My favourite reads this year.

This year I have not read as much as I would have liked to and what reading I have done has been a mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

In alphabetical order my favourite reads this year are.

 

Killing is my Business by Adam Christopher (Titan Books)

Another golden morning in a seedy town, and a new memory tape for intrepid Pl-turned-hitman-and last robot left in working order--Raymond Electromatic. When his comrade-in-electronic-arms, Ada, assigns a new morning roster of clientele, Ray heads out into the LA sun, only to find that his skills might be a bit rustier than he expected...

A Game of Ghosts by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton)

It is deep winter. The darkness is unending.  The private detective named Jaycob Eklund has vanished, and Charlie Parker is dispatched to track him down. Parker's employer, Edgar Ross, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has his own reasons for wanting Eklund found.  Eklund is no ordinary investigator. He is obsessively tracking a series of homicides and disappearances, each linked to reports of hauntings. Now Parker will be drawn into Eklund's world, a realm in which the monstrous Mother rules a crumbling criminal empire, in which men strike bargains with angels, and in which the innocent and guilty alike are pawns in a game of ghosts

American Noir: The Pocket Essential Guide to US Crime Fiction, Film & TV by Barry Forshaw (Pocket Essentials)

The crime genre is as much about films and TV as it is about books, and American Noir is a celebration of the former as well as the latter. US television crime drama in particular is enjoying a new golden age, and all of the important current series are covered here, as well as key recent films.

The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler (Quercus)

Absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. It makes people think you're dead.  So begins Christopher Fowler's foray into the back catalogues and backstories of 99 authors who, once hugely popular, have all but disappeared from our shelves.  Whether male or female,   domestic or international, flash-in-the-pan or prolific, mega-seller or prize-winner - no author, it seems, can ever be fully immune from the fate of being forgotten. And Fowler, as well as remembering their careers, lifts the lid on their lives, and why they often stopped writing or disappeared from the public eye.These 99 journeys are punctuated by 12 short essays about faded once-favourites: including the now-vanished novels Walt Disney brought to the screen, the contemporary rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie who did not stand the test of time, and the women who introduced us to psychological suspense many decades before it conquered the world.

The Nowhere Man by Gregg Hurtwiz (Michael Joseph)

He was once called Orphan X.  As a boy, Evan Smoak was taken from a children's home, raised and trained as part of a secret government initiative buried so deep that virtually no  one knows it exists. But he broke with the programme, choosing instead to vanish off grid and use his formidable skill set to help those unable to protect themselves.   One day, though, Evan's luck ran out ...  Ambushed, drugged, and spirited away, Evan wakes up in a locked room with no idea where he is or who has captured him. As he tries to piece together what's happened, testing his gilded prison and its highly trained guards for weaknesses, he receives a desperate call for help.  With time running out, he will need to out-think, out-manoeuvre, and out-fight an opponent the likes of whom he's never encountered to have any chance of escape.  He's got to save himself to protect those whose lives depend on him. Or die trying ...

Crime Fiction in German: Der Krimi by Katharina Hall (University of Wales Press

Crime Fiction in German is the first volume in English to offer a comprehensive overview of German-language crime fiction from its origins in the early nineteenth century to its vibrant growth in the new millennium. As well as introducing readers to crime fiction from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the former East Germany, the volume expands the notion of a German crime-writing tradition by investigating Nazi crime fiction, Jewish-German crime fiction, Turkish-German crime fiction and the Afrika-Krimi. Other key areas, including the West German social crime novel, women's crime writing, regional crime fiction, historical crime fiction and the Fernsehkrimi (TV crime drama) are also explored, highlighting the genre's distinctive features in German-language contexts.  The volume includes a map of German-speaking Europe, a chronology of crime publishing milestones, extracts from primary texts, and an annotated bibliography of print and online resources in English and German.

Sirens by Joseph Knox (Transworld Publishers)

It starts with the girl. How it ends is up to Detective Aidan Waits.  Isabelle Rossiter has run away again.  When Aidan Waits, a troubled junior detective, is summoned to her father’s penthouse home – he finds a manipulative man, with powerful friends.  But retracing Isabelle’s steps through a dark, nocturnal world, Waits finds something else. An intelligent seventeen-year-old girl who’s scared to death of something. As he investigates her story, and the unsolved disappearance of a young woman just like her, he realizes Isabelle was right to run away.  Soon Waits is cut loose by his superiors, stalked by an unseen killer and dangerously attracted to the wrong woman. He’s out of his depth and out of time.  How can he save the girl, when he can't even save himself?

