Half-Past Tomorrow by Chris McGeorge

Blog tour: 9 to 20 August 2021

Synopsis

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. But she is still haunted by the death of her son.

One day, she finds a frequency that was never there before. It’s a pirate radio station reporting the news.

But there is one problem – the news being reported is a daily early.

Shirley first thinks it is a mere misunderstanding – a wrong date. But as everything reported comes true, she’s in shock.

Then the presenter starts reporting murders – murders that happen just the way they said.

And Shirley is the only one who can stop them.

My review

Half-Past Tomorrow tells the story of Shirley Steadman, 70, who is a volunteer for the radio station at the local hospital in Chester-Le-Street. She enjoys chatting to patients and taking their music requests for the radio show.

Shirley lives in a small bungalow, a mile from the hospital, with her cat, Moggins. She’s a widow after the death of her husband, Bob, and has a daughter called Deena, 32. Her son, Gabe, was in the Royal Navy but died nearly 10 years ago and she still misses and mourns him, and makes his favourite bacon and banana sandwiches.

Shirley has an active social life – as well as the hospital radio, she does embroidery with a group of friends, volunteers at the local RSPCA shop and looks after her grandchildren, Maisie (10) and Kenneth (6) – but is also a bit lonely and tired of life.

One evening, while playing with the ancient radio equipment at the hospital before her request show, Shirley tunes into a pirate radio station called Mallet AM. At first, she just hears music then the presenter reads the news but, strangely, it’s for the following day. The new bulletin usually contains three items: two general bits of news and then the third one tells of an accident. Shirley decides to follow this up the next day and see if the predictions come true. She’s shocked to discover that they do!

She keeps listening to the pirate broadcast when she can and is concerned to hear that a murder is going to take place next! Shirley decides she must try to stop the murder from happening but it’s not as easy as that and things escalate in this twisted and gripping tale!

Shirley was a great protagonist – she’s fearless and brave and, despite her failing body, her mind is sharp and she’s not afraid to get involved in things to try and stop the events predicted by the Mallet AM presenter. She has a good rapport with her younger friend, Callie, who tries to help her solve the puzzling murders.

Shirley has a rather strained relationship with her daughter, Deena, who is protective and worried about her mum and her various escapades! We learn that Shirley had an abusive marriage and her husband was very harsh on their son, Gabe.

Overall, I really enjoyed Half-Past Tomorrow – it was entertaining, cleverly plotted and had an intriguing storyline. It was unique, surprising and went in several directions that I wasn’t expecting! I was never really sure if some events were real or imagined!

This was a fascinating read and very unpredictable. I had suspicions about several characters but was completely wrong about most of them and didn’t see the ending coming at all! This quirky story was something a bit different and I liked the way it was written – it was action packed and kept me gripped throughout and was also humorous and shocking as well.

I’ve already got the author’s other books, Guess Who and Now You See Me, on my Kindle so I must read those soon.

Buy the book

Half-Past Tomorrow by Chris McGeorge can be purchased from Amazon on Kindle and in paperback, and as an eBook from Kobo and iBooks. See also Ethical Book Search.

About the author

Chris McGeorge studied MA Creative Writing (crime/thriller) at City University London where he wrote debut thriller, Guess Who, as his thesis.

His interests are broad, spanning film, books, theatre and video games. He is a member of the Northern Crime Syndicate, a supergroup of writers from Northern England.

He lives in County Durham with his partner and many, many animals.

Twitter: @crmcgeorge
Facebook: @chris.mcgeorge.1

Blog tour

Thanks to Alainna Hadjigeorgiou at Orion Publishing for my copy of Half-Past Tomorrow and to Tracy Fenton at Compulsive Readers for my place on the blog tour.

See the banner below for more stops on the #blogtour.