Book Synopsis
James Cowper-art dealer, gambler, thief-is going straight and on the brink of redeeming himself with his disillusioned wife, Imani. He’s still broke, but all he needs to take care of that is a rare art find. Then trouble arrives in the shape of a scheming landlord and an unwelcome dinner party with his boss. As events spin out of his control it appears that nobody, including Imani, is what they pretend. And over everything looms one make-or-break question for James: can he get a grip on his exploding life?
About Roz Kay:
Roz Kay is a writer and former journalist. Her debut children’s novel, The Keeper of the Stones, was published in March 2020 by Hayloft Publishing and she’s had literary short stories published under the name Roz DeKett. Roz, who now lives in Wiltshire, England, has lived in Ghana, Canada, Malaysia, Brunei, and the United States—including nearly six years in Philadelphia where Fake is set. Fake is her debut novel for adults.
Social Media:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_RozKay
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Website: https://rozdekett.com/
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Purchase Links:
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/39BNW1W
Waterstones: http://bit.ly/35QNpb4
Bookshop.org: http://bit.ly/3sy5vbK
Publishing Information:
Published in paperback format by Darley Press on 21stSeptember 2020
FAKE – extract for blog tour
1: ARRESTED FOR DEBT, A RAKE’S PROGRESS
(William Hogarth, 1735, British Museum, London, England)
‘James, you’re late,’ Nick said.
‘Not very,’ I said. ‘How was your honeymoon?’
‘Much like the others,’ Nick said.
Before I could formulate a safe reply, he pointed at his office door.
‘Got a minute?’ he said. ‘In there.’
I squared my shoulders and strode after him, but I dribbled to a halt beneath the architrave. Nick was disposing himself behind his desk, a mahogany plain the size of a football field. A tableau materialised in my mind, a previous, painful meeting: Nick braced in his blood-red wingback leather armchair, his neck bulging like a Spanish fighting bull’s. ‘Why would you do this to me, James?’ he’d said then, the bull more wounded than angry. But that was then and this was now.
‘What is it you still owe me?’ he said, spatchcocking his hands on the desktop as though preparing to vault across it and wrestle me to the floor.
I deemed it prudent not to answer. Better part of valour, and all that. I shut the door and claimed the armchair farthest from my boss, a mint-green Chesterfield. Legs casually crossed, I pretended to study a painting on the wall opposite, a tolerably good watercolour by a minor artist from the Hudson River School. Nick, naturally, had a miniature gallery of his own going on in his office. He’d hang paintings he admired for a while and then flog them.
Games of chicken had always been my forte, at least when a buffer of green baize lay between me and my opponent. So I was a trifle shocked to discover what could only be described as a simpering grin screwing itself into my jaw until my teeth hurt, to realise I was cradling my chin with one hand and digging my thumb into knots popping up like rivets in my cheek muscles. Too many tells. I let go of my face and lowered my arm.
Nick was surveying me from the vantage point of his aquiline nose.
‘Eleven thousand, six hundred and thirty-six bucks,’ he said, settling back between the chair’s wings and buffing his chin with a palm as broad as a bear’s. He was a big-boned man in his fifties with skin that gleamed like a trout’s belly, an American of European heritage a few generations back, invariably expensively dressed. Fresh iron grey seams bisected his crags of black hair.
‘Agree?’ he said.
‘Sounds about right, mate.’
What else could I say, wilting there like a butterfly pinned to a cork?
‘I’ll accept a cheque,’ Nick said agreeably. ‘The full amount.’
‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘That’ll wipe me out.’
‘Don’t tell me you still haven’t straightened out your finances. You bought a house.’
My commission for the sale of the Henderson came in at a welcome eighteen thousand dollars. Sounds like riches, I know, but knock off a chunk for tax and another for the extravagant price of the bracelet I’d given Imani the night before (uneasiness curdled my gut; that hadn’t gone quite as planned) and I could barely rustle up Nick’s final pay-off. My ailing bank account was in desperate need of life support. Then there was Cody, who operated in a world in which texting was invented for the purpose of informing his parents, mainly this half of his parents, that he was short of funds, while the other half of his parents, the far better half, expected me to be on point. As for a house, I hadn’t bought a house, but Nick didn’t need to know that.
‘How about half now and the rest when I find you another painting?’ I said.
‘I think it’s time to close this sorry chapter, don’t you?’
‘Eight grand for now? As a favour?’
‘James,’ Nick said. ‘It’s already been a year. And I absolutely don’t owe you another fucking favour.’
It turns out that when you steal from someone and they catch you, it’s a while before you’re mates again.