Books to Look Forward to From Pan Macmillan

The Killing II by David Hewson is due to be published in January 2013.  Thirty-nine steps rose from the busy road of Tuborgvej into Mindelunden, with its quiet graves and abiding bitter memories.  Lennart Brix, head of the Copenhagen homicide team, felt he had been walking them most of his life.  Beneath the entrance arch, sheltering from the icy rain, he couldn't help but recall that first visit almost fifty years before.  A five-year-old boy, clutching the hand of his father, barely able to imagine what he was about see ...The bark of a dog broke his reverie.  Brix looked at the forensic officers, white bunny suits, mob hats, marching grim-faced down the rows of graves, towards the space in the little wood where the rest of the team was gathering ...Three gnarled stakes, replicas now, with the originals in the Frihedsmuseet.  A woman was tied to the centre pole, hands behind her back, bound with heavy rope round her torso.  Blonde hair soaked with rain and worse, head down, chin on chest, crouched awkwardly on her knees.  A gaping wound at her neck like a sick second smile.  She wore a blue dressing gown slashed in places all the way to the waist, flesh and skin visible where the frenzied blade had stabbed at her.  Her face was bruised and dirty.  Blood poured from her nostrils, had dried down each side of her mouth, like makeup on a tragic clown ...It is two years since the notorious Nanna Birk Larsen case.  Two years since Detective Sarah Lund left Copenhagen in disgrace for a remote outpost in northern Denmark.  When the body of a female lawyer is found in macabre circumstances in a military graveyard, there are elements of the crime scene that take Head of Homicide, Lennart Brix, back to an occupied wartime Denmark -- a time its countrymen would wish to forget.  Brix knows that Lund is the one person he can rely on to discover the truth.  Reluctantly she returns to Copenhagen and becomes intrigued with the facts surrounding the case.  As more bodies are found, Lund comes to see a pattern and she realises that the identity of the killer will be known once the truth behind a more recent wartime mission is finally revealed….

The Dance of the Seagull is by Andrea Camilleri and is due to be published in March 2013.  Inspector Montalbano is awake at dawn, sitting on his porch, when his attention is caught by a seagull, which falls from the sky, performing a strange dance, before lying down to die.  Montalbano is perplexed by what he has witnessed and the scene hangs over him like an omen.  About to depart for a holiday with his girlfriend Livia, Montalbano makes a quick trip to the police station to tie up loose ends.  But when his dear colleague Fazio is discovered missing – and it transpires that the policeman has been involved in his own secret investigations – Montalbano instead launches a desperate search for his lost friend, as time begins to run out . . . Navigating a shadowy maze of smuggling, blackmail and the darkest murder, and moving from the docks of Vigata to its deep, dry wells where the Mafia hide their terrible crimes, Inspector Montalbano must have his wits about him to unravel this tangled mystery

Her tattoo wasn't just a mark for life; it marked her for death too.  In New York's East Village, a young girl is brutally raped, tortured and murdered.  Detective Callum Doyle has seen the victim's remains.  He has visited the distraught family.  Now he wants justice.  Doyle is convinced he knows who the killer is.  The problem is he can't prove it.  In addition, the more he pushes his prime suspect, the more he learns that the man is capable of pushing back in ways more devious and twisted than Doyle could ever have imagined.  Add to that the appearance of an old adversary who has a mission for Doyle and won't take no for an answer, and soon Doyle finds himself at risk of losing everything he holds dear.  Including his life.  Marked is by David Jackson and is due to be published in January 2013.

  

The Betrayed is by David Hosp and is due to be published in January 2013.  When Sydney Chaplin left D.C. nine years ago for college, she vowed never to return.  But when her sister is found brutally murdered, she finds herself drawn once again into the shadowy web of her wealthy, powerful family.  Joined by Washington detectives Jack Cassian and Darius Train, and driven by her need to know the truth about her sister's death, Sydney will risk everything - her life and her family's future - to find the answers.  From the gritty streets and crack dens of the District's inner city, to the smart country clubs and gilded offices of the nation's political elite, Sydney, Cassian, and Train must slip deep into a labyrinth of money, power, and deceit to uncover a decades-old conspiracy that could rock the nation.

