I
keep on being asked what books am I looking forward to reading next year. As I have currently been posting about
forthcoming books from various publishers between January and June, below (in
alphabetical order) books that I am looking forward to for the first six
months.
The Assassin of Verona by Benet
Brandreth (Bonnier Zaffre)
All
is not well in Venice. Threatened daily by Papal assassins, William
Shakespeare and his close friends Oldcastle and Hemminges are increasingly
isolated - the lies that have protected them so far beginning to wear
thin. His companions want desperately to leave, but Will is tied to
the city - his lover, the beautiful Isabella, is growing ever more sick. As
tensions reach breaking point, their company is forced to split…
The Pictures by
Guy Bolton (Point Blank)
Hollywood
1939. The year that The Wizard of
Oz and Gone with the Wind were
made. Detective Craine has spent his life working as a studio fixer,
whitewashing the misdemeanours and crimes committed by the studio players and
stars. But now he’s trying to turn his back on that life following the
recent death of his wife as he’s determined to be a better parent to his young
son. But then Craine’s services are called upon one last time. MGM need
him to smooth over the press coverage of the suicide of one of their producers.
And soon, what should be a straightforward case proves anything but when
connections are made between it and a brutal murder across town. And that’s
just the start of the story. It’s only a matter of time before
Craine must decide whether to follow orders, or to attempt to redeem a career
of concealment by going in search of the ugly truth. It’s a choice he knows
that cannot end well.
Deep Down Dead by Steph Broadribb
(Orenda Books)
Lori
Anderson is as tough as they come, managing to keep her career as a fearless
Florida bounty hunter separate from her role as single mother to nine-year-old
Dakota, who suffers from leukaemia. But when the hospital bills start to rack
up, she has no choice but to take her daughter along on a job that will make
her a fast buck. And that's when things start to go wrong. The fugitive she's
assigned to haul back to court is none other than JT, Lori's former mentor -
the man who taught her everything she knows ...the man who also knows the
secrets of her murky past. Not only is JT fighting a child exploitation racket
operating out of one of Florida's biggest theme parks, Winter Wonderland, a
place where 'bad things never happen', but he's also mixed up with the powerful
Miami Mob. With two fearsome foes on their tails, just three days to get JT
back to Florida, and her daughter to protect, Lori has her work cut out for
her. When they're ambushed at a gas station, the stakes go from high to
stratospheric, and things become personal.
The Liar by Steve
Cavanagh (Orion)
A
missing child. When wealthy businessman Leonard Howell's daughter is kidnapped,
the police jump on it straight away. But Howell knows this won't be
straightforward - he needs someone willing to break the rules. A criminal
lawyer. Once a con artist, now a hotshot lawyer, Eddie Flynn's learnt that fast
talk and sleight of hand are just as important in the courtroom are they are on
the street. Knowing what it's like to lose a daughter, he'll stop at nothing to
save Howell's. A corrupt case. With a client on trial for his life, and the
body count rising, Eddie Flynn is starting to fear that the whole thing was a
set-up from the very beginning. The only question is who is deadlier - the man
who knows the truth, or the one who believes a lie? A missing girl, a desperate
father and a case that threatens to destroy everyone involved - Eddie Flynn's
got his work cut out.
Corpus by Rory
Clements (Bonnier Zaffre)
1936.
Europe is in turmoil. The Nazis have marched into the Rhineland. In Russia,
Stalin has unleashed his Great Terror. Spain has erupted in civil war. In
Berlin, a young Englishwoman evades the Gestapo to deliver vital papers to a
Jewish scientist. Within weeks, she is found dead in her Cambridge bedroom, a
silver syringe clutched in her fingers. In a London club, three senior members
of the British establishment light the touch paper on a conspiracy that will
threaten the very heart of government. Even the ancient colleges of Cambridge
are not immune to political division. Dons and students must choose a side:
right or left, where do you stand? When a renowned member of the county set and
his wife are found horribly murdered, a maverick history professor finds
himself dragged into a world of espionage which, until now, he has only read
about in books. But the deeper Thomas Wilde delves, the more he wonders whether
the murders are linked to the death of the girl with the silver syringe - and,
just as worryingly, to the scandal surrounding King Edward VIII and his mistress
Wallis Simpson...
