Books to Look Forward to From Cannongate Books.

 July 2021

The Trenches is by Parker Bilal. In London, private investigator Dr Rayhana Crane is contacted by a woman who has received an unexpected letter from her estranged son Jason, not seen since he left to become a fighter for Islamic State. When his steps are traced back to the old stomping ground of her partner, Cal Drake, the former policeman goes undercover to infiltrate the sinister network which took Jason abroad. Meanwhile, Crane pursues a woman whose seemingly unconnected disappearance off the English coast is soon found to reveal a deadlier connection. As the two investigators delve deeper, they find themselves mired in a violent world where terror and organised crime intersect.

August 2021

A Corruption of Blood is by Ambrose Parry. Edinburgh. This city will bleed you dry.  Dr Will Raven is a man seldom shocked by human remains, but even he is disturbed by the contents of a package washed up at the Port of Leith. Stranger still, a man Raven has long detested is pleading for his help to escape the hangman. Back in the townhouse of Dr James Simpson, Sarah Fisher has set her sights on learning to practise medicine. Almost everyone seems intent on dissuading her from this ambition, but when word reaches her that a woman has recently obtained a medical degree despite her gender, Sarah decides to seek her out. Raven's efforts to prove his former adversary's innocence are failing and he desperately needs Sarah's help. Putting their feelings for one another aside, their investigations take them to both extremes of Edinburgh's social divide, where they discover that wealth and status cannot alter a fate written in the blood.

September 2021

Lawyer Bobby Carter did a lot of work for the wrong type of people. Now he's dead and it was no accident. Besides a distraught family and a heap of powerful friends, Carter's left behind his share of enemies. So, who dealt the fatal blow? DC Jack Laidlaw's reputation precedes him. He's not a team player, but he's got a sixth sense for what's happening on the streets. His boss chalks the violence up to the usual rivalries, but is it that simple? As two Glasgow gangs go to war, Laidlaw needs to find out who got Carter before the whole city explodes. The Dark Remains is by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin.

The Silent Conversation by Caro Ramsay.

An October Surprise from Audible

 

Before Halloween is upon us, it might be worth downloading this remarkable literary crime thriller WHITEHAVENS by Parker Bilal from Audible, in readiness for that night - All Hallowes Eve.

But first a little background: Yet again, Audible present an exclusive, a crime thriller to debut as an audiobook before entering print or as an eBook; Audible’s 2020 October surprise -

So, what is Whitehavens all about?

In a mission that goes badly wrong, loyal assassin Brodie takes out the nephew of the criminal mastermind he works for – and the hitman suddenly finds himself in the firing line. Saved by the woman he was sent to kill, Brodie is injured and at her mercy. But Brodie and Karima know too much about unforgiving gangster Donny to remain alive. Brodie his gun for hire. Karima his accountant. They both know where the bodies are buried.

And when Donny turns the might of his brutally violent empire on them there’s only one thing to do: run. Because as Brodie knows all too well, a moving target is harder to hit. Bound together, this unlikely couple must do all they can to survive. But can Karima ever trust the man who was sent to end her life?

Taking flight, they can only outpace their would-be killers for so long. When they run out of road, they have one last shot at freedom. But can they make it – before it’s too late?

(c) 2020 AUDIBLE UK

Whitehavens by Parker Bilal is a standalone spin off from the Crane & Drake Series. Inspired by personal experience, Whitehavens follows the story of the hitman who suddenly finds himself to be the marked man.

Released exclusively to Audible and narrated with flourish by actor Damian Lynch, it’s a thought-provoking distraction from the Covid-19 lockdown.

Parker Bilal was born in London, he has lived in Khartoum, Cairo, Denmark, Barcelona and currently, Amsterdam. He began writing literary fiction under his own name Jamal Mahjoub publishing seven critically acclaimed literary novels, which have been widely translated.

