Books to look forward to from Atlantic and Corvus

One man.  On the hunt for the truth.  On the edge of London.  And way outside the law.  Daniel Connell is a disgraced ex-City lawyer now scraping a living in Essex, a man trying to escape the long shadows of his past.  When an old childhood friend visits him, asking for his help with a case of police brutality, Daniel wants nothing to do with it.  But obligations are obligations, and he soon finds himself on the wrong end of police attention, and dragged into the shady business of a local gangster.  But there is far more at stake than he could ever have anticipated - including the mystery of what happened to his mother, who disappeared months after he was born.  Daniel must keep ahead of his pursuers long enough to uncover the bloody mysteries of the past - and the fate of another young woman, too innocent to protect herself in the midst of a dangerous game.  Welcome to Essex.  East of Innocence is by David Thorne and is due to be published in January 2014.

The Templar Prophecy is by Mario Reading and is due to be published in February 2014.

  June 1190.  A Knight Templar, Johannes von Hartelius, rescues the Holy Lance from his drowning King during the Third Crusade.  April 1945.  A courier arrives at the Hitlerbunker with a parcel.  The Fuhrer calls for a vacuum canister to be brought, seals the documents he has received inside it, attaches the canister to a leather case containing the Holy Lance, and sends it away, guarded by a descendant of Johannes von Hartelius.  Present Day.  British photojournalist John Hart finds his father crucified, with the mark of a spear in his side.  Shattered and bewildered, Hart learns for the very first time of his family's destiny - to be the Guardians of the Lance.  As Hart begins to investigate, he discovers a German occult rightwing organization called the Brotherhood of the Lance.  Hart infiltrates the organization to investigate his father's murder - but the secret of the Lance is more terrifying than he could ever have imagined...

Sophie Kohl is living her worst nightmare.  Minutes after she confesses to her husband, a mid-level diplomat at the American embassy in Hungary, that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, he is shot in the head and killed.  Stan Bertolli, a Cairo-based CIA agent, has fielded his share of midnight calls.  But his heart skips a beat when he hears the voice of the only woman he ever truly loved, calling to ask why her husband has been assassinated.  Omar Halawi has worked in Egyptian intelligence for years, and he knows how to play the game.  Foreign agents pass him occasional information, he returns the favour, and everyone's happy.  But the murder of a diplomat in Hungary has ripples all the way to Cairo, and Omar must follow the fall-out wherever it leads.  American analyst Jibril Aziz knows more about Stumbler, a covert operation rejected by the CIA, than anyone.  So when it appears someone else has obtained a copy of the blueprints, Jibril alone knows the danger it represents.  As these players converge in Cairo in The Cairo Affair, Olen Steinhauer's masterful manipulations slowly unveil a portrait of a marriage, a jigsaw puzzle of loyalty and betrayal, against a dangerous world of political games where allegiances are never clear and outcomes are never guaranteed.  The Cairo Affair is due to be published in May 2014.

Rome’s Fallen Eagle is by Robert Fabbri and is due to be published in January 2014.  Rome, AD41.  Caligula has been assassinated and the Praetorian Guard have proclaimed Claudius Emperor - but his position is precarious.  His three freedmen, Narcissus, Pallas and Callistus, must find a way to manufacture a quick victory for Claudius - but how?  Pallas has the answer: retrieve the Eagle of the Seventeenth, lost in Germania nearly 40 years before.  Who but Vespasian could lead a dangerous mission into the gloomy forests of Germania?  Accompanied by a small band of cavalry, Vespasian and his brother try to pick up the trail of the Eagle.  But they are tailed by hunters who kill off men each night and leave the corpses in their path. Someone is determined to sabotage Vespasian's mission.  In search of the Eagle and the truth, while being pursued by barbarians, Vespasian must battle his way to the shores of Britannia.  Yet can he escape his own Emperor's wrath?

A house of dreams.  A place of nightmares.  Lacey has longed for a home of her own all her

life - a place where she can feel safe, where she and her new husband can raise their first, precious child.  When Lacey views the dilapidated Victorian clapboard property on an exquisite tree-lined street, she instantly falls in love.  She believes that soon its beautiful sunlit rooms will be filled with the joy of the new family she will build there.  But Lacey is mistaken.  The house doesn't want her.  It already has an occupant of its own - an angry little boy who hides terrors that Lacey cannot begin to understand.  Beneath the dark stairway, at the bottom of the shadowed hall, there lies a secret: for decades, no child has survived this house; no woman has emerged anything less than broken.  Lacey has made a mistake.  Now she must fight to survive it - and to save those she loves most.  The Starter House is the debut novel by Sonja Condit and is due to be published in February 2014.

The Gallowglass is by Gordon Ferris and is due to be published in April 2014.  He's dead.  So says his own newspaper, the Glasgow Gazette: Douglas Brodie, 25 January 1912-20 July 1947.  Just four weeks before, a senior banker was kidnapped.  Brodie delivered the ransom money on the instructions of the abducted man's

wife, but the drop went disastrously wrong.  Brodie was coshed in the kidnappers' den.  He woke with a gun in his hand next to a very dead banker with a bullet in his head.  The case against Brodie is watertight: the bullet comes from his own revolver, the banker's wife denies knowing him, and his pockets are stuffed with ransom notes.  In an apparent act of desperation, Brodie cheats justice by committing suicide in his prison cell.  Could this be the sordid end for a distinguished ex-copper, decorated soldier and man of parts?