A Game of Ghosts by John Connolly
(Hodder & Stoughton)
It
is deep winter. The darkness is unending. The private detective named Jaycob
Eklund has vanished, and Charlie Parker is dispatched to track him down.
Parker's employer, Edgar Ross, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
has his own reasons for wanting Eklund found. Eklund is no ordinary
investigator. He is obsessively tracking a series of homicides and
disappearances, each linked to reports of hauntings. Now Parker will be drawn
into Eklund's world, a realm in which the monstrous Mother rules a crumbling
criminal empire, in which men strike bargains with angels, and in which the
innocent and guilty alike are pawns in a game of ghosts ...
The Third Nero by
Lindsay Davis (Hodder & Stoughton)
It
is understood that a plebian aedile, thought to be Ti Manlius Faustus, has
issued a formal complaint to the editors of the Acta Diurna, about the
wording of a recent notice concerning his wedding. Due to health issues,
queries should be referred to his wife. In view of sensitive
material contained in this publication, Our Master and God has instructed that
the scrolls must be subjected to detailed scrutiny by the intelligence service.
Some revelations may affect national security or be prejudicial to the safety
of agents in the field. Names and other information concerning senior officials
will be subject to redaction. No public statement is
expected. Information has been received that the sovereign nation of
Parthia submitted a diplomatic protest about this publication, which it calls
cynically Parthio-phobic, at the same time strongly denouncing recent treatment
of its ambassadors in Rome and requesting the urgent return of one its
citizens. The Palatine has declined to comment. T Flavius
Abascantus, freedman of the imperial family, points out that after a brief
sabbatical, which he describes as a rest-break by mutual agreement, he has
resumed all duties as Secretary of Petitions. He stresses that no formal
charges have been laid against him and states that he has the full confidence
of the Emperor. The Emperor is currently in Pannonia and unreachable.
American Noir by Barry Forshaw (No Exit
Press)
He is
acknowledged as a leading expert on crime fiction and films from Britain and
the European countries, but a further area of expertise is American crime
fiction, film and TV, as demonstrated in such books as The Rough Guide to
Crime Fiction and Detective. After the success of earlier
entries in his ‘Noir’ series -- Nordic Noir, Brit Noir and Euro
Noir -- he now tackles the largest and, some might argue, most
impressive body of crime fiction from a single country, the United States, to
produce the perfect reader's guide to modern American crime fiction. The word
‘Noir’ is used in its loosest sense: every major living American writer is
considered (including the giants Harlan Coben, Patricia Cornwell, James Lee
Burke, James Ellroy and Sara Paretsky, as well as non-crime writers such as
Stephen King who stray into the genre), often through a concentration on one or
two key books. Many exciting new talents are highlighted, and Barry
Forshaw’s knowledge of – and personal acquaintance with – many of the writers
grants valuable insights into this massively popular field. But the crime genre
is as much about films and TV as it is about books, and American
Noir is a celebration of the former as well as the latter. US television
crime drama in particular is enjoying a new golden age, and all of the
important current series are covered here, as well as key important recent
films.
The Wild Chamber
by Christopher Fowler (Transworld)
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?
Killers of the Flower Moon: An American
Crime and the birth of the FBI by David Grann (Simon & Schuster) A
true-life murder story which became one of the newly-created FBI's first major
homicide investigations. In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the
world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was
discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions
and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began
to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime
target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And this was just the beginning,
as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious
circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were
themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case. It
was one of the organisation's first major homicide investigations and the
bureau badly bungled it. In desperation, its young director, J. Edgar Hoover,
turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery.
Together with the Osage he and his undercover team began to expose one of the most
chilling conspiracies in American history.