However, in 2012 Mahjoub realised a long-held dream of breaking into Crime Fiction with The Golden Scales, the first in his Makana series. Set in Cairo, the series covers the decade from 2001 to 2011 and the Arab Spring.

For more information, head to www.audible.co,uk and join the growing numbers who have that £7.99 / month membership.

Click HERE, and HERE, and HERE, and HERE, and HERE, and HERE, and HERE for why Audible is so important for advocates of the Crime and Thriller genre.

Private Eye Writers of America: 2018 Shamus Award Nominees

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For works published in 2017. Winners will be announced at the PWA Banquet at Bouchercon. (Nominees listed below in alphabetical order by author.)

Best Original Private Eye Paperback 

Play a Cold Hand by Terence Faherty

The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star by Vaseem Khan

Dames Fight Harder by M. Ruth Myers

The Painted Gun by Bradley Spinelli

Lights Out Summer by Rich Zahradnik

Best First Private Eye Novel

Under Water by Casey Barrett

A Negro and an Ofay by Danny Gardner

Gone to Dust by Matt Goldman

August Snow by Stephen Mack Jones

The Last Place You Look by Kristen Lepionka

Best P.I. Short Story

“Out of Business,”by Eric Beetner in Down & Out, The Magazine Vol 1/ Issue 1, edited by Rick Ollerman

 “Breakage,” by Reed Farrel Coleman in Down & Out, The Magazine Vol 1/ Issue 1, edited by Rick Ollerman

“Random,” by Brendan Dubois in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Jan/Feb

“Rosalie Marx is Missing,” by Robert S. Levinson in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, May/June

“Windward,” by Paul D. Marks in Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea, edited by Andrew McAleer and Paul D. Marks

Best Private Eye Novel 

Dark Water by Parker Bilal

Blood Truth by Matt Coyle

Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton

The Room of White Fire by T. Jefferson Parker

Monument Road by Michael Wiley

Congratulations to all the nominated authors.

Hat Tip Judith Bobalik

Books to Look Forward to From Bloomsbury

Helen and Ellie are identical twins - like two peas in a pod, everyone says. The girls know this isn't true, though: Helen is the leader and Ellie the follower. Until they decide to swap places: just for fun, and just for one day. But Ellie refuses to swap back...And so begins a nightmare from which Helen cannot wake up. Her toys, her clothes, her friends, her glowing record at school, the favour of her mother and the future she had dreamed of are all gone to a sister who blossoms in the approval that used to belong to Helen. And as the years pass, she loses not only her memory of that day but also herself - until eventually only 'Smudge' is left. Twenty-five years later, Smudge receives a call from out of the blue. It threatens to pull her back into her sister's dangerous orbit, but if this is her only chance to face the past, how can she resist? Beside Myself is a compulsive and darkly brilliant psychological thriller by Ann Morgan and is about family and identity - what makes us who we are and how very fragile it can be and is due to be published in January 2016. 

Sidney Chambers and the Dangers of Temptation is by James Runcie and is due to be published in June 2016. It's the summer of love in late 1960s England. The Apollo 11 astronauts are preparing to land on the moon, the war in Biafra dominates the news and Basil D'Oliveira has just been dropped from the England cricket team before a test series in apartheid South Africa. In the midst of all this change, Sidney Chambers, the loveable English clergyman continues his amateur sleuthing investigations. A bewitching divorcee enlists Sidney's help in convincing her son to leave a hippy commune; at a soiree on Grantchester Meadows during May Week celebrations a student is divested of a family heirloom; Amanda's marriage runs into trouble; Sidney and Hildegard holiday behind the Iron Curtain; Mrs Maguire's husband returns from the dead and an arson attack in Cambridge leads Sidney to uncover a cruel case of blackmail involving his former curate. In the rare gaps between church and crime, Sidney struggles with a persistent case of toothache, has his first flutter at the Newmarket races and witnesses the creation of a classic rock song.

