Tuesday 12 November 2013

Books to Look Forward to from Constable and Robinson

Hunted by 9 international Intelligence Agencies for a terrorist atrocity he did not commit, hostage negotiator Danny Shanklin is now the world's most Wanted man, with a reward of $10,000,000 being offered for his capture dead or alive. Trapped in a deadly race against the clock, as well as protecting his family, Danny's got to track down the terrorists who framed him. And stop them before they get their hands on 6 lethal smallpox formulations, any one of which could trigger a global pandemic, which would leave only 1 in 3 people alive. With just a 7 foot Ukrainian mercenary and a ruthless female assassin hell-bent on avenging her father's death to help him, Danny soon finds himself being forced into becoming both predator and prey as he desperately tries to win the fight of his life. Wanted is the sequel to Hunted and is by Emlyn Rees.  It is due to be published in June 2014.
When Sorrows Come is by Matt McGuire and is due to be published in May 2014.  Belfast, 2 a.m, Tomb Street. A young man lies dead in an alley.  Cracked ribs, broken jaw, fractured skull.  With the Celtic Tiger purring and the Troubles in their death throes, Detective Sergeant John O’Neill is called in to investigate.  Meanwhile O’Neill’s partner, DI Jack Ward, a veteran detective, is receiving death threats from an unknown source.
The First Rule of Survival is the debut novel by Paul Mendelson and is due to be published in April 2014.  Seven years ago in Cape Town three young white South African schoolboys were abducted in broad daylight on three consecutive days. They were never heard of again. Now, a new case for the unpredictable Senior Superintendent Vaughn DeVries casts a light on the original enquiry; for him, a personal failure which has haunted him for those seven years and has cost him his marriage and peace of mind. A former British government agent, friend to DeVries, provides intelligence on this new case, but is any of it admissible? Struggling in a mire of departmental and racial rivalry, DeVries seeks the whole truth and unravels a complex history of abuse, deception and murder. Challenging friends, colleagues and enemies, DeVries comes to realise he doesn't know who is which any more. Set against the background of Cape Town and the endless rolling South African velt, this chilling thriller reveals layer after layer of abuse - physical, political and psychological.
 Kitsap County forensic pathologist Birdy Waterman is well-known for giving a voice to the voiceless: the corpses of people who are often victims of violent crimes. When an unidentified foot is found in Banner Forest, she teams up with homicide detective Kendall Stark to investigate. The pair soon discover that people all over town are hiding secrets – even Birdy – that can prove deadly if they are uncovered.  Unquiet Bones is by Gregg Olsen and is due to be published in June 2014.
From one of the best living exponents of new Sherlock Holmes stories, a collection of 12 new strange tales and unusual mysteries of the kind loved by Holmes aficionados. The stories, which include ‘The Adventure of the Crimson Arrow’ and ‘An Incident in Society’, faithfully recreate the atmosphere of Conan Doyle’s early Holmes stories, and are set during the 1880s and early 1890s, before Holmes’s disappearance at the Reichenbach Falls.  The Mammoth Book of the Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes is edited by Denis O Smith and is due to be published in January 2014.

Hunting down a paeodophile priest, Carlyle finds himself up against his old adversary Christian Holyrod. The Mayor of London is responsible for hosting an upcoming visit by the Pope and does not want any more scandals involving the Catholic church. Carlyle, however, is not prepared to let crimes side, putting him on a collision course with both the mayor and the church. Without his sympathetic boss, Carole Simpson, to protect him, could this be the end of the line for Carlyle? Never one to fight only one battle at a time, he also has to deal with an armed robbery at an upscale jewellers in Mayfair...and a serious health scare for Helen, his wife.  A Man of Sorrows is the sixth book in the Inspector Carlyle series by James Craig and it is due to be published in February 2014.
When Vince Treadwell spots a famous jewel thief in Soho one night and the next day reads about a daring robbery at the Ritz, he takes it upon himself to investigate the case as the missing jewels belong to the beautiful French movie star Capuchine, with whom Vince is smitten. But it soon leads to murder - and he is the chief suspect. In prison and looking at a life sentence, Vince is offered a lifeline from his old friend at Interpol, Ray Dryden. He wants Vince to go undercover and return the jewels to the movie star, who is secretly dating hotshot producer, Carlo Messina. But in reality Messina is one of the biggest gangsters in Marseille , running a heroin pipeline to America. So after a daring prison escape, and armed with fake jewels, Vince finds himself on the French Riviera - and it just happens to be the eve of the 1965 Cannes film festival. Against the backdrop of movie star glamour, Vince soon finds himself embroiled in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the charismatic and psychotic criminal; a man for whom movies and reality are indivisible, and murder and mayhem are on the script.  Exit the Thief is by Danny Miller and is due to be published in March 2014.
The Third Gate is by Lincoln Child and is due to be published in June 2014. In the harsh locale of the northern Sudan, an archaeological team under the direction of renowned explorer Porter Stone attempts to locate the tomb of ancient pharaoh King Narmer, whose famed crown is supposedly possessed of mythical powers. After a series of harrowing and inexplicable occurrences befall the team and have them living in fear of a centuries-old curse, Professor Jeremy Logan is brought in to investigate. What he finds will raise new questions … and alarm.

