Peccadillo - A Katla Novel (Amsterdam Assassin Series Book 2) (43 page)

Waribashi
- (Japanese) wooden chopsticks, often for single use.

Yakuza
- (Japanese) Japanese gangster. The name derives from ya-ku-za or 8-9-3, the losing hand in oicho-kabu, a Japanese game similar to blackjack. Yakuza consider themselves ‘useless’ and they prey on the katagi or ‘useful’ members of society.
 

Yukata
- (Japanese) unlined casual summer kimono.

THE AMSTERDAM ASSASSIN SERIES

Novels

Reprobate

Assassin Katla breaks her own rules when confronted with an unusual witness...

Blessed with an almost non-existent conscience, freelance assassin and corporate troubleshooter Katla Sieltjes, expert in disguising homicide, regards murder for profit as an intricate and rewarding occupation. Her solitary existence seems more than satisfactory until a blind musician wanders in on her crime scene.
 

Katla only kills for profit or to protect her anonymity, and Bram Merleyn seems harmless and unable to identify her. By sparing his life, she breaks one of her most important rules—never leave a living witness. A decision Katla might not survive to regret...

Reprobate
is the first novel in the Amsterdam Assassin Series.

Peccadillo

Assassin Katla’s legitimate business becomes the target of a hostile takeover...

Still recuperating from injuries sustained in
Reprobate
, freelance assassin and corporate troubleshooter Katla Sieltjes, expert in disguising homicide, finds herself at war with the Kau Hong, a gang of ruthless criminals who will stop at nothing to get their hands on Sphinx Shipping.
 

The potentially lethal situation quickly becomes untenable, when victims fall on both sides, and a Hong Kong sniper arrives to team up with a mute enforcer from the competitive 14K Triad.
 

Amsterdam might prove too small for Katla to play hide and seek, when her enemies match her skills in search and destroy...

Peccadillo
is the second novel in the Amsterdam Assassin Series.

Rogue

Assassin Katla kills the wrong target and draws attention from combined intelligence communities…

Freelance assassin and corporate troubleshooter Katla Sieltjes runs her business of disguising homicide below the radar of law enforcement, but when her latest target is a judas goat intended to draw her out into the open, the hunter becomes the hunted.
 

Fooling local law enforcement can be challenging, but hiding from intelligence communities aiming to enlist Katla for their dirty work might prove impossible.
 

With Homeland Security, DEA, and the German BKA joining forces with Dutch Intelligence in an effort to track down Loki Enterprises, not only Katla’s future is threatened, but also the lives of her lover and his friends.
 

Rogue
is the third novel in the Amsterdam Assassin Series.

Ghosting

Assassin Katla's sabbatical year turns out to be her biggest challenge yet…

After her narrow escape from the intense investigations by combined intelligence forces, freelance assassin and corporate troubleshooter Katla Sieltjes takes a sabbatical to thwart the relentless scrutiny by the authorities.

But there's no rest for the wicked.
 

An unexpected pregnancy, a brother in peril, a secretive consultant, and an assiduous infiltrator conspire to force Katla to renege on her vows and once again do what she does best: solving problems in her own unparalleled way.

Ghosting
is the fourth novel in the Amsterdam Assassin Series (to be published in 2015).
 

KillFiles

The Katla KillFile short stories chronologically precede the novels in the Amsterdam Assassin Series.
 

Each KillFile features freelance assassin and corporate troubleshooter Katla Sieltjes, expert in disguising homicide, executing one of her contracts. While not mandatory reading, each KillFile provides insight both in Katla’s work methods and skill, and additional background information in her character and personal history. The KillFiles can be read out of order, as the contracts are random samples from Katla’s past.

Locked Room

Assassin Katla reinvents a forensic landmark while creating a Locked Room mystery...

The Locked Room KillFile (7,800 words) follows freelance assassin Katla Sieltjes executing a contract on a physician responsible for the death of her client’s wife. Using an updated version of a lethal puzzle that astounded forensic scientists at the end of the twentieth century, Katla recreates a diabolical killing method that became a landmark in the forensic sciences. Thwarting forensic scientists is not her only hurdle in fulfilling her contract, as her target has to be killed in his home, an opulent penthouse in a fortress-like apartment building…

Microchip Murder

Assassin Katla has to kill an industrial spy and retrieve the stolen item...

The Microchip Murder KillFile (8,500 words) follows freelance assassin Katla Sieltjes executing a contract on an industrial spy, who is in the process of selling a stolen microchip with valuable software to the competition. Katla’s client wants the stolen microchip and research materials returned to him, but her target is wary and the unscrupulous buyers are prepared to kill for the stolen software.
 

Fundamental Error

Assassin Katla is hired by a client whose brother is planning a terrorist attack…

The Fundamental Error KillFile (9,800 words) follows freelance assassin Katla Sieltjes on her most dangerous assignment yet. When Peter Brandt watches his brother Roel convert to Islam and turn into a domestic terrorist, Katla needs to enter into the mind of a fanatic suicide bomber in order to thwart a mass-murder attack in the shopping mecca of Amsterdam.

Aconite Attack

Assassin Katla finds a devious way to get a target to poison himself…

The Aconite Attack KillFile (10,700 words) follows Katla Sieltjes on her first foray as a freelance assassin and corporate troubleshooter, when she gets herself hired by the CEO of a modelling agency to permanently remove his playboy partner draining the firm’s resources on his downward spiral into self-destruction. Katla finds a way to administer poison to the target, but he has to be isolated for her plan to succeed. Every plan has a fluke factor though, and Katla soon finds herself in mortal danger, when the target reveals his darker side…

About the author:

Martyn V. Halm lives in Amsterdam with his wife Maaike, two children, two cats, and countless imaginary characters vying for attention.

