Title: Jill
Author: N. Joy
Genre: Crime Fiction, Fiction, Suspense
Book Blurb: The East End of London was a difficult place to grow up in during the Victorian era with unemployment and poverty rife in the neighbourhood. Family’s forged communities and manufactures forged industries as the grey city landscape grew. The Wheelers were more fortunate than most for they all had work and their eldest daughter Mary had found skilled employment allowing her the independence to develop into a strong and forceful woman with a wicked streak that would cause mayhem on the dirty streets of London.
Mary encounters hardships and tragedy as she establishes her place in the world which shapes her domineering personality. Family relations are strained by the constraints of society and the shame of a wayward child as Mary strives to stamp her remarkable and unforgettable legacy on the world. Inevitably, young gentleman are ensnared by the dangerous beauty and Mary forges a unique friendship that will descend into a secret web of blood and lies.
Mary loves as fiercely as she kills. Deep down all Mary craved was a family, a child to love, but that had been viciously stolen from her. The world had forsaken her, so she would forsake the world and she would teach them not to squander what they had been given.
In the autumn of 1888 London is gripped by the heinous murders of working woman. Prostitutes lay slaughtered as a savage killer taunts the police and instils terror in the local population. Police and vigilantes hunt in vain for the mysterious killer who is ripping their way through the back streets of Whitechapel. Mary has the knowledge that will lead police directly to the killer.
Mary’s volatile nature is fuelled by the experiences of her past as well as her affection for alcohol and her battle with depression. Her blackened heart is inflamed when she meets Frank Hogg. However, her obsession with Frank sees her reach incredible highs only to be crippled by devastating lows as she contends with the mother of his child, the ill-fated Phoebe. Will love conquer all and where will Mary’s fate lead her?
Excerpt:
Mother and father’s bedroom had bare floorboards and the pale walls were smudged with reminders of the previous occupants. It was just big enough to contain a double bed, which was pushed firmly against the wall and a wardrobe that had been crammed into the space between the bed and the adjacent wall. A small wooden chair that would have been fitting in museum, nestled behind the door. It was the throne to my mother’s prized possession, a tatty but loveable bear that her grandmother had given to her on her fifth birthday.
The only decoration in the room was a small mirror framed in wood and a truly awful portrait painting that looked like it had been done by a drunk donkey. On top of the wardrobe, pushed as far back as it would go was a box, I often wondered what was in that box and what secrets it held.
The bedroom that I shared with my brothers and sisters had two crudely made wooden crate beds divided by a battered chest of drawers that had as many drawers as there were children, so we got a draw each, mine was at the top. For a while it was me and Mills in one bed with Lottie and Charlie in the other, as Johnnie was still in with mother and father, but after losing Mills I had the freedom of the bed to myself until Johnnie was old enough to be tossed in with us and I had to share my bed again.
The room was sparsely furnished for it contained little else except a child sized rickety chair, a pot stood in the corner by the window for emergency calls of nature and a sprinkling of cherished toys. The ritual naked floor was matched in sadness by the faded and peeling paper that covered the walls, a jumbled collage of flowers in an ever-repeating pattern. We were expected to keep the room clean and orderly and if we didn't the candle and food rations would be decreased but there was little to keep tidy, so this particular punishment was rarely used as justification.
I lay upon my straw mattress, the chill of the early morning seeping through the cracks in the brick work around the lattice window, whispering between the holes of my moth eaten ancient blanket. The gentle warmth the seeped into the floorboards from the Buckley's stove below was long absorbed into the night so was no match for the icy fingers of a frosty morning. I began to imagine what this day would bring, what events would unfold around me and which would be attributed to my actions and how far the wave of consequences that resulted as a course of my decisions would go.
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Author Biography:
Nickie is a cat-loving married mum of two who was born and bred in Bideford, a pretty little town in North Devon. With a love of books from a young age and a passion for writing stories Nickie’s debut novel, Jill, is her self-published lifelong ambition on the literacy world. She’s not stopping there so keep an eye out for other works by N.Joy. She writes under her maiden name of Joy and hopes that you will ‘enjoy’ her work.
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