Alexander the Great rests in Babylon as he decides which should be his next world to conquer.  A war elephant, Colossus, disturbs the peace of the camp when he is provoked to a killing rampage.  Only one young mahout has the courage to stop Colossus.  And when Alexander notices his bravery, Gajendra begins a meteoric climb through the ranks of the Macedonian army.  Gajendra is fiercely loyal to Alexander, the great General who plucked him from obscurity.  But as he rises to become Captain of the Elephants, Gajendra sees how Alexander is being corrupted by luxury and power.  Forced to choose between keeping faith with Alexander or with his comrades, Gajendra must find the strength to make the right decision as Alexander's army approaches the gates of Rome.  Colossus is by Alexander Cole and is due to be published in January 2014.

What She Saw is the second book in the DCI Rosen series by Mark Roberts and is due to be published in February 2014.  When a nine-year-old boy is left to die inside a burning car on a sink estate in Peckham, DCI David Rosen is drafted in to investigate.  The young boy has been severely burned, and is now fighting for his life.  As Rosen and his team begin to scour the crime scene for forensic evidence, they discover something chilling; a graffiti image of a sinister eye, drawn in exquisite detail above the site of the wreckage - and behind it, a series of mysterious markings, etched into the wall.  Could the markings represent a secret code left by the killer - a code that will hold the key to the investigation?

When you open up, who will you let in?  When Alex Morris loses her fiancé in dreadful circumstances, she moves from London to Edinburgh to make a break with the past.  Alex takes a job at a Pupil Referral Unit, which accepts the students excluded from other schools in the city.  These are troubled, difficult kids and Alex is terrified of what she's taken on.  There is one class - a group of five teenagers - who intimidate Alex and every other teacher on The Unit.  But with the help of the Greek tragedies she teaches, Alex gradually develops a rapport with them.  Finding them enthralled by tales of cruel fate and bloody revenge, she even begins to worry that they are taking her lessons to heart, and that a whole new tragedy is being performed, right in front of her...  The Amber Fury is by Natalie Haynes and is due to be published in March 2014.

The Return is by Michael Gruber and is due to be published in June 2014.  The real Richard Marder would shock his acquaintances, if they ever met him.  Even his wife, long dead, didn’t know the real man behind the calm, cultured mask he presents to the world.  Only an old army buddy from Vietnam, Patrick Skelly, knows what Marder is capable of.  Then a shattering piece of news awakens Marder’s buried desire for vengeance, and with nothing left to lose, he sets off to punish the people whose actions, years earlier, changed his life.  Uninvited, Skelly shows up and together the two of them raise the stakes far beyond anything Marder could have envisioned.

 Manhattan 62 is by Reggie Nadelson and is due to be published in January 2014.  During the stifling autumn of 1962, NYPD detective Pat Wynne catches the hardest case of his career.  A young Cuban man's body has been found on the High Line freight railroad, mutilated beyond recognition.  His is the second Cuban murder in New York that year - both bodies displaying the same tattoo of a worm and the words Cuba Libre.  Meanwhile, international tension is mounting and missiles are trained on America.  The city is terrified.  Pat is not only investigating a disturbing, politically sensitive case: there may be a spy on his own doorstep.  Are his instincts correct, or is he about to commit the ultimate act of betrayal?

Four friends, caught in a terrible job market, joke about turning to kidnapping to survive.  And then, suddenly, it's no joke.  For two years, the strategy they devise works like a charm - until they kidnap the wrong man.  Now two groups are after them - the law, in the form of veteran state investigator Kirk Stevens and hotshot young FBI agent Carla Windermere, and an organized crime outfit looking for payback.  As they crisscross the country in a series of increasingly explosive confrontations, each of them is ultimately forced to recognize the truth: the real professionals, cop or criminal, are those who are willing to sacrifice everything.  The Professionals is by Owen Laukkanen and is due to be published in April 2014.

  

No witnesses.  Twelve-year-old Josy has an inexplicable illness.  She vanishes without a trace from her doctor's office during treatment.  Four years later, Josy's father, psychiatrist Viktor Larenz, has withdrawn himself to an isolated North Sea island in order to deal with the tragedy.  No body.  Then he's paid a surprise visit by a beautiful stranger.  Anna Glass is a novelist who suffers from an unusual form of schizophrenia: all the characters she creates for her books become real to her.  In her last novel she has written about a young girl with an unknown illness who has disappeared without a trace.  Where is his daughter?  Can Anna's delusions describe Josy's last days?  Reluctantly, Viktor agrees to take on her therapy in a final attempt to uncover the truth behind his daughter's disappearance.  But very soon these sessions take a dramatic turn as the past is dragged back into the light - with terrifying consequences.  Therapy is by Sebastian Fitzek and is due to be published in January 2014.

Magnus and Oli Jonson have spent two decades trying to escape a past overshadowed by their grandfather’s burial violence.  When Constable Páll Gylfason gets a call to investigate a suspected homicide, he is surprised to find Detective Magnus Jonson already at the scene – the dead man is his estranged grandfather, and Magus’s version of events doesn’t add up.  Magnus is arrested on suspicion of murder.  But when it emerges that his younger brother, Oli, is in Iceland after twenty years in America, Páll begins to think that Magnus may not be the only family member in the frame.  Sea of Stone is the latest in the Fire & Ice series by Michael Ridpath and is due to be published in May 2014.

The Spider of Sarajevo is by Robert Wilton and is due to be published in June 2014.  Spring 1914 Europe is on the brink of war, and two master spies are at work.  – the Comptroller-General for Scrutiny and Survey and the man with whom he wages a personal war, an agent of manipulation known as The Spider.  Obsessed with the man he has been fighting for twenty years, the Comptroller-General sends four young agents into Europe, where they are surrounded by the manoeuvrings of the warring spies.  But these agents are more than mere pawns in a game.  They have a secret mission all of their own – to assassinate the heir to the Austrian Throne. 