Writing realistic crime fiction is hard work, especially when you're a stickler for verisimilitude. When your protagonist is a seasoned killer, research can take you right up to Nietzsche’s abyss. Luckily, things get easier after the first few killings...

Apart from being an accomplished prevaricator, Martyn already possessed an eclectic variety of skills that qualified him to write the Amsterdam Assassin Series. Skills he shares with his deadly fictional characters...

If you want to contact Martyn…

Email:
[email protected]
 

Mailing List:
Click here for the form

Blog:
http://amsterdamassassin.wordpress.com/

Website:
www.tao-of-violence.weebly.com

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Tao_Of_Violence

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/katla.sieltjes

Publishers Weekly Review of
Reprobate - A Katla Novel
:

Fast-moving and intricately plotted, this manuscript of Dutch intrigue follows assassin Katla, who’s renowned for her ability to cover up a job. When the U.S. DEA’s base in the Netherlands catches wind of a heroin ring within the U.S. military, they set up an undercover operation. When the heads of the drug ring discover the plot, they arrange for Katla to assassinate the undercover agents, but the assassination doesn’t go as planned. As Katla recovers from injuries sustained in the botched job, DEA agent Deborah Stern and her colleagues investigate. Violence, drugs, and sex abound in this intense story, and the plot is less farcical than a lot of the thrillers clogging the shelves. 

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Blog Reviews
:

Sunday, 27 January 2013
 

http://hannah-thompson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/blindness-in-fiction-4-reprobate-katla.html

Blindness in Fiction 4: Reprobate: A Katla Novel
 

It is notoriously difficult for non-blind writers to depict blind characters in fiction. Although anyone can close their eyes and imagine blindness for a few minutes, living in a world where sight has lost its meaning is incredibly hard to imagine. For this reason, blind characters in fiction are relatively rare. Where they do exist, they are either secondary and therefore always described from someone else’s point of view (as in
Adrian Mole
) or evil and not described sympathetically at all (as in
Ratburger
). Like
Star Gazing
which I blogged about last April, Reprobate is a novel of shared viewpoints, in which a blind character, Bram, plays a crucial role.
 

When the reader first encounters Bram, it is easy to mistakenly think that he is nothing but a fascinating plot device. We initially encounter him just after assassin Katla has finished a job. When he interrupts her as she is cleaning up the crime scene, her first instinct is to kill him, as she normally would an ‘additional’ who might later be able to place her at the scene. But when Katla realises Bram is blind she decides to spare him. Her reasoning is that he poses no threat to her because he will never be able to make a positive identification of her.
 

Katla, like most sighted people, imagines at first that a world without sight is a world of darkness and confusion. But Bram is not the kind of passive, low-functioning blind person who is frequently found in fictional representations. Unlike
the blind man in Amelie
, for example, he is always well aware of his environment. He picks up clues from the sounds, smells and atmospheric conditions he senses and is never described as having a lesser experience of life because of his blindness. This is wonderfully demonstrated in the scenes, such as the episode in the diner at the beginning of the ‘Luncheonette’ chapter, which are told through his perspective. In these scenes, the author focuses only on what Bram can hear, touch and sense. But the reader nonetheless gains a complete understanding of the scene. In fact until you look closely at the language of the scene, you probably won’t even notice the absence of visual clues. Bram’s presence in the novel, and the part he takes in its narration, brilliantly shows that sight is not essential to a full and happy existence. Bram is clever, funny, sexy and sporty. In fact very soon the story becomes so gripping that the fact of his blindness would easily be forgotten if it weren’t for the detail with which the narrator describes the practicalities of his life.

If you want to know what it is like to be a blind person living in a sighted world, then you should read this book, especially if you enjoy complex and multi-layered thrillers with unexpected twists and a truly triumphant ending.

Hannah Thompson
is a Senior Lecturer in French at Royal Holloway, University of London. As a partially blind researcher, she is particularly interested in blindness and how the sighted and partially sighted and the blind and partially blind relate to each other.

For customer reviews, see the retail websites. Direct links to the books in the Amsterdam Assassin Series available
here
.

Special thanks to:

First and foremost, my bèta readers, Keith, Najam, James, Carter, and Lewis, for reading drafts and providing their helpful comments; The Thoughtcafe Writers Community, now sadly gone, Accentuate Writers, and the Inmates of ADVrider.com, for support and critique; Farah Evers for the beautiful cover; the Kindleboards and Goodreads community members for their support; my cats Gris-gris (deceased), Mingus, and Jotta, for comic relief; and—last, but not least—the multitude of skeptics, for strengthening my resolve to prove them wrong.

While most locations in the Amsterdam Assassin Series exist as depicted, you will look in vain for:

• The Society of the Eternal Blossom, at the Spinhuissteeg. A lovely alley, for sure, but no Japanese club with a blind man living in the basement.
  
• Bianca’s luncheonette, at the corner of Prinsengracht and Berenstraat. The Nine Streets have lots of other nice lunchrooms, though.
  
• Sphinx Shipping on the Vlothavenweg.
  
• Jazzclub The Roustabout on the Nieuwmarkt. Plenty of nice bars and restaurants, though.
  
• The bay south of Zeeburgereiland has quite a few houseboats, but Zeph Catadupa’s Mojo isn’t one of them.
  
• Café De Bonte Hond. In its place, you’ll find Café De Zwarte Kat, which is not owned by a legless biker. They do have a lovely terrace looking out over the river Amstel.
  

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organisations, businesses, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Any mistakes in this fictional work are made by the author and not the wonderful experts who generously provided their time to give me their information.

Katla’s work methods, while portrayed as accurately and realistically as possible, are not to be duplicated or imitated in real life. So, don’t try this at home!

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.