Silent Fear (A novel inspired by true crimes) Paperback – September 21, 2017

SILENT FEAR(A novel inspired by true crimes)Lance & James MORCANReviewed by Author Roy MurryA school of higher learning for the deaf is the background for this thriller that keeps the reader looking in the wrong direction for a house serial killer. When one person is murdered, an English police detective is brought in to evaluate the situation.Before her team arrives to get the forensics, the United Kingdom, and the University she just walked into is quarantine because of a pandemic. The cold outside world, literally and figuratively, is militarily closed to the people inside and outside a six-story building that has four hundred plus people including detective Valerie Crowther.Valerie is partially picked for the job because she knows British Sign Language and her being a no-nonsense crime solver. Moreover, this should have been a case easy to solve.However, she is cut off from any external help needed to do proper police work confined in a building full of panicked student, faculty, and daytime workers. To top this off; another murder expires a second and then another.The criminal is within the building. How hard can 'He or she' be found? The rollercoaster ride Valerie, her boss, the school's Chancellor and nurse go through in fighting a Monkey Flu and trying to figure out who's the killer at the same time is daunting.The MORCAN's writing kept me on the edge of my seat with an atypical and surprisingly gratifying ending which cleaned the slate for Valerie. Just the conclusion was worth the ride.

New Zealand novelist and screenwriter Lance Morcan is a former journalist and newspaper editor with twenty published books to his credit. He regularly writes in collaboration with his son James Morcan, an actor, writer, podcast host and producer who resides in Sydney, Australia. Together they have published eight novels as a team.According to the authors, ‘This novel was inspired by the murders of Deaf students at Gallaudet University, one of the world's most prestigious learning institutions for the Deaf, between 1980 and the early 2000's. The investigating authorities didn't know if the killings were 'inside jobs' and for a time nearly everyone connected to Gallaudet was under suspicion.’The quality of prose is excellent in this thriller – likely attributable in part to the authors’ experience with creating film both in storyline and acting. So often the tenor of a novel is distinctly set in a finely honed Prologue, and that is certainly the case here. ‘…Ever so gradually the hole in the brick wall grew smaller as he laid more bricks. Despite what was at stake, he worked at a leisurely pace, all the while thinking. That was something he did a lot these days. Thinking, that is. The hole was now so small he could hardly see the object he was concealing. Only the deceased’s face was visible, covered by the transparent plastic bag he’d used so effectively to cut off the other’s air supply just thirty minutes earlier. He smiled at the memory of the deceased’s final moments. Those last seconds when the young man had recognised his attacker and realised he was about to die. Beautiful…poetry in motion…slow motion. Oh how he loved the exhilarating, orgasmic-like feelings he’d experienced as the life of another was snuffed out. He willingly embraced them as he relived the moment. It was as if the helpless young man before him was still dying. Studying the deceased now, or what he could still see of him at least, he recalled how he’d laughed uproariously just before death came to his victim. The visuals replayed over and over in his mind. He remembered how the veins in the young man’s eyeballs, face and neck appeared to burst as he was deprived of air, and how fragile he’d looked – like a child being tortured. The icing on the cake had been when he’d used his hands to communicate a final message via sign language. He could still see the look on his victim’s face when, seconds before death came, he realised what was being communicated to him. It was a look of total horror, which was somehow more accentuated when viewed through the transparent plastic bag. That had made this killing even more satisfying.’It is with the same degree of imaginative intensity that his story is revealed, a d as the synopsis describes the plot the book becomes even more inviting – ‘When you can't hear...death comes silently. Scotland Yard detective Valerie Crowther is assigned to investigate the murder of a student at a university for the Deaf in London, England. The murder investigation coincides with a deadly flu virus outbreak, resulting in the university being quarantined from the outside world. When more Deaf students are murdered, it becomes clear there is a serial killer operating within the sealed-off university. A chilling cat-and-mouse game evolves as the unknown killer targets Valerie and the virus claims more lives.’A stunning, grisly mystery that pleads to become a film. Grady Harp, July 18

Feel your ears twitch to catch that sound that can save you, but find only silence is present. Then you KNOW, why they never know death is coming. Dive head first into this uniquely terrifying thriller: With a striking vividness and a gallery of profoundly ingeniously portrayed characters we get brought into a suspece filled thriller like no other. It has everything one can wish for, ranging from a very unque plot, fresh uncommon location, vivid multifaceted characters, a strong protagonist female main character, complete with pro and cons (Thank heavens she is most definitely not a bimbo). Not to mention the outstanding ways the authors have used to portrayed the storyline in all its grit and glory. This is most definitly a book I would love to see as a movie as well.When reading thrillers There is a wide array of books avaliable, sadly many are alike and the lead character is stereo typed. Thankfully thats not the case in this outstanding book. Standing ovations for a exceptionally well written book!** Notations: I first read this book as a ARC but I liked it A LOT! So I bought it and re-read it!So here in expressed opinion is not based on anything else than my opinion after the second time I read it (was actually even better since nuances that i missed first time (because of eagarness to find out what was going to happen) now could was noticed more clearly. It just deepens my opinion that this book is Ahhh-Maaazing.An afterthought with a punch: (added 2 month after I read this book.) I should perhaps add that sometimes very special books stay with you, lingers, and you find your mind going back to it, this is such a book, at least for me.But it is in the very best sense.Whats more impressive, is that it gave a insight and a understanding into the life of def people,e ven if this is a book based on a true event, if the authors hadn’t managed to make the characters so vivid and living it would not have been able to convey that insight. That is in it self by far outstanding.

