Ripster Revivals #21

 

Ripster Revivals # 21: An Apology

Actually, two apologies. First to frantic regular readers who have been wondering why this column has not appeared since before Christmas. This is due entirely to modern technology and problems with the website about which I neither know nor care. And secondly, to Ayo Onatade, who has graciously allowed me to impose upon the Shots blog which she curates so magnificently. {Note to Editor: We have told her, haven’t we?}

Happy New Reading Year

Readers of regular crime novels will need an entire suspension bridge of disbelief to cope with Vivian Dies Again by C.E. Hulse [Viper], which could have been called Groundhog Death Day. The titular anti-heroine and victim, Vivian, is a self-confessed ‘manic pixie dream slut in going-out underwear’ who has her drug-dealer on speed dial. 

Vivian’s special skill set of gate-crashing family parties, ravaging the cocktail bar and upsetting (or sleeping with) her relatives results in most of them having a good reason to murder her and the inevitable duly happens – eighty-four times as Vivian is caught in a time-loop which makes her re-live (should that be re-die?) the experience. Naturally (well, you would, wouldn’t you) she uses this supernatural reset button to try and solve her own murder with the help of a grumpy wine waiter.

Also out now is Sounds Like Trouble by American writing duo Pamela Samuels Young and Dwayne Alexander Smith [Faber]. I am not being disingenuous when I say this struck me as a traditional private eye story; there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It is set, naturally, in California and features a partnership of endearingly flirty detectives, Jackson Jones and Mackenzie Cunningham, who take it in turns to narrate their latest case which they have taken on with some trepidation as their client are the bosses of Los Angeles’ three main crime families. The tone is light, the pace sprightly and overall, great fun.

Coming next month is debut novel The Artful Anna Harris by Tracy Maton [Viper] which possibly falls into the category of ‘domestic noir’ as the predictably unpredictable protagonist Anna leaks details of her London past combined with her present situation in village life in Somerset. The problem for the reader is whether she is a faithful or a traitor as she adapts her own personality and adopts those of others. It’s not long before there’s a death – by herd of cows – and things begin to get rather creepy as Anna perfects her chameleon-like skills, having lost her moral compass somewhere along the way. The Talented Miss Maton is particularly good at depicting the suffocating effects of village life where an incomer is expected to conform to the ideals of the ruling extended families.

Illustrations in crime novels, other than maps, are rare but not unknown (I recall a Minette Walters’ novel from 2000 using the technique) but I have never before come across a book with such atmospheric, and relevant, commissioned artwork. Totem by Matthew Hall [Eye Books], published in May, is part legal, part environmental thriller set in British Columbia which highlights both the threat of ruthless developers to the natural forest and the treatment of Canada’s First Nation’s natives. The illustrations in Totem are by Jeff ‘Red’ George, an Ojibway artist from the Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation.

Remembrances of Readings Past

Readers of this column and many a book dealer will know, I have a weakness for the old A-format paperback (that slides easily into the poacher’s pocket of one’s Barbour waxed jacket), especially Pan or Fontana titles with the price in pre-decimal currency. So I can understand why I was attracted to The Storm Knight (cover price: five shillings) by Frederick E. Smith, whom I knew only as the author of 633 Squadron, the basis of an incredibly popular film in my youth with a theme tune still played to this day by the massed bands of the RAF on royal occasions.

I had honestly no idea that Frederick Escreet Smith (1919-2012) was the author of more than thirty books in various genres in addition to the ten war novels featuring his legendary squadron of WWII Mosquito fighter-bombers.

His 1966 novel The Storm Knight looked like just the sort of thriller I was brought up on, involving a wartime back story, a sunken ferry (containing vital secrets) in a Norwegian fjord and a passing Canadian tourist who just happens to be a skin-diver and underwater salvage expert. Oh, and there’s a girl who has an interest in the wreck and you know what’s going to happen there from the off, despite some cack-handed attempts at seduction by our skin-diving hero.

For a while it reminded me of a tale Hammond Innes might have told, but the geography, sailing and diving scenes are nowhere near what Innes could do. And despite decent baddies, a minefield and the wreck of the ferry lying on a rock shelf, teetering on the brink of an abyss, The Storm Knight does not actually thrill that much. The ‘skin diving’ scenes – an odd expression given the temperature of the water in a Norwegian fjord – are rather laboured and confusing unless you know that a Drager was a German breathing apparatus, as it is not explained, and the cover illustration suggests an aqualung. But I’m being picky. My main complaint was why was it called The Storm Knight? I think I missed that bit.

