Welcome, friend! Come learn about a crime/psychological thriller, The Mentor by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli. read an excerpt after the author interview. 🙂

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Get to know the author: Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

Welcome Carla! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!

Hi Kriti, and greetings to your readers! So, I’m Sardinian; I live in Cagliari, which is the capital of Sardinia (an Italian region, but also the second largest island in the Mediterranean). I have a graduation in Life Sciences (biology) and I’m a former university researcher and tutor, but in 2004, I changed my career. I became a translator and a web copywriter, and then an author (since 2012). I’m all of this now, plus since 2016, I’m teaching at university again, but this time in a totally different field: self-publishing.

What inspired you to write this book?

I’m a fan of CSI. I especially like CSI: New York. I loved how science was used in this series franchise, but what I didn’t like very much was that there were only two kinds of characters: the good ones and the bad ones. It was too a simplistic way to portrait real people, especially those involved in crimes and policing. So I imagined my characters moving in a similar context as CSI, with all the forensic investigation stuff, except the story is set in London, and at the same being three-dimensional, that is, they are good, but flawed police officers and criminals with a good reason to commit a crime, at the same time.

I like to describe this story as CSI meets a female Dexter in London, with a hint of Gone Girl.

How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?

This book was my first attempt at NaNoWriMo in 2012. I wrote the first 50,000 words in 28 days (1-28 November 2012), and then I completed the first draft about ten days later. At that point, I put it aside until January 2014 when I started the revision process. The original book in Italian (Il mentore) was published in May 2014.

After being published, it started selling very well in Italy, and that drew the attention of Amazon Publishing, which offered me to buy the English translation rights. The first English edition of The Mentor was published in 2015 and quickly became No. 1 in the Kindle Store in the USA, UK, and Australia, reaching over 170,000 readers around the world.
Frankly, it was totally unexpected, also considering that writing thrillers was just a kind of experiment to me. In fact, I started my author journey as a science fiction author.

A few years later, when Amazon Publishing stopped pushing the book, I asked and obtained my translation rights back, then I started working on a new translation on my own in 2018. Finally, I worked with an editor and a proofreader to come to a final draft.

But it took four more years before I could publish this new edition.

What makes your story unique?

In The Mentor, the border between investigation and crime becomes blurred in a story that isn’t exactly about finding the culprit, but rather observing how the main character decides to react to his shocking findings. In a game of deception in which the information available to the protagonist and the reader do not match, the latter will be thrown into modern-day London and will end up wondering where the line between good and evil really is.

Who would enjoy reading your book? 

I think this book would entertain any reader who isn’t just looking for another whodunit story, where the culprit is arrested or killed. “Who?” isn’t the only question here. The more important question is “Why?” or “Is it really wrong?”.

Do you have a favourite quote or scene in the book that you find yourself going back to?

My favourite scene is no doubt the final confrontation between the main characters: Eric Shaw and Mina (this is the name the reader knows since the first chapter, but they don’t know her actual identity until the last one).

This quote is what they say to each other at a certain point and it perfectly summarise the way they see reality.

Eric thinks that tampering with some evidence is good, but killing is not, though they are both serious crimes. Being a victim, Mina thinks killing is good when the ones paying with their lives are those who killed her beloved ones. 

“I won’t let you bring me down to your level. I’ve bent some evidence to send people I know are guilty to prison. I’ve done it because the system often fails us. I haven’t killed anyone! I would never dream of killing somebody.”

“Just because you’ve never been a victim,” she retorted, keeping her composure. “If you’d gone through what I experienced, you wouldn’t judge what I’ve done the same way.”

The Mentor is the first book of Detective Eric Shaw series. Can you share more about the series and how many books you may have planned? 

It’s the first book in the Detective Eric Shaw Trilogy, which is the story of a flawed hero going through a psychological journey triggered by his relationship with a female serial killer.

It is set in today’s London between 2014 and 2017. The main character is a detective chief inspector leading a forensic team at Scotland Yard that is facing a crucial period in his life. Excessive dedication to work caused his marriage to fail and turned him into a cop ready to break more than one rule to satisfy his obsession with bringing criminals to justice.

Things get even worse when he realises that a person he loves may be the serial killer who committed the crimes he’s investigating on.

The trilogy also includes Syndrome (expected publication: 28 February 2023) and Beyond the Limit (expected publication: 31 May 2023). They are both available for pre-order.

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Book Excerpt from
The Mentor

Context:

The following scene takes place in a morgue, where DCI Shaw is discussing the dynamics of the victim’s murder based on the evidence on the corpse. The victim is a man. His wounds are barely described. Most of the discussion is based on a simulation of the murder that DCI Shaw and a female forensic investigator, Adele Pennington, are watching on a tablet.

