The Hurdy Gurdy Boy and the New York Kidnap
“Dark, as history is dark”
Tamara’s in serious trouble. The young violinist is bundled into the back of a car and is being held captive in a New York hotel room and, deeply scared, she pleads for help from the only person in the world who can help her. But Tommy is the ghost of a Victorian street urchin. He knows nothing about the world outside the streets of Stepney in the East End of London and certainly nothing about the 21st century which appears so alien to him. But, by using all his ingenuity, he embarks on an extraordinary journey that involves getting to grips with cars, tube-trains, telephones and undertaking his first ever aeroplane journey to New York. But finding Tamara is only the beginning of a startling chase across the United States ending up in a small mining town in South Dakota while a blizzard rages.
The second novel in the cult Ghost Detective series about Tommy the street urchin musician, murdered in a shop doorway in 1885 and dragged back to existence in 2014, has been published on line. The Hurdy Gurdy Boy and the New York Kidnap takes Tommy beyond his home ground of Stepney, East London and transports him to contemporary US to help his friend Tamara who is being held captive. Tommy engineers her escape and there follows a chase across North America via Chicago to a small mining town in the hills of South Dakota where in the beautiful Homestake Opera House Tamara is again taken hostage. In the chase, Tamara is accompanied by her father who is a world famous concert pianist and her Aunt who has been a top rally driver. The eventual truth of why Tamara has been kidnapped comes as a shocking revelation. The story unfolds with dramatic pace and humour but is threaded through with dark realism and social awareness. The realism extends to some of the settings. In order to use the actual Homestake Opera House, in Lead, South Dakota, for some of the sequences Peter obtained specific permission to do so from the real life Director.
The Hurdy Gurdy Boy and the New York Kidnap is the second in a series that will eventually extend to five novels, during which time Tommy will discover who murdered him and why and how he came to be living on the streets in Stepney with his mother and sister far away from the place where he was born in rural Dorset.
The original novel The Death of the Hurdy Gurdy Boy was written for Peter’s teenage daughter some years ago and was warmly received by her age group. But in the contemporary publishing scene with crossover authors such as JK Rowling and Terry Pratchett the novels are finding a new adult audience. One adult reader described it thus: “It was dark, as history is dark, but any generation should find something to like in this tale of a boy and the girl who helps him with the mystery of his life.”
The Hurdy Gurdy Boy and the New York Kidnap is now available in all e-reader formats including Kindle Amazon,Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, and others.
Peter John Cooper is a British playwright and poet as well as a novelist. He likes to think of himself as a story teller. His poetry is dramatic and his plays are poetic. He has been a playwright for forty years and has written dozens of plays which have been performed all over the UK. Recently he began putting them online so that people can perform them for audiences all over the world. He reads his poetry in clubs in the town of Bournemouth where he lives and throughout the South of England. He lives in a flat which looks over the cliff to the sea.which joins him to his readers all over the world
You can follow Peter on his website www.spyway.co.uk
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With a special Facebook page for the Hurdy Gurdy Boy Series
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Contact him on peterjohncoooper @spyway.co.uk