The Weeping Girl is by Håkan Nesser and is due to be published in April 2013.  Winnie Maas died because she changed her mind ...A community is left reeling after a teacher -- Arnold Maager -- is convicted of murdering his female pupil Winnie Maas.  It seems the girl had been pregnant with Maager's child.  Years later, on her eighteenth birthday, Maager's daughter Mikaela finally learns the terrible truth about her father.  Desperate for answers, Mikaela travels to the institution at Lejnice, where Maager has been held since his trial.  But soon afterwards, she inexplicably vanishes.  Detective Inspector Ewa Moreno from the Maardam Police is on holiday in the area when she finds herself drawn into Mikaela's disappearance.  But before she can make any headway in the case, Maager himself disappears -- and then a body is found.  It will soon become clear to Ewa that only unravelling the events of the past will unlock this dark mystery...

  

Dead Water is the fifth book in the Shetland Island series by Anne Cleeves and is due to be published in January 2013.  When the body of journalist Jerry Markham is found in a traditional Shetland boat, outside the house of the Fiscal, down at the Marina, young Detective Inspector Willow Reeves is drafted in to head up the investigation.  Since the death of his fiancée, Inspector Jimmy Perez has been out of the loop, but his interest in this new case is stirred and he decides to help the inquiry.  Markham – originally a Shetlander but who had made a name for himself in London – had left the islands years before.  In his wake, he left a scandal involving a young girl, Evie Watt, who is now engaged to a seaman.  He had few friends in Shetland, so why was he back?  Willow and Jimmy are led to Sullum Voe, the heart of Shetland’s North Sea oil and gas industry.  It soon emerges from their investigation that Markham was chasing a story in his final days.  One that must have been significant enough to warrant his death . . .

A body is found in the woods . . . A Dreadful Murder is by Minette Walters and is based on the true story of the shocking murder of Mrs Caroline Luard, which took place in Kent in August 1908.  Caroline Luard is shot dead in broad daylight in the grounds of a large country estate.  With few clues available, her husband soon becomes the suspect . . . But is he guilty?  Bringing to life the people involved in this terrible crime, in A Dreadful Murder bestselling author Minette Walters uses modern detective skills to attempt to solve a 100-year-old crime.  A Dreadful Murder is due to be published in February 2013.

When the body of his daughter’s friend is brought to his autopsy table, Quirke is plunged into a world of corruption that takes him to the darkest corners of religion.  “At first they thought it was the body of a child.  Then they noticed the pubic hair and the nicotine stains on the fingers”  So begins the latest Quirke case, a story set in Dublin at a moment when newspapers are censored, social conventions are strictly defined, and appalling crimes are hushed up.  Why?  Because in post-war Ireland the Catholic Church controls the lives of nearly everyone.  But when his daughter, Phoebe loses her close friend Jimmy Minor to murder, Quirke can no longer play by the Church’s rules.  Along with Inspector Hackett, his sometime partner, Quirke investigates Jimmy’s death and learns just how far the Church will go to protect its own.  Holy Orders is by Benjamin Black and is due to be published in June 2013.

  

When Oscar Amalfitano begins an impulsive affair with one of his students at the University of Barcelona, he has no idea where it will lead.  More than his turbulent revolutionary past, or the death of his beautiful wife, the scandalous exposure of this relationship will change him forever.  Forced to flee with his seventeen-year-old daughter, Amalfitano finds himself in Santa Teresa, a sprawling town on the US--Mexico border.  Haunted by dark tales of murdered women, this mythical place is populated by mysterious characters.  We meet Castillo, who makes his living selling his forgeries of Larry Rivers paintings to wealthy Texans; Pancho Monje, a son born of six generations of foundlings; and Arcimboldi, a magician and writer whose work has been important to Amalfitano for some time, but whose return to prominence is just beginning.  Woes of the True Policeman is an exciting, kaleidoscopic novel, lyrical and intense yet darkly humorous.  Exploring the limits of memory and the power of art, it returns to the world and characters of Bolano's masterpiece, 2666.  Woes of the True Policeman is by Roberto Bolaño and is due to be published in January 2013.

