October 2017
Getting Carter is by
Nick Triplow. The story of Ted Lewis
carries historical and cultural resonances for our own troubled times Get Carter are two words to bring a
smile of fond recollection to all British film lovers of a certain age. The cinema classic was based on a book
called Jack’s Return Home, and
many commentators agree contemporary British crime writing began with that
novel. The influence of both book and film is strong to this day, reflected in
the work of David Peace, Jake Arnott and a host of contemporary crime &
noir authors. But what of the man who wrote this seminal work? Ted Lewis is one of the most important
writers you've never heard of. Born in Manchester in 1940, he grew up in the
tough environs of post-war Humberside, attending Hull College of Arts and
Crafts before heading for London. His life described a cycle of obscurity to
glamour and back to obscurity, followed by death at only 42. He sampled the
bright temptations of sixties London while working in advertising, TV and films
and he encountered excitement and danger in Soho drinking dens, rubbing
shoulders with the ‘East End boys’ in gangland haunts. He wrote for Z Cars and had some nine books
published. Alas, unable to repeat the commercial success of Get Carter, Lewis’s
life fell apart, his marriage ended and he returned to Humberside and an all
too early demise. Getting Carter is a meticulously researched and riveting
account of the career of a doomed genius. Long-time admirer Nick Triplow has
fashioned a thorough, sympathetic and unsparing narrative. Required reading for
noirists, this book will enthral and move anyone who finds irresistible the old
cocktail of rags to riches to rags.
The ghost of a poor Afghan
returns to haunt the doctor who once amputated his hand. A mysterious and
malignant force inhabits a room in an ancestral home and attacks all who sleep
in it. A man who desecrates an Indian temple is transformed into a ravening
beast. A castle in the Tyrol is the setting for an aristocratic murderer’s apparent
resurrection. In the stories in this
collection compiled by Nick Rennison, horrors from beyond the grave and other
dimensions visit the everyday world and demand to be investigated. The
Sherlocks of the supernatural - from William Hope Hodgson’s 'Thomas Carnacki,
the Ghost Finder', to Alice and Claude Askew’s 'Aylmer Vance' - are those
courageous souls who risk their lives and their sanity to pursue the truth
about ghosts, ghouls and things that go bump in the night. The period between 1890 and 1930 was a Golden
Age for the occult detective. Famous authors like Kipling and Conan Doyle wrote
stories about them, as did less familiar writers such as the occultist and
magician Dion Fortune and Henry S. Whitehead, a friend of HP Lovecraft and
fellow-contributor to the pulp magazines of the period. Supernatural Sherlocks is edited by Nick
Rennison.
November 2017
Walden of Bermondsey is by
Peter Murphy. When Charlie Walden took
on the job of Resident Judge of the Bermondsey Crown Court, he was hoping for a
quiet life. But he soon finds himself struggling to keep the peace between
three feisty fellow judges who have very different views about how to do their
job, and about how Charlie should do his.
And as if that’s not enough, there’s the endless battle against the
‘Grey Smoothies’, the humourless grey-suited civil servants who seem determined
to drown Charlie in paperwork and strip the court of its last vestiges of
civilisation. No hope of a quiet life
then for Charlie, and there are times when his real job – trying the
challenging criminal cases that come before him – actually seems like light
relief.
January 2018
Ray Boy Calabrese is back
in Gravesend: some people worship him, some want him dead . ..but none more
so than the ex-con himself. Ray Boy
Calabrese is released from prison 16 years after his actions led to the death
of a young man. The victim's brother, Conway D'Innocenzio, is a 29-year-old
Brooklynite wasting away at a local Rite Aid, stuck in the past and still
howling for Ray Boy's blood. When the chips are down and the gun is drawn,
Conway finds that he doesn't have murder in him. Thus begins a spiral of
self-loathing and soul-searching into which he is joined by Alessandra, a
failed actress caring for her widowed father, and Eugene, Ray Boy's hellbound
nephew. Gravesend is by William Boyle.
March 2018
The Fighter is by Michael
Farris Smith. In this brilliant novel
set against the dark and desolate backdrop of the Mississippi Delta, Jack
Boucher, a washed-up bare-knuckle fighter, battles against decades of booze and
drug abuse as he returns home to try and save all he has lost. The acres and acres of fertile soil, the
two-hundred year old antebellum house, all gone. And so is the woman who gave
it to him, the foster mother who saved Jack from a childhood of abandonment in
the care system, and now rests in a hospice, her mind eroded by dementia, the
family legacy she entrusted to Jack now owned by banks and strangers. And
Jack's mind has begun to fail, too, as concussion after concussion forces him
to carry around a notebook of names that separate friend from foe and remind
him of dangerous haunts to avoid. But in a single twisted night he is
derailed. Hijacked by a no-good harmonica player out to settle a score, Jack
loses the money that will clear his debt with Big Momma Sweet, the queen of
Delta vice, whose deep backwoods playground offers sin to all those willing to
pay. Yet this same chain of events introduces an unlikely savior in the form of
a sultry, tattooed carnival worker. Guided by what she calls her ‘church of
coincidence’, Annette pushes Jack toward redemption in her own free-spirited
way, only to discover that the world of Big Momma Sweet is filled with savage
danger. Damaged by regret, crippled by twenty-five years of fists and elbows,
heartbroken at his own betrayals, Jack Boucher is forced to step into the
fighting pit one last time, the stakes nothing less than life or death.
