ARE YOU LISTENING? THE DISTANCE: A REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

WELCOME TO BOOKIN' WITH BINGO'S" 
ARE YOU LISTENING? DAY"  
I AM EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE TODAY'S  
AUDIO BOOK CHOICE.....

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GIVEAWAY ENDED

THE DISTANCE
Read by Rachel Atkins
BY HELEN GILTROW

ABOUT THE AUDIO BOOK:
A dark, ultra-contemporary, and relentlessly paced debut thriller about a London society woman trying to put her secret criminal past behind her, and the hit man who comes to her with an impossible job she can't refuse.

Charlotte Alton is an elegant socialite. But behind the locked doors of her sleek, high-security apartment in London's Docklands, she becomes Karla. Karla's business is information. Specifically, making it disappear. She's the unseen figure who, for a commanding price, will cover a criminal's tracks. A perfectionist, she's only made one slip in her career—several years ago she revealed her face to a man named Simon Johanssen, an ex-special forces sniper turned killer-for-hire. After a mob hit went horrifically wrong, Johanssen needed to disappear, and Karla helped him. He became a regular client, and then, one day, she stepped out of the shadows for reasons unclear to even herself. 

Now, after a long absence, Johanssen has resurfaced with a job, and he needs Karla's help again. The job is to take out an inmate—a woman—inside an experimental prison colony. But there's no record the target ever existed. That's not the only problem: the criminal boss from whom Johanssen has been hiding is incarcerated there. That doesn't stop him. It's Karla's job to get him out alive, and to do that she must uncover the truth. Who is this woman? Who wants her dead? Is the job a trap for Johanssen or for her? But every door she opens is a false one, and she's getting desperate to protect a man—a killer—to whom she's inexplicably drawn. Written in stylish, sophisticated prose, The Distance is a tense and satisfying debut in which every character, both criminal and law-abiding, wears two faces, and everyone is playing a double game.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

HELEN GILTROW is a former bookseller and freelance editor whose writing has been shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award and the Telegraph "Novel in a Year" Competition in the United Kingdom. She lives in Oxford, England. This is her first novel.

PRAISE FOR THE DISTANCE:
"Fast, hard, and very, very good."-Lee Child, internationally bestselling author of the Jack Reacher thrillers

"It doesn't get more satisfyingly high-concept than Helen Giltrow's ithe Distance, a hair-raising expedition into a dark world of layered duplicities, captured with stylish prose and a breakneck pace."-Chris Pavone, New York Times bestselling author of The Expats and The Accident

 “A truly unusual thriller set in the world of espionage, this is a terrific debut . . . Original and thought-provoking.”—Mirror (UK)

In British author Giltrow’s riveting debut, the rich sophisticated Charlotte Alton is the alter ego of Karla, who operates a high-tech information network. Eight years earlier, Karla established a new identity for Simon Johanssen, a hit man fleeing gangster John Quillan. Now Johanssen wants her help infiltrating the Program, a prisoner-run society in a heavily guarded London neighborhood...the attraction between him and Karla, as well as other unexpected connections between damaged characters, add depth to an already satisfying read."- Publishers Weekly

MY THOUGHTS/REVIEW:
Helen Giltrow’s debut novel, THE DISTANCE, is a thriller that will keep you turning pages from the very start. Main protagonist, Charlotte Alton, is a sophisticated trendsetter who one would never guess is leading a double life. In her other persona, she is Karla who deals with making people’s lives change by doing away with anything from their background that they need gone. Obviously, she does not let people know whom Karla is except for that one time when she made a mistake and someone found out about her. All is well in Karla/Helen’s life until suddenly this person from her past reappears needing her help. Unable to say no, or be found out, she must agree to help Simon Johanssen. His request is for her to help him get to a woman named Catherine. In order for this to come about, Karla must get Simon into a prison where Catherine supposedly is. Besides the fact that this prison is an experimental penal colony, it also houses a crime boss from Simon’s past. 

The part of the story set in this new kind of prison is unique and almost a story within another story. With a huge population of about five thousand prisoners, a secret security group runs the place. Made up of old ramshackle buildings, making it look like a city, the prison is surrounded by 40 foot high walls that also go down about 30 feet so the possibility of digging out is very remote. The prisoners who are incarcerated there are the worst kind of career thugs you can imagine. They are put in charge of themselves almost like running a government and this brings about all kinds of problems as Karla tries to work out things for Simon Johanssen. 

In what would normally be an easy job given Karla’s connections, turns into a nightmare with everything she tries to do to help Johanssen. Beside the fact that she fears he will turn her in, she is also oddly attracted to him. At the point when she realizes Simon is in danger, she tries to get him back out only to be unable to find him!  In what becomes a cat and mouse game, where every cat and each mouse have more than one face, Karla is faced with her greatest challenge yet. Will she be able to help Simon accomplish his goal? Will he run into the crime boss he is trying to avoid? How will Karla get him into this new model society and then safely out again? 

Written in sharp, short chapters, THE DISTANCE moves very quickly as readers will want to read just one more chapter all the time! Helen Giltrow has given readers a thriller that also has somewhat of a dystopian feel to it because of the prison. I hope that we hear more from Giltrow very soon as I found this a fascinating, well written narrative with characters you came to care about, one way or the other. 

GIVEAWAY

 THANKS TO RICHARD AND THE FINE FOLKS AT

RANDOM HOUSE AUDIO, I HAVE ONE COPY

OF THIS THRILLING AUDIO BOOK TO 

GIVE AWAY TO ONE LUCKY WINNER!

  

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GIVEAWAY ENDS AT

 6 PM, EST, OCTOBER 14

GOOD LUCK!