The Lost Boy by Rachel Amphlett

Run.

Don’t look back.

When a young teenager is stabbed to death at a busy fairground, Detective Mark Turpin is assigned the task of finding the boy’s killer.

But this was no ordinary murder.

Mark knows the victim—and the man who ordered his death.

As he sifts through the young victim’s final days, he uncovers a powerful crime syndicate that will do anything to protect its interests.

Then tragedy strikes, and suddenly Mark isn’t just trying to solve a murder—he’s fighting for his own survival.

Rachel Amphlett recently spent some time with The Big Thrill discussing her latest thriller, THE LOST BOY:

What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

A sense of being at the heart of a fast-paced police investigation where the stakes are high, and you don’t know who you can trust.

Rachel Amphlett

Was there anything new you discovered, or that surprised you, as you wrote this book?

I’m always learning while I’m writing because of the attention to detail I try to convey (without boring my readers of course!). THE LOST BOY meant a lot of research into county lines operations and organised crime here in the UK and was a real eye-opener.

Without spoilers, are there any genre conventions you wanted to upend or challenge with this book?

I’m tired of reading about detectives with broken home lives or terrible drinking habits, so both the Mark Turpin series and my other detective series featuring Kay Hunter include main characters with a balanced home/work life – it allows me to pepper the stories with a little lightness between the dark scenes my detectives face.

*****

Before turning to writing, USA Today bestselling crime author Rachel Amphlett played guitar in bands, worked as a TV and film extra, dabbled in radio as a presenter and freelance producer for the BBC, and worked in publishing as an editorial assistant.

She now wields a pen instead of a plectrum and writes crime fiction and spy novels, because that’s what she grew up reading. When she was 11 years old, her grandad gave her his copy of The Eagle Has Landed, and she’s been an avid fan of the genre ever since.

Her debut thriller, White Gold, was released in July 2011 and features British secret agent Dan Taylor. The series established Rachel as an author to watch and spawned three more novels before Rachel turned her attention to a new character, Detective Kay Hunter.

The Kay Hunter crime thrillers are based in Kent and feature a tight-knit team of detectives. Praised by experts for their attention to detail, the books are also much loved by readers for their page-turning plots and devious twists with comparisons to TV shows NCIS and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

More recently, Rachel created a new crime thriller series based around the central character Mark Turpin, an Oxfordshire-based detective. The first book, None the Wiser, received critical acclaim from Adrian McKinty (The Chain) and Jo Spain (With Our Blessing, The Confession), with the follow-up book, Her Final Hour, being praised by the creator of the DCI Banks series, Peter Robinson.

In addition to her detective stories, Rachel also writes the English Assassins series featuring female assassin Eva Delacourt and a number of standalone crime thrillers, psychological thrillers, and conspiracy thrillers.

A keen traveler, Rachel has both Australian and British citizenship.

To learn more about the author and her work, please visit her website.