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    Footloose
    Footloose
    Footloose
    Ebook45 pages43 minutes

    Footloose

    By Val McDermid and Peter James

    3.5/5

    ()

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    About this ebook

    He was a clinical psychologist who specialized in unraveling the motivations of the twisted killers who wanted to express themselves again and again. She was the kind of detective for whom justice matters more than any other consideration…

    In this short story from the thrilling anthology MatchUp, bestselling authors Val McDermid and Peter James—along with their popular series characters Tony Hill and Roy Grace—team up for the first time ever.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateJul 23, 2019
    ISBN9781982139568
    Footloose
    Author

    Val McDermid

    Val McDermid is a No.1 bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold more than sixteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010. Val writes full time and lives in Edinburgh and the East Neuk of Fife.

    Read more from Val Mc Dermid

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      Book preview

      Footloose - Val McDermid

      VAL MCDERMID AND PETER JAMES

      VAL MCDERMID TELLS ME THAT the idea for this story came while she was having her feet worked on by a brisk German reflexologist. While lying there she kept thinking about how most people consider feet unattractive, and yet for some they’re a powerful sexual fetish.

      A thought occurred.

      What would happen if a foot-fetishist reflexologist confronted a pair of feet so perfect he wanted to keep them forever.

      And the story was born.

      Both Peter and Val are British crime (thriller) writers. But their novels are set at opposite ends of the country. Val’s principal characters are a detective and a psychological profiler. Peter’s is a pure detective. For them both, the whole world of foot fetishists was a relatively unexplored subject. Learning about the weird and wonderful world of feet, as objects of eroticism, seemed a bit mind-boggling for them.

      But there was an element of fun to it too.

      Peter wrote the skeleton of an outline. Val then fleshed it out and drafted the opening, setting the scene and the tone. Together, they then worked back and forth, each writing segments of about a thousand words. Val counted on Peter for all the police procedural elements, which gave her free rein to have some fun with the characters. And they both had a bit of a giggle at each other’s terrible puns about feet.

      The result is something quite unique.

      Footloose.

      FOOTLOOSE

      A WATERY RED SUN WAS struggling to defeat skeins of cloud above the moors of either Lancashire or West Yorkshire, depending on personal allegiance. A narrow ribbon of road wound down from the high tops toward the outskirts of Bradfield, its gray sprawl just emerging from the dawn light. Gary Naylor steered a van crammed with bacon, sausages, and black pudding from his organic piggery down the moorside, knowing his bladder wasn’t going to make it to the first delivery.

      There was, he knew, a lay-by round the next bend, tucked in against a dry stone wall. He’d stop there for a quick slash. Nobody around to see at this time of the morning. He pulled over and squirmed out, duckwalking over to the wall. He had eyes for nothing but his zip and his hands and then, oh, the relief as he directed his hot stream over the low wall.

      That was when he noticed her.

      Sprawled on the far side of the gray drystone dike lay a woman.

      Blond, beautiful, dressed in a figure-hugging dress, wide-eyed and indisputably dead.

      Dead and covered in his steaming piss.

      • • •

      DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR CAROL JORDAN of the Regional Major Incident Team had already been awake when the call came in. She’d been halfway up the hill behind her converted barn home, exercising Flash, her border collie. She walked; the dog quartered the hillside in a manic outpouring of energy that made her feel faintly inadequate. She took the call and turned, whistling the dog to follow. Five yards in and

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