Thinking of Smith’s best-known work, plus the fact that the 1964 film was on television (again) this month, reminded me that 633 Squadron had been published in Air Ace Picture Library, one of several series of one-shilling comic books (would we call them graphic novels today?) which told stories of derring-do, mostly from WWII. 

Among these 64-page ‘pocket libraries’ produced by competing publishers, were Battle, Combat, Action and Commando, but the first, and my personal addiction, was War Picture Library which began in 1958 and ran through more than 2000 titles up to 1984. The artwork was noted for its precision when it came to uniforms and equipment and the stories for their historical accuracy. While individual authors were never specifically identified, it is safe to assume that many of the stable of writers had first-hand experience of the war and the stories they created were never simply of the gung-ho crash-bash-boom-kapow(!) variety. The storytelling was of the highest quality, and I do not think that is me looking back on a mis-spent youth through a soft-focus lens.

I still remember some of those stories more than fifty years on and one in particular has always stuck in my mind – I even remembered that it was War Picture Library #80 – from 1961, the dramatically titled Banzai! about a small group of Australian soldiers fighting a last-ditch action during the Japanese invasion of New Guinea.

A quick search on Ebay informs me that a reprint was issued in the Battle Picture Library in 1984 and can be bought for about ten quid. Makes me almost wish I’d kept my first edition, but that went – along with my collection of about 200 others – when I started secondary school and discovered my first James Bond book: Dr No in, you’ve guessed it, an A-format Pan paperback (which I still possess).

From the To-Be-Read Pile

I really cannot think why it has taken me so long to get around to reading Eric Ambler’s Send No More Roses as I picked up a 1977 first edition at a very reasonable price about five years ago.

It is a ‘late’ Ambler (1909-1998) whose personal golden age is usually regarded as the 1930s and early ’40s, though all Amblers are well worth reading even when, as in this case, the elements of suspense, jeopardy and violent action are deliberately toned down. This is a cerebral thriller covering familiar Ambler themes; primarily, the nature of crime – in this case, when does legal tax avoidance become illegal tax evasion – and, as always, who can you trust among your fellow criminals? (Some may be faithfuls but there are always traitors.) There is also the Ambler trademark of having an international cast of characters, several of them deliberately stateless, or at least of convoluted origins, all gathered in a rented villa on the French Riviera, an old Ambler stomping-ground. (As an aside: did Ambler ever set a novel completely in England?)

Published in the US as The Siege of the Villa Lipp, though in my UK edition it is the Villa Esmerelda, the location is seemingly perfect for a bizarre meeting between a shady but successful international money-launderer and a trio of criminologists determined to label him a super-villain and the archetype of a new breed of ‘Able Criminals’. The small main cast of six become embroiled in lengthy debates, with one side blustering and indignant, the other accused and seemingly defensive but definitely not telling all the truth. Interlaced with reports of this distrustful summit, the main protagonist provides flashbacks (honest ones?) to his early career in the British army in Italy during the war and the beginning of what today would be called money-laundering and white-collar crime.

An external but very real threat to the villa and its guests emerges resulting in a rapid and dramatic escape, the threads of the story then being tied up far away from the Riviera, in the Caribbean and on an obscure South Pacific island near Fiji. And once again Ambler demonstrates his long-held theory that the innocent can easily find themselves involved in crime (or espionage) and that there is no such thing as a super-villain, merely greedy and distrustful men.

The central subject matter – tax evasion/avoidance – may not seem to be the usual Ambler fare. Could it be that Ambler had some personal score to settle with the tax authorities? Who knows? The important thing is that in Send No More Roses, Ambler is as damnably readable as he ever was.

Bespoke Problems

The problem with having a bespoke book dealer is that they tantalise me with books which I simply have to have and thus my To-Be-Read continues to increase. Despite my best efforts, its growth seems unstoppable; so much so that I have nick-named my dealer The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

My latest acquisition was Time Right Deadly the 1956 debut novel of ‘Sarah Gainham’ (Rachel Ames, 1915-1999), the edition being a 1957 Dragon paperback, an imprint I was unfamiliar with, but which was an imprint of publisher Arthur Barker which became Weidenfeld & Nicholson and subsequently Orion – publishers I have heard of.

