Capital Crime Mystery Panels

Widows Screening & Mystery Panels Revealed

CAPITAL CRIME, CAPITAL ENTERTAINMENT In two days, we throw open the doors to the Grand Connaught Rooms and welcome hundreds of crime and thriller fans to Capital Crime. FRIDAY FILM We're pleased to announce we shall be screening WIDOWS, the brilliant film directed by Steve McQueen, adapted from Lynda La Plante's seminal series. The screening is open to all Friday Day Pass and Weekend Pass holders. MYSTERY PANELS FRIDAY On Friday, we're thrilled to be welcoming two brilliant authors to Capital Crime to talk about the experience of having their novels adapted for screen. SJ Watson is an international bestseller whose debut novel, Before I Go To Sleep, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth and Mark Strong. Paula Daly is the critically acclaimed author of six novels. Her books are being adapted for the new ITV series, Deep Water, starring Anna Friel. They will be talking to Capital Crime co-founder and screenwriter, Adam Hamdy. SATURDAY Adam Hamdy will be back on Saturday as part of a panel on the Craft of Writing. He'll be in conversation with his partner in Capital Crime, David Headley, the founder of DHH Literary Agency and Goldsboro Books, and Vicki Mellor, Fiction Publishing Director at Pan Macmillan. A number of Capital Crime passholders have asked for a panel on writing advice, so if you're an aspiring author, come along. There will be an opportunity to ask questions of the panellists. You can find the final Capital Crime schedule here: https://www.capitalcrime.org/capital-crime-schedule/ FREE SHIPPING We’re pleased to announce our festival bookseller, Goldsboro Books, is offering free UK shipping on books bought at the festival, so you don’t have to worry about carrying a suitcase full of signed books home with you. Let Goldsboro take the strain while you enjoy meeting your favourite authors and discovering new ones. International shipping is also available. Please ask staff for details. CAPITAL ENTERTAINMENT, CAPITAL VALUE We’re also delighted to announce that all pass holders will be entitled to complimentary tea and coffee at the festival, courtesy of the fine folks at Pan Macmillan. Weekend pass holders will be entitled to two complimentary drinks from the bar at the opening night drinks party, thanks to DHH Literary Agency. And Saturday and weekend pass holders will be entitled to two complimentary drinks from the bar at the Saturday night drinks party, thanks to Amazon Publishing. All our pass holders will also receive a fantastic goody bag packed with books, samplers and freebies. VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! Pass holders are currently voting for the Amazon Publishing Readers' Awards. If you're a Capital Crime pass holder, visit www.capitalcrime.org, log into your account and cast your votes today. If you have any questions about Capital Crime, please try our FAQs: https://www.capitalcrime.org/faqs/ If you're planning to come to Capital Crime and haven't booked your pass, you're running out of time, and we're running out of tickets. Click here https://www.capitalcrime.org/capital-crime-schedule/to book your passes or visit www.capitalcrime.org

Books to Look Forward to from Transworld Publishers

July 2019

Mind Games by Leona Deakin. Four strangers are missing. Left at their last-known locations are birthday cards that read: Your gift is the game.  Dare to play.  The police aren't worried - it's just a game. But the families are frantic, and psychologist and private detective Dr Augusta Bloom is persuaded to investigate. As she delves into the lives of the missing people, she finds something that binds them all. And that something makes them very dangerous indeed. As more disappearances are reported and new birthday cards uncovered, Dr Bloom races to unravel the mystery and find the puppeteer. But is she playing into their hands?

It can be hard keeping secrets in a tight-knit neighbourhood. In a tranquil, leafy suburb of ordinary streets - one where everyone is polite and friendly - an anonymous note has been left at some of the houses. `I'm so sorry. My son has been getting into people's houses. He's broken into yours.' Who is this boy, and what might he have uncovered? As whispers start to circulate, suspicion mounts. And when a missing local woman is found murdered, the tension reaches breaking point. Who killed her? Who knows more than they're telling? And how far will all these very nice people go to protect their secrets? Maybe you don't know your neighbour as well as you thought you did.  Someone we Know is by Shari Lapena.

