Forthcoming books from Mulholland and Hodder & Stoughton

January 2018

There is a new cold war raging and its frontline warriors are Russian hackers - gang-members working freelance for the FSB, successor to the KGB. Massive thefts of personal information, electoral interference, catastrophic disruption of commercial and social services, banks, airlines, even whole countries disabled - this is happening now. Nicknamed 'Boot' because of his obsession with the Duke of Wellington and the battle of Waterloo, Edwin Coker is a case officer at the Vauxhall headquarters of MI6. When a young hacker falls into his hands and reveals details of a secret meeting, Boot conceives a daring plan to strike back - not with a computer virus of his own, but with a bomb that will seriously damage the Russian operation, spreading fear and distrust. Now Boot and his little team need a 'deniable' handler to deliver the explosives across the border from Estonia into Russia and bring the hacker back out. They turn to Merc, an ex-soldier fighting in Iraq, a gun-for-hire who knows how to get out of a tight spot. They hope. From the moment Merc sets out to cross the River Narva things do not go to plan and when the hacker's sister becomes involved, his mission turns from tough to near impossible. The scene is set for a classic story of pursuit and evasion and an epic battle for survival. A Damned Serious Business is by Gerald Seymour.

The Shout is by Stephen Leather.  Vicky Lewis is a force to be reckoned with: not yet thirty and already crew manager in the London Fire Brigade, she's destined for great things.  But when she enters a burning building to save a man's life and leaves it with catastrophic injuries, all that changes. She's shunted over to the Fire Investigation Unit, where she's forced to team up with cantankerous veteran Des Farmer, aka the Grouch. When Vicky stumbles across the Grouch's off-the-books investigation into the fiery deaths of a series of young, blonde women, she decides to join him in his search for the truth.

Earth Storm is by Mons Kallentoff In the early hours of the morning, the naked body of a young man is discovered in a ditch next to Gota Kanal. The cause of death is mysterious; the body bears no visible traces of violence.  The man is soon identified as Peder Akerlund, a former Swedish politician, excluded from his party for racism but since reformed. Then sixteen-year-old Nadja Lundin is reported missing, possibly abducted, the same evening, and there are signs that suggest the two cases might be connected.  But what do the victims have in common? And why were they chosen? Gradually, Malin Fors realises that they are dealing with someone who is playing a game with them, who speaks through murders and who will not be silenced. What is he or she trying to say? Desperate to fine Nadja alive, the team race against the clock to find an answer before it's too late...

A Map of the Dark is by Karen Ellis. FBI Agent Elsa Myers finds missing people.  She knows

how it feels to be lost...  Though her father lies dying in a hospital north of New York City, Elsa cannot refuse a call for help. A teenage girl has gone missing from Forest Hills, Queens, and during the critical first hours of the case, a series of false leads hides the fact that she did not go willingly.  With each passing hour, as the hunt for Ruby deepens into a search for a man who may have been killing for years, the case starts to get underneath Elsa's skin. Everything she has buried - her fraught relationship with her sister and niece, her self-destructive past, her mother's death - threatens to resurface, with devastating consequences.  In order to save the missing girl, she may have to lose herself...and return to the darkness she's been hiding from for years.

The police think Crystal Heathers isn't missing.  The trainee detective assigned to the case isn't so sure.  McAvoy thinks someone was being held at the derelict building where they just found a body pinned to the wall...and that all the signs point to it being a little girl.  But why would anyone not report a kidnapping?  And how far would someone go to get revenge?  The case will test McAvoy to breaking point - as the crimes of the present lead him to a final violent confrontation with an enemy from his own past.  Scorched Earth is by David Mark.