I have recently been reading a lot of murder mystery books, mainly involving the British police services. As there were no new publications from my favourite authors, I went looking for something new, and was pleased to find one set in an unusual environment, which promised to be educational, too. It was exceptionally long for a novel of this kind, which made it more appealing to me, and the reviews, none of which was rated less than 4 out of 5, had me hooked.Several of the reviewers have praised the authors for the depth of research that has gone into it. However, although they certainly seem to have done their homework on the organisations which exist to help deaf people and have raised awareness of the challenges facing those afflicted, I'm afraid that seems to be where the research ended. It is an author's job to grab the reader's attention and keep the story line within the bounds of credibility. If you want readers to invest a chunk of their lives in what we are told is a story inspired by actual events, you need to keep it real. Once glaring errors or unlikely scenarios raise their ugly heads, the spell is broken and the reader lost. Sadly this book is full of such pitfalls.The authors chose to set the story in England, and so the reader is entitled to expect them to have at least some idea of what life in Britain is really like. Not so, it seems. Setting it in a highly unlikely week of continuously record-breaking high temperatures is certainly not a good start.We are introduced to the heroine of the tale, Valerie Crowther, who conforms to what is fast becoming the standard protagonist in modern police procedurals: a tall, slim, very good looking woman, aged 28-35. The only difference here is that she is 'raven haired' instead of the more usual blonde, but still drags around the obligatory baggage full of disastrous personal relationships and family troubles. However, we are told, more than once, that her rank in the Service is that of 'First Class Detective'. That rank was discontinued in the British Police in 1949. Had the story been set 70 years ago, that rank would be possible, but the mention of smart phones and holographic conference calls rather militates against that. There are also several references to ranks being 'inferior' and 'superior', references which are not only politically incorrect, but insulting.In order to ramp up the British connection, the BBC is brought into the story, but we are soon told that in the middle of a news broadcast, the BBC goes to an advert break! Clearly, the authors have never watched BBC television. The BBC is not (and hopefully never will be) permitted to carry commercial adverts. It is funded from the sale of annual licences which have to be purchased by anyone wanting to watch live television broadcasts. But worse is to follow.When the so-called Monkey Flu breaks out in the university, the illogical decision is made to seal it off from the rest of the world to stop it spreading. (Perhaps the authors got the idea from the story of the village of Eyam in 1665, though the action taken then was justified because no-one knew what caused the plague, or how to fight it. Modern doctors are not so ignorant.) This involved a very large building, six-storeys high and 'a block' wide (whatever that means - 'block' is not a measurement used in the UK) being covered completely in scaffolding and planking, then the whole caboodle completely sealed up in plastic sheeting. This was apparently done in a matter of hours. Really? Did anyone consider the sheer logistics of such an exercise? The transport of the many tons of poles, planks and plastic required, not to mention the manpower involved to erect it? Where did it all come from? So now the unfortunate 500-odd souls left in the building seem doomed to three possible fates: catching the fatal Flu virus, being murdered by the mystery killer, or simply suffocating from being trapped inside what amounts to a huge polythene bag!The treatment of the unfortunate student who tries to break the quarantine is beyond belief. The Captain in charge of the soldiers tasked with dealing with such a situation, faced with a student running at him, yells at her through a megaphone to stop or be shot. When this has no effect, the student's dress and appearance might have prompted anyone of average intelligence to think that perhaps the student didn't understand English, but no, he keeps yelling. It is only moments before a fatal shot is to be fired that it suddenly dawns on him that he has been guarding the country's premiere university for the deaf, and he thinks "Oh, hang on, perhaps she can't hear me". But he still keeps yelling at her.The aftermath of his regrettable action is beyond preposterous. We are treated to vivid descriptions of the video scenes transmitted live on BBC television, depicting the murder of a student, and the subsequent desecration by birds of her half-naked corpse left lying in the open for days. What a wonderful way to spread the airborne virus they are supposed to be containing. The BBC and other media broadcasters operate under a strictly controlled code of ethics as to what can and cannot be broadcast, and there is no way this would be transmitted to the public, live or not. Even when they do show so-called live reports, these are actually delayed by a few seconds while a censor monitors the footage and halts it if anything about to be shown breaks the code. And the introduction of a Harris Hawk is completely nonsensical. These are birds of the desert and wide-open grasslands of South America. Even if a captive bird escaped in the UK, it would not fly anywhere near a busy city. It hunts only live food, and even if one did turn up at this scene, it would actually be viciously attacked by the crows themselves. It is not for nothing that the collective noun for crows is 'a murder'.The disposal of the body, and those