May 2017
As a
boy, he spied for Sherlock Holmes. As a man, he must save the Empire. London
1909: The British Empire seems invulnerable. But Captain Vernon Kell, head of
counter-intelligence at the War Office, knows better. In Russia, revolution; in
Germany, an arms race; in London, the streets are alive with foreign
terrorists. Kell wants to set up a Secret Service, but to convince his
political masters he needs proof of a threat - and to find that, he needs an
agent he can trust. The playing fields of Eton may produce good officers, but
not men who can work undercover in a munitions factory that appears to be
leaking secrets to the Germans. Kell needs Wiggins. Trained as a child by
Kell's old friend Sherlock Holmes - he led a gang of urchin investigators known
as the Baker Street Irregulars - Wiggins is an ex-soldier with an expert line
in deduction and the cunning of a born street fighter. 'The best', says Holmes.
Wiggins turns down the job - he 'don't do official'. But when his best friend
is killed by Russian anarchists, Wiggins sees that the role of secret agent
could take him towards his sworn revenge. Tracking the Russian gang, Wiggins
meets a mysterious beauty called Bela, who saves his life. Working for Kell, he
begins to unravel a conspiracy that reaches far beyond the munitions factory. The Irregular is by H B Lyle.
June 2017
All
trails became dead-ends. Tips that had at first seemed urgent now faded away.
The waiting game began. Whoever had the manuscripts would want money, and a lot
of it. They would surface eventually, but where and when, and how much would
they want? The most daring and devastating heist in literary history targets a
high security vault located deep beneath Princeton University. Valued at $25
million (though some would say priceless) the five manuscripts of F Scott
Fitzgerald's only novels are amongst the most valuable in the world. After an
initial flurry of arrests, both they and the ruthless gang of thieves who took
them have vanished without trace. Dealing in stolen books is a dark business,
and few are initiated to its arts - which puts Bruce Kable right on the FBI's
Rare Asset Recovery Unit's watch list. A struggling writer burdened by debts,
Mercer Mann spent summers on Florida's idyllic Camino Island as a kid, in her
grandmother's beach cottage. Now she is being made an offer she can't refuse:
to return to the peace of the island, to write her novel - and get close to a
certain infamous bookseller, and his interesting collection of manuscripts ...
Camino Island is by John Grisham
Ravi
Chandra Singh is the last guy you'd expect to become a private detective. A
failed religious scholar, he now works for Golden Sentinels, an upmarket London
private investigations agency. His colleagues are a band of gleefully amoral
and brilliant screw-ups: Ken and Clive, brutal ex-cops who are also a couple;
Mark Chapman, a burned-out stoner hiding a great mind; Marcie Holder, a
cheerful former publicist; Benjamin Lee, a techie prankster from South London;
David Okri, an ambitious lawyer from a well-connected Nigerian family; and
Olivia Wong, an upper-class Hong Kong financial analyst hiding her true skills
as one of the most dangerous hackers in the world-all under the watchful eye of
Roger Golden, wheeler-dealer extraordinaire, and his mysterious office manager,
Cheryl Hughes. Thrust into a world where the rich, famous, and powerful hire
him to solve their problems and wash their dirty laundry, Ravi finds himself in
over his head with increasingly bizarre and complex cases - and the visions
that he's been having of Hindu gods aren't helping. As Ravi struggles to stay
ahead of danger, he wonders if the things he's seeing are a delusion - or if he
might, in fact, be an unrecognised shaman of the modern world... Her Nightly Embrace is by Adi Tantimedh.
July 2017
Sleeping
in the Ground is by Peter Robinson. A
shocking mass murder occurs at a wedding in a small Dales church and a huge
manhunt follows. Eventually, the shooter is run to ground and things take their
inevitable course. But Banks is plagued with doubts as to exactly what happened
outside the church that day, and why. Struggling with the death of his first
serious girlfriend and the return of profiler Jenny Fuller into his life, Banks
feels the need to dig deeper into the murders, and as he does so, he uncovers
forensic and psychological puzzles that lead him to the past secrets that might
just provide the answers he is looking for. When the surprising truth becomes
clear, it is almost too late.
Light
Touch is by Stephen Leather. Working
undercover is all about trust - getting the target to trust you and then
betraying them in order to bring them to justice. But what do you do when you
believe an undercover cop has crossed the line and aligned herself with the
international drugs smuggler she was supposed to be targeting? When a deep-undercover
cop stops passing on intelligence about her target, MI5 sends in Dan 'Spider'
Shepherd to check that she is on the straight and narrow. Now two lives are on
the line - and Shepherd discovers that the real danger is closer to home than
he realised. As Spider finds his loyalties being tested to the limit, an SAS
killer is on a revenge mission in London and only Spider can stop him.
Scotland,
1934. Fair is foul and foul is fair as aristocratic private detective Dandy
Gilver heads off to Castle Bewer to solve a mystery of a missing ruby necklace
and a tragic family curse. She arrives as the residents are preparing to stage
a production of Macbeth, yet sinister goings on seem to be more than amateur
dramatics. Dandy Gilver and a Spot of
Toil and Trouble is by Catriona McPherson.