Returning from Death Benefit, embattled medical student Pia Grazdani decides to take a year off from her studies and escape New York City.  Intrigued by the promise of the burgeoning field of medical technology, Pia takes a job at Nano, LLC, and a lavishly funded, security-conscious nanotechnology institute in the picturesque foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.  Nano, LLC is ahead of the curve in the competitive world of molecular manufacturing, including the construction of microbivores, tiny nano-robots with the ability to gobble up viruses and bacteria.  But the corporate campus is a place of secrets.  When Pia encounters a fellow employee on a corporate jogging path suffering the effects of a seizure, she soon realizes she may have literally stumbled upon one of Nano, LLC's human guinea pigs.  Is the tech giant on the cusp of one of the biggest medical discoveries of the twenty-first century -- a treatment option for millions -- or have they already sold out to the highest bidder?  Nano is by Robin Cook and is due to be published in February 2013. 

The Twelfth Department is by William Ryan and is due to be published in May 2013.  This is the third Captain Korolev mystery set in 1930s Stalinist Russia, from the celebrated author of The Holy Thief and The Bloody Meadow.  Moscow, 1937.  Captain Korolev, a police investigator, is enjoying a long-overdue visit from his young son Yuri when an eminent scientist is shot dead within sight of the Kremlin and Korolev is ordered to find the killer.  It soon emerges that the victim, a man who it appears would stop at nothing to fulfil his ambitions, was engaged in research of great interest to those at the very top ranks of Soviet power.  When another scientist is brutally murdered, and evidence of the professors' dark experiments is hastily removed, Korolev begins to realise that, along with having a difficult case to solve, he's caught in a dangerous battle between two warring factions of the NKVD.  Then his son Yuri goes missing ...A desperate race against time, set against a city gripped by Stalin's Great Terror and teeming with spies, street children and Thieves.

Pure evil wears many disguises . . . Four am on a wet stretch of the A1 and a driver skids out of control.  Quick on the scene, Senior Investigating Officer Kate Daniels and partner DS Hank Gormley are presented with a horrifying image of carnage and mayhem that quickly becomes one of the worst road traffic accidents in Northumberland’s history.  However, as the casualties mount up, they soon realise that not all deaths were as a result of the accident . . .  On the other side of town a house goes up in flames, turning its two inhabitants into charred corpses.  Seemingly unconnected with the traffic accident, Kate sets about investigating both incidences separately.  However, it soon becomes apparent that all is not what it seems, and Kate and her colleagues are one always step behind a ruthless killer who will stop at nothing to get what they want.  Deadly Deceit is by Mari Hannah and is due to be published in February 2013.

Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates ...An unlikely suicide or a deadly conspiracy?  When Bristol Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates the fatal plunge of a man from a motorway bridge, she little suspects that it has any connection with the sudden death of a friend's thirteen-year-old daughter from a deadly strain of meningitis.  But as Jenny pieces together the dead man's last days, she's drawn into a mystery whose dark ripples stretch across continents and back through decades.  In an investigation which will take her into the sinister realms of unbridled human ambition and corrupt scientific endeavour, Jenny is soon forced to risk the love and lives of those closest to her, as a deadly race to uncover the truth begins ... The Chosen Death is by M R Hall and is due to be published in January 2013.

 

Also due to be published in June 2013 is the new Roy Grace by Peter James entitled Dead Man’s Time.

 

A twenty-nine-year-old man lives alone in his Glasgow flat.  The telephone rings; a casual conversation, but behind this a job offer.  The clues are there if you know to look for them.  He is an expert.  A loner.  Freelance.  Another job is another job, but what if this organisation wants more?  A meeting at a club.  An offer.  A brief.  A target: Lewis Winter.  It is hard to kill a man well.  People who do it well know this.  People who do it badly find out the hard way.  The hard way has consequences.  An arresting, gripping novel of dark relationships and even darker moralities, The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter is by Malcolm Mackay and is due to be published in January 2013.