Books to Look Forward to From Vintage (Incl Harvill Secker)

 

January 2022

Two Storm Wood is by Philip Gray. The guns are silent. The dead are not. 1919. On the desolate battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the dangerous task of gathering up the dead for mass burial. Captain Mackenzie, a survivor of the war, cannot yet bring himself to go home. First he must see that his fallen comrades are recovered and laid to rest. His task is upended when a gruesome discovery is made beneath the ruins of a German strongpoint. Amy Vanneck's fiance is one soldier lost amongst many, but she cannot accept that his body may never be found. She heads to France, determined to discover what became of the man she loved. It soon becomes clear that what Mackenzie has uncovered is a war crime of inhuman savagery. As the dark truth leaches out, both he and Amy are drawn into the hunt for a psychopath, one for whom the atrocity at Two Storm Wood is not an end, but a beginning.

April 2022

Their mission is murder. His is revenge. Suzuki is just an ordinary man until his wife is murdered. When he discovers the criminal gang responsible he leaves behind his life as a maths teacher and joins them, looking for a chance to take his revenge. What he doesn't realise is that he's about to get drawn into a web of unusual professional assassins, each with their own agenda. The Whale convinces his victims to take their own lives using just his words. The Cicada is a talkative and deadly knife expert. The elusive Pusher dispatches his targets in deadly traffic accidents. Suzuki must take each of them on, in order to try to find justice and keep his innocence in a world of killers. Three Assassins is by Kotaro Isaka.

The Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm... Dr Rea Dharmasena is devastated when she loses out on her dream research job to her med-school rival, Dr Julia Stone. When it comes to light that Julia got the job using Rea's own cutting edge research, Rea just can't let it go. Until finally, just after a life-changing medical discovery, Julia is found dead. Now Rea has the dream job she's always wanted. A job she would kill for. Deadly Cure is by Mahi Cheshire. 

May 2022

Kamil Rahman is a cook in a Brick Lane restaurant. But he used to be a detective back in Kolkata. And somehow trouble still knows how to find him. When a young woman Kamil knows is murdered the police are convinced her boyfriend is the culprit. Kamil isn't so sure and feels he has no choice but to start his own investigation. Meanwhile, his friend and restaurant manager, Anjoli, is troubled by a rise in the number of homeless deaths in their local area. The cases seem unrelated and as the duo dig deeper, discovering tentacles that stretch from Lahore to London, they find themselves in grave danger. Together they take on the indifference of the authorities to the homeless and the casual racism that pervades the investigation of killings of Muslims - all while a supremely intelligent murderer is manipulating events to stay several steps ahead of them. The Cook is by Ajay Chowdhury.

A Line to Kill is by Anthony Horowitz. It is M’s funeral. One man is missing from the graveside: the traitor who pulled the trigger and who is now in custody, accused of M’s murder – James Bond. Behind the Iron Curtain, a group of former SMERSH agents want to use the British spy in an operation that will change the balance of world power. Bond is smuggled into the lion’s den – but whose orders is he following, and will he obey them when the moment of truth arrives? In a mission where treachery is all around and one false move means death, Bond must grapple with the darkest questions about himself. But not even he knows what has happened to the man he used to be.

June 2022

Deception. Theft. Murder. All you need is confidence. When Lisa Lee, a vulnerable young woman, vanishes from a pretty Scottish seaside town Anna and Fin find themselves at the centre of an internet frenzy to find her. But Lisa may not be the hapless victim her father thinks. She had an unsuccessful YouTube channel and her last film showed her breaking into an abandoned French Chateau with other UrbExers and stumbling across a priceless Roman silver casket. One day after Lisa vanishes that casket gets listed for auction in Paris, reserve price fifty million euro and a catalogue entry that could challenge the fundamental principles of a major world religion. On a thrilling chase across Europe, Anna and Fin are caught up in a world of international art smuggling, billionaire con artists and religious zealotry. Confidence is by Denise Mina.

Sweet Dreams is by Anders Roslund. Two little girls go missing on the same day in Stockholm. Their disappearances are never explained. In time, the investigations are abandoned. A chance discovery puts Detective Ewert Grens back on the trail five years later. His own personal trauma makes him determined to find out what happened to these children who were snatched from a supermarket and a car park and never seen again and whose coffins lie empty in the local graveyard. His search leads him into the most repulsive recesses of the dark web and the discovery of a paedophile ring that can only be cracked from the inside. Grens is forced call upon his retired partner, Piet Hoffman, the best undercover operative he knows, to try to infiltrate the group. They will have only one chance - but are they up to the darkest challenge of their lives?