Spook Street by
Mick Heron (John Murray)
Lori
Anderson is as tough as they come, managing to keep her career as a fearless
Florida bounty hunter separate from her role as single mother to nine-year-old
Dakota, who suffers from leukaemia. But when the hospital bills start to rack
up, she has no choice but to take her daughter along on a job that will make
her a fast buck. And that's when things start to go wrong. The fugitive she's
assigned to haul back to court is none other than JT, Lori's former mentor -
the man who taught her everything she knows ...the man who also knows the
secrets of her murky past. Not only is JT fighting a child exploitation racket
operating out of one of Florida's biggest theme parks, Winter Wonderland, a
place where 'bad things never happen', but he's also mixed up with the powerful
Miami Mob. With two fearsome foes on their tails, just three days to get JT
back to Florida, and her daughter to protect, Lori has her work cut out for her.
When they're ambushed at a gas station, the stakes go from high to
stratospheric, and things become personal.
The Nowhere Man by
Gregg Hurwitz (Michael Joseph/ Penguin)
He
was once called Orphan X. As a boy, Evan Smoak was taken from a children's
home, raised and trained as part of a secret government initiative buried so
deep that virtually no one knows it exists. But he broke with the programme,
choosing instead to vanish off grid and use his formidable skill set to help
those unable to protect themselves. One day, though, Evan's luck ran out
...Ambushed, drugged, and spirited away, Evan wakes up in a locked room with no
idea where he is or who has captured him. As he tries to piece together what's
happened, testing his gilded prison and its highly trained guards for
weaknesses, he receives a desperate call for help. With time running out, he
will need to out-think, out-manoeuvre, and out-fight an opponent the likes of
whom he's never encountered to have any chance of escape. He's got to save
himself to protect those whose lives depend on him. Or die trying.
The Venetian Game by Philip Gwynne
Jones (Little Brown)
From
his office on the Street of the Assassins, Nathan Sutherland, English Honorary
Consul to Venice, assists unfortunate tourists as best he can. A steady but
unexciting life that dramatically changes when he is offered a large sum of
money to look after a small package containing a prayer book illustrated by the
Venetian master Giovanni Bellini. Unknown to Nathan, from a palazzo on the
Grand Canal twin brothers Domenico and Arcangelo Moro, motivated by nothing
more than mutual hatred, have been playing out a complex game of art theft for
twenty years. And now Nathan finds himself unwittingly drawn into their deadly
business ...
Athenian Blues by
Pol Koutsakis (Bitter Lemon Press)
Stratos
hates being called a hitman. A conscientious fixer is what he is. He fixes
problems that very few can deal with. Things that people are willing to pay
handsomely to get done, without wanting to know about the small stuff. Stratos
is their man, provided that his meticulous research shows him that the targets
deserve their fate. But now, in the midst of the Greek
economic and political crisis, this film-noir loving assassin takes on the
highest-profile case of his career. He finds himself caught between the most
beloved lawyer in Greece, known as “the guardian of the poor”, and his actress
wife, the most desirable woman in the country. They are both in dire need of
his killing services, but which one is telling the truth? Helped by three
childhood friends, Costas Dragas, a homicide cop, Teri, a transsexual
high-class hooker and Maria, the passion of his life, he discovers that truth,
in shattered loves and broken families, is, as ever, a relative thing.
The Silent Death by
Volker Kutscher. (Sandstone Press)
Berlin
1930. Sound film is conquering the big screen, leaving many by the wayside:
producers, cinema owners - and silent film stars. Investigating the violent
on-set death of actress Betty Winter, Inspector Gereon Rath encounters the dark
side of glamour and an industry in turmoil. When his father requests that he
help his friend, the mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, and his ex-girlfriend
Charly makes a renewed attempt at rapprochement, things start to get out of
hand. Trapped in the machinations of rival film producers, he roams Berlin's
Chinese quarter and the city's underworld as he works ever closer to the edge
of legality. Meanwhile the funeral of the murdered Horst Wessel leads to
clashes between Nazis and Communists.
A Necessary Evil is
by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)
India,
1920. Captain Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee of the Calcutta Police Force
investigate the dramatic assassination of a Maharajah's son. The
fabulously wealthy kingdom of Sambalpore is home to tigers, elephants, diamond
mines and the beautiful Palace of the Sun. But when the heir to the throne is
assassinated in the presence of Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant
'Surrender-Not' Banerjee, they discover a kingdom riven with suppressed conflict.
