Crime and Nourishment 2023

 

Oleander is delighted to be joining forces with Richard Reynolds to bring you an exciting crime fiction event featuring 8 brilliant local authors.

Each of our authors will be taking the stage and speaking about their latest book releases, answering questions from the audience and all will be signing their books for attendees.

The authors' books will  be on sale at the event and complimentary tea and cake will be served.

Come along and have a fun afternoon with your favourite authors and buy some Christmas gifts (even if they're for yourself!)

Richard is well-known locally as the recently-retired Crime Specialist at the world-famous Cambridge bookseller Heffers. He is also Chair of the CWA Gold Dagger Award.

The Oleander Press has been the other Cambridge publisher since 1960.Oleander is delighted to be joining forces with Richard Reynolds to bring you an exciting crime fiction event featuring 8 brilliant local authors.

Each of our authors will be taking the stage and speaking about their latest book releases, answering questions from the audience and all will be signing their books for attendees.

The authors' books will  be on sale at the event and complimentary tea and cake will be served.

Come along and have a fun afternoon with your favourite authors and buy some Christmas gifts (even if they're for yourself!)

Richard is well-known locally as the recently-retired Crime Specialist at the world-famous Cambridge bookseller Heffers. He is also Chair of the CWA Gold Dagger Award.

The Oleander Press has been the other Cambridge publisher since 1960.

Tickets can be bought here.

Crime at Heffers

5th April 2018

On Thursday 5th April at 6.30pm, join Peter Morfoot at Heffers as he celebrates the publication of Box of Bones, the third book in the Captain Darac series of crime novels.

Time:- 6:30pm

Information about tickets can be found here.

1st May 2018

On 1st May, join author Roland Philipps at Heffers as he talks about his new book A Spy Named Orphan, which draws on a wealth of previously classified material to tell Donald Maclean's story in full for the first time. In conversation with Christopher Andrew, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Roland will take us back to the golden age of espionage, and reveal the impact of one of the most dangerous and enigmatic Soviet agents of the twentieth century. 

Time:- 6:30pm

Information about tickets can be found here.

Books to Look Forward to from Titan Books

January 2017

London, 1887. Victorian adventuress and butterfly hunter Veronica Speedwell receives an invitation to visit the Curiosity Club, a ladies-only establishment for daring and intrepid women. There she meets the mysterious Lady Sundridge, who begs her to take on an impossible task—saving society art patron Miles Ramsforth from execution. Accused of the brutal murder of his artist mistress Artemisia, Ramsforth will face the hangman’s noose if Veronica cannot find the real killer.  But Lady Sundridge is not all that she seems, and unmasking her true identity is only the first of the many secrets Veronica must uncover. Together with her natural historian colleague Stoker, Veronica races against time to find the true murderer… A Perilous Undertaking is by Deanna Raybourn.

February 2017

Snatch is by Gregory McDonald.  Whether it’s a Middle East oil crisis in the 1970s or the London Blitz during WWII, world events have a way of breeding trouble on the home front, too. That’s how Toby Rinaldi, son of a U.N. Ambassador, wound up kidnapped on his way to a California amusement park, and how Robby Burnes, orphaned son of British nobility, wound up snatched on the snowy streets of New York City. But as Robby’s famous namesake taught us, the best-laid plans don’t always work out as intended. Especially not when you’re a kidnapper in the hands of Gregory McDonald.

The Threateners is a Matt Helm novel by Donald Hamilton.  A ruthless South American drug lord has a plan to bring the United States to its knees. A group of renegade American agents has plans to smash the kingpin and his cartel, by any means necessary. Caught in the middle, Matt Helm’s got to do double duty to stop them both, and to protect a woman with information both sides would kill for…

The Killing Bay is by Chris Ould.  When a group of international activists arrive on the Faroe Islands, intent on stopping the traditional whale hunts, tensions between islanders and protestors run high. And when a woman is found murdered only hours after a violent confrontation at a whale drive, the circumstances seem purposely designed to increase animosity between the two sides. For English DI Jan Reyna and local detective Hjalti Hentze, the case quickly exposes personal connections and con icts of interest. But as they dig deeper it becomes increasingly clear that the murder has other, more sinister aspects to it. Knowing evidence is being hidden from them, neither policeman knows who to trust, or how far some people might go to defend their beliefs.

