These are a few of my favourite books of 2015.........

My favourite books of 2015 are a varied bunch.  They are as follows in no particular order and mainly as I have remembered them.

Pleasantville by Attica Locke (Serpent's Tail)

It's 1996, Bill Clinton has just been re-elected and in Houston a mayoral election is looming. As usual the campaign focuses on Pleasantville -- the African-American neighbourhood of the city that has swung almost every race since it was founded to house a growing black middle class in 1949.  Axel Hathorne, former chief of police and the son of Pleasantville's founding father Sam Hathorne, was the clear favourite, all set to become Houston's first black mayor. But his lead is slipping thanks to a late entrant into the race -- Sandy Wolcott, a defence attorney riding high on the success of a high-profile murder trial.  And then, just as the competition intensifies, a girl goes missing, apparently while canvassing for Axel. And when her body is found, Axel's nephew is charged with her murder.  Sam is determined that Jay Porter defends his grandson. And even though Jay is tired of wading through other people's problems, he suddenly finds himself trying his first murder case, a trial that threatens to blow the entire community wide open, and reveal the lengths that those with power are willing to go to hold onto it.  A highly accomplished political thriller about an incident in African American election history. Pleasantville depicts the beginnings of the present implacable ideological standoff in US politics.  Well written, fresh and with an oppressively edgy ambiance. Attica Locke channels bitter political memories into a taut and fascinating novel.

The Truth and Other Lies by Sascha Arango (Simon and Schuster)

From the outside, Henry Hayden has a perfect life: he's a famous novelist with more money than he can spend, a grand house in the country, a loyal, clever wife. But Henry has a dark side. If only the readers and critics who worship his every word knew that his success depends on a carefully maintained lie. One he will stop at nothing to protect. His luck must surely run out, and he simply can't allow that to happen. In thrall to paranoia and self-interest, Henry makes a fatal error that could cause the whole dream to unravel and, despite his Machiavellian efforts, events swiftly spin out of control as lie is heaped upon lie, menace upon menace. And it turns out that those around him have their secrets too ...  With a fine line between truth and fiction, The Truth and Other Lies introduces readers to an anti-hero who could easily be Tom Ripley’s double. An intriguing read with a twisty plot, this novel is full of irony, misdirection and black humour. The sheer audacity leaves you gasping for breath.

The Killing Kind by Chris Holm (Mulholland Books)

Michael Hendricks is not a good man. He doesn't deserve a good life. But he is very good at his job. He's the killing kind. He doesn't accept contract kills. He doesn't work for any criminal organisation. And he never kills civilians. He only hits hitters. He's not the kind of guy you call if you want to pop somebody who's pissed you off or done you wrong. He's not a guy you call at all - he calls you. And when he does, you'd be advised to take his call. Because it means that someone wants you dead, and time is running out to save your life. It's not a bad way to make a living, but it's a great way to make enemies. And now both the FBI and the mafia have Hendricks in their sights, he's about to learn just how good he really is...  A hitman killer with a difference? A hitman who only kills other hitmen. A hit man with a guilty conscience.  Spare, ruthless and enthralling we have Hendricks who has his own moral code. With a lot of energy and told from several view points, The Killing Kind is a well-constructed hardboiled thriller easily read in one sitting.

A Song of Shadows by John Connolly (Hodder and Stoughton)

Grievously wounded private detective Charlie Parker investigates a case that has its origins

in a Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War. Recovering from a near-fatal shooting and tormented by memories of a world beyond this one, Parker has retreated to the small Maine town of Boreas to recover. There he befriends a widow named Ruth Winter and her young daughter, Amanda. But Ruth has her secrets. She is hiding from the past, and the forces that threaten her have their origins in the Second World War, in a town called Lubko and a concentration camp unlike any other. Old atrocities are about to be unearthed, and old sinners will kill to hide their sins. Now Parker is about to risk his life to defend a woman he barely knows, one who fears him almost as much as she fears those who are coming for her. His enemies believe him to be vulnerable. Fearful. Solitary. But they are wrong. Parker is far from afraid, and far from alone. For something is emerging from the shadows ...  There is not much that one can say about John Connolly’s writing that has not been said. There is many a dark pleasure along with twists and turns in A Song of Shadows and Charlie Parker is my idea of an avenging angel.  The prose is haunting, crisp, elegant and evocative. Whilst the ending is shocking I know that every time I pick up a book by John Connolly I am going to be reading a thoroughly well-written book with exciting characters. Charlie Parker is a classic.

The Ghosts of Altona by Craig Russell. (Quercus)

Head of Hamburg's Murder Commission, Jan Fabel is used to the dead, but when a routine

enquiry spirals out of control he finds himself on much closer terms with death - his own. As he struggles to process this experience, his first case comes back to haunt him: Monika Krone's body is found at last, fifteen years after she disappeared. Monika - beautiful, intelligent, cruel - was the centre of a group obsessed with the gothic. When men who knew Monika start turning up dead, the crime scenes full of gothic symbolism, Fabel realizes he is looking for a killer with both a hunger for vengeance and a terrifying taste for the macabre. A true gothic demon is stalking the streets of Hamburg ...  It is a brave author that makes his readers believe that he has killed off his main protagonist at the start of the book.  In this case Craig Russell has managed to pull off a fantastic manoeuvre that reverberates throughout the novel. This is no run of the mill serial killer novel.  There are elements of the gothic in play and The Ghosts of Altona.  An upsetting and chilling crime novel it subverts the reader’s expectations with at the same time as being cleverly constructed.  Unsurprisingly it won Bloody Scotland crime novel of the year.

