Rabette Run by Nick Rippington
Publication Date: 21st February 2020
Psychological Thriller
My thanks to Sarah Hardy of Books on the Bright Side Publicity for the opportunity to be part of this blog tour for Nick Rippington's book Rabette Run. My apologies for not being able to provide you with a review as originally planned, however Nick has generously offered an extract of the book for you to get a taster.
The
story so far...
After being involved in a nasty car
accident, graphic artist and father of one Emerson Rabette has been forced to
confront his biggest fear and take the underground to an important meeting in
London.
Pretty soon Emerson’s OCD kicks in and he is faced by an angry crowd of
commuters, only for the mysterious glamour model Winter to come to his rescue
and help him onto the train.
So far so good, until Emerson begins to suspect his fellow passengers –
including a soldier – are watching him. When he sees some graffiti scrawled on
the ceiling of the tube saying ‘Run Rabette Run’ he can stand no more, and flees the train.
Catching a bus, he starts to believe he can relax until he realises the
driver is the same soldier he saw on the underground and they are being pursued
at speed through the streets of London by the police. Now the soldier makes a strange
request of him:
Extract:
I look helplessly at the gear stick
then try to shift it, but it’s stuck fast. ‘What the hell!’
says Tank. ‘Don’t tell me you can’t even drive a flamin’
bus.’
‘That’s what I was trying to tell you!’
I protest like a child arguing with a parent over school dinners. The last
vestiges of calm and control are rapidly draining from my body. ‘I’m
a soddin’ graphic designer not Emerson Fittipaldi.’
As soon as the words tumble out
of my mouth, a vision shoots into my brain – my father watching his hero on
TV, the Brazilian racing driver from whom I got my name. I feel my eyes welling
up.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, are you blubbing, you snowflake?’
barks Tank, raising the gun and pointing it in my face. ‘Start
that business and I’ll drill a nice king-sized hole in your head.’
As I brush a tear from my cheek
with one hand, I raise the other in a submissive gesture aimed at warding off
my gung-ho ‘bodyguard’. He drops the murderous weapon to his side as quickly as he’s
raised it, as if his brain has belatedly informed him it’s
folly to wave a loaded gun at the person you’re supposed to be protecting.
‘You see what happens, Rabette?’ he says, turning the blame on
me. ‘You’re getting me wound up, and I can’t
think straight when I’m wound up.’
Suddenly the sirens,
ear-shredding in their intensity, change pitch, slowing down as they’re
replaced by an out-of-tune wail that sets my teeth on edge. It’s
the same sort of musical torture I experience when listening to those odious
Scottish musical instruments, the bagpipes. The bus lights up like Blackpool
during the illuminations, searchlights circling the interior.
‘Here they come, y’all,’
says Franklin, holding a pair of spherical objects in his hand. ‘Shall
we do this?’
‘Too right!’ says Tank and the two of them charge down the aisle like a
latter-day Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the rest of us gawping in their
wake. I realise that if they’re here to protect me the least I can do is fulfil my part
of the bargain. After crunching the gear lever around and pressing my foot to
the floor, I manage to persuade the huge monstrosity to lurch forward.
‘Hey, steady bud!’ shouts Franklin, ‘You
don’t want me to drop these do ya?’
He holds up the objects so I
can see them in the mirror. Grenades. I recognise this particular type from an
army feature I’d designed at work. Before I’m able to respond, he turns
back to face the pulsating lights behind us, pushing open the emergency door at
the back and shouting, ‘Geronimo!’
Launching one of the items
airborne like an All-Star outfielder at a baseball match, it sails in a high
arc just as a crackly voice on a megaphone announces, ‘Please
put your hands on your heads. There needn’t be any trouble. We just want
to speak to Mr Rabette, please, Mr...’
Kaboom!
The massive explosion is
accompanied by a blinding, bright flash, the combination pummelling my senses.
My vision is shrouded in a sea of white, my ears assaulted by a tinny, ringing
sensation. Time seems to pause for a moment before resuming at double speed. People
are diving for cover as glass and loose bits of mangled metal fly everywhere,
threatening to rip holes in any human flesh with which they come into contact.
Tank and Franklin are sprawled on the floor, hands covering their ears, staring
out of the back door of the bus and waiting for the fog to clear. An old man
who has been sitting near the back moans, and the woman beside him cries as she
fusses over him. ‘His leg!’ she shouts to anyone prepared to listen. ‘It’s
gone straight into his leg. Help us! Help! We need a doctor!’
Shaking myself from my
paralysed state I realise similar appeals are going up everywhere. Passengers
lucky enough to avoid the flying debris are attending those who haven’t
been so lucky, the whole surreal episode being played out to a background of
moans and groans. One of the little girls I had noticed earlier is lying across
a seat, her hair matted with dust, as her mother dabs at a cut on her arm with
a tissue from a small pack she has liberated from her coat pocket. The scene resembles
something you might see on a late-night TV documentary focusing on the
aftermath of a natural disaster.
As I look around, I’m
becoming increasingly aware something is missing. The picture isn’t
right. Then I understand. It isn’t something that’s missing, it’s
someone.
Where the hell is Winter?
NICK RIPPINGTON is the award-winning author of the Boxer Boys series of gangland crime thrillers.
Based in London, UK, Nick was the last-ever Welsh Sports Editor of the now defunct News of The World, writing his debut release Crossing The Whitewash after being made redundant with just two days notice after Rupert Murdoch closed down Europe’s biggest-selling tabloid in 2011.
On holiday at the time, Nick was never allowed back in the building, investigators sealing off the area with crime scene tape and seizing his computer as they investigated the phone-hacking scandal, something which took place a decade before Nick joined the paper. His greatest fear, however, was that cops would uncover the secrets to his Fantasy Football selections.
Handed the contents of his desk in a black bin bag in a murky car park, deep throat style, Nick was at a crossroads – married just two years earlier and with a wife and 9-month-old baby to support.
With self-publishing booming, he hit on an idea for a UK gangland thriller taking place against the backdrop of the Rugby World Cup and in 2015 produced Crossing The Whitewash, which received an honourable mention in the genre category of the Writers’ Digest self-published eBook awards. Judges described it as “evocative, unique, unfailingly precise and often humorous”.
Follow-up novel Spark Out, a prequel set at the time of Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War, received a Chill With A Book reader award and an IndieBRAG medallion from the prestigious website dedicated to Independent publishers and writers throughout the world. The novel was also awarded best cover of 2017 with Chill With A Book.
The third book in the Boxer Boys series Dying Seconds, a sequel to Crossing The Whitewash, was released in December 2018 and went to the top of the Amazon Contemporary Urban Fiction free charts during a giveaway period of five days. A digital box set, the Boxer Boys Collection, came out in September last year.
Now Nick, 60, is switching direction feeling that, for the moment, the Boxer Boys series has run its course. His latest novel, Rabette Run, will be released in the Spring and Nick says, ‘It is a gritty psychological thriller with twists and turns galore. Think Alice in Wonderland with tanks and guns.’
Married to Liz, When Nick isn’t writing he works as a back bench designer of sports pages on the Daily Star. He has two children – Jemma, 37, and Olivia, 9.
Social Media Links:
Twitter: @nickripp
Instagram: @nickrippingtonauthor
Where to find Nick’s books…
Amazon Author Page in the UK:
Amazon Author Page in the US:
