Jacqueline Jacques
Jacqueline Jacques took early retirement from teaching in order to write. One of her short stories 'just growed' into Lottie, Jacqueline's first novel, which was published in 1997 by Honno. Piatkus published her three novels, set in Britain in the early post-war years about a 'psychic family: Someone to Watch Over Me, Wrong Way Up the Slide and A Lazy Eye and, in 2004, Honno published Skin Deep, a political/SF thriller with roots in the Nazi concentration camps.
Drawn to Darkness is Jacqueline's first historical crime novel and was written under the auspices of the Escalator scheme. It concerns a Victorian portrait artist whose gifts help the police trace a serial killer. Her next novel will be a psychological thriller about an art teacher working in prisons.
Extract from Drawn to Darkness
The scents of the market hung heavy in the summer heat: offal from the cats' meat stall, stale beer belching from the open door of the pub, rotting fruit and horse-dung. It was a blessing to breathe air rinsed with oil paint and turps, but Archie turned away from his easel, frowning. Something wasn't right. Street-cries and banter were giving way to a growing murmur of concern; carthorses were whiffling into their feedbags, stamping the ground.
It took just one to spot the smoke and from the dry throats in the High Street, a cry, 'Fire!' added breath to the blaze. Now flames leapt up high over the chimneypots; the sky shimmered and darkened. People began running in all directions, women picking up their long skirts and shopping bags, herding their children home. Whistles blew, hand-bells rang. The excitement was palpable. Archie hopped around the room, pulling on his clothes, his shoes, everything else forgotten.
'Archie?' enquired the sleepy girl on the bed.
'Go home, Ida,' he said. 'I don't know how long I'll be.'
'Aye, aye, Arch,' the greengrocer greeted his tenant with a perplexed frown as his queue of customers rapidly dwindled - catastrophes before carrots. 'Where is it?'
'Up the top. McCourt's, I reckon. That's furniture, that smell - beeswax.'
As Archie turned into Hoe Street, horses came galloping down it, bells clanging, burly volunteers shouting, their moustaches streaming. By the time he arrived outside the store, along with half the population of Walthamstow, the horses had been uncoupled and led away from the inferno and two hoses were playing on the flames. The sign, 'McCourt's Second-Hand Furniture' was weeping sooty tears.