of subsequent victims of the deadly Flu, is like something out of a teenager's violent video game, and totally impractical. The authors really ought to visit a local crematorium and see for themselves just how difficult it is to cremate a human body properly. You are not left with just a small pile of black ash. And why were those outside not supplied with the protective Hazmat suits such as those given to the medics inside the university?It was at this stage, not even half-way through what was becoming a very challenging story to believe in, that I almost gave up reading it. Credulity was stretched way past its breaking point, and had I been reading a paper book I would have gone to the back to confirm who the killer was, and stopped reading. Sadly, even that revelation, when it finally came, was no surprise. That ploy has been used too many times by crime fiction writers. Very disappointing. And it became glaringly obvious that the authors had done zero research on firearms laws in the UK. British Police Officers, including the detectives of the Metropolitan CID unit, do not routinely carry firearms of any kind. The only ones who do are the rigorously trained and authorised Specialist Firearms Officers. If detectives are faced with a situation which may call for armed response, they call in the SFOs - never go armed themselves. At the end of the story, Bennett of the CID is portrayed as coming to the rescue with a six-shooter strapped to his hip, like Gary Cooper going to his High Noon appointment. The Met Police gave up using revolvers many moons ago in favour of the Glock 17, but that's OK, because he had one of those as well in his pocket. Having one unauthorised handgun in his possession (an offence earning an immediate prison sentence) is bad enough, but two? Where did he get them from?The book started off with so much promise, and I was looking forward to a long, engaging murder mystery. In the end, it was pedestrian, overlong, repetitive and treated the reader too patronisingly, reminding us over and over again, especially on almost every page of the first half of the book, that we were dealing with deaf people. I got that on page 1. The plot depended throughout on a long series of coincidences; Crowther being part of a major crime scene swarming with police personnel, but amazingly being the only one left in the building when the doors were closed; far too many missed calls and missed clues; people looking the wrong way at precisely the wrong moment; the reputedly sharp, intelligent detectives not picking up on the obvious; etc, etc. There is some good writing in this novel, particularly in the second half of the story, but it is inconsistent, and a good editor could easily reduce the book by 200 pages and ramp up the action into the bargain. The misuse of the English language is irritating, especially the continued use of past participles of verbs as nouns, and the liberal spattering of American idioms and phraseology. The intermittent sex scenes between various characters in the book are totally irrelevant to the story, and their inclusion in this tale tells us more about what's going on in the minds of the authors than those of the characters.There are many other details unexplained or glossed over, and it is too convenient that people who would otherwise be held accountable for their illegal actions die or get killed off in the final pages. Why would the university have not just one, but two incinerators capable of disposing of bodies? Why was no-one accountable for telling an untrained detective to carry out illegal autopsies on bodies? Why were they so worried that they were running out of bottled water when the university was undoubtedly connected to a mains water supply? Why were they running out of food, but were able to receive the latest digital gadgets and Hazmat suits? From whence came the seemingly inexhaustible supply of body bags? etc, etc.For anyone who has not lived in the UK, the authors have painted a disparaging picture of life in England. Those who live here would hardly recognise it. From the heartless Prime Minister behaving like some despotic tyrant of a third world country by turning a deaf ear to public outcry, her elected Cabinet and indeed common sense in condemning 500 people to almost certain death; to the BBC showing almost pornographic live images on television; to the bumbling, gun-toting police who wouldn't know a clue if it stood up and punched them on the nose, but seem to be able to get away with cold-blooded murder – it is all too much.All in all, a book which did not deliver on its potential. What a shame.

It's taken me a while to get through this book, but it has given me a very good insight into those who suffer this affliction. However I must mention the often used and really annoying use of the word "gotten". Why use it when the correct word is "got". Okay so I'm picky. It's a good story but oh so boring in places as the constant relaying of where everyone was and how they were passing the time, got quite monotonous.

From start to finish there's twists and turns, surprise bumps and dips, but holds you tight until you're forced to get out the car, days later, dazed but exhilarated.I was gripped from the moment I started to the very last moments, literally nothing should be taken for granted here, nothing and no one are what they appear.A long story, I think over 15 hours of reading, it absolutely is worth every minute, a thriller, with no hidden agenda, just a right riveting read.

This is a gripping thriller, well written & thankfully free of the typos & grammatical errors found in many Kindle books. I really engaged with the story & the characters. I'm going to look at the other books from these authors...

What a brilliant brilliant book, a great read possibly the best book I've read. A deaf university but not a normal one lots of ups and downs. A must read