The novels of Sarah Gainham, set mainly in the post-war Austria she knew well, have recently been reappraised as significant contributions to spy fiction. Her debut novel however, although there are hints of possible espionage, is primarily a detective story and the story of two detectives. When charming and rather randy journalist Julian Dryden is shot dead in a dodgy part of the Russian sector of occupied Vienna in 1947, suspicion falls on one of his lovers, Ellen Perrott, who is married to an unbelievably tolerant British diplomat. Ellen is not a sympathetic character, bitchily dismissing one of her rivals for Dryden’s affections as ‘A common little thing ...(with)…her provincial worries about her reputation in the intervals of concupiscence.’

In the first half of the book, the dim and lazy Colonel Thompson leads the British investigation, despite not speaking a word of German, or Russian. He is convinced of Ellen Perrot’s guilt but too worried about upsetting the status quo to take action. Then (for no clear reason I can see), the investigation is taken over by a retired Austrian policeman, Mollner, who chain smokes cigars, re-questions witnesses and uncovers Dryden’s involvement in a people smuggling ring which, for a price, helps people escape from behind the descending Iron Curtain.

It is the grizzled veteran Mollner, who knows the ways of Central Europe, rather than the stiff, humourless Thompson who doesn’t care about them, who brings the case to a conclusion.

True Crime 

I met Patricia Cornwell once. It would have been back in 1990 at a party to mark the UK publication of her ground-breaking debut thriller Postmortem and I was there as the crime fiction critic of the Sunday Telegraph (“an excellent chiller with pace and tension”), very much in the shadow of those far more experienced reviewers Harry Keating and Julian Symons.

Now, thirty-six years and thirty-six(?) best-selling novels on, Ms Cornwell gives us an autobiographical memoir, True Crime, to be published in May by Sphere, which has already been described as ‘achingly honest’ and, according to fellow bestseller James Patterson, ‘could be the best book she’s ever written’.

The Other Cornwell

Nicholas Cornwell, better known by his pen-name Nick Harkaway, has done sterling work continuing the legend of his father’s famous creation George Smiley, but I had no idea he himself must have had an adventurous past, as chronicled by novelist John Harris…

Until normal service is resumed,

The Ripster.

Sounds LIke Trouble Q & A with Pamela Samuels Young and Dwayne Alexander Smith

 Introduction:

Dwayne Alexander Smith is the author of Forty Acres, which is in development at Netflix, with Jay-Z attached to produce. Pamela Samuels Young has been widely published across genres, and Netflix is also developing her work, having optioned the first two books in her Vernette Henderson series. Both authors received NAACP Image Awards, for Forty Acres and Anybody’s Daughter respectively.

AO:     What brought the two of you together?  

PSY & DAS:   We’d known each other for a few years after becoming familiar with each other’s work. We’d see each other at book events from time to time and eventually became friends. Our writing styles are pretty similar, and we had discussed the idea of collaborating on a novel. Dwayne came up with the idea for the first book in the series, Sounds Lika a Plan. He shared it with Pamela and suggested they write it together, and she was all in.

AO:     Not only are you both novelists but you also have other jobs. How do you balance this with your writing.

PSY & DAS:   Pamela retired from the practice of law a few years ago and has been writing full time since then. Dwyane is still a full-time writer, focusing primarily on screenwriting. We both love writing and are luckily enough to be able to do it full time.

AO:     A lot of trust is needed for authors who collaborate, how do the two of you work together not only on the plot but the characters?

PSY & DAS:   We work from a pretty detailed outline. So once the writing process begins, we know exactly where the story is headed. Dwayne wrote the first chapter from Jackson’s POV and sent it to Pamela, who wrote the next chapter from Mackenzie’s POV. We went back and forth with that process until the book was completed. We pretty much stuck to the outline. It was a relatively smooth process, with very few hiccups. Because our writing style is pretty similar and because we both like each other’s solo work, it was a relatively smooth process.

AO:     When I read  Sounds Like Trouble, it brought back memories of other detecting duos for example Dashiell Hammet’s Nick and Nora Charles, Laurie R. King's Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs to name a few. What makes them work so well as a duo and was it intentional that they had to be a male and a female when for example you have duos such as Sherlock Holmes and Watson, Poirot and Hastings.

