#BlogTour ‘Inside Out’ by Chris McGeorge

About the book…

SHE WAS SENT DOWN…
Cara Lockhart has just commenced a life sentence in HMP North Fern – the newest maximum security women’s prison in the country. She was convicted of a crime she is adamant she didn’t commit.

SHE WAS SET UP…
One morning she wakes up to find her cellmate murdered – shot in the head with a gun that is missing. The door was locked all night, which makes Cara the only suspect.

BUT THAT WAS JUST THE BEGINNING.
Cara needs to clear her name, unravelling an impossible case, with an investigation governed by a prison timetable.
But as Cara starts to learn more about North Fern and the predicament she is in, she finds connections between the past and present that she never could have imagined.

Indeed it seems that her conviction and her current situation might be linked in very strange ways…

Happy publication day to ‘Inside Out’ by Chris McGeorge, which is released (no pun intended)after a nail biting, pandemic shuffling delay, but boy is it worth the wait! Huge thanks to Alainna at Orion books for my gifted ebook review copy.

Fast becoming the modern master of the locked room mystery, this is an enigma wrapped in a puzzle, locked inside a box that has had the key thrown away. And then chucked in the sea.

Starting with a ‘there is no way that could have happened’ murder, Cara’s story flashes back and forth throughout the book but at the very beginning, the reader is left with little doubt that she has been accused of a horrific crime. Her nickname, ‘The Butcher’, is eventually explained, but the reader is 100% with cara as she is taken from the prison environment which she has just about become accustomed to and thrust into an entirely new one.

She doesn’t know whee she is. There are no windows and no clocks. All the women prisoners are given an iteinery but have no clue whether the times that such activities as ‘Illumination’ are actually held at the time they are told. The ‘windows’ in their cells are like tv screensavers with artificial daylight being pumped into their cells. There isn’t even an exercise yard. No visiting, no contact with the outside world except for a weekly letter. The women are shown the same movie over and over and over again.

It reads like a modern hellscape, but at the same time, these are apparently the country’s worst offenders. So shouldn’t a punishment fit the crime?

And this is where the reader becomes fully engaged into what Chris is trying to say, in context, do those who commit crimes and step outside of the clearly defined rules of society, have the right to say what is and is not, a fair punishment? Or is that for others to decide? How much of the narrative around personal and collective responsibility is driven by the media and perceptions of who, or what a criminal is? And what about those who are actually wrongly convicted?

As Cara begins to fight back against the brutal regime of North Fern, she is working from an internal and external perspective, trying to release her mind and her body from a system which has consistently failed her.

Thoughtful, engaging and a real puzzle to work through, this novel also has cross over mentions to Chris’ other books, ‘Guess Who?’ and ‘Now You See Me’ which really thrilled me! Go grab ‘Inside Out’ in ebook format, I guarentee it will be a few hours well spent!

About the author…

Chris McGeorge has an MA in Creative Writing (Crime / Thriller) from City University London where he wrote his first crime novel Dead Room for his thesis. He constantly told stories from a young age, whether they took the form of comics, short stories or scripts.

He is a lover of Golden Age crime, like Christie and Conan Doyle, leading his crime stories to be a mix of the old and the contemporary. He likes weird and wonderful plots, with plenty of intrigue and twists.

His often coherent ramblings about everything pop culture can be found on his blog Festival of Blood and occasionally he produces the Sarcasmicast podcast with a group of friends.

Twitter @crmcgeorge @OrionBooks