#BLOGTOUR - HALF PAST TOMORROW BY CHRIS MCGEORGE

Shirley Steadman, a 70 year old living in a small town in the North East of England, loves her volunteer work at the local hospital radio. She likes giving back to the community, and even more so, she likes getting out of the house. Haunted by the presence of her son, a reluctant Royal Navy officer who was lost at sea, and still in the shadow of her long dead abusive husband, she doesn’t like being alone much.

One day, at the radio station, she is playing around with the equipment and finds a frequency that was never there before. It is a pirate radio station, and as she listens as the presenter starts reading the news. But there is one problem – the news being reported is tomorrows. Shirley first thinks it is a mere misunderstanding – a wrong date. But she watches as everything reported comes true. At first, Shirley is in awe of the station, and happily tunes in to hear the news.  

But then the presenter starts reporting murders – murders that happen just the way they were reported. 

And Shirley is the only one who can stop them.

This was fun. Bloody, but fun. The prologue details the 2012 suicide of Gabe Steadman who throws himself off a Royal Navy ship. Present day, his mother, Shirley, a retired teacher volunteers at a local hospital radio, taking requests, interacting with and cheering up patients in the wards, and returns home to share her day with her cat, Moggins, and the ghost of her son, for whom she makes bacon and banana sandwiches, which he doesn’t eat, because he is dead.

One day Shirley stumbles upon a pirate ratio station which shares local news stories of small occurrences in Chester-le-Street, the baths closing down, the local baker falling off a ladder. Next day, the local baker having fallen off a ladder, Shirley realises that the news bulletin she heard was reporting the news a day early. When a minor milk float crash happens the day after it was reported, Shirley sets off to investigate. It is an intriguing mystery for the retired schoolteacher, something on which to exercise her mind and take her away from the machinations of the embroidery circle. And then the radio news predicts a murder…

In HALF-PAST TOMORROW, Chris McGeorge has delivered a twisty mystery-thriller which is in turns delightful, gentle and cosy, then bloody and shocking. The book keeps the reader engaged and full of questions, not only about the central radio news plot, but also why, and how, Shirley communicates with her son. There is humour and creepiness. The characters are great fun. There are superficial similarities with THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB but, only in tone, and pensioner protagonists, and the books are very different although readers of one would like the other, I feel.

I enjoyed HALF-PAST TOMORROW thoroughly. It is well plotted, well told, and everything is neatly and convincingly tied up at the end. 

Thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers @Tr4cyF3nt0n, Orion Publishing @orionbooks and the Author, @crmcgeorge for the invitation to the BlogTour.