Silver Bullets by Elmer Mendoza (Maclehose Press)

For Detective Edgar "Lefty" Mendieta, tormented by past heartbreak and dismayed by all-pervasive corruption, the murder of lawyer Bruno Canizales represents just another day at the office in Culiacan, Mexico's capital of narco-crime. There is no shortage of suspects in a city where it's hard to tell the gangsters from the politicians. Canizales was the son of a former government minister and the lover of a drug lord's daughter, and he nurtured a penchant for cross-dressing and edgy sex. But why did the assassin use a silver bullet? And why, six days later, did he apparently strike again? Mendieta's hunt for the killer takes him from mansions to low-life bars, from gumshoe reporters to glamorous transsexuals. Unearthing the truth can be as dangerous as any drug.  Silver Bullets is Élmer Mendoza’s seminal founding text of Latin America’s ‘narco-lit’ wave.  A noir novel with a difference it tears the scab off Latin American drug trafficking and corruption.   A truly grimly black comedic violent novel Silver Bullets is thrilling and sweltering in violence and has a battered detective as an revenging angel. Whilst Mexico is presented in a very unflattering light warts it is a deeply satisfying read.

Arab Jazz by Karim Miské  (Quercus)

Arab Jazz.  Kosher sushi, kebabs, a second-hand bookshop and a bar: the 19th arrondissement in Paris is a cosmopolitan district where multicultural citizens live, love and worship alongside one another. This peace is shattered when Ahmed Taroudant's melancholy daydreams are interrupted by the blood dripping from his upstairs neighbour's brutally mutilated corpse. The violent murder of Laura Vignole, and the pork joint placed next to her, set imaginations ablaze across the neighbourhood, and Ahmed finds himself the prime suspect. But detectives Rachel Kupferstein and Jean Hamelot are not short of other leads. What is the connection between a disbanded hip-hop group and the fiery extremist preachers that jostle for attention in the streets? And what is the mysterious blue pill that is taking the district by storm? Reading a crime novel that is full of literary references makes for a fascinating read.  In this case it is the debut novel In Arab Jazz Karim Miské gives the reader an evocative sense of place seen through the streets of Paris and the synagogues of New York coupled with a sharp eye for character. Evocative, topical and grim and to top it all there is a brilliant playlist as well.

Stealing People by Robert Wilson (Orion)

London, January 2014. In the space of 32 hours, in a well-planned and highly organised operation, six billionaires' children are taken off the streets of London in a series of slickly well-executed kidnaps. The gang demands £25 million per hostage for 'expenses' - not ransom.  And when your child goes missing, you need Charles Boxer: a man with little left to lose who'll stop at nothing to save families suffering what he has.  The wealthy parents of the missing children know that Boxer will do more than police can - but that doesn't mean the law will leave it to him. Intelligence agencies are all interested in the kidnaps because in each case the parents are related to people in power in the various countries involved. Soon the investigation goes beyond the corridors of power and the boardrooms of big corporations - and to far darker corners. Even more worryingly for Boxer, and his ex-wife Mercy, it threatens to lead back to their own lives, too.  But still nobody knows what this mysterious kidnap gang ultimately want and, if they have a cause, what the hell is it?  Robert Wilson always writes books that are thrilling and haunting with mesmerising characters. In this case he has created a wonderful character in Charles Boxer. Stealing People is the third book in the series. Exciting and unpredictable you will hope that you will never get kidnapped.  If you do then hopefully someone akin to Charles Boxer will come and rescue you.

Malice by Keigo Higashino (Little Brown)

Acclaimed bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is brutally murdered in his home on the night before he's planning to leave Japan and relocate to Vancouver. His body is found in his office, in a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, both of whom have rock solid alibis. Or so it seems. Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognizes Hidaka's best friend from years ago when they were both teachers. Kaga went on to join the police force while Nonoguchi became a full-time writer, though with not nearly the success of his friend Hidaka. When Kaga suspects something is a little bit off with Nonoguchi's statement, he investigates further, ultimately executing a search warrant on Nonoguchi's apartment. There he finds evidence that shows that the two writers' relationship was very different than they claimed... Malice is a tale of cat and mouse, the truth, the past and how a murder took place. Intricate and at times upsetting Malice is also very reminiscent in its own way of a classic detective novel. It is more of a “whydunnit” than a “whodunit” but no less satisfying.

The Body Snatcher by Patrica Melo (Bitter Lemon Press)

The novel is set in the Pantanal, the vast untamed Brazilian lowlands bordering Bolivia. One bright Sunday, alone on the banks of the Paraguay River, the narrator witnesses the fatal crash of a small 'plane. He finds a kilo of cocaine in the dead pilot's backpack. After but a moment's hesitation he pockets the coke and the pilot's expensive watch. Thus begins the protagonist's long slide into corruption. When the crash site is located several days later, the pilot's body is missing and remains unfound for months despite a large-scale police search. Our hero gets involved in a busted cocaine deal and ends up owing a Bolivian drug gang so much money that blackmailing the wealthy family of the dead pilot seems to be the only way out. The family secretly agrees to pay serious money to recover the body of their son. Our hero doesn't have the pilot's body so someone else's will do. Or so he thinks.  Told in first person this is a brilliant Brazilian corruption crime caper. There is mis-adventure after misadventure in The Body Snatcher, which is fast-paced and intricately plotted.  With a wry vein of humour throughout the novel you are unsure as to whether or not you should be laughing or crying at times.

Every Night I dream of Hell by Malcolm Mckay (Pan MacMillan)

Nate Colgan: a violent man; 'smart muscle' for the Jamieson organization. Someone to be afraid of. But now, with its most powerful individuals either dead or behind bars, things within the Jamieson organization are beginning to shift. When Nate, long working on the fringes of the business, is reluctantly appointed its new 'security consultant', he can little imagine how things are about to unravel . . . It begins with an execution, a message; and soon the various factions within the organization are sent into chaos. But out of the confusion comes one clear fact: a new group has arrived in Glasgow, and in their quest for power they are prepared to ignite a war. But who is behind the group? And why has the calculating Zara Cope - the mother of Nate's child - suddenly appeared back in town?  Meanwhile DI Fisher, buoyed by his recent successes in finally jailing some of the city's most notorious criminals, is prowling on the edges of these latest battles, looking for his chance to strike before all hell breaks loose . . . Welcome to a world of violence, fear and double-crossing. A superb page-turner.  Sparse but sharp dialogue and meticulous plotting makes Every Night I dream of Hell a book that stays with you for a long time.