Jonathan is a private investigator in a decaying eastern European city, consumed by his

work and his failing marriage. Approached one day by an elderly couple, he is presented with a faded photograph of their daughter, missing for nearly two decades. Troubled by the image of the little girl, who was the same age when she vanished as his own daughter is now - he is compelled to find her. But one night, soon after taking on the case, as he walks across the bridge spanning the river that divides the city, he encounters a young woman crouched at the foot of a stone angel - a woman who suddenly leaps into the icy water below. Without thinking, Jonathan plunges after her, and is soon drawn into her ghostly world of confusion, coincidence and intrigue, and the city he thought he knew turns strange and threatening. Haunting and deeply moving, The Drowned Detective is an intoxicating, atmospheric exploration of relationships, lies and betrayal and is due to be published in February 2016.

The death of a postman, Jorgen Kramer Nielsen, looks like a straightforward accident, the prefect case for Detective Inspector Konrad Simonsen to return to after a severe heart attack.  However, as new forensic evidence comes to light, the facts of Nielsen’s life unravel.  The postman is linked to the disappearance of an English teenager almost 40 years previously and as Simonsen and his team try to pull all of the threads together it becomes clear that events leading to his death were more sinister than anyone imagined.  The Vanished is by Lotte Hammer and Søren Hammer and is due to be published in March 2016.

How far would you go to protect the people you love?  When young painter Marianne Glass is found dead in her snow covered Oxford garden, Rowan Winter, her once closest friend, knows it wasn’t an accident.  Marianne had paralysing vertigo: she would never have gone so close to the roof edge.  Rowan’s pursuit of the truth about her old friend’s death takes her into every corner of her life, from bohemian East London to the professional art world in which Marianne had made her name.  Rowan is determined to find out what really happened – but some secrets are better left uncovered, and others are lethal.  Keep You Close is by Lucie Whitehouse and is due to be published in April 2016. 

Terrorists are nothing new.  The year is 1368 and Granada is under threat from violent extremists.  Enter Abu Abdallah, the penniless globetrotter who has wives and concubines on three continents and is still searching for the right woman, and his West African slave Sinan, the one with the brawn, the brains, the looks – and demons from the past.  Granada’s labyrinthine palace –citadel, Alhambra, is nearing its triumphant completion.  But Sinan and Abu Abdallah are drawn to a darker maze, where baffling mysteries threaten to ruin the balance of Muslim-Christian power in Spain.  Alhambra is by Tim Mackintosh-Smith and is due to be published in March 2016. 

Early in the morning of Monday 8 July 1895, thirteen-year-old Robert Coombes and his twelve-year-old brother Nattie set out from their small, yellow brick terraced house in east London to watch a cricket match at Lord's. Their father had gone to sea the previous Friday, leaving the boys and their mother at home for the summer. Over the next ten days Robert and Nattie spent extravagantly, pawning family valuables to fund trips to the theatre and the seaside. During this time nobody saw or heard from their mother, though the boys told neighbours she was visiting relatives. As the sun beat down on the Coombes house, an awful smell began to emanate from the building. When the police were finally called to investigate, what they found in one of the bedrooms sent the press into a frenzy of horror and alarm, and Robert and Nattie were swept up in a criminal trial that echoed the outrageous plots of the 'penny dreadful' novels that Robert loved to read.  The Wicked Boy is by Kate Summerscale and is due to be published in May 2016.

Mourad Hafiz appears to have dropped out of university and disappeared. Engaged by his family to try and find him, Makana comes to believe that the Hafiz boy became involved in some kind of political activity just prior to his disappearance. But before he can discover more, the investigation is sidetracked: a severed head turns up on the riverbank next to his home, and Makana finds himself drawn into ethnic rivalry and gang war among young men from South Sudan. The trail leads from a church in the slums and the benevolent work of the larger-than-life Rev. Preston Corbis and sister Liz to the enigmatic Ihsan Qaddus and the Hesira Institute.  The fifth installment of this acclaimed series is set in Egypt in December 2005. While Cairo is torn by the protests by South Sudanese refugees demanding their rights, President Mubarak has just been re-elected by a dubious 88 percent majority in the country's first multi-party elections. In response to what appears to be flagrant election-rigging, there are early stirrings of organized political opposition to the regime. Change is afoot and Makana is in danger of being swept away in the seismic shifts of his adopted nation. City of Jackals is by Parker Bilal and is due to be published in July 2016.