Stop at Nothing is by Tammy Cohen.   A mother's job is to keep her children safe. Tess has always tried to be a good mother. Of course, there are things she wishes she'd done differently, but doesn't everyone feel that way? Then Emma, her youngest, is attacked on her way home from a party, plunging them into a living nightmare, which only gets worse when the man responsible is set free But what if she fails? So when Tess sees the attacker in the street near their home, she is forced to take matters into her own hands. But blinded by her need to protect her daughter at any cost, might she end up putting her family in even greater danger? There's nothing she wouldn't do to make it right.

August 2019 

Innocent? When Carrie was accused of brutally murdering her husband's lover, she denied it. She denied it when they arrested her, when they put her in front of a jury, and when they sent her to prison. Now she's three years into a fifteen-year sentence, away from the daughter she loves and the life she had built. And she is still denying that she is to blame. Guilty? Tess Gilroy has devoted her life to righting wrongs. Through her job for Innocence UK, a charity which takes on alleged miscarriages of justice, she works tirelessly to uncover the truth. But when she is asked to take Carrie's case, Tess realises that if she is to help this woman, she must risk uncovering the secrets she has struggled a lifetime to hide . . . We've all done things we're not proud of.  Clear my Name is by Paula Daly.

The Murder Map is by Danny Miller.  When art dealer Ivan Fielding is found dead of a heart attack in his home, surrounded by the treasures he's collected all his life, it doesn't initially seem like a case for Detective Inspector Frost and the Denton police force. But then signs of a burglary are discovered, and Frost senses there's more to the story than meets the eye - even though the only thing taken was a worthless amateur painting. Then a young girl is abducted outside the school, an infamous gangster fresh from prison arrives in the area, and dead bodies start turning up in the woods. As Frost and his team dig deeper, everything seems to lead back to Ivan Fielding's murky lifetime of misdeeds. Will they find the answers they need before the dead man's past puts them all at risk?

September 2019

The Night you Left is by Emma Curtis. It only takes a moment to unravel a perfect life. When Grace's fiancé vanishes without a trace the night after proposing, her life is turned upside down. But has Nick walked out on her, or is he in danger? As Grace desperately searches for answers, it soon becomes clear that Nick wasn't the uncomplicated man she thought she knew. And when she uncovers a hidden tragedy from his childhood, she realises an awful truth: that you can run from your past - but your secrets will always catch up with you. 

The Year of the Locust is by Terry Hayes - Luke Truman is a junior officer on board the USS Leviathan, the most advanced and powerful warship ever built. It is an eight-hundred-foot-long submarine which, among its vast array of weaponry and secret systems, boasts a top secret “cloaking technology.” Bending light around objects to render them invisible, it is the hottest military research innovation not just in the US, but throughout the world. Now the time has come for the first large-scale trial of its effectiveness. But neither Luke nor the United States government realize the astonishing forces this experiment will unleash. What Luke discovers on board the Leviathan is that the future of our world is at a deadly tipping point and that only he will be able to stop the cascade of events which are leading them all inexorably towards doom.

October 2019

Black Sun is by Owen Matthews. It is the dawn of the 1960s. Stalin has been dead for eight years but his ghost casts a long shadow. In a place called Arzamas-16 - one of the most secret locations in the USSR, a place that doesn't appear on any map - a community of brilliant scientists, technicians and engineers have been tasked with creating the most powerful nuclear bomb the world has ever seen - a device three thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima. But one scientist has died an excruciating, grotesque death by ingesting a massive dose of irradiated Thalium. The Arzamas authorities believe it's suicide, want the body disposed of and the case closed, but someone in Moscow is concerned about what's going on in this strange, isolated and fiercely independent community. And so Major Alexander Vasin, a mostly good KGB officer in the department of 'Special Investigations', is sent across the Soviet Union in order to discover the truth. What he finds in Arzamas is a group of eccentrics, patriots and dissidents who - because their work is considered of such vital importance - have, unlike their fellow Soviet citizens, the freedom to think and act, live and love as they wish. Some of them, it seems, even believe they can get away with murder . . . 