Bluebird Bluebird by Attica Locke (Profile Books)

Observer Southern fables usually go the other way around.   A white woman is killed or harmed in some way, real or imagined, and then, like the moon follows the sun, a black man ends up dead. But when it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules - a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger working the backwoods towns of Highway 59, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about his home state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. So when allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he is drawn to a case in the small town of Lark, where two dead bodies washed up in the bayou. First a black lawyer from Chicago and then, three days later, a local white woman, and it's stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment.   Darren must solve the crimes - and save himself in the process - before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt.

.

Kiss, Kiss Bang, Bang: The Boom in British Thrillers from Casino Royale to the Eagle Has Landed by Mike Ripley (Harper Collins)

An entertaining history of British thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed, which reveals that, though Britain may have lost an empire, her thrillers helped save the world. When Ian Fleming dismissed his books in a 1956 letter to Raymond Chandler as `straight pillow fantasies of the bang-bang, kiss-kiss variety' he was being typically immodest. In three short years, his James Bond novels were already spearheading a boom in thriller fiction that would dominate the bestseller lists, not just in Britain, but internationally.  The decade following World War II had seen Britain lose an Empire, demoted in terms of global power and status and economically crippled by debt; yet its fictional spies, secret agents, soldiers, sailors and even (occasionally) journalists were now saving the world on a regular basis. From Ian Fleming and Alistair MacLean in the 1950s through Desmond Bagley, Dick Francis, Len Deighton and John Le Carre in the 1960s, to Frederick Forsyth and Jack Higgins in the 1970s.  Many have been labelled `boys' books' written by men who probably never grew up.  Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, examines the rise of the thriller from the austere 1950s through the boom time of the Swinging Sixties and early 1970s, examining some 150 British authors (plus a few notable South Africans). Drawing upon conversations with many of the authors mentioned in the book, the author shows how British writers, working very much in the shadow of World War II, came to dominate the field of adventure thrillers and the two types of spy story - spy fantasy (as epitomised by Ian Fleming's James Bond) and the more realistic spy fiction created by Deighton, Le Carre and Ted Allbeury, plus the many variations (and imitators) in between.

Grandville: Force Majeure by Bryan Talbot. (Vintage)

In the middle of a gang war, wanted for murder, truly alone and outside the law, Detective Inspector LeBrock is on the run from both the police and gangster assassins, the victim of a diabolical scheme to annihilate himself and everyone he holds dear, engineered by mastermind crime lord Tiberius Koenig, one of the most despicable villains in the history of detective fiction. A detective thriller, featuring Grandville's trademark high-octane excitement, humour and deduction on a Holmesian scale as we finally meet LeBrock's mentor, Stamford Hawksmoor, and discover LeBrock's untold backstory. Featuring favourite characters Detective Sergeant Roderick Ratzi and LeBrock's vivacious fiancee, Parisian prostitute Billie are joined by a new badger in town! Enter Tasso, an Italian badger who's bigger, meaner and uglier than LeBrock - but is he a force for good or evil? A battle royale ensues as LeBrock fights against truly outrageous odds. How can he possibly survive? Prepare to be royally badgered!

The Man Who Died by Antti Tuomainen (Orenda Books)

A successful entrepreneur in the mushroom industry, Jaakko Kaunismaa is a man in his prime. At just 37 years of age, he is shocked when his doctor tells him that he's dying. What is more, the cause is discovered to be prolonged exposure to toxins; in other words, someone has slowly but surely been poisoning him. Determined to find out who wants him dead, Jaakko embarks on a suspenseful rollercoaster journey full of unusual characters, bizarre situations and unexpected twists. With a nod to Fargo and the best elements of the Scandinavian noir tradition.

The Force by Don Winslow (HarperCollins)

Detective sergeant Denny Malone leads an elite unit to fight gangs, drugs and guns in New York. For eighteen years he's been on the front lines, doing whatever it takes to survive in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean.  What only a few know is that Denny Malone himself is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash. Now he's caught in a trap and being squeezed by the Feds, and he must walk a thin line of betrayal, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all. 