Canary by Duane Swiercznsky (Mulholland Books)

Every student needs a part-time job.   Hers is hunting criminals.  Sarie Holland is a good kid. An Honor student. She doesn't even drink.  So when a narcotics cop busts her while she's doing a favour for a friend, she has a lot to lose.  Desperate to avoid destroying her future, Sarie agrees to become a CI - a confidential informant. Armed only with a notebook, she turns out to be as good at catching criminals as she is at passing tests.  But it's going to take more than one nineteen-year-old to clean up Philadelphia. Soon Sarie is caught in the middle of a power struggle between corrupt cops and warring gangs, with nothing on her side but stubbornness and smarts.  Which is bad news for both the police and the underworld. Because when it comes to payback, CI #137 turns out to be a very fast learner...  Cool, with wry humour and told from multiple view points Canary features a spirited heroine that finds herself mixed up in drugs and corruption. Words are not wasted and there is a sense of place that makes you think you are right in the middle of what is happening.  Canary is a contemporary neo crime thriller that will no doubt become a classic.

Worthy mentions also go to Hush, Hush by Laura Lippman (Faber & Faber), The Burning Man by Christopher Fowler (Transworld) The Defence by Steve Cavanagh (Orion) The Strings of Murder by Oscar de Muriel (Penguin), The Crossing by Michael Connelly (Orion) and The Killer Next Door by Alex Marwood (Little Brown)

Books to look forward to from Quercus Books and MacLehose Press

Five Dreams of Fame.  Glasgow, 1965 Jack Mackay dares not imagine a life of predictability and routine.  The headstrong seventeen year old has one thing on his mind – London – and successfully convinces his four friends, and fellow band mates, to join him in abandoning their lives to pursue their goal of musical stardom.  Five Decades of Fear.  Glasgow, 2015.  Jack MacKay dares not look back on a life of failure and mediocrity.  The heavy-hearted sixty-seven year old is haunted by the cruel fate that befell him and his friends some fifty years before, and how he did and did not act when it mattered most – a memory he has run from all his adult life.  London, 2015 A man lies dead in a bedsit.  His killer looks on, remorseless.  What started with five teenagers five decades before will now be finished.  Runaway is by Peter May and is a tense nostalgic crime thriller spanning a half-century of friendships solidified and severed, passions ignited and extinguished; and set against the background of two unique and contrasting cities at two unique and contrasting periods of recent history.  Runaway is due to be published in January 2015.

The Lady from Zagreb is by Philip Kerr and is due to be published in May 2015.  In 1942, there are many worse places to be than Zurich, and detective Bernie Gunther has seen his fair share of them.  So when a superior asks him to track down a glamorous German actress believed to be hiding in Zurich, he takes the job.  Not that he has much choice: the superior is Goebbels himself.  Soon Bernie finds himself involved in something much more sinister.  The actress, it emerges, is the daughter of a fanatical Croatian fascist, the sadistic commandant of a notorious concentration camp.  And the Swiss police have a cold case that they want Bernie to take a look at: one that seems to have connections to some powerful people back in the Reich.

  

London, 1654.  Oliver Cromwell is at the height of his power and has declared himself Lord

Protector.  Yet he has many enemies, at home and abroad.  London is a teeming warren of spies and merchants, priests and soldiers, exiles and assassins.  One of the web's most fearsome spiders is Damian Seeker, agent of the Lord Protector.  No one knows where Seeker comes from, who his family is, or even his real name.  All that is known of him for certain is that he is utterly loyal to Cromwell, and that nothing can be long hidden from him.  In the city, coffee houses are springing up, fashionable places where men may meet to plot and gossip.  Suddenly they are ringing with news of a murder.  John Winter, hero of Cromwell's all-powerful army, is dead, and the lawyer, Elias Ellingworth, found standing over the bleeding body, clutching a knife.  Yet despite the damning evidence, Seeker is not convinced of Ellingworth's guilt.  He will stop at nothing to bring the killer to justice: and Seeker knows better than any man where to search.  The Seeker is the first in a new series by S G Maclean and is due to be published in February 2015.

The Other Child is by Lucy Atkins and is due to be published in June 2015.  When her newly married husband, Greg, a high profile paediatric heart surgeon, is offered the job of a lifetime in Boston, Tess reluctantly agrees to move to the US for a couple of years.  But once Tess and Joe, her son from a previous relationship, arrive in Boston they don't find settling there very easy.  Strange things seem to be happening at the house they have moved into, and the neighbours are acting weirdly towards Tess and Joe.  Above all, Tess has found out that she is pregnant, after having agreed with Greg that they wouldn't want any more children...and the unborn baby triggers different feelings with all three family members.  The only one striving in the new surroundings seems to be Greg, and Tess is beginning to wonder why.  Then she makes a jaw-dropping discovery.

