Monday 9 January 2017

Books to look Forward to from Quercus, Riverrun & MacLehose Press

 January 2017

A Sadistic killer is on the loose in Glasgow.  Thomas Boag escaped from his first court appearance facing charges on a brutal murder. He's suspected in the disappearances of two other people. Now he's out for revenge. Rosie Gilmour, crime reporter, helped put Boag behind bars. It was her investigation that provided enough evidence to arrest him. Now she's watching her back. Rosie tries to distract herself with a new story: refugees trafficked into Glasgow and used as modern-day slaves - or worse. But this investigation soon leads her into dangerous territory as it takes her up against some of Glasgow's nastiest characters, and all the while, somewhere out there, Boag is laying his trap...  Death Trap is by Anna Smith

The Girl Before is by JP Delaney Jane stumbles on the rental opportunity of a lifetime: the chance to live in a beautiful ultra-minimalist house designed by an enigmatic architect, on condition she abides by a long list of exacting rules. After moving in, she discovers that a previous tenant, Emma, met a mysterious death there - and starts to wonder if her own story will be a re-run of the girl before. 

In 1989, a killer dumped the body of twenty-year-old Lucie Martin into a picturesque lake in the West of France. Fourteen years later, during a summer heatwave, a drought exposed her remains - bleached bones amid the scorched mud and slime.  No one was ever convicted of her murder. But now, forensic expert Enzo Macleod is reviewing this stone cold case - the toughest he has been challenged to solve. Yet when Enzo finds a flaw in the original evidence surrounding Lucie's murder, he opens a Pandora's Box that not only raises old ghosts but endangers his entire family.  Cast Iron is by Peter May.


February 2017

Boiled human bones have been found in Norwich's web of underground tunnels. When Dr Ruth Galloway discovers they were recently buried, DCI Nelson has a murder enquiry on his hands. The boiling might have been just a medieval curiosity - now it suggests a much more sinister purpose. Meanwhile, DS Judy Johnson is investigating the disappearance of a local rough sleeper. The only trace of her is the rumour that she's gone 'underground'. This might be a figure of speech, but with the discovery of the bones and the rumours both Ruth and the police have heard that the network of old chalk-mining tunnels under Norwich is home to a vast community of rough sleepers, the clues point in only one direction. Local academic Martin Kellerman knows all about the tunnels and their history - but can his assertions of cannibalism and ritual killing possibly be true? As the weather gets hotter, tensions rise. A local woman goes missing and the police are under attack. Ruth and Nelson must unravel the dark secrets of The Underground and discover just what gruesome secrets lurk at its heart - before it claims another victim.  The Chalk Pit is by Elly Griffiths

A Harvest of Thorns is by Corban Addison.  A beloved American corporation with an
explosive secret. A disgraced former journalist looking for redemption. A corporate executive with nothing left to lose. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, a garment factory burns to the ground, claiming the lives of hundreds of workers, mostly young women. Amid the rubble, a bystander captures a heart-stopping image-a teenage girl lying in the dirt, her body broken by a multi-story fall, and over her mouth a mask of fabric bearing the label of one of America's largest retailers, Presto Omnishops Corporation. When the photo goes viral, it fans the flames of a decades old controversy about sweatshops, labor rights, and the ethics of globalization. A year later, in Washington, D.C., Joshua Griswold, a disgraced former journalist for the Washington Post, receives an anonymous summons from a corporate whistleblower promising information about Presto. There, to Griswold's astonishment, he meets Cameron Alexander, Presto's long-time general counsel. Alexander, who has secrets of his own, offers Griswold confidential information about Presto's apparel supply chain. For Griswold, the challenge of exposing Presto's willful negligence is irresistible, as is the chance, however slight, at redemption. Deploying his old journalistic skills, he builds a historic case against Presto, setting the stage for a war in the courtroom and in the media that Griswold is determined to win-both to salvage his reputation and to provoke a revolution of conscience in Presto's boardroom that could change the course of the fashion industry across the globe.