PSY & DAS:   Thanks for that amazing compliment. From the start we felt that the dynamic between Jackson and Mackenzie would click. Actually, we saw our two protagonists more like Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in the TV show Moonlighting.  We wanted the same kind of humorous love / hate chemistry.

AO:     Are there any elements of yourselves in your main characters.

PSY & DAS:   We don’t like to admit it, but there are elements of Jackson that are very much like Dwyane and the same for Pamela and Mackenzie. Dwyane can be a little prima donna-like, and Pamela does have her uptight moments.

AO:     What sparked the idea for the current storyline featuring mobsters?

PSY & DAS:   Dwyane has a folder full of story ideas. He came up with the mobster’s storyline and when Pamela heard it, she was hooked. Dwyane is definitely the part of the duo who comes up with the outrageous car chases and action scenes.

AO:     How important is research and do you do a lot of research? In Sounds Like Trouble did you get to hang out with mobsters?

PSY & DAS:   Fortunately, we didn’t have to hang out with mobsters, LOL! We are both long-time fans of crime fiction. We just put our imaginations to work and went for it. We, of course, do research when there’s something we don’t have a lot of familiarity with. For instance, we researched what’s involved in picking a lock. We’ll also make sure the settings for our stories make sense. If we describe a building on a particular street, we make sure the architecture fits.

AO:     How difficult is it then to have storylines to ensure that they are realistic without going overboard.

PSY & DAS:   We work hard to present a realistic story, but as fiction writers, we do take some liberties when it’s necessary. For example, could the two PIs really sneak into a well-guarded cemetery where tons of famous people are buried? Maybe? We try to present each scenario in a way that the reader can at least accept it as a possibility.

AO:     How important is LA as a location in this series and did you consider setting it elsewhere.

PSY & DAS:   Location is very important for us. Local readers love reading about places they recognize. Hence, we give a great deal of thought to where the scenes take place. We want to make sure our LA-based readers can visualize the scene as they’re reading because they’ve visited that exact location. We’re both from L.A. and know the city well, so we never considered another location. That’s not to say we won’t take the story to another location at some point.

AO:     The book touches on themes of justice, loyalty, and morality when working for criminals. Was there a deliberate message that you were trying to convey about the characters' moral compasses, especially given the "offer they can't refuse”?

PSY & DAS:   We weren’t necessarily trying to make a moral statement. Instead, we wanted to create a story with lots of drama, action and conflict, where the stakes our main characters faced were constantly being raised. If that also encompasses a moral or social issue, so be it.

AO:     There is a lot of banter between your two main characters. How easy or difficult has it been to make sure that their relationship does not overwhelm the story.

PSY & DAS:   The banter was both easy and fun to write. That’s because if you eavesdropped on a conversation between Dwayne and Pamela, it might be much the same as the banter between Jackson and Mackenzie. We never feared their relationship would take over the story. Our major focus was always on the plot and making sure it engaged the reader from chapter to chapter.

AO:     Now that you have written two books in the series is there anything in hindsight you wish you could change about both your characters?

PSY & DAS:   No, not really. We were pretty happy with how we crafted our characters.

 AO:     A lot of action takes place.  Which is more important to you character or plot?

PSY & DAS:   Definitely plot! We both write commercial fiction and love a fast-paced, engaging mystery. That doesn’t mean we don’t want well-developed characters. But our primary focus is on our plot.

AO:     There are two types of crime writers those who meticulously plan before writing and those who jump straight in and find the story along the way. Which do you do?

PSY & DAS:   We are definitely meticulous plotters. Dwayne prepared a very detailed chapter-by-chapter outline of Sounds Like Trouble. Then we discussed it and made a few changes. Along the way, the story changed, but because we wrote this book together, it was crucial to have a well-developed outline from the start.

AO:     One could call this series a cross-genre book as it has not only elements of a thriller but that of a mystery and humour.  Was this intentional?

PSY & DAS:   Yes, all of that was intentional. The interplay between Jackson and Mackenzie was intended to be funny, since they have such different personalities. We had a lot of fun with those chapters. We also wanted to keep the reader guessing. If there’s one thing we both equally hate, it’s a predictable ending.

AO:     I believe that if you would like a good grounding in social history and social policy that one should read a crime novel.  How important was it for you to weave important topics into your books?

