Blind School

Blind
School

None can see like the Blind…

Ryan Lorimar and Jessica Werner have a special gift: they can see ‘fallen angel’ apparitions within other people. But as the fallen angels in turn know that they’ve been ‘viewed’, it’s a gift that will get him killed. They need protection. They need to enter ‘
Blind
School
’.

Their only hope is Ellis Kendell and his team of agents. Day in, day out, Kendell’s team trawl through street-cam images from across the nation to pick up that tell-tale eye light-refraction of ‘viewers’. Can Kendell’s team get to the viewers before the fallen angels and get them to safety in ‘
Blind
School
’?  But there’s also an added agenda: Kendell’s department want the ‘viewers’ help in tracking down more ‘fallen angels’.

Yet is Kendell deluding himself? Setting this small group of teens against a legion fifty-times their number of the most cunning and vicious murderers and criminal masterminds the nation has to offer – is he simply throwing them to the wolves? Fated to watch them one-by-one die. The odds are against them.
  

Blind
School
reviews:

'An adrenalin-rush, one day read. If you’ve ever wondered what might make mass-murderers and megalomaniacs tick, now you know. Never has the ongoing fight between good and evil been so much fun, or so frighteningly real.’

- Wendy Mellor, Simply Scripts.

‘Harry Potter with attitude. Plumbs into the teen readership that has made Harry Potter and Twilight so popular, but with a wry slant that would also make it appeal to adults. Has ‘kidult’ written all over it.’

- Tom McIntyre, Xanadu Productions.

John Matthews reviews:

‘Matthews maintains the suspense... an engrossing odyssey into the seamy side of a world that is so near, yet sometimes seems so far. Compulsive reading.'

 - The Times

'Impressive... strong characterization and a relentless race against time to avert the worst carry the reader along the thick pages of this psychological and legal thriller with a difference.'

 - Time Out

'Intriguing thriller (with a) ...dogged and sexy French detective. Treat yourself.' 

 - Prima

'One of the most compelling novels I've read... an ambitious and big novel which will keep you enthralled to its last page.'

- 
Cork
Examiner

'If John Grisham ever developed a sense of irony, or Scott Turow ever tried to write from the other side of the prison bars, they might come up with something like John Matthews's Ascension Day. This is a book that doesn't sacrifice style for suspense, or character for plot. The legal thriller has needed a jolt of electricity for a few years now and Matthews may just be the man to throw the switch.'

 - Peter Blauner. Author of The Intruder.

ASCENSION
DAY
is a fast-paced thriller set between
New Orleans
and an upstate
Louisiana
prison, and Matthews' strong descriptive prose brings the darkness at the heart of
Libreville
penitentiary alive. His chief protagonist, Jac McElroy,is particularly interesting with his Franco-Scottish heritage - and his ever-changing relationship with prisoner Larry Durrant sets the main pulse for this race-against-time thriller... with the stakes and tension racheted up throughout the book.'

 - Luke Croll. Reviewing the Evidence.

'A classy, well-written and unusual thriller.'

 -
Yorkshire
Post

'Matthews delivers one of the best debut thrillers in years, brave, ambitious and remorselessly entertaining. Past Imperfect is a stormer.'

 -
Dublin
Evening Herald

'Lock the doors and turn off the phone. Once you start this compelling, thoughtful, edge-of-your-seat thriller, you won't have time for anything else. A riveting read that hits it just right - right on the knife-edge between psychological and action thriller.'

-  Chris Mooney. Edgar-nominated author of `Remembering Sarah'

'Move over Grisham, your reign is over! Reminiscent of vintage Grisham, but Matthews has his own distinctive style. Strong, believable characters and a plot that grips from page one and won't let go, twisting and turning its way towards a nail-biting climax - they don't come much better than this. One of the best and most memorable thrillers I've read in years. A winner all the way.'

 
- Bob Burke. Mystery Readers International.

Distinctively written… all the forceful energy of the best thrillers.