March 2017

I was there when it happened. I watched her disappear. Lillian had phoned telling her to get Skype up and running. 'I have so much to tell you.' Then, the knock on the door. 'Sorry Orla, I'd better see who it is' she said. Orla waited. Seconds became minutes. She didn't know how long she waited before she realised that something terrible had happened. For more than a decade, Lillian's disappearance has remained unsolved, and Orla has found it impossible to move on. Then she receives an unexpected visit from Ned Moynihan, the detective who led the original investigation into her friend's vanishing. Moynihan has been receiving anonymous notes accusing him of having failed to investigate the case properly. He assumes the notes are coming from Orla, yet Orla knows nothing of these letters. Is somebody trying to tell them the truth about what really happened to Lillian that night?  Without a Word is by Kate McQuaile.

The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman is by Mindy Mejia. Eighteen-year-old Hattie Hoffman is a talented actress, loved by everyone in her Minnesotan hometown. When she's found stabbed to death on the opening night of her school play, the tragedy rips through the fabric of the community. Sheriff Del Goodman, a close friend of Hattie's dad, vows to find her killer, but the investigation yields more secrets than answers: it turns out Hattie played as many parts offstage as on. Told from three perspectives, Del's, Hattie's high school English teacher and Hattie herself, The Last Act of Hattie Hoffman tells the story of the Hattie behind the masks, and what happened in that final year of her life...

INFILTRATOR One-time Swedish government agent Piet Hoffmann is on the run: both from the life prison sentence he escaped, and from the Polish drug mafia he double-crossed. Only Hoffmann's handler, Erik Wilson, knows he now hides in Cali, Colombia, living under a false identity with his wife Zofia and sons Rasmus and Hugo. INFORMANT But life on the run is precarious. And so when Hoffmann, in order to survive, accepts employment as a bodyguard and hit man for the Colombian cocaine mafia, and is simultaneously approached by the US DEA to infiltrate the same cartel, he chooses to say yes to both. Hoffmann has a new, lucrative double life. IN TOO DEEP However, Hoffmann's successful balancing act is short lived. When Timothy D. Crouse, Chairman of the US House of Representatives, is kidnapped while on a trip to Colombia, US forces settle on a new enemy for their next War on Terror. This gives the cartel and the US government the same problem. Piet Hoffmann. Condemned and hung out to dry, Hoffmann is stranded, and marked. Yet Erik Wilson will find him help from the most unlikely of figures - the stubborn, acerbic Swedish detective who has never forgotten Piet Hoffmann's face. DCI Ewert Grens - the enemy who Hoffmann once tricked - will now become the only ally he can trust.  Three Minutes is by Roslund and Hellström.

Suspended from her job as a promising police officer for firing "one bullet too many", Anne
Capestan is expecting the worst when she is summoned to H.Q. to learn her fate. Instead, she is surprised to be told that she is to head up a new police squad, working on solving old cold cases. Though relived to still have a job, Capestan is not overjoyed by the prospect of her new role. Even less so when she meets her new team: a crowd of misfits, troublemakers and problem cases, none of whom are fit for purpose and yet none of whom can be fired. But from this inauspicious start, investigating the cold cases throws up a number a number of strange mysteries for Capestan and her team: was the old lady murdered seven years ago really just the victim of a botched robbery? Who was behind the dead sailor discovered in the Seine with three gunshot wounds? And why does there seem to be a curious link with a ferry that was shipwrecked off the Florida coast many years previously? The Awkward Squad is by Sophie Hénaff.

April 2017

The Special Girls is by Isabelle Grey.  Who are the Special Girls? Are they victims or 'asking for it'? A case of historical child sex abuse by a famous doctor is linked to the murder of his young and popular colleague at a summer camp deep in the Essex woods. A young psychiatric registrar is found beaten to death in the woods close to a summer camp for young patients suffering from eating disorders. It is run by the charismatic, world-renowned Professor Ned Chesham. DI Grace Fisher investigates, but it is not long before she is pulled from the case - to head up a Metropolitan Police review into a cold case involving Chesham himself. Nearly twenty years ago, one of Chesham's patients made allegations that he sexually assaulted her. The investigation at the time found no conclusive proof, but Grace soon discovers another victim, and a witness whose account never reached the police. Does this mean the original investigation was bungled? Scotland Yard would certainly like her to conclude otherwise. As Grace uncovers the lies that led to the young doctor's murder, she discovers the full extent of the damage done to Chesham's 'special girls' - and the danger they are still in.