2013 Ned Kelly nominations and Bloody Scotland 2013 Award Short List

 

The Australian Crime Writers Association have recently announced the shsortlists for the 2013 Ned Kelly Awards. They are as follows -

Best First Fiction –The Marmalade Files by Steve Lewis & Chris Uhlmann
The Midnight Promise by Zane Lovitt
The Robbers  by Paul Anderson
Murder With The Lot by Sue Williams
The Richmond Conspiracy by Andrew Grimes

Best Fiction
The Holiday Murders by Richard Gott
Web of Deceit by Katherine Howell

Blackwattle Creek by Geoffrey McGeachin 

I Hear The Sirens In The Street by Adrian McKinty
Silent Valley by Malla Nunn  

True Crime
The People Smuggler  by Robin de Crespigny  
Every Parent’s Nightmare by Belinda Hawkins
The Devil’s Cinema  by Steve Lillebuen  
Dead by Friday  by Derek Pedley  
Eugenia  by Mark Tedeschi QC  

The short list for the Deanston Crime Novel of the year has also been announced and will be given out Bloody Scotland.   The 2013 shortlisted titles are:

Dead Water by Anne Cleeves
Pilgrim Soul by Gordon Ferris
How a Gunman Says Goodbye by Malcolm Mackay

The Red Road by Denise Mina
The Vanishing Point by Val McDermid
Standing in Another Man’s Grave by Ian Rankin

The Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year award winner will be announced at a gala dinner during the Bloody Scotland Festival on Saturday 14th September, and presented with a trophy and a cheque for £1000.

Dagger in the Library Longlist!

The Dagger in the Library long list is out!

The nominees are –

Belinda Bauer

Alison Bruce

S J Bolton

Peter May

Gordon Ferris

Tania Carver

Elly Griffiths

Christopher Fowler

Michael Ridpath

Jane Casey

Phil Rickman

Alex Gray and

Frances Brody!

Congratulations to all those on the longlist!  The shortlist will be announced at Crimefest on 31 May 2013, with the eventual winner being revealed at the Daggers Gala Dinner on 15 July 2013.

Forthcoming books to look forward to from Atlantic and Corvus books

They call him Herod – a killer of unimaginable cruelty, with an unthinkable desire London is in the grip of a barbaric serial killer. Four women have been abducted in quick succession, their bodies mutilated and dumped. When a fifth woman is taken from her home, DCI David Rosen knows that time is running out... Then Rosen gets a mysterious phone call from Father Sebastian Flint, an enigmatic priest who seems to know rather too much about the abductions.  But it isn’t until Rosen discovers the existence of an ancient text – said to be the devil’s answer to the bible –that the true horror of Herod’s plan begins to unfold.  The Sixth Soul is the debut novel by Mark Roberts and is due to be published in February 2013.

Blessed Are Those Who Thirst is by Anne Holt and is due to be published in April 2013. In Oslo, crime scenes are being found covered with blood, but there is no victim. Only an odd series of numbers is left behind. When a girl is brutally raped in her apartment, Hanne Wilhelmsen quickly notices strange similarities with the blood-stained crime scenes. But the girl’s father has started an independent hunt for the rapist... Also by Anne Holt and due to be published in June is Death of the Demon. The cheerful façade of the Spring Sunshine Children’s home hides a brutal regime. When the manager is found dead in her office, Hanne Wilhelmsen is called in to investigate.

Welcome to fifth-century Britain: the Romans have left, the Saxons have invaded, the towns are decaying and the countryside is dangerous.  Malgwyn ap Cuneglas, an embittered ex-soldier who lost a limb in the Saxon wars, has become the trusted counsellor to Arthur, High King of all Britannia. So when a monk dies in horrific circumstances in Glastonbury Abbey, the Abbot calls for Malgwyn to investigate.  His search for the truth will draw him into an intricate web of religious, economic and political deceit – and a conspiracy that could endanger everything Arthur has fought for. The Divine Sacrifice is by Anthony Hays and is due to be published in April 2013

Traitor’s Field is the second book in the series by Robert Wilton (the winner of the inaugural Goldsboro Crown Award for debut historical novel) to feature John Thurloe.  It is due to be published in May 2013. As England tears itself apart, two spymasters fight for its future: It is 1648 and Britain is at war with itself. The Royalists are defeated but Parliament is in turmoil, its power weakened by internal discord.  Royalism’s last hope is Sir Mortimer Shay, a ruthless veteran of decades of intrigue who must rebuild a credible threat to Cromwell’s rule, whatever the cost.  John Thurloe is a young official in Cromwell’s service. Confronted by the extent of the Royalists’ secret intelligence network, he will have to fight the true power reaching into every corner of society: the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey.

False Gods of Rome is the third novel in the Vespasian series by Robert Fabbri. Sickened by Tiberius’s insane debauchery, Vespasian places his faith in the new Emperor, Caligula. Instead, he watches Rome’s shining star deteriorate into a blood-crazed, incestuous, all-powerful madman. Lavish building projects, endless games, public displays of his  relationship with his sister and a terrified senate are nothing to Caligula’s most ambitious plan: to bridge the bay of Neapolis and ride over it wearing Alexander’s breastplate. And it falls to Vespasian to travel to Alexandria and steal it. False Gods of Rome is due to be published in January 2013.