Cocaine is a collection of short stories by Massimo Carlotto, Gianrico Carofiglio and Giancarlo de Cataldo and is due to be published in May 2015.  In Carlotto's The Campagna Trail, Inspector Campagna uses an old friendship with notorious drug dealer Roby Pizzo in a Machiavellian attempt to keep the peace.  But when an interfering new police chief demands Campagna bring down the Mafioso who heads Pizzo's gang, Campagna must use every weapon he has to save his job - and his life.  Meanwhile in Carofiglio's The Speed of an Angel, a writer in crisis strikes up an unlikely friendship with a mysterious woman he meets in a quiet seaside cafe.  As their conversations deepen, and their obsessions darken, their drug-fuelled relationship begins to spiral, in this haunting tale of damnation and redemption.  Finally in De Cataldo's The White Powder Dance, the city police are put on the trail of a baby-faced new graduate in the Milanese banking sector.  As the pursuit accelerates through back streets and skyscrapers, it becomes clear that there is more to organised crime than getting your hands dirty.

Cuckold Point is by Patrick Easter and is due to be published in April 2015.  October 1799.  A

century is coming to an end, but river policeman Tom Pascoe's work is never done.  A new case in London's Docks holds danger not just for Tom but for the nation.  Sailing master Robert Cox cannot pay his gambling debts.  But he has information about a ship, which has arrived in British waters carrying a precious cargo.  Selling that information to one of London's most feared men might be Robert Cox's salvation - or his damnation.  Elsewhere in the warren of streets and waterways, Tom and his assistant Sam Hart are tipped off about a robbery.  Their inquiries take them to London's secretive Jewish community, where a dealer admits to being told that a quantity of silk is about to come on the market.  But when Robert Cox goes missing and powerful men from London's underworld and beyond begin to hunt for the silk, Tom finds himself investigating not just a crime but a conspiracy that will threaten his life, his family and his country.

A Book of Scars is the third book in the Breen and Tozer series by William Shaw and is due to be published in June 2015.  London - Devonshire, 1969.  Five years ago, teenager Alexandra Tozer was murdered on her family farm.  Her sister Helen Tozer will never forget.  Returning home after quitting the Met Police, she brings with her the recovering Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen, who begins to covertly investigate the unsolved case.  He discovers the Tozers were never told the whole truth.  Alexandra was tortured for twenty-four hours before she died.  But when he tracks down the original investigating sergeant, the man goes missing.  And so does Tozer.  Suspicion falls on her.  But Breen is on a trail that goes far beyond the death of a schoolgirl.  For the two men connected to this case met in Kenya, during the Mau Mau uprising; and the history that Britain has turned its face from is now returning to haunt it.  So when another innocent woman goes missing, Breen knows he has just twenty-four hours to save her.

Jigsaw Man is by Elena Forbes and is due to be published in January 2015.  DI Mark Tartaglia spends a night in a west London hotel with a woman he has just met.  When he is called out to the same hotel the next morning to investigate a murder, he realises it must have taken place while he was there.  If things weren't already complicated enough, the investigation takes a new and horrifying turn when he recognises the young female victim.  Still reeling from the shock, he learns that another case he has been investigating - the body of a homeless man found in a burnt-out car - is also not what it seems.  Tests reveal that the corpse has been assembled from the body parts of four different people.  Under mounting pressure from the media and unsure where his loyalties lie, Tartaglia must solve this new macabre puzzle before the Jigsaw Killer strikes again.

Unexplained bloodstains appear in a young couple's apartment; a disembodied hand is found in a rubbish dump; political prisoners resort to horrific measures in order to make a point.  In this brilliant new collection of stories, Crimes by Alberto Barrera Tyszka casts an eye on the violence that afflicts Latin America, and in particular its intimate effects on the individuals who suffer and inflict it.  Mixing the surreal with the quotidian, the banal with the unspeakable, Tyszka has created a fragmentary panorama of man's misdeeds against his own kind.  These windingly elliptical stories are ceaselessly surprising, and will bury themselves into your subconscious long after the final page is turned.  Crimes is due to be published in April 2015.

A Killing Winter is the debut novel by Tom Callaghan and is due to be published in February

2015.  'The Kyrgyz winter reminds us that the past is never dead, simply waiting to ambush us around the next corner'.  When Inspector Akyl Borubaev of Bishkek Murder Squad arrives at the brutal murder scene of a young woman, all evidence hints at a sadistic serial killer on the hunt for more prey.  But when the young woman's father turns out to be a leading government minister, the pressure is on Borubaev to solve the case not only quickly but also quietly, by any means possible.  Until more bodies are found...Still in mourning after his wife's recent death, Borubaev descends into Bishkek's brutal underworld, a place where no-one and nothing is as it seems, where everyone is playing for the highest stakes, and where violence is the only solution.

Norfolk is experiencing a July heat wave when a construction crew unearths a macabre discovery - a buried WWII plane with the pilot still inside.  Forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway quickly realizes that the skeleton couldn't possibly be the pilot, and DNA tests identify the man as Fred Blackstock, a local aristocrat who had been reported dead at sea.  When the remaining members of the Blackstock family learn about the discovery, they seem strangely frightened by the news.  Events are further complicated by a TV company that wants to make a film about Norfolk's deserted air force bases, the so-called Ghost Fields, which have been partially converted into a pig farm run by one of the younger Blackstock's.  As production begins, Ruth notices a mysterious man lurking close to the Blackstock's family home.  Then human bones are found on the family's pig farm.  Can the team outrace a looming flood to find a killer?  The Ghost Fields is by Elly Griffiths and is due to be published in April 2015.

Dirty War is by Dominique Sylvain and is due to be published in June 2015.  A lawyer who specialises in French-African relations is found brutally murdered after suffering 'the torture of Father Lebrun' - a burning tyre is placed around his neck until he suffocates.  The case is already explosive because of its connections to high-profile members of the Franco-African arms trade.  But for Lola Jost, the case has a darker resonance - her much-loved assistant, a mixed race policeman named Toussaint Kidjo, was murdered in the same manner five years before - a crime that was never solved.  Weaving in our favourite larger-than-life characters from The Dark Angel, this is a far darker story, as Lola and Ingrid become embroiled in a case that draws attention from all the wrong quarters.