There’s some tension between the two of them due to personal reasons.

The pungent odour of chemicals mixed with decomposing flash invaded Eric’s nose and mouth as he walked into the morgue, making him cough.

“Good morning, Detective.” Dr Dawson was busy filling out a file and had greeted him without glancing up from his paperwork.

Beside him was the table where Thompson’s corpse was lying. His clothes had been removed, but the autopsy hadn’t started yet. Two red plastic rods were sticking out of the body. One was perpendicular to his groin, the other was on a side of his neck.

“Richard,” Eric replied as a salutation.

A flash illuminated the body, revealing the presence of a third person in the room, taking pictures. Eric stiffened as he recognised Adele. She, on the other hand, seemed immersed in her work, uninterested in his arrival.

“Good morning,” Eric finally murmured. She nodded to him, adding a half smile to her gesture. She always behaved this way; there was nothing wrong with it, save for the fact that the previous morning he’d woken up in Adele’s flat instead of his own, and that made him embarrassed. “What can you tell me about the victim?” He turned back to the medical examiner. Focusing on the case was the best thing to do.

“First of all, as you can see, the suppositions on the crime scene have proved mostly wrong.”

“And for wrong you mean …?” Eric stepped closer to the table to take a close look at the body.

“We thought the murderer shot him in the neck first, and then in the groin, to leave him to die of blood loss.” Dawson put the file on a little trolley as he finally turned his gaze to the forensic team chief. “But the directions of the bullets tell us a different story.” He pointed at the rod on the neck. “As you can see, it is pointing downwards with respect to the rest of the body.”

“This means that the murderer was shorter than the victim and had to raise his arm to shoot. Although …” Eric paused for a moment, noticing the size of the corpse. “He can’t be more than one metre and seventy centimetres tall.”

“The wound has an angle lower than sixty degrees. This suggests that the shot came from below. But things get more complicated with the one in the groin.”

Eric’s attention moved to the red rod sticking straight up out of the corpse’s groin. “It’s a ninety-degree angle!”

“Exactly! Either our murderer is a dwarf or, worse, a child, or he was sitting much lower, when he pulled the trigger.” The medical examiner was looking at him with the air of someone who loved asking riddles.

Another flash flooded the room.

“Perhaps there was a fight, the murderer fell on the … settee, and shot from there.” It was an acceptable theory. Thompson wasn’t very tall, but rather stout. He would’ve had the strength to push away someone bigger than he was.

While he thought about this, out of the corner of his eye, Eric noticed that Adele had put away the camera and picked up a tablet computer, on whose surface she was moving her left forefinger.

“I don’t know what your team will find on the scene or in the victim’s clothes,” Dawson said. “But what I can tell you is that the body doesn’t show defensive wounds. It doesn’t look like he fought with anyone before dying.”

“Then what happened, in your opinion?”

“Oh!” the doctor exclaimed, raising both arms. “I’m just a simple medical examiner.” Eric smiled at this statement. He’d heard it already many times. “You forensic investigators are the wizards of reconstruction. But before coming to this, there’s something I haven’t told you yet.” He stooped down to reach out for an object on the lower tray of the trolley. A moment later, he had a clear bag in his hand and a pleased smile on his face.

Eric tried to bring into focus the tiny piece of coloured plastic inside it.

“I’ll save you the question,” Dawson added, before the detective could even start to formulate any. “It’s a piece of packing tape. I found it here.” He pushed the victim’s head to one side with his gloved hand and pointed at a spot on the back of the cheek. “With all the blood, we didn’t notice it the first time. It showed up once I cleaned the body.”

“He’d been gagged with tape!” That changed things.

“Exactly.” Dawson had a boundless love for that word. “So he might not have been shot first in his neck, to silence him, and then in his groin. The opposite may be true. Actually …” He removed his glasses and raised his head, turning his gaze straight at him. “Our talented Ms Pennington has an interesting theory on the dynamics of the murder that fits perfectly with the external examination of the corpse.”

Eric did the same as Dawson, so that they both were now looking at Adele, who seemed to have been waiting for them to involve her in the conversation.

“I’ve created a simulation,” she said in a confident tone, showing the tablet she was holding, but not its screen.

Eric hesitated for a moment, unsure whether or not to approach her. That was why it was a bad idea to fraternise with colleagues. You felt embarrassed about gestures that in any other circumstances would’ve felt normal. Only there hadn’t been any real fraternisation, because nothing had happened between them. It was all in his head. As he repeated that concept to himself, he glanced at Dawson.

“She’s all yours,” the medical examiner commented. A wrong interpretation of those words made Eric gave a feeble start. “I’ve already seen it.” The further clarification wasn’t really of any help. Then Dawson put his glasses back on and went back to his file.