Letters to My Daughter’s Killer is by Cath Staincliffe and is due to be published in April 2014.  Grandmother Ruth Sutton writes to the man she hates more than anyone else on the planet: the man who she believes killed her daughter Lizzie in a brutal attack four years earlier. Ruth's burden of grief and hatred, has only grown heavier with the passing of time, her avid desire for vengeance ever stronger. In writing to him Ruth hopes to exorcise the corrosive emotions that are destroying her life, to find the truth and with it release and a way forward. Whether she can ever truly forgive him is another matter - but the letters are her last, best hope.  Letters to My Daughter's Killer exposes the aftermath of violent crime for an ordinary family and explores fundamental questions of crime and punishment. How do we deal with the very human desire for revenge? If we get justice does reconciliation follow? Can we really forgive those who do us the gravest wrong? Could you?

The Lost Ones is by Ace Atkins and is due to be published in May 2014. When Army Ranger Quinn Colson, the new sheriff of Tebbehah County, is called out to investigate a child abuse case, what he finds is a horrifying scene of neglect, thirteen empty cribs, and a shoe box full of money. Janet and Ramon Torres seem to have skipped town - but Colson's sure they'll come back for the cash. Meanwhile, Colson's sister has returned - clean and sober for good she says. His friend Boom has been drinking himself into oblivion and picking fights at the local bar. And his old flame is pregnant. But Colson can't focus on his personal problems. He and Deputy Lillie Virgil are convinced that Janet and Ramon have a taste for guns, drugs, and human trafficking. Soon Colson and Virgil find a link between the fugitive couple and a drug cartel that controls most of the Texas border, taking their investigation far beyond the rough hills of northeast Mississippi...

Also due to be published in May by Ace Atkins is The Broken Places.  A year after becoming sheriff, Quinn Colson is faced with the release of an infamous murderer from prison.  Jamey Dixon comes back to Jericho preaching redemption, and some believe him, but for the victim’s family, the only thought is revenge. Colson has his work cut out for him, made all the worse by a tornado that hits nearby.  Communications are down, the roads are impassable – and the rule of law is just about to snap.
 A Brief Guide to Agatha Christie is by Nigel Cawthorne and is due to be published in June 2014.  Agatha Christie’s 80 novels and short-story collections have sold over 2 billion copies in more than 45 languages; more than any other author. When he died, Poirot, that ‘detestable, bombastic, tiresome, egocentric little creep’ in Christie’s words, received a full-page obituary in the New York Times. From her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, a Poirot mystery, to her last, Sleeping Murder, featuring Miss Marple, Cawthorne explores Christie’s life and fiction.
A pen pusher from Head Office soon finds himself pushing up the daisies...Local police stations all over the Scottish Highlands are being threatened with closure and this presents the perfect opportunity for Detective Chief Inspector Blair, who would love nothing more than to get rid of Sergeant Hamish Macbeth. Blair suggests that Cyril Sessions, a keen young police officer, visit the town of Lochdubh to monitor exactly what Hamish does every day. On hearing of Blair's plans Hamish is fully prepared to ensure young Cyril returns back to headquarters with a full report ...but before he can do that, Cyril is found dead and Hamish very quickly becomes the prime suspect for his murder... Death of a Policeman is by M C Beaton and is due to be published in February 2014.
When a claimant to the title of Lord Darlymple comes to an unexpected sticky end, the cry goes up: 'Was it murder?' The Honourable Daisy Dalrymple is recruited by her cousin Edgar - the current Lord Dalrymple - to help him find the next heir to the viscountcy. With the involvement of the family lawyer, they come up with four claimants who, along with Daisy, are invited to Fairacres, the family estate, to celebrate Edgar's fiftieth birthday. And they're a mixed bunch. A hotelier from Scarborough, a diamond merchant from South Africa, a mixed-race boy from Trinidad and a sailor from Jamaica. But then the sailor goes missing ...and so begins a series of inexplicable and troubling accidents, resulting in the death of one of the would-be heirs. Daisy and her husband, DCI Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, are left wondering who might be behind all of this and, more importantly ...who's next?  Heirs to the Body is by Carola Dunn and is due to be published in December 2013.
Chief Inspector Henrique Monroe of the Lisbon Police Department is not your usual cop, and his peculiar behaviour at crime scenes is legendary. But his colleagues put up with it because, in the end, Monroe’s the best of the best. But he has a double-sided secret. And when he’s called to investigate the brutal slaying of well-connected Portuguese businessman Pedro Coutinho, it’s not just the murder case that will unravel – but his own identity, too.  The Night Watchman is by Richard Zimler and is due to be published in June 2014.

