Forthcoming Books from No Exit Press/Oldcastle Books

 January 2023

Final Term is by Leigh Russell.When a pupil accuses a teacher of molesting her, his career and marriage are threatened... The girl's corpse is discovered in the woods, and the teacher becomes a suspect in a murder enquiry. The victim's best friend is then murdered so she cannot reveal the killer's identity. The investigating team are satisfied the teacher is guilty, apart from Detective Inspector Geraldine Steel, who believes the wrong man has been arrested. All of her colleagues disagree... but if she is right, the real killer remains at large.

Guns, Dames and Private Eyes: The Rivals of Philip Marlowe - Stories from the Golden Age of the American Pulp Magazines is edited by Nick Rennison. The prototypes of Raymond Chandler's immortal private detective Philip Marlowe first appeared in a magazine called Black Mask in the 1930s. Black Mask was not the only pulp magazine of the period to publish crime fiction. There were news stands full of them with titles like Dime Detective, Spicy Mystery Stories and Ten Detective Aces. And there were plenty of other private eyes in action. This was the era in which the hard-boiled American detective was born and Nick Rennison's anthology gathers an exciting selection of stories about the rivals of Philip Marlowe. From the intriguingly named Cellini Smith to the two-fisted female crime-solver Violet McDade, from the crime reporter Johnny Castle to the quick-witted, fast-shooting Marty Quade, these characters have their own style and originality. Authors like Norbert Davis, reputedly the favourite crime author of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Cleve F. Adams and Robert Reeves may not have the reputations of Chandler or Dashiell Hammett, another famous name who began his career writing for the pulps, but they knew how to tell a thrilling story. They deserve to be remembered and admired, and this collection highlights more than a dozen of them.

February 2023

Robert B Parker's Fallout is by Mike Lupica. When two seemingly unconnected mysterious deaths occur on his watch, police chief Jesse Stone must pull out all the stops to unravel the truth and stop a killer from striking again. The small town of Paradise is devastated when a star high-school baseball player is found dead at the bottom of a bluff just a day after winning the team's biggest game. For Jesse, the loss is doubly difficult - the teen was the nephew of his colleague, Suitcase Simpson, and Jesse had been coaching the young shortstop. As he searches for answers about how the boy died and why, he is stonewalled at every turn, and it seems that someone is determined to keep him from digging further. Jesse suddenly must divide his attention between two cases after the shocking murder of former Paradise police chief, Charlie Farrell. Before his death, Farrell had been looking into a series of scam calls that preyed upon the elderly. But how do these 'ghost calls' connect to his murder? When threats - and gunshots - appear on Jesse's own doorstep, the race to find answers is on. Both old and new enemies come into play, and in the end, Jesse and his team must discover the common factor between the two deaths in order to prevent a third.

Too many people loved Kelly Rowland. One of them killed her, but was it the man in prison for her murder? Gethin Grey is back in the game. His wife may have left him and he's struggling with life as a single father, but now he's got his biggest case in years. The brutal murder of a young woman called Kelly Rowland has been the talk of the South Wales valleys. Even the conviction of a neighbour, a builder called Morgan Hopkins, failed to stop the gossip. There were too many other suspects still around, among them a pair of coppers: brother and sister. So Gethin was delighted when Morgan's family stumped up the money to pay him and his Last Resort Legals team to reinvestigate the case. But when a new lead takes him undercover into a support group for recovering addicts, Gethin has to confront his own demons. Moving from the former mining towns of the valleys to the shiny new waterfront developments of Cardiff, taking in adult puppet shows and piercing parlors, derelict mines and country clubs, Grey In The Dark is by John Lincoln and lays bare a world in which sex and money collide and everyone has their secrets. 

April 2023

Viper's Dream is by Jake Lamar. A hard-boiled crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961, Viper's Dream combines elements of the epic Godfather films and the detective novels of Chester Himes to tell the story of one of the most respected and feared Black gangsters in America. At the centre of Viper's Dream is a turbulent love story. And the climax bears an element of Greek tragedy. For the better part of 20 years, Clyde 'The Viper' Morton has been in love with Yolanda 'Yo-Yo' DeVray, a singer of immense talent but a woman consumed by demons. By turns ambitious and self-destructive, conniving and naive, Yo-Yo is a classic femme fatale. She is a bright star in a constellation of compelling characters including the chauffeur-turned-gangster Peewee Robinson, the Jewish kingpin Abraham 'Mr. O' Orlinsky, the heroin dealer West Indian Charlie, the corrupt cop Red Carney, the wife-beating singer Pretty Paul Baxter, the pimp Buttercup Jones and the brutal enforcer Randall Country Johnson. But Viper's Dream has a fast-paced vibe all its own, a story charged with suspense, intrigue and plot twists and spiced with violence and humour. It is also steeped in music. The Viper's story is intertwined with the history of jazz over a quarter century.

