If a tooth costs a tooth and an eye costs an eye
When a man hits his wife, then it’s his turn to die
Furious that the courts and police can’t prevent respected surgeon John Kirby from beating his wife, Sally Mellors steps in to save her. Permanently…
But Grace Kirby isn’t the only one who needs saving and Sally quickly discovers she’s taken on a much bigger job than she’d thought.
With her unique ability to blend justice with fun, Sally sets joyfully about the business of removing the monsters from women’s lives, but is she in danger of becoming a monster herself?
As her friends in the police get ever closer, Sally has some serious questions of her own to answer.
Maps of where An Implacable Woman is set–https://ktfindlay.com/an-implacable-woman-maps/
Purchase Links
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088HJJ6NW/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B088HJJ6NW/
https://www.amazon.in/dp/B088HJJ6NW/
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B088HJJ6NW/
MY INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR!
- When did you know that you wanted to be an author?
Oh, for a long time. I first read Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men In A Boat when I was six and I was captivated by the way a whole world could be made to appear in my head, just by reading words off a page. It was like magic, and I wanted to be able to do it too. So very early indeed, but like most people, I didn’t actually do anything about it until much later. I started doing some serious dabbling in the early nineties, getting two books to sixty thousand words each, but while I returned to them over the years, reworking what I’d already written, they didn’t really progress. Then, in November 2017 a window opened up to take my writing seriously and I seized it.
- What inspired you to write this book?
The seemingly never ending river of domestic abuse is appalling in itself, but I was struck one day by the cases where women who’d been left for years in the most intolerable situations by the police and courts, finally broke and struck back. Often, they’d strike when their tormentor was incapacitated, either drunk, drugged, or simply asleep, and that gave them a problem in court. Their defence tended to be provocation, pushed to breaking point, but the prosecution could quite rightly point out that given the victim was incapacitated, surely the murderess could simply have walked away? There wasn’t actually a need to kill him because at that precise moment he demonstrably represented no threat at all. That’s perfectly true, but it completely misses the point that the average woman is physically weaker and smaller in stature than the average man, so taking her aggressor on face to face wouldn’t be a smart thing to do because attacking him is going to make him even more angry, lifting the threat to herself even higher. Running away wasn’t an option either, because abusers often come after their victims, so the women have to live on the run, hiding away, as if they’re the ones in prison.
My wonderful character Sally Mellors had happily despatched her own dragons in A Thoughtful Woman, and I wondered what she would do if cases of serious domestic violence within her own social circle were brought to her attention. Would she want to do anything about it? Even more interesting, could she still stay the lovely human being she was, or would her soul plunge into darkness? And finally, there was a challenge for me. Could I tell such a tale and still fill it with the light and fun that’s Sally’s very essence?
- If you could sell this book in one sentence what would it be?
With her unique blend of justice and fun, Sally sets joyfully about freeing battered women from their monsters: permanently…
- What are you up to next?
I have two series going, the Sally Mellors Adventures of which An Implacable Woman is the second volume, and the Prince Wulfstan series, where a modern day museum curator falls back in time and finds his soul sharing a body with a ten year old Anglo Saxon prince. Right now I’m a third of the way through A Change Of Mind, the second book in that series.
- Who is your biggest inspiration?
Wow… If we’re talking in the writing world, that’s quite hard to say, because I’m somewhat spoiled for choice. As a child I would have said Arthur Ransom for his Swallows and Amazons stories, and as an adult I’d be torn between James Herriot and his vet series, Bill Bryson with pretty much everything he’s ever written, and Terry Pratchett and his Discword series. They all weave story, character, and how things really work in an almost seamless way, and I love that.
If I had to choose just one, I guess it would be Terry Pratchett because his Discworld books (apart from the first two) have so much depth and so many layers to them. You can read them lightly as a story, or you can really dive deep and have a good solid think. And the truly wonderful thing is that even if you’re just devouring the story, you’ll still absorb some of the underpinnings that point back to your own world. Plus of course, he makes me laugh, and I loved his attitude to life and his work!
If on the other hand, we’re talking about who inspired me the most, full stop, then I’d go Jimmy Clark, Juan Manuel Fangio and Gilles Villeneuve. All three were the very best of their respective times, world famous in a highly competitive sport, and yet they remained fantastic human beings to the end. Fangio explained how he managed it in a single sentence. “You must always strive to be the best, but you must never believe that you are.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
K.T. Findlay lives on a small farm where he dovetails his writing with fighting the blackberry and convincing the quadbike that killing its rider isn’t a vital part of its job description.
Social Media Links –
Webpage : www.ktfindlay.com
Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0UIrcFBnHtHXQzbr37Ay-Q
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/KTFindlayauthor
Twitter : https://twitter.com/ktfindlay
donnasbookblog 
Hi Donna,
Many thanks for the interview and the post. I very much appreciate it. 🙂
KT Findlay
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