Honourable mentions also to the return of Charlie Fox in Zoe Sharp’s Fox Hunter, Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr, Insidious Intent by Val McDermid, The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronvitch, The Late Show by Michael Connelly and The Pictures by Guy Bolton.

Forthcoming books from Transworld and Vintage

April 2017

There's a new killer on the streets.  A woman is found murdered after an internet date. The marks left on her body show the police that they are dealing with a particularly vicious killer. He's in your house.  He's in your room.  Under pressure from the media to find the murderer, the force know there's only one man for the job. But Harry Hole is reluctant to return to the place that almost took everything from him. Until he starts to suspect a connection between this killing and his one failed case.  He's out for blood.  When another victim is found, Harry realises he will need to put everything on the line if he's to finally catch the one who got away.  The Thirst is by Jo Nesbo.

May 2017

In the last days before her death, Nel called her sister. Jules didn’t pick up the phone, ignoring her plea for help. Now Nel is dead. They say she jumped. And Jules has been dragged back to the one place she hoped she had escaped for good, to care for the teenage girl her sister left behind. But Jules is afraid. So afraid. Of her long-buried memories, of the old Mill House, of knowing that Nel would never have jumped. And most of all she’s afraid of the water, and the place they call the Drowning Pool . . .  Into the Water is by Paula Hawkins

 

What Alice Knew is by T A Cotterell. How far would you go to keep a secret? Alice has a perfect life - a great job, happy kids, a wonderful husband. Until he goes missing one night; she receives a suspicious phone call; things don't quite add up. Alice needs to know what's going on. But when she uncovers the truth she faces a brutal choice. And how can she be sure it is the truth? Sometimes it's better not to know.

Frost at Midnight is by James Henry.  August, 1983. Denton is preparing for a wedding. Detective Sergeant Waters should be on top of the world with less than a week to go until he marries Kim Myles. But the Sunday before the big day, instead of a run-through with his best man, the church is sealed off. The body of a young woman has been found in the churchyard, and their idyllic wedding venue has become a crime scene. Detective Sergeant Jack Frost has been homeless for the past three months, ever since his wife's family sold the matrimonial house. He's been staying with Detective Constable Sue Clarke but with a baby to take care of and the imminent arrival of her mother, she's given him his marching orders. But as best man to Waters, he's got a responsibility to solve the mystery of the dead girl in the churchyard. Can he put his own troubles aside and be the detective they need him to be? All in all, August looks set to be a wicked month in Denton...

Jack 'No Middle Name' Reacher, lone wolf, knight errant, ex military cop, lover of women, scourge of the wicked and righter of wrongs, is the most iconic hero for our age. This is the first time all Lee Child's shorter fiction featuring Jack Reacher has been collected into one volume. A brand-new novella, Too Much Time, is included, as are those previously only published in ebook form: Second Son, James Penney's New Identity, Guy Walks Into a Bar, Deep Down, High Heat, Not a Drill and Small Wars. Added to these is every other Reacher short story that Child has written: Everyone Talks, Maybe They Have a Tradition, No Room at the Motel and The Picture of the Lonely Diner. Read together, these twelve stories shed new light on Reacher’s past, illuminating how he grew up and developed into the wandering avenger who has captured the imagination of millions around the world.  No Middle Name is by Lee Child.

June 2017

Vicky thought that nobody would know if she just stepped out for twenty minutes. Everything was quiet; it was so easy for her to slip away ...One little lie. One little secret. One little mistake has changed everything. Now Vicky's best friend is going to help stop her whole life from falling apart. But if she's keeping Vicky's secret, then Vicky is going to have to keep hers in return...One Little Mistake is by Emma Curtis.

Fierce Kingdom is by Gin Phillips.  Lincoln is a good boy. At the age of four, he is curious, clever and well behaved. He does as his mum says and knows what the rules are. "The rules are different today. The rules are that we hide and do not let the man with the gun find us." When an ordinary day at the zoo turns into a nightmare, Joan finds herself trapped with her beloved son. She must summon all her strength, find unexpected courage and protect Lincoln at all costs - even if it means crossing the line between right and wrong; between humanity and animal instinct. It's a line none of us would ever normally dream of crossing. But sometimes the rules are different.

The Child is by Fiona Barton.  When a paragraph in an evening newspaper reveals a decades-old tragedy, most readers barely give it a glance. But for three strangers it's impossible to ignore. For one woman, it's a reminder of the worst thing that ever happened to her. For another, it reveals the dangerous possibility that her darkest secret is about to be discovered. And for the third, a journalist, it's the first clue in a hunt to uncover the truth. 