Pagan Spring is by G M Malliet and is due to be published in March 2014.  Vicar Max Tudor feels that life at the moment holds no greater challenge than writing his Easter sermon. But when a guest is poisoned at a local dinner, Max knows a criminal atmosphere has once again enveloped his perfect village of Nether Monkslip. Connections to past crimes, some sparked by the paintings of a famous local artist, help Max unravel the clues – but will he be too late to restore peace to the village?

The British Museum in Bloomsbury is home to one of the Caryatids, a beautiful and priceless statue of a maiden that Lord Elgin brought to London in the 19th century. Lord Francis Powerscourt finds himself summoned by the museum to attend a most urgent matter: the Caryatid has been stolen and an inferior copy left in her place. Powerscourt agrees to handle the case discreetly – but then comes the first death: an employee of the British Museum is pushed under a rush-hour train before he and the police can question him. What had he known about the statue’s disappearance? And who would want such a priceless object? Powerscourt and his friend Johnny Fitzgerald embark on a mission that takes them deep into the heart of London’s Greek community and the upper echelons of English society to uncover the bizarre truth of the vanishing lady.  Death of an Elgin Marble is by David Dickinson and is due to be published in January 2014.

The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime Volume 11 is edited by Maxim Jakubowski and is due to be published in June 2014.  A superb collection of the year’s most outstanding short crime fiction published in the UK it showcases the impressive breadth of crime writing, from cosy tales of detection to noir mayhem and psychological suspense and terror. There are puzzles to solve, questions about the nature of society, but, above all, there is an abundance of first-class entertainment by writers of the calibre of Robert Barnard, Lee Child, Simon Kernick, Val McDermid and ZoĆ« Sharp.

When Gordianus’ lover Bethesda is kidnapped by mistake, he must seek out her captors before they realise they have the wrong woman and dispose of her for good. A raid on the golden tomb of Alexander the Great, a shady troupe of travelling performers, highwaymen, amorous innkeepers, the politics of the pharaohs and an adventure on the Nile all combine to make this a rescue mission neither Gordianus – or Bethesda – will ever forget.  Raiders of the Nile is by Steven Saylor and is due to be published in May 2014.

 Night Kills is by John Lutz and is due to be published in June 2014.  Frank Quinn is sure he is hunting for a madman: someone is shooting young women in the heart and defiling their bodies, leaving only torsos to be found. Quinn, a former NYPD detective, is called on to the case by an ambitious chief of police and mobilises his team of brilliant law-enforcement misfits. But in the concrete canyons of New York, this shocking serial murder case is turning into something very different …

Late December. A 16-year-old girl is found dead on a train line. Detective Sergeant Lucy Black is called to identify the body. The only clues to the dead teenager’s last movements are stored in her mobile phone and on social media – and it soon becomes clear that her ‘friends’ were not as trustworthy as she thought. Lucy is no stranger to death: she is still haunted by the memory of the child she failed to save, and the killer she failed to put behind bars. And with a new boss scrutinizing her every move, she is determined that – this time – she will leave no margin for error. Hurt is a tense crime thriller about how, in the hands of a predator, trust can turn into terror.  Hurt is by Brian McGilloway and is due to be published in November 2013.
 

The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction is edited by Maxim Jakubowski and is due to be published in February 2014.  A truly mammoth collection of 7 decades of pure, unadulterated pulp fiction, jam-packed with tough guys and femme fatales. Join shady operators, voluptuous molls, ruthless bigshots and crooked – or just occasionally, honest – cops on a rollercoaster ride through the mean streets of popular literature in the company of outstanding writers of hardboiled crime such as Dashiell Hammett, Bill Pronzini and Micky Spillane, as well as some forgotten authors well worth rediscovering.

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