A Darkness Descending is by Christobel Kent and is due to be published in May 2013.  Silvano Rosselli, the gaunt, charismatic leader of a Florentine political movement, collapses at a rally. His longtime partner Flavia has disappeared, leaving him literally holding their new baby, at least until Rosselli’s formidable mother takes charge. Meanwhile, Sandro Cellini has been reduced to looking into a possibly fraudulent insurance claim. Soon he is drawn into the mystery surrounding Rosselli, and when Flavia’s fate is revealed, events take a terrifying turn.

No Way Back is by Matthew Klein and is due to be published in March 2013. Jimmy Thane has always taken the wrong path. Now he has one last chance to save both his career and his marriage – he has  seven weeks to turn round a failing company. But when the police start asking questions about the disappearance of the former CEO, Jimmy begins to wonder what he’s got himself into.  Then he discovers surveillance equipment in his neighbour’s house. And he begins to notice that his wife isn’t just tired, she’s terrified. Jimmy no longer feels like he’s living the dream – instead he’s plunged into the worst kind of nightmare.

Brodie is approached by the Jewish community in Glasgow to solve a series of thefts. But when the thief is knifed by a householder, who is then also murdered, Brodie’s easy case becomes a terrifying, violent mess. When Brodie investigates further, he discovers that the dead man wasn’t a brutalized Jew, but a sadistic camp guard. What starts as a small case soon escalates into a relentless personal quest for the truth. And when it begins to seem that the guards are protecting someone high up in the old Nazi organization, Brodie faces the biggest moral dilemma of his career.  Pilgrim Soul is by Gordon Ferris and is due to be published in April 2013.

Sherlock Holmes meets Flashman in the first instalment of Adam Carver’s adventures, a wonderfully exuberant piece of Victoriana.  It is 1870. When amateur archaeologist Adam Carver and his loyal but obdurate retainer Quint are visited by an attractive young woman, they are pitched headlong into an elaborate mystery which comes to centre on the existence (or not) of a lost text in Ancient Greek, one that may reveal the whereabouts of the treasure hoard of Philip II of Macedonia. With the scene shifting from the roughest and most genteel parts of the teeming metropolis to the fastness of a Greece gripped by political unrest, Carver and Quint soon realize that nothing is quite what it seems.  Carver’s Quest is by Nick Rennison and is due to be published in June 2013. 

Forthcoming books to look forward to from Corvus

Warlord is the latest novel by David Rollins featuring his protagonist Vin Cooper and is due to be published in June 2012. Special Agent Vin Cooper has just returned from an off-books mission in the Congo. Now he's caught up in something even more dangerous. An ex-air force colleague has been kidnapped. His severed hand, buried in a KFC bucket with a demand for five million dollars, has found its way to Cooper's door - and he has just 21 days to pay. Tracking the missing man's movements from a topless revue in Vegas, to the shark-infested Pacific, the favelas of Brazil and finally to the pirate-patrolled waters off Somalia, Cooper discovers his ex-colleague is now an undercover agent working with a vicious Colombian arms dealer. Meanwhile, the CIA are searching for a stolen thermonuclear device. Suddenly, Cooper's quest to find his friend becomes a journey to the heart of a chilling conspiracy. A journey that Cooper might not survive…

Taklimakan desert, 1890: A storm uncovers a city buried deep beneath the shifting sands that lie beyond the roof of the world. A new Pompeii has come to light, and with it two remarkable artefacts, found in a hidden burial chamber. A metal ankh and star - covered in strange hieroglyphs.

Arctic Circle, 1897: On the skerried islands of Svalbard, Swedish aeronaut S A Andrée begins an expedition untried by any other navigator – a polar voyage by hydrogen dirigible. The entire company will disappear without trace, and with them the metal ankh and star.

Sweden, present day: Miles under the earth in a long-flooded mineshaft, a diver’s torch-beam plays over an ancient corpse, uncannily preserved. A coin-sized hole in its forehead suggests a violent death. Skeletal arms clutch a metal ankh to the remains of the body. On the wall of the submerged cavern, one word – NIFLHEIM: the Norse kingdom of the dead. Strindberg’s Star is the debut novel by Jan Wallentin and is due to be published in June 2012

FreeFlow is a group of internet activists dedicated to the freedom of information. They have video evidence of a military atrocity in the Middle East and are preparing to unleash it on the world’s media in from their Iceland HQ. On the glacial rim of an erupting volcano, they christen their endeavour Operation Meltwater. Minutes later one of them is murdered. The list of people FreeFlow have antagonised is long – the Chinese government, the Israeli military, Italian politicians, and even American Fraternities. Magnus Jonson has a long list of suspects but he is getting little help from FreeFlow – for a group dedicated to transparency, they’re a secretive bunch.

But they are not the only ones with secrets. Asta, a newly qualified priest, has contacted FreeFlow with damming information about the former Bishop of Iceland. And with the return of Magnus’s brother Ollie to Iceland, the feud that haunted their family for three generations is about to reignite. Meltwater is the third in the Fire & Ice Quartet by Michael Ridpath and it is due to be published in June 2012.

Vespasian: Rome's Execution is the sequel to Robert Fabbri's debut novel Vespasian: Tribune of Rome. Thracia, 30 AD: Even at the edge of the Roman world, Vespasian can't escape the tumultuous politics of an empire on the brink of disintergration. His patrons in Rome have charged him with the clandestine extraction of an old enemy from a fortress on the banks of the Danube before it falls to the Roman legion besieging it. Vespasian's mission is the key move in a deadly struggle for the right to rule the Roman Empire. The man he has been ordered to seize could be the witness that will destroy Sejanus, commander of the Praetorian Guard and ruler of the empre in all but name. Before he completes his task, Vespasian will face ambush in snowbound mountains, pirates on the high seas and Sejanus's spies all around him. But he will also face a far greater terror: he will have to travel to the island of Capri, there to confront the nightmarish court of an insane emperor. Vespasian: Rome's Executioner is due to be published in May 2012.

