Where She Lies

 

Tuesday saw the publication of book number…. Four in the Caplan series.

I think it’s my 18^th book overall,  but I’m not sure, after a while they all drift into a oneness of words, mayhem,  death and confusion.

That could be the motto on the Ramsay coat of arms. The real motto is Ora Et Labora, Pray and labour.

Where she lies is a book about celebrity, and how difficult it must be to live under the scrutiny of the media these days.

It wasn't an excuse to write about people with made up names, ridiculous eyebrows and lips that look like a stressed haddock. 

Real celebrities nowadays, maybe have the savvy to stay ‘in their lane’ and keep a shroud of privacy around them.  They tend to have a talent that keeps them relevant, rather than striving to be relevant for the sake of ... being relevant.

The celebrities who are professional celebrities  – yes I can't get my head around that either-  will blog/vlog/reality TV about getting their eyebrows shaped or having more plastic surgery ( the butt lift?) so that they can look like every other celebrity who has had the same surgery.

My main character is called Koi McQuarrie.  She was discovered (or invented ) after she walked through an airport age 16 and was spied by an older man, a fashion photographer, who thought she had  that special something.

Her life changed that day.

Scroll on  a year and Koi, with two other very young models are involved in a campaign for…. Nobody can remember what the ad was for, but the campaign was three women  on a Clydesdale stallion.  The horse is plodding through the shallows on a Scottish  beach – it's fiction so it's sunny. The horse gets one splash of cold water too many over his ‘bits’ and takes one step sideways. The three models are dumped in the shallows, to much unscripted hilarity. The  company decided that that 'take', the one with the accident, was the one they were going to go for to head the campaign. With a sexy sax solo as a backing track,  the advert won a lot of awards. People remembered it because it was funny.

The advert was for a clothing company called The Sunflower Linen Co.'

The original title of the book was The Last Of The Sunflower Girls.

Because twenty years later,  Koi goes off the top of a cliff.

Of the four beating hearts in that advert, only the horse died a natural death.

Koi has moved her family to a Scottish Castle to get away from 'fame'. Or maybe some other things.

But at the start of the book, there's a party at the castle and she goes out for some fresh air.... and doesn't come back.

Cue the mystery and suspense music.

The Blurb!!

A celeb wedding venue. A life gone viral. A dead It Girl. The stunning new DCI Christine Caplan thriller from critically acclaimed author Caro Ramsay, who has "a place in the upper echelons of Scottish crime writing" (Financial Times).

Koi, ex-supermodel and face of lifestyle brand the Sunflower Company, is #livingmybestlife in a Scottish castle with her famous family of nepo babies and influencers. Everything they do is posed, filtered and spun for the perfect story. Even when Koi is found on the rocks at the foot of a cliff, the media juggernaut rolls on, with the image of her body, battered and bleeding, splashed across every social platform around the world.

DCI Christine Caplan’s job is simple – did Koi fall, jump or was she pushed? Only the family knows what really happened that night and, as with everything in their lives, they’re only willing to engage with reveals they can stage. With the world’s press breathing down her neck, Caplan must figure out what’s real, what it takes to survive in the public eye, and how the truth of a story lies in the telling. As Caplan begins to see through Koi’s glossy facade, she realizes just how close to the edge she was, and how easy it can be for one misstep to bring everything crashing down . . .

                                                    

Just to confuse everybody, the paperback of last year's hardback is out next week, but there's no celebrities in this one. Just more words, mayhem, death and confusion.