February 2018

London 1888: George 'Zulu' Hart is the mixed-race illegitimate son of a Dublin actress and (he suspects) the Duke of Cambridge, commander-in-chief of the army. George has fought his way through wars in Africa and Afghanistan, won the VC and married his sweetheart, but he's also a gambler, short of money and in no position to turn down the job of 'minder' to Prince Albert Victor, second in line to the throne. George is to befriend the charming young cavalry officer and keep him out of trouble - no easy task, given that the Prince is a known target for Irish nationalist assassins, while his secret sexual orientation leaves him open to blackmail and scandal. To make matters worse, the Prince is also in the habit of heading out late at night to sample the dubious pleasures of the East End. Both outsiders in their different ways, perhaps the two men have more in common than they know, but when a series of horrible murders begins in Whitechapel, on just the nights the Prince has been there, George is drawn into an investigation which forces him to confront the unthinkable... The Prince and the Whitechapel Murders is by Saul David.

Hanson thought he had witnessed the worst of humanity after a tour of duty in Vietnam and a stint as a cop in Oregon. Then he moves to Oakland, California to join the under-funded, understaffed police department.  Hanson chooses to live - alone - in the precinct that he patrols; he, unlike the rest of the white officers, takes seriously his duty to serve and protect the black community of East Oakland.  He will encounter prejudice and hate on both sides of the line... and struggle to keep true to himself against powerful opposition and personal danger.  Green Sun is by Kent Anderson.

Charles Street was once a highly-respected agent working for MI6, until a terrible mistake cost him his job. Now he's a desperate man, living on past glories and struggling to make ends meet.  Until he makes a discovery that has the power to bring down the new President of the United States.  But when Street tries to cash in on this discovery, he finds himself pursued by a Russian snatch squad.  Strike Back hero John Porter and Regiment renegade John Bald are recruited by their handler to head to Washington, D.C. Their mission: find Street before the Russians.  What begins as a routine exfiltration quickly descends into a brutal struggle and the ex-SAS legends will need to use all of their fighting instincts to stay alive.  It seems someone is desperate to stop Street from going public with the dossier. Bald and Porter face a race against time to protect him.  A startling revelation that leads from the White House to the Kremlin threatens to trigger a new global conflict...  Global Strike is by Chris Ryan.

March 2018

When a Member of Parliament shows up in the office of the Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard, trouble quickly follows. He is there to request an investigation into the suicide of the son of one of his constituents in the medieval town of Ludlow, who happens to be a wealthy brewer with a team of solicitors ready to file a major lawsuit over the death. The Assistant Commissioner sees two opportunities in this request: the first is to have an MP owing him a favour, and the second is to get rid of Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, whose career at the Met has been hanging by a thread for quite some time. So he assigns Barbara Havers to the case and partners her not with her regular partner but with the one person who shares his enthusiasm for ridding the Metropolitan Police of Barbara Havers, Detective Chief Superintendent Isabelle Ardery. But Ardery has her own difficulties, the most heart-breaking of which is the loss of her twin sons to a move to New Zealand. She is not happy to be sent away from London and as a result is in a rush to return. This rush causes her to overlook things, important things, and prevents her from uncovering an earlier crime that set everything in motion.  The Punishment she Deserves is by Elizabeth George.

The Reckoning is by Yrsa Sigurdardottir. In 2016 the following people are going to die: K, S, BT, JJ, OV and I.  Nobody will miss them. Least of all me.  I can’t wait.  A chilling note predicting the deaths of six people is found in a school's time capsule, ten years after it was buried. But surely, if a thirteen-year-old wrote it, it can't be a real threat...Detective Huldar suspects he's been giving the investigation simply to keep him away from real police work. He turns to psychologist Freyja to help understand the child who hid the message. Soon, however, they find themselves at the heart of another shocking case.For the discovery of the letter coincides with a string of macabre events: body parts found in a garden, followed by the murder of the man who owned the house. His initials are BT, the first name on the note.  Huldar and Freyja must race to identify the writer, the victims and the murderer, before the rest of the targets are killed...

Maverick agent Valentine Pescatore is back and investigating a brutal killing that leads him across borders and reveals a vast conspiracy of wealth and power terrifyingly close to home.  Valentine Pescatore, the former U.S. agent, finds himself back on American soil, investigating the merciless killing of a group of women in a motel room. At first, the crime seems to be a straightforward case of gangsters battling for territory. Soon, however, the motive is revealed to be much deeper and more sinister: a single witness who knows too much is being hunted.  Rip Crew is by Sebastian Rotella.