The aristocratic Charles Bromley arrives at 221B Baker Street to beg Sherlock Holmes for his help. Bromley believes that his wife is in danger, as she has refused an offer to sell the Moonstone, a fabulous diamond that has been in her family for generations but which is said to be cursed. When a jeweller is found murdered, it seems as if the Moonstone deserves its reputation. Then the diamond is stolen, and Holmes must try to unravel a mystery centuries in the making. The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Moonstone’s Curse is by Sam Siciliano.

March 2017

Private Investigator George Kocharyan is on the trail of a runaway maid, the employee of a famous TV surgeon and his beauty-queen wife. The maid is accused of stealing confidential documents, and Kocharyan’s investigation leads him to the city’s Filipino community, where he discovers the risks faced by those working far from home. Meanwhile, the discovery of a teenager’s body brings the permanently unpleasant DI Vicky Stubbing back into George’s life, and as two violent strangers cross his path also looking for the missing maid, he begins to wonder if his celebrity employers are everything they seem. The Surgeon’s Case is by E G Rodford.

Follow Me Down is by Sherri Smith.  Mia Haas has built a life for   As Mia re-evaluates their difficult, shared history and launches her own investigation into the grisly murder, she uncovers secrets that could exonerate Lucas—or seal his fate. In a small town where everyone’s history is intertwined, Mia will be forced to confront her own demons, placing her right in the killer’s crosshairs herself far from the small town where she grew up, but when she receives word that her twin brother is missing, she’s forced to return home. Once hailed as the golden boy of their community, Lucas Haas disappeared the same day the body of one of his teenage students is pulled from the river. Trying to wrap her head around the rumours of Lucas’s affair with the teen, and unable to reconcile the media’s portrayal of Lucas as a murderer with her own memories of him, Mia is desperate to find another suspect.  All the while, she wonders, if he’s innocent, why did he run?

Sherlock Holmes: A Betrayal of Blood is by Mark A Latham.  It is 1894, and the news of a Transylvanian nobleman’s death at the hands of a certain Professor Van Helsing is the talk of London.  Unsatisfied at the acquittal of the professor, Mycroft Holmes asks Sherlock to investigate what truly led to the deaths of Lucy Westenra and the mysterious aristocrat. The newspapers are full of inconsistencies and wild supernatural theories, and as Holmes digs deeper, he suspects that those hailed as heroes are not what they seem. The clues point to an innocent man framed and murdered for crimes he did not commit, and Holmes and Watson find themselves targeted at every turn, as what began as a quest to clear one man’s name reveals a conspiracy that draws them to the mountains of Transylvania and the infamous Castle Dracula.

How far would you go to provide for your child?  Adam Shaw is dying, and knows he’ll leave his disabled son with nothing. His solution? Rob a bank. It’s no surprise that things go wrong. What is surprising is that when another customer is accidentally shot, no one in the bank is in a hurry to hand Adam over to the police. There’s the manager who’s desperate to avoid an audit, the security guard with a serious grudge against the dead man, and the woman who knows exactly how bad the victim really was...  Eight people, twelve hours, one chance to cover up a murder. But it’s not just the police they have to fool. When many lives intersect, the results can be explosive. Parallel Lines is by Steven Saville.

Taking a midnight stroll along the Hudson River, Mike Hammer gets more than he bargained for: a partial corpse on an ice floe. The body is that of an ex-police captain, who spent the last years of his life as a butler to a millionaire—also now deceased.  Were both master and servant murdered? Captain Pat Chambers thinks so. But to prove it Hammer must travel to upstate New York to investigate the dead man’s family, all of whom have a motive for murder.  The Will to Kill is a Mike Hammer novel by Micky Spillane and Max Allan Collins.

April 2017

The Age of Olympus is by Gavin Scott.  Duncan Forrester’s research on an Aegean island is interrupted first by the murder of a British archaeologist, and then by the outbreak of the Greek Civil War. The worship of ancient gods may provide a clue to the murderer, but in such a tumultuous time, little is what it seems.

