Simon Lucas

Simon Lucas

About

Indie novelist, Simon Lucas, is the author of The Chicken Shak Spy, the first book in a conspiracy thriller/spy novel series that follows the work of Graham Chapman, a reluctant secret agent.

Simon is also the author of Beyond the Door, a traditional genre children's fiction novel.

A full-time indie novelist, Simon is a former history teacher.  He lives in Sussex, UK, with his wife Claire, a doctor.

As well as writing, Simon enjoys walking, geocaching, sailing, swimming and playing the flute and piano.  He is also training as a Local Preacher in the Methodist Church.

A Shadow in Yucatan

A Shadow in Yucatan

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Description

<p>A mythical jewel of a story… A true story told on a beach in Yucatan, A Shadow tells Stephanie's story but it was also the story of the golden time. Its nostalgia sings like cicadas in the heat.</p><p>An American ‘Under Milkwood’, this distilled novel of the Sixties evokes the sounds, music and optimism on the free-wheelin streets and parks of Coconut Grove. You can hear Bob Dylan still strumming acoustic; smoke a joint with Fred Neil; and Everybody’s Talkin is carried on the wind.</p><p>Stephanie, a young hairdresser living in lodgings finds herself pregnant. Refused help from her hard Catholic mother in New York, unable to abort her baby, she accepts the kindness of Miriam, her Jewish landlady, whose own barren life spills into compassionate assistance for the daughter she never had.</p><p>The poignancy of its ending, its generosity and acceptance, echoes the bitter disappointment of those of us who hoped for so much more, but who remember its joy, and its promise, as though untarnished by time.</p>

Story Behind The Book

Ever wondered if one of your friends is actually a spy? I did! He claimed to deliver chicken for a living, but I could not believe that this is actually what he did all day. Perhaps this was just a cover, and he was actually a spy! Taking this as my starting point, Graham Chapman, the Chicken Shak Spy evolved. Like my friend, he tells people he's a chicken delivery guy, but actually he is a secret agent employed by a top secret private security company. Have you ever felt stuck in a job? Perhaps you've really wanted to give it all up and do something different. Graham Chapman is the same. He's never wanted to be a spy, and is fed up with the grief he gets from his colleagues. Unfortunately, he feels indebted to his boss, who saved his life, and can't bring himself to walk away. Do you find yourself wondering what is going on behind the scenes when a high profile visitor arrives in your country? What if a group wants to kill him? What if the people in the group actually have a convincing reason for wanting him dead? This was the final idea behind the plot for The Chicken Shak Spy. The members of the group in question will stop at nothing to kill the Pope, but not for the reasons that you might think... The Chicken Shak Spy has been getting rave reviews from everyone who has read it. It's been compared to the work of Dan Brown, Lee Child and John Grisham. If you enjoy a good thriller, you'll love The Chicken Shak Spy!

Reviews

<strong>Alex: </strong><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;">The tone of the story reminded me greatly of a Dan Brown book - however I found that this annoyed me a lot less.  While I compare this to a Dan Brown novel - I also found it a lot better than a Dan Brown novel - the characters seem a lot more believable.</span><div><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;"><strong>Phill: </strong></span><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;">I found the plot really got going in the second half of the book, keeping me gripped until the end, a real page-turner!  </span><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;">If you like 'pop fiction' and want something pretty light and fast-paced to read, you won't regret buying this book.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;"><strong>Steve: </strong></span><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;">In writing this novel Simon has managed to take all the best parts of the genre while avoiding being as annoying as Dan Brown. The result is that this is a great thriller with an outrageous plot and characters that you can sympathise with. Once I found the time to start reading it, I couldn't stop. (I finished it at 5am!)</span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;"><strong>Ian: </strong></span><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;">This is a really enjoyable book. As an apparent mix of conspiracy thriller and spy novel the concept seemed to have something of a Dan Brown feel to it, but the book itself was much better than that. A truly unlikely hero is an example of the kind of reader wrong-footing that the author revels in, and adds to the unpredictability. It starts with a bang - literally - and that in itself is almost a twist in the story, and there are many other twists and turns along the way that mean not only do you not know how it is going to end but you are not always sure what is going on (in a good way) as a group of heroic operatives try to uncover the truth and race against time to prevent disaster.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;"><strong>Chris: </strong></span><span style="font-family:verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;line-height:normal;font-size:small;">A spellbinding tale which kept my attention from the first paragraph to the last page! I would throughly recommend this to anyone who enjoys thrillers!</span></div>