For journalist Douglas Brodie, Glasgow's out-break of murder and mayhem begins simply enough. A typical Staurday night brawl adds a splash of colour to the morning edition of the Gazette. But Brodie's piece receives a hot-blooded reply - the declaration of a new war upon pettey crime signed by a group of vigilantes: The Glasgow Marshalls. After his own stint at the Front, Brodie counts himself lucky to be back in his home town, paying his way as the local crime reporter. And although the frustrated, demobbed men of Glasgow are taking an ee for an eye. Brodie has some sympathy for their cause. When a man is killed suspicion automatically falls on the Marshalls. But for Brodie, this crime is all wrong. The Marshalls stand for justice, not murder. Amid the heated clash of populace and police, a calculated crime has been ignored. Enlisting the help of advocate Samantha Campbell, Brodie begins to investigate the death himself. Bitter Water is by Gordon Ferris and is due to be published in April 2012.

Joe Pickett's outlaw falconer companion, Nate Romanowski, faces the battle of his life and one he may very likely lose. His mysterious past comes back in the form of his former special forces colleague, an utterly ruthless soldier/homeland security official who knows his rise through the military and intelligence community will be derailed if Nate ever tells what he knows about their time together in Afghanistan in 1995. After years of dispatching fellow special forces team members to take him out, Nate's nemesis decides the time has come to end the threat to him once and for all. And he does it by incorporating many of the same tactics that served their unique and secret unit well in the Middle East: by recruiting locals. Nate can trust no one except Joe Pickett, who is constrained by his oath and duty to the law and the state. But Nate must involve Joe because he knows his enemy will strike at his friends in order to draw him out and the entire Pickett family will be a target. Because of Nate's fugitive status he can only fight back outside the law, and Joe must make a choice: help his friend or adhere to his principles? Force of Nature is by C J Box and is due to be published in March 2012.

The Dead Season is the latest novel by Christobel Kent and is due to be published in May 2012. Every August, Florence shimmers in the summer heat. But this year the heatwave is fiercer than usual, and the city's inhabitants have fled to the cool of the hills and beaches of the surrounding countryside. But former policeman turned private detective Sandro Cellini will not be joining them, and nor will the manager of a branch of a small, failing provincial bank. Sandro has a case: a man who seems to have vanished into thin air leaving his pregnant wife behind him. But the bank manager lies amidst the shrubbery of a busy roundabout, his corpse bloating in the humid air. Meanwhile, bank-teller Roxana Delfino is both worried by her mother's state of mind - is her memory failing? Has she imagined an intruder onto their property? - and puzzled by the disappearance of one her regular clients. And just what does the old porn cinema near Roxana's bank have to do with these three separate mysteries? as all Florence sweats it out, Sandro, his assistant Guili, wife Luisa and former police partner Pietro attempt as best they can to grapple with the case and the complications it throws up along the way. And when the weather finally breaks, it brings with it a shocking revelation...

An American Spy is the latest novel by the award winning author Olen Steinhauer and is due to be published in March 2012. Milo Weaver is still haunted by his last job. As an expert assassin for the Department of Tourism, an ultra-secret group of super-spooks buried deep in the corridors of the CIA, he fought to keep himself sane in a paranoid and amoral profession. Now, the Department has been destroyed, and with it Weaver's livelihood. Finally he can spend time with his family - without constantly looking over his shoulder and fixing one eye on the exits. Weaver's former boss is not so settled. For Alan Drummond, Tourism was everything. Now, all he wants is to take revenge on the Chinese spymaster that exploded their operations from within. Weaver tries to persuade him to leave sleeping cells lie, but when Drummond disappears from a London hotel room after a serpentine journey through the world's cities, Weaver is sucked back down into his old life. Investigating Drummond's intentions in London throws up more questions than answers. Why was an ex-Tourist in his hotel room that night? Why is homeland security suddenly asking questions? And how are the Chinese connected? Soon, Weaver is sifting through what secrets, lies and misinformation he can extract from the sources he still has on the ground. If his time as a Tourist has taught him anything, it's that nothing and no-one can be trusted - even within the CIA itself...

A Name in Blood is by Matt Rees and is due to be published in May 2012. Italy, 1605: For the ruling Borgia family, Rome is a place of grand palazzos and the frescoed cathedrals. For the lowly artist Caravaggio, it is a place of rough bars, knife fights, and grubby whores. Until he is commisioned to paint the pope... Soon, Caravagio has gained entry into the inner circle of Rome's power-brokers, and becomes the most celebrated artist in Italy. But when he falls for Lena, a low-born fruit seller, and paints her as the Madonna, Italian society is outraged. Discredited as an artist, but desperate to defend the honour of the woman he loves, Carravagio is forced into a duel - and murders a nobel man. Even his powerful patrons cannot protect him from a death sentence. So Carravagio flees to Malta, where in oredr to be pardoned, he must undergo the rigorous training of the Knights of Malta. His paintings continue to speak of his love for Lena. But before he can return to her, as a knight and a noble, Carravagio, the most famous artist in Italy simply disappears....