Hap and Leonard are an unlikely pair - Hap, a self-proclaimed white trash rebel, and Leonard, a tough-as-nails black gay Vietnam vet and Republican - but they're the closest friend either of them has in the world. Hap is celebrating his wedding to his long time girlfriend, when their backyard barbecue is interrupted by a couple of Pentecostal white supremacists. They're not too happy to see Leonard, and no one is happy to see them, but they have a problem and they want Hap and Leonard to solve it.  Judith Mulhaney's daughter, Jackrabbit, has been missing for five years. That is, she's been missing from her family for five years, but she's been missing from everybody, including the local no-goods they knew ran with her, for a few months. Despite their misgivings, Hap and Leonard take the case. It isn't long until they find themselves mixed up in a revivalist cult believing that Jesus will return flanked by an army of lizard-men, and solving a murder to boot.  Jackrabbit Smile is by Joe. R Lansdale.

April 2018

The Woman in the Woods is by John Connolly.  It is spring, and the semi-preserved body of a young Jewish woman is discovered buried in the Maine woods. It is clear that she gave birth shortly before her death.  But there is no sign of a baby.  Private detective Charlie Parker is engaged by the lawyer Moxie Castin to shadow the police investigation and find the infant, but Parker is not the only searcher. Someone else is following the trail left by the woman, someone with an interest in more than a missing child, someone prepared to leave bodies in his wake.  And in a house by the woods, a toy telephone begins to ring.  For a young boy is about to receive a call from a dead woman . . .

Flavia Albia is a private investigator, always drawn to an intriguing puzzle - even if it is put to her by her new husband's hostile ex-wife. On the Quirinal Hill, Clodia Volumnia, a very young girl with stars in her eyes, has died, amid suggestions that she was poisoned by a love-potion. It will have been supplied by a local witch, who goes by the name of Pandora, though Albia learns that Pandora carries on a trade in herbal beauty products while hiding much more dangerous connections. Pandora's beloved grandson, a trainee hack lawyer, is one of the dead girl's empty-headed friends; can this be relevant?  As she homes in on the truth, Albia has to contend with the occult, organised crime, an unusual fertility symbol, and celebrity dining. She discovers the young girl was a handful; her father mediates in disputes, yet has divorced his grief-stricken wife and is now suing his own mother-in-law; Clodia's so-called friends were none too friendly. The supposedly sweet air of the Quirinal hides the smells of loose morality, casual betrayal and even gangland conflict. When a friend of her own is murdered, Albia determines to expose as much of this local sickness as she can - beginning with the truth about the death of little Clodia.  Pandora’s Boy is by Lindsey Davis

May 2018

The Cutting Edge is by Jeffery Deaver.  Lincoln Rhyme is back – and facing a particularly brutal killer, who seems to be targeting couples just as they start out on their lives together.  While Amelia Sachs tracks the case on the street, and Rhyme analyses the clues in his townhouse, new information forces them to realise the story is deeper than either of them had thought.

They are a group of misfits who go online for fun. Their hobby is giving names to the missing dead. But a killer is online with them, and his game is in deadly earnest . . .Shaun Ryan's brother, Teddy, died in 1989. Only he didn't. Looking through his grievously ill mother's personal effects, Shaun finds a postcard that Teddy posted from New York, dated October 22nd 1990. And in his mother's family Bible is a picture of an adult Teddy. Could Teddy somehow be alive? And how do you find someone who has never been declared missing and who vanished nearly thirty years ago? Missing-linc.com are an oddball assortment of geeks and obsessives whose macabre hobby is matching unidentified bodies with missing people. Ellie Caines' first and biggest case was The Boy in the Dress, a corpse found not ten miles from where she lived in Minnesota, two years after Teddy's postcard. Her obsession nearly broke her marriage and she left the group - but when the Ryan's enquiry is passed onto her she knows they have likely matched the missing Teddy with that decades-old corpse. And that she will be sucked back into the old nightmare, where the dead are more real than the living.  Missing Persons is by Sarah Lotz.