With so many potential
victims to choose from, there would be many deaths. He was
April 2018
Boston PI Spenser and
right hand Hawk follow a con man's trail of smoke and mirrors in the latest
entry of the iconic crime series. After conning everyone from the cable news
shows to the local cops, it looks like the grifter's latest double cross may be
his last. Connie Kelly thought she'd
found her perfect man on an online dating site. He was silver-haired and
handsome, with a mysterious background working for the CIA. She fell so hard
for M Brooks Welles that she wrote him a check for almost three hundred
thousand dollars, hoping for a big return on her investment. But within weeks, both Welles and her money
are gone. Her therapist, Dr Susan Silverman, hands her Spenser's card. A self-proclaimed military hotshot, Welles
had been a frequent guest on national news shows speaking with authority about
politics and world events. But when he disappears, he leaves not only a jilted
lover but a growing list of angry investors, duped cops, and a team of
paramilitary contractors looking for revenge.
Enter Spenser, who quickly discovers that everything about Welles is
phony. His name, his resume, and his client list are nothing but an elaborate
fraud. But uncovering the truth won't be easy, as he'll have to keep the
mystery man alive long enough to get back his client's money. As the trail
winds from Boston to back roads Georgia, Spenser will need help from trusted
allies Hawk and Teddy Sapp to make sure Welles's next con is his last. Robert B Parker’s Little White Lies is by Ace
Atkins.
It's one of the most
successful - and surprising - of phenomena in the entire crime fiction genre:
detectives (and proto-detectives) solving crimes in earlier eras. There is now
an army of historical sleuths operating from the mean streets of ancient Rome
to the Cold War era of the 1950s. And this astonishingly varied offshoot of the
crime genre, as well as keeping bookshop tills ringing, is winning a slew of
awards, notably the prestigious CWA Historical Dagger. Historical Noir is by
Barry Forshaw.
May 2018
The Ways of the Wolfe is
by James Carlos Blake. Twenty years ago,
college student Axel Prince Wolfe—heir apparent to his Texas family’s esteemed
law firm and its “shade trade” criminal enterprises—teamed up with his best
friend, Billy, and a Mexican stranger in a high-end robbery that went wrong.
Abandoned by his partners, he was captured and imprisoned, his family
disgraced, his wife absconded, his infant daughter Jessie left an orphan. Two
decades later, with eleven years still to serve, Axel has long since exhausted
his desire for revenge against the partners who deserted him. All he wants now
is to see the woman his daughter has become, despite her lifelong refusal to
acknowledge him. When the chance comes to escape in the company of Cacho, a
young Mexican inmate with ties to a major cartel, Axel takes it, and a massive
manhunt ensues, taking the pair down the Rio Grande and into a desert inferno.
With his chance to see Jessie now within reach, a startling discovery
re-ignites an old passion and sends Axel headlong toward reckonings many years
in the making.
June 2018
It’s been two years since
legendary Chicago hitman Sal Cupertine disappeared into the
July 2018
The Language of Secrets is
by Ausma Zehanat Khan. Detective Esa
Khattak heads up Canada's Community Policing Section, which handles
minority-sensitive cases across all levels of law enforcement. Khattak is still
under scrutiny for his last case, so he's surprised when INSET, Canada's national
security team, calls him in on another politically sensitive issue. For months,
INSET has been investigating a local terrorist cell which is planning an attack
on New Year's Day but their undercover informant, Mohsin Dar, has been
murdered. Khattak used to know Mohsin, and he can't let this murder slide, so
he sends his partner, Detective Rachel Getty, undercover into the unsuspecting
mosque which houses the terrorist cell. As Rachel tentatively reaches out into
the unfamiliar world of Islam, and begins developing relationships with the
people of the mosque and the terrorist cell within it, the potential reasons
for Mohsin's murder only seem to multiply, from the political and ideological
to the intensely personal.
September 2018
Robert B Parker’s The
Hangman’s Sonnet is by Reed Farrel Coleman.
Jesse Stone, still reeling from the murder of his fiancée by crazed
assassin Mr Peepers, must keep his emotions in check long enough to get through
the wedding day of his loyal protégé, Suitcase Simpson. The morning of the
wedding, Jesse learns that a gala 75th birthday party is to be held for folk
singer Terry Jester. Jester, once the equal of Bob Dylan, has spent the last
forty years in seclusion after the mysterious disappearance of the master
recording tape of his magnum opus, The Hangman’s Sonnet. That same morning, an elderly Paradise woman
dies while her house is being ransacked. What are the thieves looking for? And
what’s the connection to Terry Jester and the mysterious missing tape? Jesse’s
investigation is hampered by hostile politicians and a growing trail of blood
and bodies, forcing him to solicit the help of mobster Vinnie Morris and a
certain Boston area PI named Spenser. While the town fathers pressure him to
avoid a PR nightmare, Jesse must connect the cases before the bodies pile up
further.-->
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