 - Kirkus UK.

‘A clever premise for an epic page-turner written with wit, compassion (and) highly evolved characters.

- Daily Telegraph.

‘… A chilling and thrilling novel, one in which real people start to wonder if they are insane, and have to come to terms with a terrifying reality that threatens their own life. Mesmerising.

 - Books Monthly

 
‘Shoots super-fast from the first page, immersing the reader in a plot full of surprising twists and turns. A fresh, contemporary tale which doesn't let up for a second - firmly establishing an author from whom we'll no doubt hear more.

 - Books n' Things

ONE

Gary Fulton’s life could pretty well be tracked from the photos and mementoes around his house: pictures of
Gary
in infantry fatigues alongside his buddies in the First Gulf War;
Gary
as a National Guardsman with another bunch of buddies dutifully smiling for the camera;
Gary
with his hunting buddies.

   Two things predominated: buddies, and lot of rifles and guns; as if they were the main things to put a smile on
Gary
’s face. Only four family photos, but
Gary
’s smile was less easy in those – even the two from way back, happier days, when his wife was still with him. And only one photo of him alone with his teenage daughter: his smile almost completely stiff and forced now, as if the pain of his wife leaving him and the four years of teen angst he’d had to endure alone with
Tracy
since had taken their toll.

   From upstairs came the strains of Led Zeppelin’s ‘
Kashmir
’.
Gary
looked its direction and swore he could almost see the dust jumping from the staircase in time with its beat.

   ‘
Tracy
! Turn that Goddamn thing down!’

   No response. For a man his size he moved surprisingly swiftly to the bottom of the stairs, glaring up.

   ‘
Tracy
!’

Still no response. The music seemed louder than normal, and he doubted she could even hear him above it this time.

A yard to his side in the hallway was a display cabinet with guns and rifles in one section and his infantry jacket, a round of 12mm shells and sharpshooters certificate the other.

He shook his head. She was too big now for him to take off his belt and whip her, but locking her for a spell in the broom cupboard had been effective the last few times when grounding her hadn’t worked. 

   His eyes were fixed so intently on her bedroom door at the top of the stairs that he didn’t notice the two empty slots in the hallway cabinet. He started his way up the stairs. 

 
Tracy Fulton rocked gently to the strident beat of the music and stroked the gun in her grip – a Desert Eagle Magnum – to the same rhythm, as if mesmerized.  

   She barely heard the door swing open behind her, and it took a moment for the booming voice to register above the music and her own thoughts.

   ‘How many damn times do I have to tell you?’

   She didn’t answer. She stayed facing the fading afternoon light through her bedroom window, her back to the door behind. She kept stroking the gun in her grip, but slower now.

   ‘And what the hell’s the meaning of this?’

   She realized he was questioning why she was wearing his beloved trench coat; he couldn’t see the gun from behind, and the music was too regular an occurrence to earn surprise.

   ‘Oh, this? This means you don’t have to tell me any more.’ She slid the gun back into her pocket. ‘No more annoying music for you to have to put up with.’

   The tone in her voice was somehow different, and Gary Fulton was still puzzling over his daughter’s new-found confidence as she turned to face him. With the light behind her, it took him a second to focus on her: the look in her eyes was different too, bleary and gone, and he might have put that down to drugs or drink if they weren’t fixed so intently on him, seeming to bore right through him. And something else in them too, a deeper glow and movement.

   He was still trying to work out what it was as the shotgun swung up from beneath the trench coat.  

The music was so loud that their next door neighbour, Beth Turner, had her favourite soap opera, ‘
Days of our Lives’
, turned up high to bury its strains reaching her.

   The two gun shots were louder still, and broke abruptly into Bo Brady’s anniversary dinner speech. Car backfiring? Beth wondered, going over to the window: that
Pontiac
of the
Fulton
’s had seen better days. But as she glimpsed through the nets, the black
Pontiac
was still in the driveway, nobody behind the wheel.