Smart, tough Los Angeles FBI agents Jack Harper and Oscar Hidalgo breathe sighs of relief after violent diamond smuggler Karl Steinbach is finally arrested in a complex sting. Vowing vengeance on the agents who brought him down, Steinbach is imprisoned - only to be offered a release with total immunity in a dodgy deal with Homeland Security. As Jack and Oscar's team of agents start to die, it becomes clear that Steinbach's is no idle threat. But when the pair investigate their slain comrade's lives, they discover that what looked like retribution is actually tied to a web of deceit that stretches to the highest echelons of the FBI. Navigating car chases, shootouts, and even venomous reptiles, Jack and Oscar furiously pursue clues scattered throughout the underbelly of Los Angeles, in a desperate attempt to find the killer - before he finds them. With a storyline crackling with action, a dazzling cast of thugs, traitors, killers and creeps, and a cinematic portrait of a seamy Los Angeles clogged with corruption and greed, Robert Ward's turbulent new thriller is clever, contemporary and cool as ice. Total Immunity is due to be published in January 2012.

Newsy Stuff - Good News and Bad News

The Good News

There will be a number of well-known Russian authors attending the London Book Fair later on this year. According to the press release (via Booktrade info) The programme will feature 49 authors, poets, critics and academics, representing Russia and will be bringing the best in contemporary Russian writing and publishing to London in April and through a series of high-profile trade and public events will foster mutual understanding between Russia and the UK through literature and help facilitate long-term partnerships. Amongst those due to attend will be Boris Akunin. He will be London Book Fair's Market Focus Author of the Day on Tuesday 12th April. Boris Akunin is one of the most widely read authors in Russia and his Erast Fandorian novels have sold over eighteen million copies in Russia alone.

The Los Angeles Times have announced the 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalists.

The authors in the Mystery and Thriller category are –

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin (William Morrow)

Faithful Place by Tana French (Viking)

I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman (William Morrow)

Collusion by Stuart Neville (SoHo Press)

City of Dragons by Kelli Stanley (Minotaur Books/A Thomas Dunne Book)

The full list of nominees can be found here.

The 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes will be awarded April 29, 2011, in a ceremony at the Los Angeles Times building.

No Exit Press have according to the Bookseller acquired The Killer is Dying by James Sallis. The book follows three characters: a hitman on his final job, a detective caring for his ill wife and a young boy living on the streets, and how their lives are linked despite them never meeting. Sallis is also the author of the acclaimed novel Drive which has been made into a film featuring Ryan Gosling and is due to be released in September 2011.

According to the Bookseller Headline have acquired The God of Gotham, a novel set in 19th-century New York. Set in 1845 during the establishment of the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the potato famine in Ireland, the novel follows a fledgling police officer's investigation into a murderer intent on fanning the flames of anti-Irish immigrant sentiment.

Headline’s fiction publisher at large Martin Fletcher has also acquired two sets of acquisitions. The first is a two-book deal by Cityboy author Geraint Anderson. His debut novel Just Business will be published in June 2011. The second is two novels by thriller writer Steven Dunne. Dunne is moving from HarperCollins as part of the deal. The first book entitled Deity, is about five college students who appear to have committed suicide. It will be published in May 2012.

Orion have launched a new imprint. The new imprint to be known as Swordfish will publish a wide range of commercial non-fiction as well as a small selection of fiction. The fiction selection will be aiming for "big, distinctive thrillers". The first fiction title will be Spartan by Matthew Dunn, a début thriller by the ex-MI6 field operative.

Gordon Ferris’s novel The Hanging Shed has received some rave reviews on its early release as an ebook.

However, according to The Daily Record some readers are having problem with The Hanging Shed because they can’t understand the Ayrshire and Glaswegian slang in the novel.

And the Bad news ---

Is that the BBC have decided to axe the excellent crime series Zen. According to the Guardian BBC 1 Controller Danny Cohen has decided not to renew the series despite the excellent reviews that it received. Not sure what this is about as Zen was one of the better crime dramas to be shown earlier this year. It is a shame and I hope that this decision will be reviewed.

Books to look forward to from Corvus

Mozart’s Last Aria is by Matt Rees. It is 1791 and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is enlightenment Vienna’s brightest star. Master of the city’s music halls and devoted member of the Austrian Freemason’s guild, he stands at the heart of an electric mix of art and music, philosophy and science, politics and intrigue. But, six weeks ago, the great composer told his wife he had been poisoned. yesterday, he died. The city is buzzing with rumours of infidelity, bankruptcy and murder. But Wolfgang’s sister Nannerl will not believe base gossip. Who but a madman would poison such genius? yet as she looks closely at the objects that her brother left behind, Nannerl finds traces of something sinister: a masonic secret that might just be connected to his death. And as she listens to Wolfgang’s bewitching last opera, The Magic Flute, she realizes that the arias might contain more than just the music. Mozart’s Last Aria will be published in May 2011.

July 1805. The armies of France have only to sail to England to complete Napoleon’s domination over Europe. Britain is militarily weak, politically divided, unsettled by her rioting poor. Into this feverish environment comes a dead man. Pulled half-drowned from a shipwreck, his past erased, Tom Roscarrock is put to work for the Comptrollerate-General for Scrutiny and Survey, a shadowy Government bureau. He is thrown into a bewildering world of political intrigue and violence. In France, a plan is underway to shatter the last of England’s stability. In England, the man who recruited Roscarrock has disappeared, his agents keep turning up dead, and reports of a secret French fleet are panicking the authorities. Roscarrock begins to realize that his mission is a deliberate device to reveal the British spy net- work in France... and his own opaque past is the key to the conspiracy. For Tom Roscarrock, the battle of the Empires is his chance for private vengeance. Will he prove nemesis or saviour? The Emperor’s Gold is by Robert Wilton and is due to be published in June 2011.

