BOOK BLAST
Book Title: The Refuge Bid (County Durham Quad 8)
Author and Publisher: Jude Tresswell
Release Date: August 1, 2022
Genre: Contemporary crime/mystery, gay male protagonists
Tropes: Cold case investigation, self-awareness journey
Themes: Asexual/sexual relationships, respect and working together
Heat Rating: 2 flames
Length: 64 000 words
The crime/mystery stands alone.
The story does not end on a cliffhanger.
Buy Links - Available in Kindle Unlimited
You’re tellin’ me that if this shiter buys St Stephen’s, there’s a chance we won’t have access to the graveyard! Over my dead body!
Blurb
The Refuge Bid is a gay mystery and relationships tale set in fictional Tunhead, northeast England.
Is there a link between a woman who has been missing for ten years and the people bidding to buy and redevelop Tunhead’s decommissioned church and graveyard? Can the County Durham Quad and their special friend, Nick, find out and stop the sale—one grave is special—and can they raise the cash to counter the bids with an offer of their own? Success involves their drawing on Tunhead’s quarrying industry past and on employing their very different skills but, also, they must acknowledge what it is that they really want from their unusual liaison.
Trigger Warning: references to a teenager’s suicide and to conversion therapy.
Check out the other books in the County Durham Quad series:
Mike Angells is an openly gay CID inspector based in North East England. There are three men in his life: Raith Balan, Phil Roberts and Ross Whitburn. Mike is particularly close to Ross.
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Excerpt
Anxiety, but mounting relief. Those were his feelings as he stamped down the final clod of earth and smoothed the surface. Some stones and bricks would lie around but who would pay attention to a scattering of those in a place like this? You wouldn’t give them a second glance. So, he’d done it! Literally buried a problem and no one would be any the wiser.
And nobody was until, years later, a group of men from County Durham started digging up the past.
***
The Beck on the Wear Arts Centre, known for ease and for effect as BOTWAC, and the brainchild of Ross Whitburn-Howe. Ross lay in bed and mentally ticked off items linked to BOTWAC’s Easter re-opening. People could visit all year round if they wished to, but the Centre’s location at the end of the lane that wound steeply up to Tunhead in the Durham hills was an icy deterrent during winter. Come spring, though, Tunhead shook off winter’s cold discomforts and looked and sounded full of life—even where it harboured death, for Tunhead had a church with a graveyard.
It might be asked why a tiny village that had never been home to more than a hundred people at any one time should boast a church, let alone a graveyard. The church was a gift from the family who, two centuries past, had owned the limestone quarry that led to Tunhead’s existence. The workers should have Sundays off, provided they prayed and listened to sermons instead, and as the nearest church was a ten mile walk from the row of terraced houses, it seemed sensible to offer an alternative on-site as it were. So, called St Stephen’s after the patron saint of stone masons, the church was used by the quarrymen, their families, the tenant farmers and farmhands who worked the fields adjoining the lane and by the old landowners themselves. St Steve’s was still consecrated although, now, disused. That didn’t mean that the graveyard had become a dismal ruin. Like the rest of the village, it looked neat and tidy, spring flower-full and ready to welcome visitors.
“Yes!” thought Ross. “Everything sorted. Publicity placed with the tourist board, leaflets ready for distribution, programme of events arranged, social media angles covered, and bookings already coming in for the workshops and for August’s week-long pottery festival.”
The man who lay beside him stirred, opened and rubbed two sleepy eyes and said, “Mornin’, Gorgeous.”
“Morning, Mike.” Ross smiled and returned the squeeze that followed the greeting. He snuggled down to enjoy a few more minutes’ warmth in bed. A hair dryer whirred into action from the bedroom across the landing.
“That Raith doin’ his hair? Better get a move on before he’s down and nickin’ me breakfast sausages.” Mike got up, pulled on a pair of boxers and went downstairs.
The ‘Raith’ was Raith Rodrigo Roberts-Balaño—known as Raith Balan: sculptor of erotic art and wearer of exotic clothing. The ‘Roberts’ section of his name was the surname of his husband, Phil, who in comparison with Raith was extremely conventional, and a surgeon. Phil was breakfasting on yoghurt, fruit and wholemeal bread when Mike entered the sunny kitchen.
“Mornin’ Phil.” A kiss on the cheek and a hug around the shoulders. Returned with a grin and a “Morning.”
And so, Ross, Mike, Raith and Phil looked forward to March with the optimism produced by mutual affection and the promise of spring.
About the Author
Jude Tresswell lives in south-east England but was born and raised in the north, and that’s where her heart is. She is ace, and has been married to the same man for many years. She feels that she understands compromise. She supports Liverpool FC, listens to a lot of blues music and loves to write dialogue.
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