With a certain reluctance, Eric walked around the table and stood next to her. She moved her head a little, then waved one hand in front of her face as if to shoo away an insect. He couldn’t see any, but the gesture freed a fragrance from her hair, which for a few seconds prevailed over the stench of the corpse.

“This is a reconstruction of the crime scene. It’s pretty rudimentary.” Adele had seemed as if she was apologising whilst pronouncing those words.

On the screen was a three-dimensional image of a room, the one where they’d found the body. About one metre away from the table on the floor were two large bloodstains, one of which was roughly three times the other. Their shapes weren’t round, but irregular, as if something had prevented the liquid from spreading out freely. The reconstruction was very realistic. Eric recognised the scene. Only the corpse was missing.

“At first, we supposed the victim was here, more or less, when he was shot,” Adele continued. A human figure materialised over the largest stain.

“No, wait,” Eric cut it. “Were it so, we would have high-velocity spatters all around the body and some gravitational drops where it fell afterwards.”

“In fact, there weren’t any. When we lifted it, most of the floor underneath was clean. That made me think Thompson wasn’t standing at all when he was shot.”

“Wait a moment.” Eric knew where she was going with this. “You think he was already on the floor.”

“That would explain the shape of the bloodstains and also why the one related to the neck was a bit farther from the body,” Adele said, nodding.

But now Eric was a little lost. They’d thought that the abnormal position of the stain was due to the victim writhing as he was dying.

“I’ll show you.” She tapped an icon on the side of the screen and the body’s position changed. Now the human figure was no longer standing, but lying down supine. “If they’d shot him while he was already on the floor, we could explain the direction of the bullets for a start.”

A new figure, this time equipped with a gun, was standing beside the victim, its feet by his groin.

“The murderer threatens him with a handgun, forces him to gag himself.” Adele’s account was flowing. It was evident that she’d worked on it for a long while. Considering that it was nine o’clock on Monday morning, she must have devoted the day before to it. “Then they make the victim lie down, and bang.” She’d imitated the shot by raising her voice. “They shoot him in the groin.”

Without meaning to, Eric winced. He instinctively moved a hand to cover his private parts, but as he realised it, he stopped halfway. However, the manoeuvre didn’t escape Adele, who shot him a mischievous glance. He wondered whether she’d done it on purpose, to see his reaction.

“Thompson would like to scream.” She resumed describing the events. “But being gagged, he can’t produce anything more than a soft noise, which his neighbours can’t hear.”

“But nobody heard the shot.” He was still her boss and had every right to test her now and again.

“They used a silencer,” was her laconic reply.

Okay, that had been a silly remark. They’d already arrived at that supposition at the crime scene.

“So … they shot him in the groin.” Eric tried to mimic the shot, holding his right arm down and aiming towards the floor. “The victim instinctively places his hands on the wound, and in doing so he curls up on one side.”

Adele smiled, satisfied, and tapped the table to move on to the next sequence. The body was now in a foetal position, curled up on one side. The murderer’s arm was stretching out, aiming towards the victim’s neck. “Bang.” A line united the pistol and the penetration wound on one side of the neck.

The detective examined the corpse on the table again. The angle of the line corresponded to the one of the rod. But there was still something not quite right. “But the body wasn’t like that when we found it.”

The young forensic investigator wasn’t perturbed. “Because it was moved.”

“How can you tell?”

“The murderer waits for their victim’s death.” She kept talking, apparently ignoring Eric’s question. “They struck the carotid artery in full, so they don’t have to wait long. Thompson bleeds to death quickly, he loses consciousness almost immediately.” She shifted her attention from the tablet to the corpse. “Pushing the body with one foot, they shift the man onto his back again.” The sequence was played on the screen, but Adele was pointing at the side of the body, whose skin showed a bluish stain. “It wasn’t visible at first, but a day in the fridge revealed this peri-mortem bruise.”

“The shoe caused it.” This kind of revelation, when the clues began to take shape, allowing him to pull the threads together, made Eric remember why he loved his job so much. He put on a latex glove and touched the skin around the bruise. “It seems a lot more marked towards the centre.”

“As if he were hit by a rigid, pointed shoe,” Adele suggested. They had both come to the same conclusion. “Like a woman’s shoe.”

“Ah, women!” was the medical examiner’s comment from the other side of the room.

“And once the body is supine …” Eric said. “The killer rips off the tape.”

“At that point, there’s no longer any risk of him screaming,” Adele concluded, triumphant.

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Interested?

Find The Mentor on Goodreads and IndieStoryGeek. Here is the buy link. 

Thank you for hanging out with us today! Connect with Carla on her website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Goodreads, Youtube, Amazon, Linkedin, and Medium.

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