Iceland

1934: Two boys playing in the lava fields surrounding their isolated farmsteads see something they shouldn’t. The consequences will haunt them and their families for generations. Iceland 2009: The credit crunch bites. Currency is devalued, banks nationalized, savings annihilated, lives ruined. Grassroots revolution is in the air, as is the feeling that someone ought to pay... ought to pay the blood price. And in a country with a population of just 300,000 souls, in a country where everyone knows everybody, it isn’t hard to draw up a list of exactly who is responsible. And then,

one-by-one, to cross them off. Iceland 2010: As bankers and politicians start to die, at home and abroad, it is up to Magnus Jonson to unravel the web of conspirators before they strike again. But while Magnus investigates the crimes of the present, the crimes of the past are catching up with him. 66° North is by Michael Ridpath and is due to be published in May 2011.

The Killing Way by Anthony Hays is due to be published in April 2011. Welcome to fifth century Britain: the Romans have left, the Saxons have invaded, the towns are decaying and the countryside is dangerous. A young leader has forged a reputation as both a warrior and a diplomat and supreme power is within his grasp. But this is not the Arthur of legend: Camelot does not exist; chivalry is nonexistent; betrayal and treachery are endemic. And neither is this Arthur’s story. This tale belongs to its grim narrator, Malgwyn ap Cuneglas, a man whose broken life mirrors the broken Roman roads that divide the landscape. Once a feared warrior, he should have lost his life when he lost his swordhand on the battlefield. Arthur saved him, condemning Malgwyn to a half-life as a meagre scribe. But when a young woman is murdered and Arthur’s reputation is threatened, Malgwyn is tasked with solving the mystery and safeguarding the stability of Arthur’s newborn realm.

Resolution by the late Robert B Parker is the second instalment of a new series. The dust has yet to settle in the new frontier town of Resolution. It’s barely even a town: a general store, a handful of saloons and a run-down brothel for the workers at a nearby copper mine. No sheriff has been appointed, and gunslingers have taken control. Amid the chaos, itinerant lawman Everett Hitch has created a small haven of order at the Blackfoot Saloon.

Charged with protecting the girls who work the back room, Hitch has seen off passing cowboys and violent punters – though it’s his scheming boss, Amos Woolfson, who stirs up the most trouble. When a greedy mine owner threatens the local ranchers, Woolfson ends up at the centre of a makeshift war. Hitch knows only too well how to protect himself, but with the bloodshed mounting, he’s relieved when his friend Virgil Cole rides into town. In a place where justice and order don’t yet exist, Cole and Hitch must lay down the law – without violating their codes of honour, duty and friendship. Resolution is due to be published in March 2011.

Smart, tough Los Angeles FBI agents Jack Harper and Oscar Hidalgo breathe sighs of relief after violent diamond smuggler Karl Steinbach is finally arrested in a complex sting. Vowing vengeance on the agents who brought him down, Steinbach is imprisoned only to be offered a release with total immunity in a dodgy deal with Homeland Security. As Jack and Oscar's team of agents start to die, it becomes clear that Steinbach's is no idle threat. But when the pair investigate their slain comrade's lives, they discover that what looked like retribution is

actually tied to a web of deceit that stretches to the highest echelons of the FBI. Navigating car chases, shootouts, and even venomous reptiles, Jack and Oscar furiously pursue clues scattered throughout the underbelly of Los Angeles, in a desperate attempt to find the killer - before he finds them. Total Immunity is by Robert Ward and is due to be published in March 2011.

In Daddy’s Girl by Margie Orford It is Friday evening on deserted street below Table Mountain where a six-year-old ballerina waits alone for her mother to fetch her. Then an unmarked car approaches, and she is gone. With no trace of where, or why she's been abducted, suspicion falls on her divorced father, Captain Riedwaan. The boss of Cape Town's gang unit, Riedwaan is tough and ruthless, a man accustomed to being in control. But now he is powerless. Suspended from the squad for wasting police time, Riedwaan watches helplessly as the search for his daughter is called off. In desperation, Riedwaan turns to investigative journalist and police profiler Dr Clare Hart, whose brutal TV documentary about Cape Town's missing young girls has made her something of a local celebrity. Clare has seen how aspiring gangsters in the Cape Flats ghetto prove their worth by tormenting children. She knows that the odds of a victim's survival worsen with each passing minute. She understands that finding the child without police involvement will be difficult, dangerous, and probably illegal. But she also knows she'll do anything to help this heartbroken father - even if it puts all their lives at risk. Daddy’s Girl is due to be published in March 2011.

Glasgow, 1946: The last time Brodie came home he was a proud young man in a paratrooper’s uniform. Now, the war is over but victory’s wine has soured, and Brodie’s back to try and save

his childhood friend Hugh Donovan from the gallows. Donovan returned from war burned, mutilated, unrecognizable. It’s no surprise that he keeps his own company, venturing out only to score heroin. And it’s no surprise that when a local boy is found raped and murdered, there is only one suspect. A mountain of evidence says he’s guilty. But Donovan denies it, and ex-policeman Brodie feels compelled to help him. Working with advocate Samantha Campbell, Brodie trawls the mean streets of the Gorbals and confronts an unholy alliance of troublesome priests, corrupt coppers and Glasgow’s deadliest razor gang. As time runs out for the condemned man, and the murder tally of innocents starts to climb, Brodie reverts to his wartime role as a trained killer. It’s them or him. The Hanging Shed is due to be published in March 2011 and is by Gordon Ferris.