Prussian Blue is by Philip Kerr. It's 1956 and Bernie Gunther is on the run. Ordered by Erich
Mielke, deputy head of the East German Stasi, to murder Bernie's former lover by thallium poisoning, he finds his conscience is stronger than his desire not to be murdered in turn. Now he must stay one step ahead of Mielke's retribution. The man Mielke has sent to hunt him is an ex-Kripo colleague, and as Bernie pushes towards Germany he recalls their last case together. In 1939, Bernie was summoned by Reinhard Heydrich to the Berghof: Hitler's mountain home in Obersalzberg. A low-level German bureaucrat had been murdered, and the Reichstag deputy Martin Bormann, in charge of overseeing renovations to the Berghof, wants the case solved quickly. If the Fuhrer were ever to find out that his own house had been the scene of a recent murder - the consequences wouldn't bear thinking about. And so begins perhaps the strangest of Bernie Gunther's adventures, for although several countries and seventeen years separate the murder at the Berghof from his current predicament, Bernie will find there is some unfinished business awaiting him in Germany.

SUMMER OF LOVE She made a profit from her youth. She's not beautiful anymore - but she will be young forever. Called away from his pregnant girlfriend, Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen knows the sight of the murdered prostitute will be with him all his life. But this is what he does: he finds killers. Helen Tozer, more than most, understands why. SUMMER OF DEATH The girl they called Julie Teenager had a client list full of suspects - all rich, powerful - and protected. Someone warns off the beat coppers; someone disturbs the crime scene. Breen begins to fear that this is more than the murder of a prostitute. It's political. Then Helen, with her ex-copper's instincts and fierce moral sense, gets dangerously involved. And Breen knows he has more to lose than ever before. He is about to become a father. He can have no sympathy for the devil. Breen and Tozer met through murder. They work in a world before forensics or criminal databases; a world that's bigoted and brutal. Sympathy for the Devil is by William Shaw.

May 2017

The Night Visitor is by Lucy Atkins.  How far would you go to save your reputation? Professor Olivia Sweetman has worked hard to achieve the life she loves, with a high-flying career as a TV presenter and historian, three children and a talented husband. But as she stands before a crowd at the launch of her new bestseller she can barely pretend to smile. Her life has spiralled into deceit and if the truth comes out, she will lose everything. Only one person knows what Olivia has done. Vivian Tester is the socially awkward sixty-year-old housekeeper of a Sussex manor who found the Victorian diary on which Olivia's book is based. She has now become Olivia's unofficial research assistant. And Vivian has secrets of her own. As events move between London, Sussex and the idyllic South of France, the relationship between these two women grows more entangled and complex. Then a bizarre act of violence changes everything. The Night Visitor is a compelling exploration of ambition, morality and deception that asks the question: how far would you go to save your reputation?

June 2017

Being held hostage at gunpoint by her childhood friend is not Dr Heather Gilmore's idea of a good day at work. It only gets worse when she hears that her nineteen-year-old daughter Leah has been kidnapped. Sergeant Claire Boyle wasn't expecting to get caught up in a hostage situation during a doctor's appointment. When it becomes apparent that the kidnapping is somehow linked to the hostage-taker, a woman called Eileen Delaney, she is put in charge of finding the missing girl. What happened between Eileen and Heather to make Eileen so determined to ruin her old friend? Claire Boyle must dig up the secrets from their pasts to find out - and quickly, because Leah is still missing, and time is running out to save her.  One Bad Turn is by Sinead Crowley.


Sweet After Death is by Valentina Giambanco In the dead of winter Homicide Detective Alice Madison is sent to the remote town of Ludlow, Washington, to investigate an unspeakable crime. Together with her partner Detective Sergeant Kevin Brown and crime scene investigator Amy Sorensen, Madison must first understand the killer's motives...but the dark mountains that surround Ludlow know how to keep their secrets and that the human heart is wilder than any beast's. As the killer strikes again Madison and her team are under siege. And as they become targets Madison realises that in the freezing woods around the pretty town a cunning evil has been waiting for her.

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