Jack Reacher is a former military cop, trained to notice things. He’s on a Greyhound bus, watching an elderly man sleeping in his seat, with a fat envelope of cash hanging out of his pocket. Another passenger is watching too ... obviously hoping to get rich quick.  When the mugger finally makes his move, Reacher rides to the rescue. The old man is grateful, yet he turns down Reacher’s offer to help him home. He’s vulnerable, scared, and clearly in big, big trouble.  Elsewhere in the city, two ruthless rival criminal gangs, one Albanian, the other Ukrainian, are competing for control. Do they have a life-and-death hold on the old guy? Will Reacher sit back and let bad things happen? Or can he twist the situation to everyone’s benefit?  ‘This is a random universe,’ he says. ‘Once in a blue moon things turn out just right.  The odds are better with Reacher involved. That’s for damn sure.  Blue Moon is by Lee Child.

Books to Look Forward to from Transworld Publishing

January 2018

PERFECT HUSBAND. PERFECT FATHER. PERFECT LIAR? Vivian Miller is a CIA analyst assigned to uncover Russian sleeper cells in the USA. After accessing the computer of a potential Russian spy, she stumbles on a secret dossier of deep-cover agents living in her own country. Five seemingly normal people living in plain sight. A few clicks later, everything that matters to Vivian is threatened - her job, her husband, even her four children . . . Vivian has vowed to defend her country against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But now she's facing impossible choices. Torn between loyalty and betrayal, allegiance and treason, love and suspicion, who can she trust? Will her next move be the right one?  Need to Know is by Karen Cleveland

March 2018

Panic Room is by Robert Goddard.  Sometimes the danger is on the inside . . . High on a

Cornish cliff sits a vast uninhabited mansion. Uninhabited except for Blake, a young woman of dubious background, secretive and alone, currently acting as housesitter. The house has a panic room. Cunningly concealed, steel lined, impregnable - and apparently closed from within. Even Blake doesn't know it's there. She's too busy being on the run from life, from a story she thinks she's escaped. But her remote existence is going to be invaded when people come looking the house's owner, missing rogue pharma entrepreneur, Jack Harkness. Suddenly the whole world wants to know where his money has gone. Soon people are going to come knocking on the door, people with motives and secrets of their own, who will be asking Blake the sort of questions she can't - or won't - want to answer. And will the panic room ever give up its secrets?

Bryant & May – Hall of Mirrors is by Christopher Fowler.  The year is 1969 and ten guests are about to enjoy a country house weekend at Tavistock Hall. But one amongst them is harbouring thoughts of murder. . . The guests also include the young detectives Arthur Bryant and John May - undercover, in disguise and tasked with protecting Monty Hatton-Jones, a whistle-blower turning Queen's evidence in a massive bribery trial. Luckily, they've got a decent chap on the inside who can help them - the one-armed Brigadier, Nigel `Fruity' Metcalf. The scene is set for what could be the perfect country house murder mystery, except that this particular get-together is nothing like a Golden Age classic. For the good times are, it seems, coming to an end. The house's owner - a penniless, dope-smoking aristocrat - is intent on selling the estate (complete with its own hippy encampment) to a secretive millionaire but the weekend has only just started when the millionaire goes missing and murder is on the cards. But army manoeuvres have closed the only access road and without a forensic examiner, Bryant and May can't solve the case. It's when a falling gargoyle fells another guest that the two incognito detectives decide to place their future reputations on the line. And in the process discover that in Swinging Britain nothing is quite what it seems... So gentle reader, you are cordially invited to a weekend in the country. Expect murder, madness and mayhem in the mansion!

Detective Aidan Waits returns - on the hunt to find the identity of The Smiling Man. 'An

arresting new talent' Metro `I usually experienced the presence of a dead body as an absence, but in this case, it felt like a black hole opening up in front of me' Disconnected from his history and careless of his future, Detective Aidan Waits has resigned himself to the night shift. An endless cycle of meaningless emergency calls and lonely dead ends. Until he and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter `Sutty' Sutcliffe, are summoned to The Palace, a vast disused hotel in the centre of a restless, simmering city. There they find the body of a man. He is dead. And he is smiling. The tags have been removed from the man's clothes. His teeth filed down and replaced. Even his fingertips are not his own. Only a patch sewn into the inside of his trousers gives any indication as to who he was, and to the desperate last act of his life... But even as Waits puts together the pieces of this stranger's life, someone is sifting through the shards of his own. When the mysterious fires, anonymous phone calls and outright threats escalate, he realises that a ghost from his own past haunts his every move. And to discover the smiling man's identity, he must finally confront his own.  The Smiling Man is by Joseph Knox.