PSY & DAS:   While we also think that’s important, we didn’t necessarily start out planning to make any social statements. But when the opportunity presents itself, we’ll take it. For example, in the next book in the series, we’ll be delving into AI and the impact of social media on our lives.

AO:     What next for Jackson Jones and Mackenzie Cunningham.

PSY & DAS:   We truly enjoy breathing life into Mackenzie and Jackson and dreaming up adventures for them. We plan to write many more books in this series and are currently drafting the third book in the series.       

Sounds Like Trouble by Pamela Samuels Young and Dwayne Alexander Smith (Faber & Faber) £9.99 (Out Now)

Three mobsters. Two detectives. A deadly race against time. Jackson Jones and Mackenzie Cunningham – two of the best private investigators in the business – are presented with a case they aren’t allowed to refuse. The heads of L.A.’s three major crime families have tasked them with finding sensitive information hidden by a man in critical condition before he flatlines. Or else.  The pair can’t agree on how to furnish the office of their new joint venture, Safe and Sound Investigations, let alone the nature of their feelings for each other. But with a masked man on their tail, they are going to have to stick together if they are going to have any chance of solving the case.

More information about the authors can be found on their websites - www.pamelasamuelsyoung.com and Dwayne Alexander Smith

Dwayne Alexander Smith can also be found on Instagram @theamazin and on Facebook

Pamela Samuels Young can also be found on  X and Instagram @AuthorPSY and on Facebook

Paupers and Princelings by Simon Lewis

In Bad Traffic I wrote about a Chinese cop searching or his daughter in the UK. I wanted to show familiar territory from a fresh new perspective; and there’s great drama in someone trying to investigate in an alien country where they can’t even speak the language. For the sequel it seemed natural to keep him here, so I made him a target of China’s notorious ‘tigers and flies’ anti-corruption campaign - knowing he’ll be arrested on trumped up charges if he goes home, he has no choice but to live on as an illegal immigrant, reluctant daughter in tow. 

In No Exit they are living a precarious existence in a slum block of flats, beholden to a sleazy landlord. Their situation worsens when Jian is blackmailed by a gang into hunting down a thief who has robbed a Mah Jiang den. The trail leads them, unexpectedly, to elite society, and another kind of high rise, a penthouse in a new development on the Isle of Dogs. 

The seed for the plot of No Exit was the observation that some of the richest and the poorest Londoners are mainland Chinese. The poorest, like Jian live in a twilight world, at the mercy of unscrupulous gangmasters and landlords. Though, unlike many Chinese at the bottom, at least Jian is not beholden to a snakehead people smuggling gang, working off a high interest debt. 

As for the richest… they are often young, here to study, as a qualification from a British university carries prestige back home. Cash-strapped British universities love high-paying Chinese students, and some London colleges have up to a forty percent Chinese intake. Economics and the like used to be the most popular subjects, but now it seems to be the graphic arts. The kids are supposed to have a TOEFL English language score above a certain level - but it is not uncommon to find students who are clearly nowhere near that score. They are confident that their universities won’t fail them and are probably right: it would shut down a lucrative pipeline. (Knowing this, you have to wonder how long a British education will have any prestige in China. Or anywhere else). 

Among these kids are ‘princelings’ (tai zidang) - the children of the mainland political elite. With Chinese politics growing uncertain it can be a good idea to stow your kids far away. As the benefactors of nepotism, they are often much resented by other Chinese.

Others will be ‘white gloves’ (bai shoutao) - used for money laundering. The emigre can control a foreign bank account that can be stuffed with illicit cash from home. Wealth equivalent to two percent of China’s GDP is estimated to be hidden abroad. 

It's an urgent business because (as Jian well knows) the Chinese government does not mess around when it catches you: I know an ex-pat Chinese who was asked to become emergency adoptee for a mainland baby, as its parents, both customs officials, had been found guilty of corruption and were about to executed. 

To try to understand how these groups might see the city I interviewed among both. The wealthy students described feeling more at home in Canary Wharf than in Chinatown. They liked English tea, the parks and green spaces and the heritage buildings, though wondered where the London that they knew from costume dramas had gone - no bowler hats or gentleman culture. The poor, on the other hand, were brutally matter of fact: to them the city was expensive and unforgiving, and they only cared about opportunities to make money. 