July 2017

There are some surprises that no-one should ever have to experience. Standing over the

body of your beloved - and murdered - niece is one of them. For Detective Inspector Harry Virdee, a man perilously close to the edge, it feels like the beginning of the end. His boss may be telling him he's too close to work the case, but this isn't something that Harry can just let lie. He needs to dive into the murky depths of the Bradford underworld and find the monster that lurks there who killed his flesh and blood. But before he can, he must tell his brother, Ron, the terrible news. And there is no predicting how he will react. Impulsive, dangerous and alarmingly well connected, Ron will act first and think later. Harry may have a murderer to find but if he isn't careful, he may also have a murder to prevent.  Girl Zero is by A A Dhand

They All Fall Down is by Tammy Cohen.  She knows there's a killer on the loose. But no-one believes her. Will she be next? Hannah had a normal life - a loving husband, a good job. Until she did something shocking. Now she's in a psychiatric clinic. It should be a safe place. But patients keep dying. The doctors say it's suicide. Hannah knows they're lying. Can she make anyone believe her before the killer strikes again?

A Stranger in the House is by Shari Lapena.  Why would you run scared from a happy home? You're waiting for your beloved husband to get home work. You're making dinner, looking forward to hearing about his day. That's the last thing you remember. You wake up in hospital, with no idea how you got there. They tell you that you were in an accident; you lost control of your car whilst driving in a dangerous part of town. The police suspect you were up to no good. But your husband refuses to believe it. Your best friend isn't so sure. And even you don't know what to believe…

 

Here and Gone is by Haylen Beck. Audra has finally left her abusive husband. She's taken the family car and her young children, Sean and Louise, are buckled up in the back. This is their chance for a fresh start. She keeps to the country roads to avoid attention and finds herself on an empty road in the Arizona desert, far from home. Looking for a safe place to stay for the night she spots something in her rear-view mirror. A police car is following her and the lights are flickering. Blue and red. As Audra pulls over she is intensely aware of how isolated they are. Her perfect escape is about to turn into a nightmare beyond her imagining.

Someone is Watching You is by Arne Dahl.  Someone is watching. At each abandoned crime scene there's a hidden clue: a tiny metal cog, almost invisible to the naked eye. Someone is sending Detective Sam Berger a message, someone who knows that only he will understand the cryptic trail. Someone knows. When another teenaged girl disappears without trace, Sam must convince his superiors that they're dealing with a serial killer. As the police continue the hunt to find the latest victim, Sam is forced to unearth long-buried personal demons. He has no choice if he is to understand the killer's darkly personal message before time runs out. Somebody is killing just for him.

August 2017

I have a secret. And someone wants to make sure I never tell ...In a house decorated with horror movie posters, a young woman's body is found. She lies on her bed, two bloodied objects clutched in her palm. Detective Jane Rizzoli and Forensic Pathologist Maura Isles are called to the murder scene, but even faced with this gruesome sight they are unable to identify the immediate cause of death. Their investigation leads them to a high-profile murder case that was seemingly solved years before. But when another body is found in horrific circumstances, the link between the two victims is clear. Was the wrong person sent to prison? Is the real killer out there right now, picking off new targets? One woman knows the killer is coming for her next. She's the only one who can help Rizzoli and Isles catch him. But she has a secret that she has to keep...  I Know a Secret is by Tess Gerritsen.

Last Stop Tokyo is by James Buckler.  The funny thing with suffering is just when you think you've suffered enough, you realize it's only the beginning. Alex thought running away would make everything better. Six thousand miles from the mistakes he's made and the people he's hurt, Tokyo seems like the perfect escape. A new life, a new Alex. The bright lights and dark corners of this alien and fascinating city intoxicate him, and he finds himself transfixed by this country, which feels like a puzzle that no one can quite explain. And when Alex meets the enigmatic and alluring Naoko, the peace he sought slips ever further from his grasp. After all, trust is just betrayal waiting to happen and Alex is about to find out that there's no such thing as rock bottom. There's always the chance it'll get worse...

