Blood, Sweat and Tears The Trilogy, Book Three

The year is 1988.

Margaret Thatcher is the British Prime Minister and with her, it's the age of privatization, technology, computerization and commercialism, plus the demise of the big power-wielding unions....especially in the car manufacturing and newspaper industries. But 'old school' characters, habits and social customs are still prevalent - especially in the East Midlands amongst a group of die-hard, ex-Fleet Street hacks who have been recruited to launch and produce the UK's first national freesheet.
The newspaper's owner is Mrs Hanley, a mysterious millionairess who gave up her high-powered job in the fashion industry in America, to buy out the beleageured Derby based, Trader Group, which was facing bankruptcy after its managing director lost the company millions through illegal share dealing on the London Stock Exchange.
Readers of 'The Derby 9' series might already be familiar with the incredible Trader Group story as Mrs Hanley, as she prefers to be called (Alison is her first name) has now built up an empire, expanding the Trader Group to more than 20 titles from its original 9, from when she first took over in 1980.
But the launch of the new national freesheet is the biggest gamble of her life, even sinking some of her own personal fortune into the project as new offices are built, plus the recruitment of extra advertising staff and expensive, experienced national newspaper editorial workers, who are taken on to make sure the new newspaper 'hits the ground running.'
But already, there's resentment brewing from the long-serving editorial staff on the Trader weekly editions against the highly paid ex-Fleet workers on the new national newspaper with its larger-than-life Editor-in-Chief, Guy Pomeroy, already enjoying the conflict, which he puts down solely to jealousy. Pomeroy will unashamedly go to any lengths to make sure he gets a brilliant scoop to splash on his first edition, so when the story breaks on his own patch about a local vicar embezzling thousands of pounds from his own church roof restoration fund, no expense is spared to track down the clergyman and a pretty parishioner he absconds with and then flees to France. Pomeroy send his hard-nosed Chief Reporter, Doug Farraday, to 'do the business.' But Farraday's task is by no means easy as it's a race against time to find the guilty vicar before he plans to jet away to Brazil by himself with the stolen collection money. In fact, the drama has only just started. One of the new national newspaper staff, together with the editor of the Derby Trader and its senior journalist, have sensationally quit their jobs and have agreed to collude with the local daily newspaper in Derby to go to any lengths to sabotage the launch of the Trader Group's new national freesheet. To make matters worse, the guilty vicar story has been secretly sold by the now ex-Trader Group's national newspaper employee, to a national press agency, who in turn have sold it to the local daily newspaper in Derby who now plan to print it before the Trader Group can. Dave Wilde, Mrs Hanley's second in command at the Trader Group and a former paratrooper in the British Army and an ex-Military Policeman, vows retribution "with violence" against the three perpetrators who have quit their jobs to join the Derby evening newspaper and plot against the Trader Group. With a sizzling plot containing drama, black humour, passion, jealousy, intrigue and a unique true-to-life microcosm of the working of a daily newsroom from that era in the UK, Award winning journalist Mark Bishop's Blood, Sweat and Tears, The Trilogy, should keep you gripped with every turn of the page!