Barcelona, Summer 2003.  Three women are sacrificed to an unknown purpose, skin

carved with a cryptic alphabet, tongues cut from their mouths.  Sent beautiful, sinister letters - clues, or confessions?  - Inspector Fabregat cannot decipher the warnings within.  As Barcelona explodes in revelry on the Festival of St Joan, Natalia Hernandez, flower of the National Theatre and Catalan idol, lies broken on the steps of the Cathedral.  The city bays for blood; Fabregat chases a shadow-like suspect and signs that whisper of secrets beyond his grasp.  Barcelona, Winter 2014.  Anna Verco - academic, book thief, and savant - unearths letters hidden for centuries from a lightning-struck chapel in Mallorca.  What they reveal compels her and Fabregat to reignite the Hernandez investigation.  Every page she turns conceals a coded message; every street she treads leads her deeper into the labyrinth.  As Fabregat baits her with suspects, and threats darken her steps, Anna hunts her own prey - the book that began it all, a medieval revelation written in the language of witches and alchemists: The Serpent Papers.  Anna believes this book will unlock the mystery.  She does not yet know she is the key.  The Serpent Papers is the first in a trilogy and is by Jessica Cornwell.  The Serpent Papers is due to be published in January 2015.

Daniel and Vanessa Parker are an American success story.  He is a Washington, D.C. power broker, and she is a doctor with a thriving practice.  But behind the facade, their marriage is a shambles, and their teenage son, Quentin, is self-destructing.  In desperation, Daniel dusts off a long-delayed dream - a sailing trip around the world.  Little does he know that the voyage he hopes will save them may destroy them instead.  Half a world away, on the lawless coast of Somalia, Ismail Ibrahim is plotting the rescue of his sister, Yasmin, from the man who murdered their father.  Driven to crime by love and loyalty, he hijacks ships for ransom money.  There is nothing he will not do to save her, even if it means taking innocent life.  Paul Derrick is the FBI's top hostage negotiator.  His twin sister Megan is a celebrated defense attorney.  When Paul is called to respond to a hostage crisis at sea, he has no idea how far it will take them both into their traumatic past - or the chance it will give them to redeem the future.  Across continents and oceans, through storms and civil wars, their paths converge in a single, explosive moment.  It is a moment that will test them, and break them, but that will also leave behind a glimmer of hope - that out of the ashes of tragedy the seeds of justice and reconciliation can grow, not only for themselves but also for Somalia itself.  The Tears of Dark Water is by Corban Addison and is due to be published in March 2015.

Four bodies are found.  There is nothing to connect them, other than that they have been killed in the same way: quick, efficient and bloodless, each victim stabbed with the same instrument.  The press call the killer 'The Ghost', as he leaves no trace.  Nor can Fabel see any hint of any psycho-sexual or other motive.  The victims are of both genders and from completely different walks of life.  They are, however, all roughly the same age, which leads Fabel to suspect, as the investigation progresses, that the motive may be linked to their histories.  From the earliest stages of the investigation, Fabel finds himself the target of attempts on his own life from a hidden, unknown assailant.  It's only after a near deadly encounter that Fabel realizes that, while he is the hunter of one killer, he has become the hunted of another.  A spectre from his own past has come to claim vengeance.  A killer who believes himself to be untouchable - because he believes himself already dead.  The Ghosts of Altona is by Craig Russell and is due to be published in June 2015.

The Boy in the Shadows is by Carl-Johan Vallgren and is due to be published in January 2015.  In an overcrowded Stockholm underground station a father and his two boys are late for their train.  Joel, the youngest, is howling in his pushchair and his seven-year-old brother, Kristoffer, refuses to take the lift.  A woman approaches and offers to lead Kristoffer up the stairs.  Reluctantly his father agrees, but when he arrives on the platform Kristoffer and the woman have vanished without a trace.  Many years later, Joel, now an adult, goes missing in suspicious circumstances.  His wife turns to Danny Katz - an old friend - for help.  But Katz isn't the only one trying to find Joel, and the deeper he digs the more secrets he uncovers about the wealthy and powerful family at the heart of the investigation.  Then suddenly, the case takes a dramatic new turn.

A Cold Killing is by Anna Smith and is due to be published in April 2015.  Crime reporter Rosie Gilmour returns from hiding in Bosnia to a story of a brutal execution.  University lecturer Tom Mahoney was shot at point blank range, the killing has all the signs of a hit.  But who would want to kill a retired lecturer?  Rosie throws herself into the investigation, looking for a witness that has gone missing.  A witness that might hold the key to the story.  But she has her own reasons to stay hidden.  As Rosie digs deeper, she finds the story has connections to the Ministry of Defence and MI6 and Mahoney's past is darker than anyone could imagine.  Rosie's running out of time to find out the truth, before Mahoney's killers silence her for good.

The Wrong Girl is by Laura Wilson and is due to be published in May 2015.  In 2006, three-

year-old Phoebe Piper went missing on a family holiday.  Despite massive publicity and a long investigation, no trace of her was ever found.  Seven years later, Molly Jackson, aged ten and recently uprooted to a Norfolk village, finds her great uncle Dan dead in his bed.  Molly remembers nothing of her early years, but she's been sure for ages that she is Phoebe.  Everything in her life points to it and now, finally, she has proof.  Dan's death brings his hippie sister Janice back to Norfolk where she's re-united with Molly's mother Suze, the daughter she gave up for adoption decades earlier.  Janice discovers that a former lover, Joe Vincent, lives nearby.  Joe was a rock star who, at the height of his fame, turned his back on public life.  As she is drawn back into the past, Janice begins to wonder if Dan's death and Joe's reputation as a reclusive acid casualty are quite what they appear...And then Molly disappears.