Books to look forward to from Bloomsbury

A war criminal on the run.  A mercenary hunting him down. A man caught in the crossfire.  Private Investigator Makana has a new client: the powerful art dealer Aram Kasabian. Kasabian wants him to track down a priceless painting that went missing from Baghdad during the US invasion. All the dealer can tell Makana is that the piece was smuggled into Egypt by an Iraqi war criminal who doesn't want to be found.  The art world is a far cry from the shady streets and dirty alleyways of the Cairo that Makana knows, but he discovers that this side of the city has its own dark underbelly. Before long, he finds himself caught between dangerous enemies on a trail that leads him into the darkness of war and which threatens to send the new life he has built for himself up in flames. The Burning Gates is by Parker Bilal and is due to be published in February 2015.

The Mime Order is by Samantha Shannon and is due to be published in January 2015. Paige Mahoney has escaped the brutal penal colony of Sheol I, but her problems have only just begun: many of the fugitives are still missing and she is the most wanted person in London. As Scion turns its all-seeing eye on Paige, the mime-lords and mime-queens of the city's gangs are invited to a rare meeting of the Unnatural Assembly. Jaxon Hall and his Seven Seals prepare to take centre stage, but there are bitter fault lines running through the clairvoyant community and dark secrets around every corner. Then the Rephaim begin crawling out from the shadows. But where is Warden? Paige must keep moving, from Seven Dials to Grub Street to the secret catacombs of Camden, until the fate of the underworld can be decided. Will Paige know who to trust? The hunt for the dreamwalker is on.

The Case of the 'Hail Mary' Celeste is by Malcolm Pryce and is due to be published in March 2015.  It was Tuesday the second of December 1947 when Jenny the Spiddler walked into my office: almost a month before they nationalised my mother. Jack Wenlock is the last of the Railway Goslings: that fabled cadre of railway detectives created at the Weeping Cross Railway Servants' Orphanage, who trod the corridors of the GWR trains in the years 1925 to 1947. Sworn to uphold the name of God's Wonderful Railway and all that the good men of England fought for in two world wars, Jack keeps the trains free of fare dodgers and purse-stealers, bounders and confidence tricksters, German spies and ladies of the night. But now, as the clock ticks down towards the nationalisation of the railways Jack finds himself investigating a case that begins with an abducted great aunt, but soon develops into something far darker and more dangerous. It reaches up to the corridors of power and into the labyrinth of the greatest mystery in all the annals of railway lore - the disappearance in 1915 of twenty-three nuns from the 7.25 Swindon to Bristol Temple Meads, or the case of the 'Hail Mary' Celeste. Shady government agents, drunken riverboat captains, a bandaged bookseller, a missing manuscript, a melancholic gorilla and a 4070 Godstow Castle engine - the one with a sloping throatplate in the firebox and the characteristic double cough in the chuffs - all collide on a journey that will take your breath away.

Haunted by his failure to prevent the violent murders of two innocent women, Gibraltarian

lawyer Spike Sanguinetti joins an old flame, Detective Sergeant Jessica Navarro, for a holiday on Corfu’s beautiful northeast coast. There they meet philanthropist Leo Hoffmann, scion of the powerful Hoffmann banking family. Leo has recently unearthed an important archeological site, but the discovery of the body of a young Albanian, bludgeoned to death, halts progress. Reluctantly, Spike agrees to defend the local man accused, but as he digs deeper, he finds an island paradise full of deadly secrets – secrets that some will go to any lengths to let lie …  Sleeping Dogs is by Thomas Mogford and is due to be published in April 2015

Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins is by James Runcie and is due to be published in May 2015. The loveable full-time priest and part-time detective, Canon Sidney Chambers, continues his sleuthing adventures in 1960's Cambridge. On a snowy Thursday morning in Lent 1964, a stranger seeks sanctuary in Grantchester's church, convinced he has murdered his wife. Sidney and his wife Hildegard go for a shooting weekend in the country and find their hostess has a sinister burn on her neck. Sidney's friend Amanda receives poison pen letters when at last she appears to be approaching matrimony. A firm of removal men 'accidentally' drop a Steinway piano on a musician's head outside a Cambridge college. During a cricket match, a group of schoolboys blow up their school Science Block. On a family holiday in Florence, Sidney is accused of the theft of a priceless painting. Meanwhile, on the home front, Sidney's new curate Malcolm seems set to become rather irritatingly popular with the parish; his baby girl Anna learns to walk and talk; Hildegard longs to get an au pair and Sidney is offered a promotion. 

Under the heartless vault of the Greenland's artic sky the body of a girl is discovered. Half-naked and tied up, buried hundreds of miles from any signs of life, she has lain alone, hidden in the ice cap, for twenty-five years. Now an ice melt has revealed her. When Detective Chief Superintendent Konrad Simonsen is flown in to investigate this horrific murder and he sees how she was attacked, it triggers a dark memory and he realises this was not the killer's only victim. As Simonsen's team work to discover evidence that has long since been buried, they unearth truths that certain people would rather stayed forgotten, disturbing details about the moral standing of some of Denmark's political figures are revealed and powerful individuals are suddenly working against them. But the pressure is on as it becomes clear that the killer chooses victims who all look unsettlingly similar, a similarity that may be used to the investigators' advantage, just so long as they can keep the suspect in their sights.  The Girl in The Ice is by Lotte & Søren Hammer and is due to be published in June 2015.

These are a few of my favourite books of 2014...

This year I sadly did not read as many books as I wanted to.  However there were a number of books that I read that certainly made my favourites list this year and a number that are also honourable mentions.  They are as follows in no particular order (that is to say as a how I remembered them).

The Wolf in Winter by John Connolly.  John Connolly is one of those writers whose writing continues to fascinate in a myriad of ways.  With his latest Charlie Parker novel he has once again written a stylish novel that reminds longstanding readers as to why he is one of our foremost thrillers writers.  In The Wolf in Winter the community of Prosperous, Maine has always thrived when others have suffered.  Its inhabitants are wealthy, its children's future secure.  It shuns outsiders.  It guards its own.  And at the heart of the Prosperous lie the ruins of an ancient church, transported stone by stone from England centuries earlier by the founders of the town . . . But the death of a homeless man and the disappearance of his daughter draw the haunted, lethal private investigator Charlie Parker to Prosperous.  Parker is a dangerous man, driven by compassion, by rage, and by the desire for vengeance.  In him the town and its protectors sense a threat graver than any they have faced in their long history, and in the comfortable, sheltered inhabitants of a small Maine town, Parker will encounter his most vicious opponents yet.  Charlie Parker has been marked to die so that Prosperous may survive.  I have always loved John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series and this one in my opinion is one of the best in the series.

The Fever is by Megan Abbott in which the Nashes are a close-knit family.  Tom, a popular teacher, is father to the handsome, roguish Eli and his younger sister Deenie, serious and sweet.  But their seeming stability is thrown into chaos when two of Deenie's friends become violently ill, and rumours of a dangerous outbreak sweep through the whole community.  As hysteria swells and as more girls succumb, tightly held secrets emerge that threaten to unravel the world Tom has built for his kids, and destroy friendships, families, and the town's fragile idea of security.  For me Megan Abbott is a writer whose novels always fascinate and always have a sense of place whether it is writing noir stories that evoke sexy, dark and tormented characters or teenage angst and family dilemmas. 