Murder at the Grand Raj Palace is by Vaseem Khan.  For a century the iconic Grand Raj Palace Hotel has welcomed the world's elite. From film stars to foreign dignitaries, anyone who is anyone stays at the Grand Raj.  The last thing the venerable old hotel needs is a murder...  When American billionaire Hollis Burbank is found dead - the day after buying India's most expensive painting - the authorities are keen to label it a suicide. But the man in charge of the investigation is not so sure. Chopra is called in - and discovers a hotel full of people with a reason to want Burbank dead.  Accompanied by his sidekick, baby elephant Ganesha, Chopra navigates his way through the palatial building, a journey that leads him steadily to a killer, and into the heart of darkness . . .

June 2018

Bianca St. Ives makes her living as a high-end thief and a genius of disguise, conning criminals out of the money they stole - and all for the greater good. A femme fatale Robin Hood, she's learnt everything she knows from her father. Now that she's taken over running the family business, it's not just Richard St. Ives on most-wanted lists, but Bianca, too. After faking his own death, the word is out that Bianca's father is, in fact, alive, and having just pulled off a major heist in Austria, he has a dangerous task for Bianca that will see her travelling to Russia to steal ancient jewels and artifacts. But now all eyes are on Bianca, and escaping international pursuit will be harder than ever...  The Moscow Deception is by Karen Robards

How it Happens is by Michael Koryta.  'And that is how it happened. Can we stop now?'  Kimberly Crepeaux is no good, a notorious jailhouse snitch, teen mother, and heroin addict whose petty crimes are well-known to the rural Maine community where she lives. So when she confesses to her role in the brutal murders of Jackie Pelletier and Ian Kelly, the daughter of a well-known local family and her sweetheart, the locals have little reason to believe her story.  Not Rob Barrett, the FBI investigator and interrogator specializing in telling a true confession from a falsehood. He's been circling Kimberly and her conspirators for months, waiting for the right avenue to the truth, and has finally found it. He knows, as strongly as he's known anything, that Kimberly's story-a grisly, harrowing story of a hit and run fuelled by dope and cheap beer that becomes a brutal stabbing in cold blood-is how it happened. But one thing remains elusive: where are Jackie and Ian's bodies?  After Barrett stakes his name and reputation on the truth of Kimberly's confession, only to have the bodies turn up 200 miles from where she said they'd be, shot in the back and covered in a third person's DNA, the case is quickly closed and Barrett forcibly reassigned. But something still nags at locals, and at a local newspaper reporter who's been chasing the story as doggedly as Barrett himself.

Never Go There is by Rebecca Tinnelly. What if you found out that you'd been married to a stranger?  'Never go there, Nuala. Please, never go there.'  Nuala knows nothing of her husband James's past. He made her swear that she would never contact his family and never, EVER visit the place he was from.  But now James is dead, and Nuala is alone. Grieving and desperate, she decides to ignore his warning.  Nuala is about to find out that some secrets are better left buried - and that uncovering the truth about the man she married will have terrible consequences...

The Death Knock is by Elodie Harper.  Is there a serial killer in East Anglia? The police deny it. Journalist Frankie suspects they're wrong. Student Ava knows they're wrong... because she's just been abducted by him.  As Ava struggles to stay alive, and Frankie finds herself far closer to the case than she'd anticipated...

He saved your son's life.  Does that mean you have to give him yours?  It starts with a holiday.  A three-year-old boy on a beach, and the hero who saves his life. But nothing is ever that simple.  Tessa and Marcus know they owe Dave Jepsom more than they can ever repay.  Yet even as he is walking from the sea with their son in his arms, there is something about him that makes them uneasy.  He is not like other people that they know.  Being with him makes them confront truths about themselves they would rather not see.  The shock of that moment will change everything.  And it's not how things start that matter.  But how they end . . .  Take Me In is by Sabine Durrant.

Liar, Liar is by Lisa Jackson.  A woman jumps to her death.  She looks a lot like washed up beauty queen Didi Storm, but her daughter is adamant: that’s not her mother.  To solve the mystery of who jumped – and why – Remmi Storm and cop Dani Settler have to go back to the start, to a deal conducted in the Las Vegas desert twenty-two years ago, which went terribly wrong.