Fatal Music is by Peter Morfoot.  Captain Paul Darac of the Brigade Criminelle is called to a potential crime scene - an elderly woman found dead in her hot tub. At first it is thought that she died of natural causes, but a surprising link with Darac’s own life leads him to dig deeper. In doing so he uncovers disturbing proof that there may have been a motive to kill the woman, and there is no shortage of suspects. Allegiances past and present must be set aside to unravel a tale of greed, deception and treachery that spans the social spectrum. It is among the winding streets of his own neighbourhood in Nice’s old town, the Babazouk, that Darac faces his severest test yet.

May 2017

Two Lost Boys is by L F Robertson.  Janet Moodie has spent years as a death row appeals attorney. Overworked and recently widowed, she’s had her fill of hopeless cases, and is determined that this will be her last. Her client is Marion ‘Andy’ Hardy, convicted along with his brother Emory of the rape and murder of two women. The brothers were tried separately, and Emory received a life sentence, while Andy got the death penalty, labelled the ringleader despite his low IQ and Emory’s dominant personality.  Convinced that Andy’s previous lawyers have missed mitigating evidence that would have spared him the death penalty, Janet investigates Andy’s past, revealing a sordid and damaging upbringing, a series of errors on the part of his previous council, and most worrying of all, the possibility that there is far more to the Hardy family than was first thought. Andy may be guilty, but of what?

His first adventure consisted of the search for a rare record; his second begins with the discovery of one. When a mint copy of the final album by “Valerian”—England’s great lost rock band of the 1960s—surfaces in a charity shop, all hell breaks loose.  Finding this record triggers a chain of events culminating in our hero learning the true fate of the singer Valerian, who died under equivocal circumstances just after—or was it just before?— The abduction of her two-year-old son.  Along the way, the Vinyl Detective finds himself marked for death, at the wrong end of a shotgun, and unknowingly dosed with LSD as a prelude to being burned alive. And then there’s the grave robbing… But he does find out what happened to the missing child, and it wasn’t what anyone expected—or wanted—to hear.  The Vinyl Detective: The Run-Out Groove is by Andrew Cartmel

June 2017

Fight or Die is by James Hilton When the Gunn brothers Danny and Clay answer a call to help old friends, they are plunged into a volatile and potentially deadly situation. Larry and Pamela Duke own one of the most popular nightclubs in the Spanish resort town of Ultima, but a local gang known as the Locos are determined to take it for themselves. Danny and Clay are hired to protect the club, but soon new adversaries enter the game. Against such odds there are only two choices: fight or die..

The game’s afoot once more as Holmes and Watson face off against Moriarty’s gang, the Pinkertons, flesh-eating horses, a parliament of imps, boredom, Surrey, a disappointing butler demon, a succubus, a wicked lord, an overly-Canadian lord, a tricycle-fight to the death and the dreaded Pumpcrow. Oh, and a hell hound, one assumes.  Warlock Holmes: The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles is by G S Denning

July 2017

A mysterious Catholic priest arrives at 221B Baker Street, only to utter the words ‘il corpe’ before dropping dead. Though the man’s death is attributed to cholera, when news of a similar case in Bristol reaches Holmes, he becomes convinced that the priests have been poisoned. He and Watson learn that the men were on a mission from the Vatican to investigate a miracle; it is said that the body of an eighteenth-century philanthropist and slave trader Edwyn Warwick has not decomposed. But should the Pope sanctify a man who made his fortune through slavery? And when Warwick’s body is stolen, it becomes clear that the priests’ mission has attracted the attention of a deadly conspiracy... Sherlock Holmes: Cry of the Innocents is by Cavan Scott.

Captain Paul Darac, The Genesis Of A Different Kind Of Detective by Peter Morfoot

Peter Morfoot has written a number of plays and sketch shows for BBC Radio and TV and is the author of the acclaimed satirical novel, Burksey. He has lectured in film, holds a Ph.D in art history, and has spent thirty years exploring the life, art and restaurant tables of the French Riviera, the setting for his series of crime novels featuring Captain Paul Darac of Nice’s Brigade Criminelle.