April 2018

The Fenlands, 1954 It is a tough winter; the temperatures have fallen too low too quickly and the floods are the worst anyone can remember. Most people have lost everything but there are some who have found themselves eager for the chance at a new start. For Jimmy Devlin, it's a little of both. Forced from his home by an uncompromising bailiff, Jimmy has nothing to his name and the prospect of work digging urgently needed drains could be the opportunity he's been waiting for. But Jimmy, it seems, has a knack for finding trouble. Before long, he's caught up in the wrong business with the people from the fairground passing through town. But, on the run from the law, he has nowhere else to turn.   Mercury Falling is by Robert Edric

American by Day is by Derek B Miller.  She knew it was a weird place. She'd heard the stories, seen the movies, read the books. But now police Chief Inspector Sigrid Odegard has to leave her native Norway and actually go there; to that land across the Atlantic where her missing brother is implicated in the mysterious death of a prominent African-American academic. America. And not someplace interesting, either: upstate New York. It is election season, 2008, and Sigrid is plunged into a United States where race and identity, politics and promise, reverberate in every aspect of daily life. To find her older brother, she needs the help of the local police who appear to have already made up their minds about the case. Working with - or, if necessary, against - someone actually named Sheriff Irving 'Irv' Wylie, she must negotiate the local political minefields and navigate the back woods of the Adirondacks to uncover the truth before events escalate further.

May 2018

Snap decisions can be fatal . . . On a stifling summer's day, eleven-year-old Jack and his two sisters sit in their broken-down car, waiting for their mother to come back and rescue them. Jack's in charge, she said. I won't be long. But she doesn't come back. She never comes back. And life as the children know it is changed for ever. Three years later, mum-to-be Catherine wakes to find a knife beside her bed, and a note that says: I could have killed you. Meanwhile Jack is still in charge - of his sisters, of supporting them all, of making sure nobody knows they're alone in the house, and - quite suddenly - of finding out the truth about what happened to his mother. But the truth can be a dangerous thing . . .  Snap is by Belinda Bauer

Open Your Eyes is by Paula Daly.  Haven't we all wanted to pretend everything is fine? Jane doesn't like confrontation. Given the choice, she'll let her husband, Leon, fight their battles. She'd prefer to focus on what's going well, the good things in life. But when bestselling crime author Leon is brutally attacked in the driveway of their home, in front of their two young children, Jane has to face reality. With her husband in a coma, Jane must open her eyes to the problems in her life, and the secrets that have been kept from her, if she's to find out who hurt her husband - and why. Maybe it's time to face up to it all. Who knows what you might find . . . 

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Ultimatum is by Frank Gardner.  After helping to avert a deadly attack on London, Luke

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

Books to Look forward to from Transworld Publishers

January 2017

 A doting mother or a pushy parent? Karen Bloom expects perfection. Her son, Ewan, has been something of a disappointment and she won't be making the same mistake again with her beloved, talented child, Bronte. Bronte's every waking hour will be spent at music lessons and dance classes, doing extra schoolwork and whatever it takes to excel. But as Karen pushes Bronte to the brink, the rest of the family crumbles. Karen's husband, Noel, is losing himself in work, and his teenage daughter from his first marriage, Verity, is becoming ever more volatile. The family is dangerously near breaking point. Karen would know when to stop...wouldn't she?  The Trophy Child is by Paula Daly.

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

February 2017

Blackout is by Marc Elsberg.  Tomorrow will be too late. A cold night in Milan, Piero Manzano wants to get home. Then the traffic lights fail. Manzano is thrown from his Alfa as cars pile up. And not just on this street - every light in the city is dead. Across Europe, controllers watch in disbelief as electricity grids collapse. Plunged into darkness, people are freezing. Food and water supplies dry up. The death toll soars. Former hacker and activist Manzano becomes a prime suspect. But he is also the only man capable of finding the real attackers. Can he bring down a major terrorist network before it's too late?