The Axeman's Jazz by Ray Celestin.  New Orleans, 1919.  As a dark serial killer - The

Axeman - stalks the city, three individuals set out to unmask him.  Though every citizen of the 'Big Easy' thinks they know who could be behind the terrifying murders, Detective Lieutenant Michael Talbot, heading up the official investigation, is struggling to find leads.  But Michael has a grave secret and — if he doesn't find himself on the right track fast — it could be exposed.  Former detective Luca d'Andrea has spent the last six years in Angola State penitentiary, after Michael, his protégée, blew the whistle on his corrupt behaviour.  Now a newly freed man, Luca finds himself working with the mafia, whose need to solve the mystery of the Axeman is every bit as urgent as the authorities'.  Meanwhile, Ida is a secretary at the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.  Obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and dreaming of a better life, Ida stumbles across a clue which lures her and her musician friend, Louis Armstrong, to the case and into terrible danger . . . As Michael, Luca and Ida each draw closer to discovering the killer's identity, the Axeman himself will issue a challenge to the people of New Orleans: play jazz or risk becoming the next victim.  And as the case builds to its crescendo, the sky will darken, and a great storm will loom over the city . . . The Axeman’s Jazz is a debut novel that will satisfy anyone who enjoys historical crime fiction.  Based on a real life killer it is also set in 1919 in New Orleans, the pre-prohibition era, and the birth of the jazz era and the mafia holding their grip.  Along with a young Louis Armstrong helping with the investigation it makes for a wonderful story.

Kill Your Boss by Shane Kuhn - If you're reading this, you're a new employee at Human Resources, Inc.  Congratulations.  And condolences.  At the very least, you're embarking on a career that you will never be able to describe as dull.  You'll go to interesting places.  You'll meet unique and stimulating people from all walks of life.  And kill them.  You will make a lot of money, but that will mean nothing to you after the first job.  Assassination, no matter how easy it looks in the movies, is the most difficult, stressful, and lonely profession on the planet.  Even when you're disguised as an intern.  John Lago is a hit-man.  He has some rules for you.  And he's about to break every single one.  Kill Your Boss is subversive, funny, twisty, ultra violent, and darkly comedic.  It is a novel that is destined to become a classic. 

After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman.  When Felix Brewer meets nineteen-year-old Bernadette 'Bambi' Gottschalk at a Valentine's Dance in 1959, he charms her with wild promises, some of which he actually keeps.  Thanks to his lucrative if not always legal businesses, she and their three little girls live in luxury.  But on the Fourth of July, 1976, Bambi's world implodes when Felix, newly convicted and facing prison, mysteriously vanishes.  Though Bambi has no idea where her husband — or his money — might be, she suspects one woman does: his devoted young mistress, Julie.  When Julie herself disappears ten years to the day that Felix went on the lam, everyone assumes she's left to join her old lover — until her remains are found in a secluded wooded park.  Now, twenty-six years after Julie went missing, Roberto 'Sandy' Sanchez, a retired Baltimore detective working cold cases for some extra cash, is investigating her murder.  What he discovers is a tangled web of bitterness, jealously, resentment and greed stretching over the three decades and three generations that connect these five very different women.  And at the centre of every woman's story is the man who, though long gone, has never been forgotten: the enigmatic Felix Brewer.  Somewhere between the secrets and lies connecting past and present, Sandy could find the explosive truth...  After Your Gone is a classic story of murder and mystery, in which one man's disappearance echoes through the lives of his wife, daughters — and mistress.  Laura Lippman is as skilful at plotting as she is at characters and setting and she is a writer of some of the best contemporary crime writing being written today.  Any of her novels are worth reading but with After I’m Gone she has written a novel that focuses on crimes of the heart and the repercussions that have an effect on so many. 