A few pages into my novel, Impure Blood, (Titan Books, April 2016) featuring Captain Paul Darac of Nice’s Brigade Criminelle, we meet the detective heading back to his apartment the morning after playing a gig with his jazz group.

As a tram snaked behind him into Boulevard Jean Jaurès, Darac left the Place and disappeared into the whorl of narrow streets and alleyways that made up the old town, a quarter known as The Babazouk. Exuding coffee, fish, flowers and drains, the Babazouk had the feel of the Moorish souk its name suggested - a shaded warren frequented by fast locals and slow tourists... Darac had acquired his roof-terrace apartment in the Plassa five years ago. It had proved a good move. The pan-tiled canopy of the Babazouk was an atmospheric habitat and it suited him to live suspended between the tangle of the old town and the Nice of the boulevards.

Darac’s world is set in stone for me now but when I began devising the series, (the second and third titles, Babazouk Blues and Box Of Bones are published by Titan Books in April 2017 and 2018), the detective was neither French nor led a double life as a jazz musician. How did he get there?

From the outset, I had qualities in mind for the character that expressed his strong individuality. But attesting to the essentially collaborative nature of police work, I needed him to be a team player, also. An interesting dynamic, I thought, and one that gave me the pleasurable task of creating a permanent cast of supporting players. But where should I locate these stories?

Over the years, I’d come to know Nice well and although it appealed to me as a possible setting, places closer to home were ahead on points. I knew that plumbing the depths of a criminal justice system very different from the UK’s wouldn’t be easy. And my so-so French meant I would need an interpreter to interview officers of Nice’s Police Judiciaire, something I deemed essential should I proceed. It seemed far more practical to set the series in, say, my native Yorkshire.

The Côte d’Azur, though, has compensations for the researcher. And not just the restaurants. The light, the inspiration of generations of artists, is magical. The beauty of the Alpes Maritimes mountains and that eponymous azure coastline is stupendous. But as a crime writer, I needed more than light and beauty. I needed darkness and despair. Are there serpents slithering around in this paradise? Oh yes, they’re there. Aplenty. Nice, as exotically beautiful as any Mediterranean resort, has its fair share of big city problems and crime. Yet I was still unsure.

It was thinking further about my detective-to-be that decided the issue of the setting for me. The turning point was reading an article in The Observer penned by Europe Correspondent, Jason Burke. Entitled: France’s Tough Cops Wield A New Weapon: Culture, the piece focussed on the work of three artists of differing backgrounds and approaches. They did, however, have one thing in common. All three were serving police officers. In the article, chief of police, poet and best-selling author Philippe Pichon made this assertion: “A poet can be a policeman and a policeman can be a poet.” That was my light bulb moment. Added to the picture of Darac I’d already formed, I knew that enlisting him into the ranks of this new generation of artist cops, Poètes Policiers, as they’re dubbed, was the way for him to go.

The question now was to determine the art form.  A music lover, I felt that jazz with its characteristic tension between structure and improvisation would give me the most relevant and interesting possibilities. And Nice’s long love affair with the medium seemed right, also. Headlined by Louis Armstrong, the city’s jazz festival of 1948 was the first in history.

So Darac was coming together. A senior police officer who plays jazz in a quality group, a significant player therefore in two different sorts of team, was someone I was looking forward to getting to know better. I was intrigued that, unlike some of his fictional counterparts, he was a character drawn to living not so much on the edge but on the borderline. A man who chooses to position himself at points of junction or collision with the world. As Impure Blood unfolds, those collisions become ever more treacherous. For the sake of the subsequent novels in the series, let’s hope Darac makes it.

Impure Blood by Peter Morfoot (£7.99,  Titan Books)

In the heat of a French summer, Captain Paul Darac of the Nice Brigade Criminelle is called to a highly sensitive crime scene. A man has been found murdered in the midst of a Muslim prayer group, but no one saw how it was done. Then the organisers of the Nice leg of the Tour de France receive an unlikely terrorist threat. In what becomes a frantic race against time, Darac must try and unpick a complex knot in which racial hatred, sex and revenge are tightly intertwined.