Rich, rather naive kids abroad for the first time, and desperate illegals: there is much dramatic potential in a story that takes in these very different extremes. I think crime fiction is particularly suited for this kind of broad presentation of society’s highs and lows - I think it’s the modern form that a writer like Dickens would feel most comfortable with! I hope that readers appreciate the attempt to show groups too little written about in the west, and the familiar seen from a different angle - as well as a rollercoaster story full of twists and turns, taking in, as well as cultural dislocations, kidnap, blackmail, gambling and gangsters.

No Exit by Simon Lewis (Sort of Books) £9.99 Out Now

Inspector Jian and his daughter Weiwei just want to go back to their home in China: but Jian is facing a corruption charge in his absence and risks arrest. Instead, he tries to scrape a living on London's meanest streets as an illegal immigrant, reduced to hustling Mah Jiang for cash. A bleak future looks to be growing bleaker still when a triad gang blackmail him into tracking down an unlikely young robber. In No Exit Jian and Weiwei scramble between London's grimiest bedsits and its swankiest penthouses as they penetrate the glittering world of 'princelings' - the rich children of the Chinese elite, who treat the city as their playground. Locked in a desperate struggle, with no way out in sight, it will take all their wiles, as well as some lucky gambles, to come out of this latest venture alive.

More information about Simon Lewis and his work can be found on his website and at Inspectorjian.com He can also be found on Facebook @SimonLewisauthor and on Instagram @Simon7684

Author photo ©Mark Pengelly

Penguin Classics Crime and Espionage for 2026

Publishing through 2026, the Penguin Classics Crime and Espionage series brings together landmark works of fiction from across the twentieth century and beyond. Highlights include Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee mystery The Chinese Nail Murders, Dorothy B. Hughes’s noir classic Ride the Pink Horse, Robert Littell’s Cold War thriller The Amateur, and Mai Jia’s international bestseller Decoded. The list also features Giorgio Scerbanenco’s Italian noir Traitors to All, alongside Rear Window and Other Stories, a newly curated Penguin Classics selection of suspense stories by Cornell Woolrich, originally published in the 1930s and 1940s. 

The Chinese Nail Murders by Robert van Gulik (9 July 2026) First published in 1961

Judge Dee returns in one of Robert van Gulik’s strangest and most atmospheric mysteries, set far from the courtly intrigue of Tang China and deep into a ferocious northern wilderness. In a remote, freezing region, a young girl vanishes, jewels are stolen and a brutal beheading shocks the local community. As Dee pulls at the threads, the case begins to circle an unsettling local obsession, the “Seven Board”, a popular game that may be more than a harmless pastime. With its locked room ingenuity and mounting dread, the novel offers all the pleasures of classic puzzle crime while using the harsh landscape and tight knit settlements to heighten the tension. Van Gulik’s Judge Dee novels are celebrated for their vivid historical texture, and this instalment is a particularly rich example, blending clue driven plotting with an immersive sense of place and period.

About the author: Robert van Gulik (1910 to 1967) was a Dutch diplomat and a leading authority on Chinese history and culture, who lived much of his life in the Far East. He wrote sixteen Judge Dee mysteries alongside influential studies of Chinese art and music.

Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes (9 July 2026) First published in 1946

A heat hazed, high pressure noir that shifts the genre out of shadowy alleyways and into the bright glare of the American Southwest. Sailor, a former gangster’s muscle, arrives from Chicago in Santa Fe during Fiesta season with revenge and money on his mind. But the city is packed, the temperature is punishing, and the forces ranged against him are both organised and unpredictable. With nowhere to stay and danger in every crowd, Sailor is pushed into a tightening web of corruption and violence, where survival depends on reading people quickly and striking first. Dorothy B. Hughes turns the usual noir palette inside out, using vivid colour and sunlight to make paranoia feel even sharper. The result is a lean, propulsive thriller that builds dread through constant motion, chance encounters and the sense that the whole town is watching.