Kosher sushi, kebabs, a second hand bookshop, and a bar:

the 19th arrondissement in Paris is a cosmopolitan neighbourhood where multicultural citizens live, love, and worship alongside one another.  This peace is shattered when Ahmed Taroudant's melancholy daydreams are interrupted by the blood dripping from his upstairs neighbour's brutally mutilated corpse.  The violent murder of Laura Vignole, and the pork joint placed next to her, set imaginations ablaze across the neighbourhood, and Ahmed finds himself the prime suspect.  However detectives Rachel Kupferstein and Jean Hamelot are not short of leads.  What is the connection between a disbanded hip-hop group and the fiery extremist preachers that jostle in the streets for attention?  And what is the mysterious new pill that is taking the district by storm?  Arab Jazz is the debut novel by Karim Miské and is due to be published in February 2015.

Camille is the third book in the trilogy by Pierre Lemaitre and is due to be published in March 2015.  Anne Forestier finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time when she is trapped in the middle of a raid on a jewellers on the Champs-Elysees.  Shot three times, she is lucky to survive - and morbidly unlucky to remember the face of her assailant.  Followed home from her hospital bed, Anne is in grave danger.  But one thing stands in her favour - a dangerously vengeful partner, carrying the scars of devastating loss, who will break all the rules to protect the woman he loves: Commandant Camille Verhoeven.  Following the horror of Irene and the thrills of Alex, Camille is the heart-stopping final chapter of Lemaitre's multi-award-winning trilogy, soon to be the subject of a major American film.  Drawn once again into a labyrinthine web with answers ever out of reach, Camille must draw on all his talent to face an enemy who threatens everything he holds dear.

Tormented by past heartbreak and contemporary politics, for Edgar 'Lefty' Mendieta the news of the murder of lawyer Bruno Canizales represents just another day at the office in the drug-ridden city of Culiacan.  It soon becomes clear that there is no shortage of suspects in a city where it's hard to tell the gangsters from the politicians.  Canizales was the son of a former government minister and the partner of a drug baron's daughter, with his own penchant for cross-dressing and dangerous sex.  What is less clear is why the assassin chose to use a silver bullet.  And why, two days later, they seem to have struck again.  In this sweltering city where a desire for the truth can be as dangerous as any drug, Mendieta's search for justice takes him from mansions to drug dens, in Élmer Mendoza's seminal founding text of Latin America's 'narco-lit' wave.  Silver Bullets is by Élmer Mendoza and is due to be published in April 2015.

Fall of Man in Wilmslow is by David Lagercrantz and is due to be published in May 2015.  Leonard Corell, a detective sergeant in the sleepy town of Wilmslow, is disillusioned with his lot.  Trapped between professional stagnation and personal repression, he can't even work up the courage to ask out Julie, the pretty assistant at the tailor's.  Tasked with investigating the suicide of a local recluse, Alan Turing, Corell is torn between admiration for the dead man's genius and disgust for his sexuality.  In the face of opposition from his superiors, Corell continues to investigate the open-and-shut case, stumbling across forbidden knowledge about the marvels of Bletchley Park, and the horrors of its hero's downfall.  As this succession of remarkable discoveries drives Corell to examine his own prejudice, he is rocked by two startling developments.  His much-loved Aunt Vicky is exposed as a lesbian, and his increasingly hostile bosses are demanding he investigate rumours of homosexual activity in Wilmslow.  To make matters worse, it seems Corell's questions might be answered sooner than he imagined...

Books to Look Forward to from Quercus

The Dark is by V M Giambanco and is due to be published in September 2014.  Seattle Homicide Detective Alice Madison is bound to jailed murderer John Cameron and attorney Nathan Quinn by a debt that cannot be repaid, by a nightmare that changed their lives forever.  When the remains of Quinn's younger brother - murdered when he was a boy - are discovered in a shallow grave, Madison vows to follow the trail of brutal deaths that leads to the truth.  A sadistic killer stalks the investigation, as Madison's own demons threaten her future career with the police and darkness closes in.  How far is she prepared to go to save a life?

Graham Weber has been the director of the CIA for less than a week when a Swiss kid in a dirty T-shirt walks into the American consulate in Hamburg and says the agency has been hacked, and he has a list of agents' names to prove it.  This is the moment a CIA director most dreads.  Weber turns to a charismatic (and unstable) young man named James Morris who runs the Internet Operations Centre.  He's the CIA's in-house geek.  Weber launches Morris on a mole hunt unlike anything in spy fiction one that takes the reader into the hacker underground of Europe and America and ends up in a landscape of paranoia and betrayal.  Like the new world of cyber-espionage from which it's drawn, The Director is a maze of deception and double dealing, about a world where everything is written in zeroes and ones and nothing can be trusted.  The CIA has belatedly discovered that this is not your father’s Cold War, and Weber must play catch-up, against the clock and an unknown enemy, in a game he does not yet understand.  The Director is by David Ignatius and is due to be published in June 2014.

The Arc of the Swallow is by Sissel-Jo Gazan and is due to be published in November 2014.When controversial Immunology Professor Kristian Storm is found hanged in his office his assistant Marie Skov refuses to believe that he has committed suicide. Grappling with Storm’s disputed legacy, she uncovers a scandal behind vaccination programmes in West Africa, leading her behind the scene of the cut-throat pharmaceutical industry.

The Root of all Evil is the second book in the Commissario Michele Balistreri series  by Roberto

Costantini and is due to be published in August 2014.  Tripoli, 1960s. During the years in which post-colonial Libya fell prey to the sprawling greed of the West, Michele Balistreri suffered a succession of blows that would scar him for life.  The death of his mother; the unspeakable horror that befell his best friend's family; his father's role in Gaddafi's ascent to power; and the innocent blood pact that would corrupt the course of his future.  Rome, 1982. In the wake of a ruinous blunder, a ground-down Commissario Balistreri escapes his regrets through sex, alcohol, and gambling.  His sole responsibilities are now a stilted investigation into the death of a South American student, and a tiresome obligation - as a gratitude to the man who saved his career - to a rising television starlet needing protection from the pitfalls of fame.  As the risks to this girl, Claudia Teodori, begin to rise along with her reputation, the sorrows of Balistreri's past also start to push back into his present.  Both of their fates are inextricably linked - and this driven, obsessive young woman must help this damaged detective fight a foe that follows her and refuses to forget him.