Incendium is by A D Swanston.  Summer, 1572 and England is vulnerable. Fear of plague and insurrection taint the air, and heresy, fanaticism and religious unrest seethe beneath the surface of society. Rumour and mistrust lead to imprisonment, torture and sometimes murder. To the young lawyer Christopher Radcliff and his patron and employer, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the prospects for peace are poor. As Leicester's chief intelligencer, Radcliff is charged with investigating both rumours of rebellion at home and invasion from abroad. That the queen's own cousin, the Duke of Norfolk, is found guilty of treason is a sign of just how deep the dissent goes. Supporters of the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots foment revolt, but the papist threat doesn't just come from within. Across the channel, France is being swept up in a frenzy of brutal and bloody religious persecution while England's other enemy of old, Spain, makes preparations to invade. Christopher's own life is far from orderly. His relationship with the widow Katherine Allington is somewhat turbulent and he knows full well that the cut-throat world of court politics leaves no room for indiscretions. So England is a powder-keg, waiting for a spark to ignite it. And then a whisper of a plot that could provide that spark reaches Christopher. All he has to go on is a single word - 'incendium'. But what does it mean and who lies behind it? He must find the answers before it is too late...

Dublin, 1816. A young nursemaid conceals a pregnancy and then murders her new-born in the home of the Neshams, a prominent family in a radical Christian sect known as the Brethren. Rumours swirl about the identity of the child's father, but before an inquest can be held, the maid is found dead after an apparent suicide. When Abigail Lawless, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the coroner, by chance discovers a message from the maid's seducer, she sets out to discover the truth. It's the year without a summer. A climatic event has brought frost to mid-July, hunger and unrest, and a lingering fog casts a pall over the city. An only child, Abigail has been raised amid the books and instruments of her father's grim profession, and he in turn indulges her curious and critical mind. Now she must push against the restrictions society places on a girl her age to pursue an increasingly dangerous investigation. Two groups have come to dominate the city: the Brethren, founded by Mr Darby, a charismatic preacher and evangelical, and opposed to them, a burgeoning rationalist community led by the Royal Astronomer, Professor Reeves. Abigail's searches begin to uncover the well-guarded secrets of both factions, drawing the attention of a sinister figure who emerges in fleeting glimpses and second-hand reports: the man with the lazy eye. Abigail leads us through dissection rooms and hospital wards, austere churches and graceful salons, and to the equatorial room of the Saggart Observatory; and we see her interact with a wide assortment of characters: the family and staff of her Rutland Square home; her friends, peers and rivals; zealots, both religious and rationalist, while always shadowed by a seemingly pitiless sociopath, whom she believes has killed twice already, and will no doubt kill again ...Determined, resourceful and intuitive, and more than just a dutiful daughter or society debutant, Abigail Lawless emerges as a young lady sleuth operating at the dawn of forensic science.  The Coroner’s Daughter is by Andrew Hughes.

March 2017

Our story begins at the end of an investigation, as the members of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit race to catch a killer near London Bridge Station in the rain, not realising that they're about to cause a bizarre accident just yards away from the crime scene. And it will have repercussions for them all...One year later, in an exclusive London crescent, a woman walks her dog - but she's being watched. When she's found dead, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in to investigate. Why? Because the method of death is odd, the gardens are locked, the killer had no way in - or out - and the dog has disappeared. So a typical case for Bryant & May. But the hows and whys of the murder are not the only mysteries surrounding the dead woman - there's a missing husband and a lost nanny to puzzle over too. And it seems very like that the killer is preparing to strike again. As Arthur Bryant delves in to the history of London's 'wild chambers' - its extraordinary parks and gardens, John May and the rest of the team seem to have caused a national scandal. If no-one is safe then all of London's open spaces must be closed...With the PCU placed under house arrest, only Arthur Bryant remains at liberty - but can a hallucinating old codger catch the criminal and save the unit before it's too late? Bryant and May – The Wild Chamber is by Christopher Fowler.

The Owl Always Hunts at Night is by Samuel Bjork.  When a young woman is found dead, the police are quick to respond. But what they find at the scene is unexpected. The body is posed, the scene laboriously set. And there is almost no forensic evidence to be found. Detective Mia Kruger has been signed off work pending psychological assessment. But her boss has less regard for the rules than he should. Desperate to get Mia back in the office, Holger Munch offers her an unofficial deal. But the usually brilliant Mia is struggling and the team are unable to close the case. Until a young hacker uncovers something that forces the team to confront the scope of the murderer's plans and face the possibility that he may already be on the hunt for a second victim.

April 2017

What Alice Knew is by T A Cotterell.  He trusts her with his secret. But can she trust him?

