Today I am delighted to be able to bring you a guest post from Ellis Shuman, author of fantastic The Burgas Affair which I was lucky enough to read over Christmas!
About the Book:
In the wake of a deadly terrorist attack at Burgas Airport in Bulgaria, Israeli and Bulgarian intelligence agencies launch a joint investigation. Detective Boyko Stanchev on the police task force teams up with Ayala Navon, a young Israeli intelligence analyst on her first overseas assignment.
The two must establish whether the terrorists were assisted by a Bulgarian crime organization in laying the groundwork for the attack. It should be a routine investigation, but shadows of the past keep interfering.
Boyko’s interactions with a crime boss pursuing a vendetta against him threaten to throw him off track. Ayala’s pursuit of the terrorists and their accomplices brings up painful memories of a family tragedy.
Boyko and Ayala form a shaky alliance, one that evolves into growing cooperation and affection as they desperately race against time to uncover who was behind the Burgas bombing.
The Burgas Affair is a fictional account of the aftermath of a very real terrorist attack. On July 18, 2012, a deadly explosive rocked a tourist bus at Burgas Airport, killing five Israelis and their Bulgarian bus driver. The terrorists responsible for this murderous attack have never been brought to justice.
Guest Post from Ellis – I Had Never Considered Writing about Bulgaria until…
At the end of 2008 I was summoned into my boss’s office. I worked in online marketing at a mid-level management position and I thought I was handling the work pretty well. My boss informed me that the position was being relocated from Israel, where I live, to Bulgaria.
In January 2009, I arrived in Sofia with my wife to start a two-year relocation of the job. I had never previously been to Bulgaria and I had never lived before in Europe. I was born in the United States and Israel has been my home since I was as a teenager. Living in Bulgaria would not only be an exciting challenge to my career, but also an adventure.
I found working at a desk in a Bulgarian office to be very similar to working at a desk in Tel Aviv. I eagerly looked forward to the weekends, when my wife and I set forth to explore the country which had become our temporary home.
We were stunned to see that Bulgaria is an incredibly beautiful place. It’s not only blessed with amazing nature, but the country also has a rich culture and history that is evident wherever you go. We found Sofia, the capital, to be a typical Eastern European city, but one that is trying to advance quickly into the modern world. The countryside, though, was what really captured our attention. We travelled extensively, from Varna on the Black Sea to the serene Rila Monastery. We visited the picturesque villages, the forests, and the mountains. Everywhere we went there was something unique to see, and we found the Bulgarian cuisine extremely tasty.
The two years of our stay in Bulgaria ended and we went back to our home in Israel. Except, I found that I missed my life in Sofia. As a writer with a very vivid imagination, I returned to Bulgaria in my mind every day. I began to write about my experiences walking the Sofia streets, the majestic views I took in when climbing the Bulgarian mountains. I began to share the country’s beauty through my writing. I wrote travel articles encouraging tourists to visit Bulgaria, but my real desire was to visit the country in fiction.
I published my first novel, Valley of Thracians, in January 2013. The book is a suspense thriller in which an American Peace Corps volunteer goes missing in Bulgaria, and only his grandfather believes that he is still alive. Along with the suspense, readers are treated to an introduction to the country and its people.
Three years later, I was shocked to the core when a bomb exploded at the airport in Burgas, Bulgaria. The bombing was a terrorist attack directed at a group of Israeli tourists. Five Israelis lost their lives in the bombing, as well as their Bulgarian bus driver. This was the first terror attack ever to occur in Bulgaria.
The media reported extensively on the bombing and its aftermath, but no one was ever held accountable for the attack (although it is presumed that the Hezbollah terrorist organization was responsible). In my creative mind, I began to envision a joint Bulgarian-Israeli investigation into the attack, and this was the starting point for my new novel, The Burgas Affair.
She’s an Israeli data analyst. He’s a headstrong Bulgarian detective. Together they must track down those responsible for a horrific bombing. It should be a routine investigation, but shadows of the past keep interfering.
The Burgas Affair, a crime thriller set in Bulgaria and Israel, was published in October 2017 and is available for purchase on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Burgas-Affair-Ellis-Shuman-ebook/dp/B0767KHQPW
Make sure you check back to my blog on the 23rd January 2018 for my review of this excellent thriller!!!
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