Thank you for joining us on the Virtual Book Tour for Bullet in the Blue Sky, a Crime Fiction novel by Bill Larkin (4 August 2016, Spyglass Press, 374 pages). 
Don't miss our interview with author Bill Larkin.PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and excerpt below. Read the first six chapters with Amazon Look Inside.
Author Bill Larkin will be awarding a copy of Bullet in the Blue Sky to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀), interviews (ℚ), reviews (✍) and guest blog posts (✉).
Synopsis | Teaser | The Series | Author Q&A | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops
Synopsis
In the chaotic aftermath of a massive earthquake that leveled much of the Los Angeles region, a LAPD deputy chief sends an elite team of detectives on a rescue mission. They are ordered to set aside all law enforcement duties, to ignore the destruction and to focus on one task: Find LAPD Detective Gavin Shaw, who disappeared just before the earthquake.Kevin “Schmitty” Schmidt of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department joins five others on the rescue team. With rioting, looting, attacks and homicides rampant in the streets, the six cops have to defend themselves while chasing down leads on the whereabouts of Shaw. The mission takes them through the dizzying war zone and the more they encounter, the more they wonder why they are searching for one man in these extreme circumstances. Why is this man so important to the deputy chief, and why now?
Schmitty discovers that others with high connections are also after Shaw. The questions pile even higher when they learn of a shadowy history between Shaw and the deputy chief. A history with deadly consequences for the team as they uncover a threat that elevates the mission to a race against time.
Teaser: Excerpt
Chapter One
The damp streets of El Dorado Hills near Sacramento glowed under a three-quarter moon. A perceptible blanket of stillness covered everything. From the driver’s seat, Kira Boyd was surprised to see a lone runner, a white LED headlamp blazing on his forehead, pacing himself along the asphalt near the curb. At the devil’s hour of three in the morning, he was either an early riser or a night crawler with a penchant for exercise.
She thundered by him in her carbon black BMW 550 going eighty. Nothing else moved. Kira took several turns and blew through two red lights without even tapping the brakes. She briefly considered upscale El Dorado Hills. Here, she lived among the suburban professionals, state government workers, families and retirees. She owned a home with a pool, wore name brand clothes, Prada sunglasses, carried a Coach bag, and kept a bottle of Stoli Elite in her freezer. The comforts of upper-middle-class America.
And at this moment, the city was hers.
Kira glanced in the rearview mirror and confirmed that nobody was following her. Sleep had been impossible. She was too close to the culmination. It was days away and the thought charged her with anticipation. For the first time in a very long time, Kira felt like her true self. Unbounded and moving fast.
The tule fog, a dense and persistent opaque mist that often brought drizzle to this part of California, had started to dissipate. The morning remained damp and chilly.
Making a turn, Kira caught the glow of eyes in her headlights. Two coyotes watched the fast car from the bushes as she entered Highway 50 going west toward Sacramento. A wide open band of asphalt. The car effortlessly accelerated. Her mind started to drift dangerously away from the present.
Then a dark car on the shoulder of the highway ahead caught her attention. The reflection of her headlights bounced back from its taillights as she closed the distance quickly. A lurking California Highway Patrol Explorer, stopped on the shoulder.
Beep-beep-beep-beep! Her radar detector lit up with a full signal. Kira pictured a pale-skinned CHP officer working the morning shift, like an owl with an appetite for fast-moving cars.
She pressed the accelerator, passing the patrol car with blinding speed. In her mirror, she saw the lights come on and the black-and-white jump onto the highway desperately trying to gain speed in her wake. Kira smiled and licked her lips.
When she refocused her eyes to the front, a pair of taillights filled the windshield in the fast lane right in front of her. A small car traveling at less than half her speed. Kira swept around it, but came perilously close. Her wake rocked the small car into the center divider. In her mirror she saw sparks fly. The red and blue lights of the CHP unit faded as her speed edged over one hundred and thirty.
The radar detector silenced itself and she shut off her lights. A darkened mass rocketing through the night in a blur.