  

Research is by Philip Kerr and is due to be published in July 2014.  The rolling strip across the bottom of the screen shouts the news: BESTSELLING NOVELIST JOHN HOUSTON'S WIFE FOUND MURDERED AT THEIR LUXURY APARTMENT IN MONACO.  Houston is the richest writer in the world, a book factory publishing many bestsellers a year - so many that he can't possibly write them himself. He has a team that feeds off his talent; ghost writers, agents, publishers.  So when he decides to take a year out to write something of quality, a novel that will win prizes and critical acclaim, a lot of people stand to lose their livelihoods.  Now Houston, the prime suspect in his wife's murder, has disappeared.  He owns a boat and has a pilot's licence - he could be anywhere and there are many who'd like to find him.  First there's the police. If he's innocent, why did he flee?  Then again, maybe he was set up by one of his enemies.  The scenario reads like the plot of one of Houston's million-copy-selling thrillers...

A suspicious device is found inside a suitcase near a nursery in Holon, Tel Aviv.  The children are

taken to safety; a man is caught fleeing the scene.  Then comes the phone call: ‘thee suitcase is only the beginning.’  And it is.  Chaim Sara's son is glad not to be at nursery that day.  He has been bullied - there are bruises.  Chaim, taking care of both his children since the sudden absence of his wife, watches with anticipation as the police search for clues.  Inspector Avraham is thrust into the investigation, still haunted by the failure of his last case.  Witnesses are unforthcoming; suspects are eliminated.  Then a frightening act of violence shifts his understanding.  The suitcase has alerted him to a greater danger; one more private, and deeply disturbing.  No one believes in it but him.  And he will do anything to stop it in its tracks.  A Possibility of Violence is by D A Mishani and is due to be published in September 2014.

Bavaria, Germany, 1947.  At the end of the war, Afra Zauner returns to her parents' cottage on the edge of Mauther Forest.  Unmarried, and pregnant. As she struggles to raise her child, her father's shame, her mother's fury, and the loud whispers of the neighbours begin to weigh upon her.  She doesn't believe in her sin.  But everyone else does.  And someone brings judgement down upon her.  Many years later, Hermann Muller is throwing a drunk out of his tavern.  A traveller, who won't stop ranting about a murder left unsolved, about police who never investigated.  Out of curiosity, the file is reopened.  And in the cold light of hindsight, a chilling realisation creeps upon the community.  No one ever atoned for Afra's death.  But her story is waiting to be told. The Dark Meadow is by Andrea Maria Schenkel and is due to be published in August 2014.

Lake Wales, Central Florida.  Ten years ago, a political fundraiser became a bloodbath when a hooded assassin carried out a savage public execution.  Three men were massacred, casting a dark shadow over the Sunshine State.  A decade on, history is threatening to repeat itself.  The widow of one victim, herself now running for governor, has received an anonymous threat - a newspaper clipping from that fateful day, along with the chilling words 'I'm back.’  Florida detective Cab Bolton agrees to investigate the threat against this candidate, Diane Fairmont: an attractive politician who has a complicated history with Cab's mother, Hollywood actress Tarla Bolton - and with Cab himself.  But by doing so, Cab is entering dangerous waters.  Fairmont's political party is itself swamped in secrecy - a fact that, unknown to Cab, has led one of its junior staff to start asking very sensitive questions about the death of a party employee.  Both Cab and this young researcher, Peach Piper, are digging up the kind of dirt that ten years can't wash away.  And as the powerful crosswinds of state politics swirl around Cab and Peach, and the threat of a tropical storm hangs over Florida, this whirlwind of pressure and chaos will ultimately unearth a poisonous conspiracy, and reawaken a killer who has lain dormant for a decade.  Season of Fear is by Brian Freeman and is due to be published in July 2014.

Arab Jazz is by Karim Miské and is due to be published in August 2014.  Kosher sushi, kebabs, a second hand bookshop, and a bar: the 19th arrondissement in Paris is a cosmopolitan neighbourhood where multicultural citizens live, love, and worship alongside one another.  This peace is shattered when Ahmed Taroudant's melancholy daydreams are interrupted by the blood dripping from his upstairs neighbour's brutally mutilated corpse.  The violent murder of Laura Vignole, and the roast pork placed next to her, set imaginations ablaze across the neighbourhood, and Ahmed finds himself the prime suspect.  However detectives Rachel Kupferstein and Jean Hamelot have plenty to go on, as they uncover a volatile underworld of drug trafficking and religious fundamentalism.  In this his debut novel, Karim Miské demonstrates a masterful control of setting, as he moves seamlessly between the sensual streets of Paris and the synagogues of New York to reveal the truth behind a horrifying crime.

A devastating analysis of the human capacity for violence and redemption. 1957: a pacifist goes to war.  2008: a policeman on the warpath.  Set between Paris and Algeria, the overlapping fates of these two men reveal a dark conspiracy to mask the blackest chapter of French history, which can only be undone by the most unlikely hero: a thuggish ex-boxer who’ll do anything for cash . . . Loser’s Corner is by Antonin Varenne and is due to be published in December 2014.