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch.  If you haven’t read this series then I would urge you to do so.  This time around Peter Grant is out of whatever comfort zone he might have found and out of London - to a small village in Herefordshire where the local police are reluctant to admit that there might be a supernatural element to the disappearance of some local children.  But while you can take the London copper out of London you can't take the London out of the copper.  Travelling west with Beverley Brook, Peter soon finds himself caught up in a deep mystery and having to tackle local cops and local gods.  And what's more all the shops are closed by 4pm.  Think police procedural and magic and murder.  However, for all the murder and mayhem, this is a darkly comic read with characters you can't help but like.  Easily read by adults and young adults alike.

A Cruel Necessity by LC Tyler - The theatres are padlocked.  Christmas has been cancelled.  It is 1657 and the unloved English Republic is eight years old.  Though Cromwell's joyless grip on power appears immovable, many still look to Charles Stuart's dissolute and threadbare court-in-exile, and some are prepared to risk their lives plotting a restoration.  For the officers of the Republic, constant vigilance is needed.  So, when the bloody corpse of a Royalist spy is discovered on the dung heap of a small Essex village, why is the local magistrate so reluctant to investigate?  John Grey is a young lawyer with few clients at the time of Oliver Cromwell and Charles Stuart.  Grey is drawn into a vortex of plot and counter-plot and into the all-encompassing web of intrigue spun by Cromwell's own spymaster, John Thurloe.  So when nothing is what is seems, can Grey trust anyone?  LC Tyler is best known for his comedic crime novels featuring Ethelred Tressider a mid-list crime writer and Elsie his trusty agent.  However in A Cruel Necessity, LC Tyler has started a new historical series which is richly drawn and where it is clear that painstaking research has given this new series a strong sense of credibility and historical accuracy.  As a character John Grey is engaging as much as he is sympathetic.  This is a series that will no doubt get better and garner a loyal following.  Hopefully I am at the head of the queue.

The Final Silence by Stuart Neville.  Rea Carlisle has inherited a house from an uncle she never knew.  It doesn’t take her long to clear out the dead man’s remaining possessions, but one room remains stubbornly locked.  When Rea finally forces it open she discovers inside a chair, a table — and a leather-bound book.  Inside its pages are locks of hair, fingernails: a catalogue of victims.  Horrified, Rea wants to go straight to the police but when her family intervene, Rea turns to the only person she can think of: DI Jack Lennon.  But Lennon is facing his own problems.  Suspended from the force and hounded by DCI Serena Flanagan, the toughest cop he’s ever faced, Lennon must unlock the secrets of a dead man’s terrifying journal.  Whilst the characters in The Final Silence are not all likeable they do bring a sense of depth.  He’s not afraid of violence, less than perfect characters or controversial plot developments; all of which make his stories more realistic and thrilling.  The Final Silence has a very dark noirish quality to it as can be expected in the novels of Stuart Neville.  It is gloomy and violent, but it is also wickedly funny at times.  Most of its bitter characters are mired in the past; like one has come to expect from Stuart Neville this is not a book for the fainthearted.  It is intriguingly complex, and Neville's dialogue is profane and caustic.  Perfect.

  

The Missing by Sam Hawken.  Jack Searle, an American widower, is bringing up his two stepdaughters, Lidia and Marina, alone in the border town of Laredo.  One night, Marina crosses the border into Mexico to go to a concert with her cousin Patricia in Nuevo Laredo — a dangerous city, controlled by drug cartels and devastated by violence and corruption.  They never come back.  A frantic hunt begins, with Jack and Inspector Gonzalo Soler leading the way.  But soon the whole police force is suspended due to endemic corruption, the army takes over the city and missing girls are forgotten.  Jack and Gonzalo must take the law into their own hands, but in their efforts to find the girls they uncover truths about Nuevo Laredo that neither of them ever wanted to face.  It is clear that he is preoccupied by current events in Mexico and the events are very sharply portrayed in his novels.  From his first novel Tequila Sunset (which is my personal favourite) to The Missing, Hawken manages to enthral readers .  His prose is razor sharp and it is an exceptionally crafted novel that resonates with urgency, emotion, and danger.  It’s a gritty, visceral novel you won’t want to put down.  My only problem with The Missing is the fact that I felt that it was too short. 