Her office at Mather Field, about ten miles east of downtown Sacramento, was within a few miles. The BMW ate up the distance quickly and Kira took the Zinfandel Drive exit. Once on surface streets, she turned the lights back on and made a series of quick turns. There were no helicopters working at this hour. Kira was free again.
Moments later she parked at the office building. Hers was the only car in the parking lot at the early hour. The engine ticked and heat rose from under the hood. She could smell the tires. The silence of the early morning was stunning. She stood still for several minutes, taking in the calm. Two flagpoles fronted the modern two-story building. At this hour, no flags were flying. A large radio mast with multiple antennas and several small dishes rose above the building from the rear.
A vague premonition came to her but she could not shape it in her mind. Just that something was building. Kira intellectualized it as the enormity of everything that she had been asked to accomplish. Which she would do in spades. Very soon. She checked her watch and hurried toward the building.
She used her key card to gain entry. Inside the false bottom of a supply cabinet, she retrieved a special cell phone. She took it to her large corner office, typed a quick message and sent it into cyberspace.
In the end, thought Kira, the only thing that mattered was that she was a hero.
Bullet in the Blue Sky
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The Series
|| The Highlands || The Deep End || Shadow Truth || Detective Lessons [1] ||Click on the book cover to Look Inside the book on Amazon and read an excerpt.
The Highlands (A Short Story)
**FREE on Kindle Unlimited**LAPD Detective Trainee C.P. Mata is called to assist with a homicide investigation in The Highlands, an upscale neighborhood in the Pacific Palisades. The victim is a local man whose body was found in some bushes with a strange wound. The investigation leads them to a friend of the victim, an attractive single woman who comes up with her own suspect. Detectives convince her to help them set up a sting to catch the killer. It catches much more than they anticipated and it catapults Mata into a career as a homicide detective.
[Published 30 November 2013, 30 pages]
The Deep End (A Short Story)
As a reluctant favor to his cousin, Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy “Schmitty” Schmidt attends a snazzy fundraiser at an exclusive waterfront home on Lido Isle in Newport Beach. But it’s not what he bargained for when he finds a drowning man in the pool and has to jump into action. It turns out that there’s a killer on the loose at the party and Schmitty goes on a personal mission to figure out who it is before he disappears. [Published 26 Junuary 2014, 22 pages]
Shadow Truth (a Novella)
**FREE on Kindle Unlimited**A deadly boat explosion in Newport Harbor looks like an accident, but Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin “Schmitty” Schmidt soon finds himself in the middle of a homicide investigation that raises questions about his relationship to the victim’s wife. Pitted against enemies inside the OCSD, Schmitty races to follow his own investigative instincts.
Schmitty learns that the victim had invented a new lie detector, giving the investigation new importance. The traditional polygraph was invented in the 1920s and although it’s evolved, scientists, courts, and critics know it isn’t perfect. A clever liar can manipulate anybody and any machine – until now. This new lie detector can’t be beat. But it threatens a new future, and a lot of people will do anything to get their hands on this technology.
[Published 16 February 2014, 81 pages]
Detective Lessons [1]
**FREE on Kindle Unlimited**Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Schmidt is trying to get used to working Harbor Patrol in Newport Beach, an assignment forced on him after arresting the son of a commanding officer. A wealthy boater asks Schmitty for a personal favor: find his missing son. Schmitty reluctantly accepts out of curiosity….and boredom.
He isn’t bored for long. Schmitty reluctantly teams up with Megan McCann, an attractive private investigator with her own set of rules. Finding a body in the trunk of a BMW sends Schmitty and Megan on an adrenalized trail through Southern California unraveling a sophisticated real estate scam. Determined to find the missing heir apparent, but caught in the middle of a shocking web of greed and corruption, Schmitty must figure out how to make justice prevail and who to bring down.
[Published 17 September 2014, 263 pages]
About the Author
Bill Larkin writes crime fiction and is the author of two highly-acclaimed books: Bullet in the Blue Sky and Detective Lessons. He has also written several short stories, including The Highlands and Shadow Truth, both Amazon category bestsellers. Bill previously served as a reserve with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, then the Los Angeles Police Department where he worked in four different divisions and a detective assignment.
Bill is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers.
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Giveaway and Tour Stops
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