Stockholm, September 2011.  Carina Dymek is on a fast track for promotion at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when she is approached by a stranger and given a USB stick containing a report to circulate in her department.  Unwittingly, she delivers a time bomb of classified information that sends her career up in flames and puts her on the radar of the security service, Sapo.  Tasked with investigating how Dymek gained access to the confidential report, the formidable Bente Jensen of Sapo is quietly approached by the British MI6, who have an undisclosed interest in the leak. She finds out that Dymek's boyfriend is an Egyptian Swedish national.  But it's MI6 who link his family to an extreme faction within the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo. The case explodes into an international manhunt.  Liaising with the ruthless MI6, Bente uncovers the secretive plans contained in that leaked report: plans for an omnipotent Europe-wide Intelligence Service.  Forces hone in on Dymek, while Bente begins to suspect she is a red herring caught in a far wider net: one in which social media is abused for intelligence and civil rights are sacrificed to national security.  Into a Raging Blaze is by Andreas Norman and is due to be published in July 2014.

Four lives are about to come crashing together...Devastated by the murder of his sister in Soho seven years ago, Mark Davis travels to London to carry out an act of violence that he believes will avenge her death.  PhD student Stella is returning to London with her partner Paula to visit a fertility clinic.  But Stella is hiding a secret that could tear their lives apart.  Recovering alcoholic Seb has left his wild days behind him.  As he helps his wife prepare to launch her restaurant in Soho, he feels that his life is finally back on track. But a chance encounter with a stranger brings back tragic memories and puts his family in serious danger.  Kerstin Engel is a brilliant but troubled research analyst.  Haunted by the events of 7/7 when she narrowly escaped death, she has spent the last seven years carrying out a self-imposed penance.  But an unseen enemy lies in wait and threatens to destroy her career and her mind.  As crowds gather in Soho to mark the restaurant launch, a terrifying sequence of events brings these characters together and the last days of summer to a shocking end.  Summer Lies Bleeding is by Nuala Casey and is due to be published in August 2014.

Poisoned Ground is by Barbara Nadel and is due to be published in September 2014.  Ex-soldier Lee Arnold and his Muslim assistant Mumtaz Hakim run a detective agency in London's ethnically diverse, crime-ridden East End.  An Egyptian woman, Salwa, whose husband is in Belmarsh on terrorism charges, approaches Mumtaz.  Salwa convinces Mumtaz of her husband's innocence and persuades her to go undercover to prove it.  But Salwa is not what she seems.  Trapped in an old tunnel that leads to the London docks, will Mumtaz escape with her life?

The Bosch Deception is by Alex Connor and is due to be published in July 2014. A TRUTH CONCEALED.  Brabant, 1473. A clandestine brotherhood hides a secret that could bring down the Catholic Church.  Their chosen hiding place - the art of Hieronymus Bosch. A TERRIBLE CONSPIRACY. London, 2014. An excommunicated priest approaches both the Church and the art world, claiming to possess an artefact that will destroy their reputations.  A TICKING CLOCK. This man, Nicholas Laverne, is poised to end over 500 years of silence and injustice.  Yet, unknown to Nicholas, he has just summoned a killer intent on silencing him.

You'd know if someone close to you was capable of lethal violence, right?  Dead wrong.  Accused of grassing up a fellow officer and driven brutally out of home and job, Grace Fisher is thankful to survive some dark times and find haven with the Major Investigation Team in Essex.  One female student is missing, last seen at a popular bar in Colchester.  When a second student, also out drinking, is murdered and left grotesquely posed, the case becomes headline news.  Someone is leaking disturbing details to a tabloid crime reporter.  Is it the killer?  Or a detective close to the case? With another victim, and under siege by the media, the murder enquiry hits a dead end.  The review team brought in to shake things up is headed by Grace's old DCI.  Who is going to listen to her now?  Good Girls Don’t Die is the first in a new series by Isabelle Grey featuring Detective Grace Fisher.  It is due to be published in September 2014.

London,  1657. All that is known of the Seeker is that he is utterly loyal to Cromwell, and that nothing can be hidden from him.  In  a fashionable coffee house, a murder takes place and a lawyer, Elias Ellingworth, found holding a knife over the bleeding body.  Despite the damning evidence, the Seeker is not convinced of Ellingworth’s guilt.  He will stop at nothing to bring the real killer to justice.  The Seeker is by S G Maclean and is the first in a new historical thriller series featuring Damian Seeker, one of Cromwell’s most trusted and feared adherents.  The Seeker is due to be published in October 2014.

In Mark Sullivan’s latest high-octane blockbuster, robin Monarch must seek out and steal a mysterious and much-coveted elixir of life, while at the same time attempting to reclaim something – or, more accurately, someone – cruelly stolen from him.  The perilous trail begins in the deepest recesses of the Brazilian rainforest, and will lure Monarch into a deadly trap where his nemesis will be waiting, and where the fate of those dearest to him will be decided.  Thief is due to be published in December 2014.

Two hours to get away, 22 more to survive.  Security consultant and private investigator Michael Sander is tasked with the investigation of a video that seems to show two people being hunted to their deaths.  His job is to find out who they are, and why they were murdered.  But this isn’t just another case, and these deaths are only one piece of the puzzle.  Michael is investigating the darkest reaches of humanity, uncovering crimes that reach further than he ever imagined.  Trophy is by Steffen Jacobsen and is due to be published in October 2014.

Talking to Ghosts is by Hervé Le Corre and is due to be published in July 2014.  With his son Pablo's kidnapping still unsolved, and his marriage ruined by the torment of hope, the brutal murder of a single mother in her own home is an almost welcome diversion for Commandant Vilar.  The woman leaves behind a son, Victor, thrown into the foster system with only his mother's urn for company.  Struggling with bullies, trauma and the first pangs of teenage love, Victor carries a secret that followed his mother to her grave.  Struggling for leads, Vilar is shaken when the colleague investigating Pablo's kidnapping disappears.  When a sadistic caller claims to have information about his son, Vilar is torn between duty and a desperate chance of redemption.