The Burning Room by Michael Connelly.  I always have a soft for Harry Bosch and in this latest novel Michael Connelly has reaffirmed why he is the best in the business.  In the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit, not many murder victims die a decade after the crime.  So when a man succumbs to complications from being shot by a stray bullet ten years earlier, Bosch catches a case in which the body is still fresh, but any other clues are virtually non-existent.  Even a veteran cop would find this one tough going, but Bosch's new partner, Detective Lucia Soto, has no homicide experience.  A young star in the department, Soto has been assigned to Bosch so that he can pass on to her his hard-won expertise.  Now Bosch and Soto are tasked with solving a murder that turns out to be highly charged and politically sensitive.  Beginning with the bullet that has been lodged for years in the victim's spine, they must pull new leads from years-old evidence, and these soon reveal that the shooting was anything but random.  As their investigation picks up speed, it leads to another unsolved case with even greater stakes: the deaths of several children in a fire that occurred twenty years ago.  But when their work starts to threaten careers and lives, Bosch and Soto must decide whether it is worth risking everything to find the truth, or if it's safer to let some secrets stay buried.  As can be expected this is  a well-drawn police procedural.  The beautifully constructed plot involves political corruption, greed, lust, and vengeance.  It excels as a look at how power, prestige, and the media can override the best intentions.                                   

Skeleton Road by Val McDermid.  In the centre of historic Edinburgh, builders are preparing to demolish a disused Victorian Gothic building.  They are understandably surprised to find skeletal remains hidden in a high pinnacle that hasn’t been touched by maintenance for years.  Who do the bones belong to, and how did they get there?  Could the eccentric British pastime of free climbing the outside of buildings play a role?  Enter cold case detective Karen Pirie, who gets to work trying to establish the corpse’s identity.  And when it turns out the bones may be from as far away as former Yugoslavia, Karen will need to dig deeper than she ever imagined into the tragic history of the Balkans: to war crimes and their consequences, and ultimately to the notion of what justice is and who serves it.  One of the things McDermid excels in is writing standalone novels.  This is not to say that there is anything wrong with her series books but it seems that she writes with an extra fervour with these.  In Skeleton Road we have a murder mystery moves seamlessly to an exploration of geopolitics and genocide.  This is one of her best being complex and thought provoking.  With a multi stranded story and some very haunting and evocative details about the atrocities in the Balkans, this was really part murder mystery and part history lesson.  At the heart of the story is a real opportunity to explore themes of loss and revenge.  It is not surprising with novels like Skeleton Road that Val McDermid is considered to be one of our finest crime writers.

Grandville Noël by Bryan Talbot.  This is not strictly a novel but a graphic novel.  A steampunk graphic novel to be precise.  I mean how else can one explain the head of Scotland Yard Inspector LeBrock, a muscular, talking badger who has penchant for bareknuckle fights.  Not only badgers, but also rats, dogs, and every other kind of talking animal populate Talbot’s alternate nineteenth-century Britain and France.  In Granville Noël Detective Inspector LeBrock is alone in Grandville, stalking a growing religious cult led by a charismatic unicorn messiah who, along with his con-men partners, are responsible for horrific mass murder.  With Paris in the grip of the mysterious crime lord Tiberius Koenig and increasingly violent attacks by human terrorists, can LeBrock stop the inevitable slide into fascism?  And could these conditions all be the manipulations of a centuries-old conspiracy to throw the world into war?  This is the latest book in the series in this beautifully illustrated murder mystery that is one part Sherlock Holmes, another part Wind in the Willows, wrapped in a steampunk veneer.  It is not to be missed.

Honourable mentions go to Sarah Hilary’s Someone Else’s Skin, A possibility of Violence by D A Mishani, The Ghost Runner by Parker Bilal, This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash, The Silent Boy by Andrew Taylor and Euro Noir by Barry Forshaw.