Alice has always trusted her instincts. And she knows that she married a good man. But when a woman dies and the evidence begins to suggest otherwise, Alice does what she always does - she looks for the truth. What do you do when the person you love most makes a huge mistake? Should Alice tell the truth, or can she live with a lie...

 

Detective Inspector Harry Virdee wasn't expecting this. But there's no denying that the body lying at his feet is her - Tara, his beloved niece. And although his boss is already removing him from the case, Harry knows there no such thing as too close. He will stop at nothing to find the monster that killed his flesh and blood. But before he can, he must tell his brother the news. And there is no predicting what a man on the edge will do when confronted with the worst thing imaginable. Harry may have a murderer to find but if he isn't careful, he may also have a murder to prevent.  Girl Zero is by A A Dhand.

Dead Woman Walking is by Sharon Bolton.  Just before dawn in the hills near the Scottish border, a man murders a young woman. At the same time, a hot-air balloon crashes out of the sky. There's just one survivor. She's seen the killer's face - but he's also seen hers. And he won't rest until he's eliminated the only witness to his crime. Alone, scared, trusting no one, she's running to where she feels safe - but it could be the most dangerous place of all...

It was a first class deception that would change her life forever. 1939, Europe on the brink of war. Lily Shepherd leaves England on an ocean liner for Australia, escaping her life of drudgery for new horizons. She is instantly seduced by the world onboard: cocktails, black-tie balls and beautiful sunsets. Suddenly, Lily finds herself mingling with people who would otherwise never give her the time of day. But soon she realizes her glamorous new friends are not what they seem. The rich and hedonistic Max and Eliza Campbell, mysterious and flirtatious Edward, and fascist George are all running away from tragedy and scandal even greater than her own. By the time the ship docks, two passengers are dead, war has been declared, and life will never be the same again.  A Dangerous Crossing is by Rachel Rhys.

Frost at Midnight is by James Henry.  It was a first class deception that would change her life forever. 1939, Europe on the brink of war. Lily Shepherd leaves England on an ocean liner for Australia, escaping her life of drudgery for new horizons. She is instantly seduced by the world on-board: cocktails, black-tie balls and beautiful sunsets. Suddenly, Lily finds herself mingling with people who would otherwise never give her the time of day. But soon she realizes her glamorous new friends are not what they seem. The rich and hedonistic Max and Eliza Campbell, mysterious and flirtatious Edward, and fascist George are all running away from tragedy and scandal even greater than her own. By the time the ship docks, two passengers are dead, war has been declared, and life will never be the same again.

May 2017

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

June 2017

How do you stop a serial killer who no one believes is real? Alice is in high-risk psychiatric unit.  Fellow patients are disappearing.  She knows they’re not suicides, though.  They are being picked off one by one.  Alice could need your help.  Because she’s next. They All Fall Down is by Tammy Cohen.

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

The Restless Dead is by Simon Beckett.  ‘Composed of over sixty per cent water itself, a

human body isn’t naturally buoyant. It will float only for as long as there is air in its lungs, before gradually sinking to the bottom as the air seeps out. If the water is very cold or deep, it will remain there, undergoing a slow, dark dissolution that can take years. But if the water is warm enough for bacteria to feed and multiply, then it will continue to decompose. Gases will build up in the intestines, increasing the body’s buoyancy until it floats again.  And the dead will literally rise . . . ‘It was on a Friday evening that forensics consultant Dr David Hunter took the call: a Detective Inspector Lundy from the Essex force. Just up the coast from Mersea Island, near a place called Backwaters, a badly decomposed body has been found and the local police would welcome Hunter's help with the recovery and identification . . .  Because they would like it to be that of Leo Villiers, the 31 year-old son of a prominent local family who went missing weeks ago, and they are under pressure to close the case. Villiers was supposed to have been having an affair with a married woman, Emma Derby. She too is missing, and the belief is that the young man disposed of his lover, and then killed himself. If only it was so straightforward.  But Hunter has his doubts about the identity of the remains. The hands and feet are missing, the face no longer recognisable. Then further remains are found - and suddenly these remote wetlands are giving up yet more grisly secrets.  As Hunter is slowly but surely drawn into a toxic mire of family secrets and resentments, local lies and deception, he finds himself unable, or perhaps unwilling, to escape even though he knows that the real threat comes from the living, not the dead.