About the author: Hughes (born Kansas City, later based in New Mexico) was a journalist and poet who became one of the key voices of American hard-boiled fiction. Several novels were adapted for film, and she was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

The Amateur by Robert Littell (23 July 2026) First published in 1981

A classic Cold War thriller built on a deliciously unnerving premise: what happens when an ordinary man decides to do an extraordinary, violent thing and refuses to be stopped. Charlie Heller is a CIA cryptographer, a quiet specialist in codes and patterns, not fieldcraft. When his beloved fiancée is murdered by terrorists and his superiors choose not to pursue the killers, Heller turns his grief into purpose. He forces his way into the role of avenger, following the trail behind the Iron Curtain and stepping into a world he understands only on paper. Littell’s brilliance is in making Heller’s “amateur” status an advantage as well as a vulnerability. He does not know the rules, but he can see structures others miss, and his enemies underestimate him until it is too late. The novel moves with pace and bite, balancing tradecraft detail with mounting moral stakes, and it remains a sharp, unsettling meditation on bureaucratic cynicism and personal justice.

About the author: Robert Littell (born 1935) is a major American novelist of espionage and Cold War fiction, also known for The Company. The Amateur has been filmed twice, most recently as a major film released in April 2025.

Decoded by Mai Jia (13 August 2026) First published in China in 2002

An international bestselling spy novel that plunges into the secretive world of cryptology and the psychological cost of genius. Rong Jinzhen is a mathematical prodigy, recruited into China’s clandestine Unit 701 to crack “Code Purple”, an enemy cipher so elusive it becomes an obsession. As Jinzhen’s reputation rises, so does the pressure: the work is isolating, the stakes are national, and the line between brilliance and breakdown begins to blur. What starts as a triumph narrative becomes something darker, a descent into paranoia and mental unravelling as the act of decoding becomes a metaphor for power, secrecy and the limits of the human mind. Mai Jia writes from intimate knowledge of intelligence culture, giving the novel an unusual authenticity and a strong sense of Chinese social texture across decades. The result is both a gripping thriller and a portrait of a man consumed by the very talent that makes him indispensable. Decoded was first published in China in 2002 and became a phenomenon.

About the author: Mai Jia (pseudonym of Jiang Benhu) is one of China’s most awarded and bestselling writers, often credited as a key moderniser of Chinese espionage fiction.

Traitors to All by Giorgio Scerbanenco (3 September 2026) Originally published in Italian in 1966

A landmark of Italian noir and a defining case for Duca Lamberti, Scerbanenco’s doctor turned detective with a hard-earned moral core. One spring evening outside Milan, a Fiat carrying two passengers plunges into a canal. The deaths are initially filed as an accident, but Lamberti notices the pattern: the canal has claimed others, and the circumstances feel staged. His investigation points to a respectable lawyer with a murky history stretching back to the Second World War, and to an uncomfortable personal link, the man once shared a prison cell with Lamberti. Winner of the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 1968, the novel is both a razor tight mystery and a social portrait of “swinging sixties” Milan, where prosperity sits uneasily atop old wounds, compromised loyalties and opportunism. Scerbanenco’s writing is brisk, street level and unsentimental, exposing how violence and betrayal thread through every class. It is a gripping, morally charged thriller that helps explain why Scerbanenco is often called the father of Italian noir.

About the author: Born in Kiev in 1911, Scerbanenco moved to Italy young and settled in Milan as a teenager. After early romance fiction, he pioneered a distinctly Italian crime style, with many adaptations for film. He is best known for the Milan Quartet.

Rear Window and Other Stories by Cornell Woolrich (1 October 2026) Stories first appeared individually in the 1930s–1940s.

Nine superb crime stories from one of the twentieth century’s great masters of suspense and the lethal plot twist. The collection includes the tale that inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, in which an injured, housebound man becomes convinced he has witnessed a murder and must investigate without ever leaving his apartment. Elsewhere, Woolrich pushes ordinary people into extraordinary corners: an accidental killer improvises a grotesque hiding place for a body just as the landlord starts showing the room to prospective tenants; an innocent youth accused of murder flees, only to discover an unnerving talent for crime. Woolrich’s gift is acceleration: he takes a simple premise, tightens the screws with plausible obstacles, and then swivels the reader into a new, darker understanding at exactly the right moment. These stories show why he was so influential on film and fiction alike, and why his work remains a touchstone for psychological suspense. This selection follows the success of the Crime and Espionage edition of his novel I Married a Dead Man and offers an ideal entry point for new readers, while giving collectors a concentrated dose of his best short form work.

About the author: Cornell Woolrich (1903 to 1968) was a hugely admired American crime writer whose work inspired numerous films including Rear Window, Phantom Lady and The Bride Wore Black. He lived a notoriously difficult life and became a recluse in later years.