authors for digesting such information for their readers to have the most accurate experience.

Is The Mother on your wishlist or TBR? How much do you care about the attention to details and research done for a story?