Marc Lucas had it all, and lost it all. He is only slowly putting his life back together after the car crash that killed his pregnant wife, when things start to go strangely wrong for him. Nothing too sinister to begin with: his credit cards stop working. But then his key no longer fits his door, and he discovers someone else working in his office. Much worse is to come: he returns home to find himself face to face with his once-dead wife, and she doesn’t have a clue who he is. The next day, there is no trace of her. Could this have anything to do with the clinic? They wanted to test their ability to remove traumatic memories from live subjects. Marc had met them, just once, but declined their experimental technology. He now fears they may have begun their tests illicitly... Can he discover what is happening to him before the waking nightmare he finds himself living overwhelms his sanity? Splinter is a psychological novel by Sebastian Fitzek and s due to be published in April 2011.

Con men and killers, aliens and zombies, priests and soldiers - just some of the characters that kill and thrill in this compelling collection of gun-toting, double-crossing, back-stabbing, pulse

-pounding stories. Jeffrey Deaver investigates the suspicious death of a crime-writer in 'The Plot'; Karin Slaughter's grieving widow takes revenge on her dying ex-husband in 'Cold, Cold Heart'; Stephen Coonts discovers a flying saucer in the depths of the ocean in 'Savage Planet' and John Lescroat's secret field agent finds himself caught up in a complex game of cat-and-mouse in 'The Gate Conundrum'. Handpicked by world number one Lee Child, celebrity authors and stars of the future are brought together, writing brand-new stories, especially commissioned for this must-have collection. First Thrills is edited by Lee Child and is due to be published in February 2011.

End Game is by Matthew Glass and is due to be published in February 2011. July 5 2018, Masini, Uganda: 218 people are massacred when the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) attack a hospital. Amongst the dead are 32 American medical volunteers. September 12, UN Security Council: The US announces its plan to eradicate the LRA once and for all. But it will mean intervening in China’s African sphere of influence. The message from the Chinese is keep out. October 17, Wall Street: Stock prices tumble as a wave of uncertainty sweeps US markets. Washington will do what it takes to prop up America’s banks but their fear is that someone is deliberately undermining them. unrelated incidents, or the opening moves in a deadly confrontation between superpowers? With hardliners on both sides keen to provoke conflict, US ambassador Marion Ellman must defuse the situation before it is too late, but with American and Chinese carrier groups massing off the Horn of Africa, her time is running out.

The elite warriors of the Hereford-based SAS know all about pain and the enduring of it. Syd Spicer, ex-SAS trooper, has found himself back in the Regiment – this time as its chaplain, responsible for the spiritual welfare of the hardest men in or out of uniform. Faced with a case, which would normally be passed discreetly to diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins, Spicer is forced, for security reasons, to try and handle it himself and is coming close to a breakdown. Meanwhile, the scattered communities along the Welsh border face their own crisis. With recession biting deep, urban crime has spilled into the countryside and old barbaric evils are revived. When a wealthy landowner is hacked to death in his own farmyard, DI Frannie Bliss, the senior investigating officer, is caught in the backlash, his private life in danger of exposure. Merrily Watkins is going to have to venture into areas where neither priest nor woman is welcome, to unearth secrets linked to the pagan past. Secrets which she knows can never be disclosed. The Secrets of Pain is by Phil Rickman and is due to be published in February 2011.

Hollywood Hills is by Joseph Wambaugh and is due to be published in January 2011. For the streetwise cops of Hollywood Station, dealing with the panhandlers, prostitutes and costumed crackheads of the boulevard is all in a day's work. If they're lucky, surf-mad partners Flotsam and Jetsam can spend the morning calming the crazies and the afternoon policing the babes on the beach. But beyond the lights and the crowds on the Walk of Fame, the real Los Angeles simmers dangerously. And when things heat up, even veterans like Viv Daley will see

things that they'll wish they could forget. In the hills above town, it's a different world, where sports-car-studded driveways lead to sprawling villas stuffed with clothes and jewels. Up here, pickings are easy for the Bling Ring - a group of photogenic young addicts who knock off celebrity cribs to fund their next fix. Evenexperienced cop and wannabe filmstar Nate HollywoodA" Weiss has struck gold in the hills. Leona Bruger, wife of an Industry Mover and Shaker, has taken a fancy to him. Although he knows the Hollywood maxim - you don't pet the cougars, especially if they belong to the boss - Nate reckons that a leg-over might be just the leg-up he needs. What Weiss doesn't realise is that his new flame's crooked art-dealer is about to pull a forgery scam right under his nose. And when a pair of desperate junkies hit on a foolproof plan to pay their drug debts with a stolen painting, things get very complicated indeed.

Cassandra Brooks is a single mother-of-two, schoolteacher and water diviner. Deep in the woods as she dowses the land for a property developer, she is confronted by the body of a young girl, swinging from a tree, hanged. When she returns with the authorities, the body has vanished. Already regarded as an eccentric, her story is disbelieved- until a girl turns up in the woods, alive, mute and identical to the girl in Cassandra's vision. In the days that follow, Cassandra's visions become darker and more frequent as they begin to take on a tangible form. Forced to confront a past she has tried to forget, Cassandra finds herself locked in a game of cat-and-mouse with a real life killer who has haunted her for longer than she can remember. At once an ingeniously plotted mystery and a magical love story, The Diviner’s Tale is by Bradford Morrow and is due to be published in January 2011.