Amplify: A Billy Lime Thriller(1 Billy Lime Thriller)

Music promoter Billy Lime is in trouble. The tour of rock legends, The Pagan Virtue, is the biggest in music history. Their concerts in Australia should be a career highlight if Billy can keep the warring musicians off the drugs, out of the bars and on the stage. When lead singer Jet Kelly is poisoned, Billy's world starts to crumble. Motorcycle gang the White Sharks has stashed $100 million of cocaine inside the band equipment bound for Sydney, and the cops mark Billy as a killer and drug runner. How will Billy Lime keep the show on the road . . .

About the Author :
Mark Hollands was born in Portsmouth in southern England and spent his teenage years in Devon, playing cricket, rugby and cultivating a prolific knowledge of music trivia thanks to punk-era media like the NME, Melody Maker, Kerrang! and Sounds. He began his media career as a 16-year-old cub reporter and tea-boy at The Sidmouth Herald, and went on to edit magazines before migrating to Australia after a working holiday took a permanent turn. He has held editorial roles in major media companies across Australia and the UK, and spent two years as a journalist in Papua New Guinea. He's currently CEO of the Australian media industry body, The Newspaper Works. Mark has worked in major American companies Gartner Inc. and Dow Jones, launched a dotcom back in the day, is a keen student of psychology and devours crime novels and music biographies. He lives in Sydney with wife Kylie and youngest son Charlie with his eldest son, Sam living and working in the UK. Amplify is his first nove

Review :
Hollywood should sign Lime up Does it get any better than this? Bikies, drugs, rock 'n' roll and a parade of truly authentic modern Australian characters makes this a real page-turner. And Billy Lime is sublime. Hollands has put together a complicated man and a fascinating narrative that deserves a long-running series - and if Hollywood hasn't come looking already to sign Billy Lime up, it soon will. It's like reading a book with a fast, grinding guitar soundtrack in the background. Fast, tight and guaranteed to get your pulse racing. Well worth the ticket. - Garry Linnell, Sydney You'll want to take up booze, drugs and babes With a cover tagline that screams 'sex, drugs, rock'n'roll - and murder', it's immediately clear that Mark Hollands has no intention of allowing readers to slip into a boredom-induced coma. The first of what will hopefully be many Billy Lime offerings, Amplify is a fast-paced, adrenalin-charged read that lays its cards on the table at the very outset. Featuring protagonists including ruthless outlaw bikers and a band of substance-fuelled Motley Crue-esque rock superstars, this debut offering motors along at a frenetic pace thanks to punchy prose that drives the narrative with page-turning ferocity. In beleaguered music promoter Billy Lime, the author presents an unlikely but equally compelling hero figure. Dark, edgy, and morally dubious, he lives in the kind of world we perhaps secretly wished we inhabited, all the while being secretly glad that we don't. Although far more than a mouth-watering insight into the mind-blowing excess, debauchery and bitchiness of rock'n'roll at its most elite, don't be surprised to find yourself suppressing the urge to take up booze, drugs and babes (or even the guitar) by the end. It's well worth a look. - Owen Thomson, Wollongong Mark Holland's debut novel is a stunning thriller with a memorable anti-hero. Like all the best thrillers it grabs from the opening pages. The story is dark and brooding with intense sex and equally intense violence. The story concludes with unfinished business and an obvious opportunity for a sequel, which I shall look forward to. - Phillip Tolley, United Kingdom Fast and furious - an Aussie ripper If you like your stories fast and furious, AMPLIFY is a real Aussie 'ripper' to keep you entertained at full volume from cover to cover. From the page-one moment tax inspectors blunder into a Sydney brothel, super-hero Billy Lime's charmed life explodes into an orgy of violence, drink, cocaine and 'shagging'. In keeping with the best tabloid newspaper tradition, the title headline says it all: "SEX, DRUGS, ROCK 'N ROLL - AND MURDER" . Former hack Mark Hollands has crafted a racy tale that leaps from Australia to the United States and leaves behind a trail of corpses. As events quickly spiral out of control, pop music impresario Lime is forced into deadly dances with bikie gang thugs, a drugs cartel and one of its top assassins, while managing the addictive antics of what might have been the world's best hard rock band. Even his own top silk is suspect and Lime has to outfox the local police's finest gumshoes. Hollands' first novel certainly packs a punch, just like Lime who's smart, rich and doesn't seem to give a s***, until the tragic finale perfectly sets up a second Billy Lime Thriller. - Barry Parker, Sydney You'll love the bad boy in Billy Live the rock star life vicariously through Billy Lime. From the first page, you're addicted to the sex, drugs and rock n roll life. Amplify is a sexy page turner on the seedy side of the music industry that keeps you engaged and wanting more. The Aussie charm make you love the bad boy in Billy while he slithers through the underbelly of the music scene and everything that comes with it. Men want to be Billy, women want to be with him... - Maria Terrell, Dallas, USA