Prince Adhir was a moderniser whose attitudes - and romantic relationship - may
have upset the more religious elements of his country, while his brother – now
in line to the throne – appears to be a feckless playboy. As Wyndham
and Banerjee desperately try to unravel the mystery behind the assassination,
they become entangled in a dangerous world where those in power live by their
own rules and those who cross their paths pay with their lives. They must find
a murderer, before the murderer finds them…
A Mask of
Shadows by Oscar de Muriel (Michael Joseph/ Penguin)
Frey
& McGray are back for their biggest and best case yet...1890. The Scottish
Play is coming home. But before the darling couple of London theatre, Henry
Irving & Ellen Terry, take their acclaimed Macbeth north of the border,
terror treads the boards on closing night in the capital. A supposed banshee
leaves a message written in blood, foretelling someone's demise. But whose?
With the company's arrival in Scotland, comes another death threat and
Edinburgh's own beloved pair - Detective 'Nine-Nails' McGray & Inspector
Ian Frey - enter the scene. Frey scoffs, believing it to be a publicity stunt,
while McGray is convinced it's a supernatural affair. As they scrutinise the
key players, they discover that Terry, Irving, and his peculiar, preoccupied
assistant (one Bram Stoker) all have reasons to kill, or be killed...By occult
curse or human hand, death will take a bow the night the curtain rises.
Blue Light
Yokohama by Nicolás Obregón (Michael Joseph/ Penguin)
Setagaya
ward, Tokyo Inspector Kosuke Iwata, newly transferred to Tokyo's homicide
department, is assigned a new partner and a secondhand case. Blunt, hard as
nails and shunned by her colleagues, Assistant Inspector Noriko Sakai is a partner
Iwata decides it would be unwise to cross. A case that's complicated - a family
of four murdered in their own home by a killer who then ate ice cream, surfed
the web and painted a hideous black sun on the bedroom ceiling before he left
in broad daylight. A case that so haunted the original investigator that he
threw himself off the city's famous Rainbow Bridge. Carrying his own secret
torment, Iwata is no stranger to pain. He senses the trauma behind the killer's
brutal actions. Yet his progress is thwarted in the unlikeliest of places.
Fearing corruption among his fellow officers, tracking a killer he's sure is
only just beginning and trying to put his own shattered life back together,
Iwata knows time is running out before he's taken off the case or there are
more killings ...
Not Single Spies by Michael Ripley
(Harper Collins)
An
entertaining history of British thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed, in which award-winning crime
writer Mike Ripley reveals that, though Britain may have lost an empire, her
thrillers helped save the world. With a foreword by Lee Child. From 1953, with the publication of Casino
Royale, the first James Bond novel, Britain ruled the waves when it came to
thriller novels, and HarperCollins stood at the forefront of this. Not Single Spies presents an engaging,
informal history of British thrillers, from Ian Fleming up to Lee Child, and it
will tell the story of how thrillers would take over from crime, transporting
readers from the cosy, class-ridden detective novels of Golden Age’ authors
such as Agatha Christie to the exotic, international settings of Fleming, Le
Carre and Deighton. In turn these
writers and their books would help Britain stagger out from under the yoke of
rationing into a bright new golden age of the 1960s and 70s. Excitement was in,
and it would be the dominant literary genre for almost four decades.
The Intrustions by Stav Sherez (Faber
& Faber)
When
a distressed young woman arrives at their station claiming her friend has been
abducted, and that the man threatened to come back and 'claim her next',
Detectives Carrigan and Miller are thrust into a terrifying new world of
stalking and obsession. Taking them from a Bayswater hostel, where backpackers
and foreign students share dorms and failing dreams, to the emerging threat of
online intimidation, hacking, and control, The Intrusions explores disturbing
contemporary themes with all the skill and dark psychology that Stav Sherez's
work has been so acclaimed for. Under scrutiny themselves, and with old foes
and enmities re-surfacing, how long will Carrigan and Miller have to find out
the truth behind what these two women have been subjected to?
Incendium by
A D Swanston (Transworld)
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...-->
No comments:
Post a Comment