 After helping to avert a deadly attack on London, Luke Carlton has been welcomed on board as a full-fledged member of SIS and is assigned the role of case officer running agents. He is sent undercover into Iran to 'turn' and recruit an officer in that country's infamous Revolutionary Guard Corps: the word is that a conservative group within the IRGC doesn't like the direction post-revolutionary Iran appear to be taking and are planning something big to embarrass their own government - and frighten the country's new 'allies' in the West. The intelligence services need to find out who and what, and fast...but then a senior British government minister on an official visit to Iran goes missing, his close protection officers are found murdered...  Ultimatum is by Frank Gardner.

Fatal Sunset is by Jason Webster. In the hills above Valencia is a notorious nightclub called Sunset. When its larger-than-life owner, Jose Luis, dies suddenly, everyone assumes it was a heart-attack. Perfectly understandable for a man of his age, size and lifestyle. Meanwhile, all is not well for Max Camara at HQ. His new boss, Rita Hernandez, has it in for him and his idiosyncratic methods. He must abandon a complex investigation into home-grown extremism to check out what looks like a routine death at Sunset. But an anonymous phone-call suggests otherwise...Back in the city, Max's journalist girlfriend Alicia is working on a lead that could turn out to be the story of her career. How her own investigation connects with Max's at Sunset, and an unholy network of drug dealers, priests and shady officials protecting a dark government secret, will place both their lives in jeopardy and push everything to the very edge.

The Accordionist is by Fred Vargas.  Louis Kehlweiler of the Three Evangelists trilogy returns, along with his beloved pet toad, Bufo. Vauquer Clement, a young accordionist in his thirties has disappeared, believed by police forces from Nevers to Paris to have killed two women, both shockingly violent murders. But Kehlweiler is not so sure he’s guilty. With his team of experts, he must go back and look at all the facts, and see if he can clear Clement’s name before it’s too late.

Susan Svendsen has a special talent: she has a unique ability to make people confide in her and tell her their innermost secrets. She has exploited that talent, and now has a prison sentence hanging over her head for punching a Bollywood actor in an Indian casino. To make matters worse, her husband is on the run from the mafia, one of her children has been accused of antiquity smuggling and the other has run off with a monk. But Susan gets an offer from a former government official - an offer to use her power one more time and have all her charges dropped so she can return to Denmark. Together with her family, she must track down the last surviving members of a secret think tank of young talents founded in the 1970s, the so - called Future Committee, and find out what was written in the committee's final report. But the report is apparently covering up information of great value, and some powerful people are determined it is not revealed.  The Susan Effect is by Peter Høeg.

October 2017

Stone has returned to London.  Both the UK and the US are in a state of unrest and ever more extreme politicians are looking to take advantage of an unstable world.  Their motives are unclear. But their threat is real.  Who are they really working for?  Line of Fire is by Andy McNabb

After The Fire is the final novel by Henning Mankell. Fredrik Welin is a seventy-year-old retired doctor. Years ago he retreated to the Swedish archipelago, where he lives alone on an island. He swims in the sea every day, cutting a hole in the ice if necessary. He lives a quiet life. Until he wakes up one night to find his house on fire. Fredrik escapes just in time, wearing two left-footed wellies, as neighbouring islanders arrive to help douse the flames. All that remains in the morning is a stinking ruin and evidence of arson. The house that has been in his family for generations and all his worldly belongings are gone. He cannot think who would do such a thing, or why. Without a suspect, the police begin to think he started the fire himself. 

November 2017

The Badger is back! In the middle of a gang war, wanted for murder, truly alone and outside the law, Detective Inspector LeBrock is on the run from both the police and gangster assassins, the victim of a diabolical scheme to annihilate himself and everyone he holds dear, engineered by mastermind crime lord Tiberius Koenig, one of the most despicable villains in the history of detective fiction. A fiendishly ingenious story of love, tenacity, treachery and tragedy, featuring Grandville's trademark high-octane excitement, humour and deduction on a Holmesian scale as we finally meet LeBrock's mentor, Stamford Hawksmoor, and discover LeBrock's untold backstory. Fan favourite characters, Detective Sergeant Roderick Ratzi and LeBrock's vivacious fiancee, Parisian prostitute Billie, are joined by a new badger in town! Enter Tasso, an Italian badger who's bigger, meaner and uglier than LeBrock - but is he a force for good - or evil? A battle royale ensues as LeBrock fights against truly outrageous odds. How can he possibly survive? Prepare to be royally badgered!  Grandville Force Majeure is by Bryan Talbot.

-->