Rowan
Petty is a conman down on his luck. Tinafey is a hooker who's tired of the
streets. Their paths cross one snowy night in Reno, and they hit it off. An old
friend of Petty's turns up with a rumour about a crew of American soldiers who
smuggled two million dollars out of Afghanistan and stashed the money in an
apartment in Los Angeles. He thinks Petty's just the guy to steal the cash.
Petty thinks he hasn't got much to lose. He decides to drive down to L.A. to
investigate. Tinafey decides to go with him. These might be the last decisions
they will ever make. Smack is by Richard
Lange.
August 2017
Pushed
to breaking point, Cara Burrows abandons her home and family and escapes to a
five-star spa resort she can't afford. Late at night, exhausted and desperate,
she lets herself into her hotel room and is shocked to find it already occupied
- by a man and a teenage girl. A simple mistake on the part of the hotel
receptionist - but Cara's fear intensifies when she works out that the girl she
saw alive and well in the hotel room is someone she can't possibly have seen:
the most famous murder victim in the country, Melody Chapa, whose parents are
serving life sentences for her murder. Cara doesn't know what to trust:
everything she's read and heard about the case, or the evidence of her own
eyes. Did she really see Melody? And is she prepared to ask herself that
question and answer it honestly if it means risking her own life? Did You See Melody is by Sophie Hannah.
Blood
Sister is by Dreda Say Mitchell. They say blood is thicker than water. That's
not going to stop it being spilled. Life hasn't been easy for the Miller
family. Finally, mum Babs has had one bit of luck. She plans to share the
profits with her daughters. She thought they'd be pleased...But money always
causes trouble, especially when it's desperately needed. Jen wants to make a
better life for her kids. Tiff owes a lot of bad men a lot of money. And Dee is
worried that her husband is getting back into the criminal life. As the sisters
fall out, a gold bullion heist brings more opportunities - and many more
dangers. None of them are giving up without a fight...
The
Zealot’s Bones is by D M Mark. From Hell, Hull and Halifax, may the Good Lord
deliver us. In 1849, Hull is a city forgotten and abandoned; in the grip of a
cholera outbreak that sees its poorest citizens cut down by the cartload. Into
this world of flame and grief comes Mesach Stone, a former soldier, lost upon
his way. He's been hired as bodyguard by a Canadian academic hunting for the
bones of the apostle Simon the Zealot, rumoured to lie somewhere in
Lincolnshire. Stone can't see why ancient bones are of interest in a world full
of them...but then a woman he briefly loved is killed. As he investigates he
realises that she is just one of many...and that some deaths cry out for
vengeance.
September 2017
Svalbard,
Norway, 1977. Engineer Yuri takes the last boat to the Soviet outpost of
Pyramiden, just as the sun sinks for three long months. When his ambitious
assistant Semyon is found dead in a mine, the circumstances seem strange. Yuri
still plays by Stalin-era rules: Don't trust anyone; Keep your head down; Look
after number one. Yet is his tempestuous love affair with the fickle, brooding
Anya blinding him? On an island where the vodka follows freely and anyone could
be a secret agent, even the people closest to you are not always what they
seem. The Reluctant Contact is by
Stephen Burke
November 2017
A
family cloaked in secrets. A beguiling woman. A unique setting. Inspector
Bordelli is back to solve one of the most difficult cases of his entire career
in the sixth book in this atmospheric and evocative crime noir series by Marco
Vichi. 1967. It is winter in Florence,
and one year has passed since the city was devastated by the flood of the Arno.
Though the waters have receded, the memories of that day continue to linger
with the stains on the city walls. Residing in his farmhouse in the Florence
hills, Inspector Bordelli is weighed down with remorse and yearning for the
woman he has lost when a new case presents itself. An old, rich man loved by everyone
he knew has been killed in his own Fiesole villa and the murderer has left no
trace. While Bordelli questions the relatives and struggles to solve the
intricacies of the crime, he encounters a stooped, worn figure, who he
recognises as an old acquaintance from the War. Welcoming the man into his
home, Bordelli sets out to help him recover with the aid of good food and good
wine. But little does Bordelli know that his old friend is leading him ever
closer to a mysterious woman - the person who holds the secrets at the heart of
the mystery. Ghosts of The Past is by Marco Vichi.
The
Deaths of December is by Susi Holliday.
No one in the police station pays attention to the advent calendar until
DC Becky Greene idly opens one of the windows… and discovers a crime
scene. There are twenty-four doors. There’s a murder hidden behind twenty of
them. Twenty supposedly unconnected
deaths across the country, across the years – and at last the killer is
claiming them. As the county relaxes
into festive cheer, Greene and DS Eddie Carmine race against time to stop
future deaths. Because there are still
four doors left, and four murders will fill them.
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