May 2023

Salvage this World is by Michael Farris Smith. There was no rising from the dead and there was no hand to calm the storms and there was no peace in no valley. In the hurricane-ravaged bottomlands of South Mississippi, where stores are closing and jobs are few, a fierce zealot has gained a foothold, capitalizing on the vulnerability of a dwindling population and a burning need for hope. As she preaches and promises salvation from the light of the pulpit, in the shadows she sows the seeds of violence. Elsewhere, Jessie and her toddler, Jace, are on the run across the Mississippi/Louisiana line, in a resentful return to her childhood home and her desolate father. Holt, Jace's father, is missing and hunted by a brutish crowd, and an old man witnesses the wrong thing in the depths of night. In only a matter of days, all of their lives will collide, and be altered, in the maelstrom of the changing world.

August 2023

As a favour to her partner, Geraldine agrees to look into the disappearance of a young woman, only to discover that several other young women have also gone missing locally. They all vanished unexpectedly, without trace. When one of the missing women is discovered, unconscious and covered in mud, she dies without recovering consciousness, leaving Geraldine and her team in an urgent race to find the other missing women before it is too late to save them. Without Trace is by Leigh Russell.

September 2023

Master storyteller and award-winning author Chris Offutt’s latest book, Code of the Hills, is a dark, witty, and propulsive thriller of murder and secrets in a town where little is as it seems. Mick Hardin is back in the hills of Kentucky. He’d planned to touch down briefly before heading to France, marking the end to his twenty-year Army career. In Rocksalt, his sister Linda the sheriff is investigating the murder of Pete Lowe, a sought-after mechanic at the local racetrack. After another body is found, Linda and her deputy Johnny Boy Tolliver wonder if the two murders are related. Linda steps into harm’s way just as a third body turns up and Mick ends up being deputised again, uncovering evidence of illegal cockfighting, and trying to connect all the crimes.

October 2023

Never Walk Away is by Nick Triplow. DS Mark (Max)Lomax is a former Demonstration Squad Officer – a Special Branch Unit dedicated to inflitrating political and extremist groups, a world he thinks he has left far behind. Following a botched stakeout of a north London gangster, he finds himself on enforced leave and is called back into his old world of half-truths and conflicting agendas. As he digs into the death of the civil servant, Max is obstructed at evry turn, forcing him to turn to the people he once infiltrated an betrayed for help. With political reputations on the line, the case becomes less about uncovering the truth, then burying it for good.

November 2023

Charlie Walden is the Resident Judge of the Bermondsey Crown Court, where he had hoped for a quiet life, but has found it to be anything but. With the job of balancing the needs of prosecutors, judges, 'Grey Smoothies' – the humourless grey-suited civil servants – and the overall needs of a Crown Court, he soon finds himself struggling to keep the peace with his own delightful humour. In this first full length Walden novel Charlie is faced with a number of topical issues he hadn't anticipated; invited to join the Court of Appeal he finds hmself faced with a case involving the 'confusion' of one of his team; in another, a Trans teacher must be penalised for defacing a statue; a huge and mysterious cat comes to the rescue in yet another case, and so the harrassed Judge must pick his way through this minefield of exasperating casesin order to keep eveyone from the cannabis lobby to the anti-slave traders happy with his judgments. No hope of that quiet life for Charlie then but as ever he picks his way through the issues of the day with satirical good humour, insight and wit in another entertaining look at the British Court system. A Week on Mount Olympus and Other Tales From the Bench is by Peter Walden.

Books to Look Forward to From No Exit Press (Incl Oldcastle Books & Verve)

 February 2022

Berlin, 1989. Anne Simpson, an American who works as a translator at the Joint Operations Refugee Committee, thinks she is in a normal marriage with a charming East German. But then her husband disappears and the CIA and Western German intelligence arrive at her door. Nothing about her marriage is as it seems. Anne had been targeted by the Matchmaker - a high level East German counterintelligence officer - who runs a network of Stasi agents. These agents are his 'Romeos' who marry vulnerable women in West Berlin to provide them with cover as they report back to the Matchmaker. Anne has been married to a spy, and now he has disappeared, and is presumably dead. The CIA are desperate to find the Matchmaker because of his close ties to the KGB. They believe he can establish the truth about a high-ranking Soviet defector. They need Anne because she's the only person who has seen his face - from a photograph that her husband mistakenly left out in his office - and she is the CIA's best chance to identify him before the Matchmaker escapes to Moscow. Time is running out as the Berlin Wall falls and chaos engulfs East Germany. But what if Anne's husband is not dead? And what if Anne has her own motives for finding the Matchmaker to deliver a different type of justice? The Matchmaker is by Paul Vidich. 

March 2022

Shoot The Moonlight Out is by William Boyle. Southern Brooklyn, July 1996. Fire hydrants are open and spraying water on the sizzling blacktop. Punk kids have to make their own fun. Bobby Santovasco and his pal Zeke like to throw rocks at cars getting off the Belt Parkway. They think it's dumb and harmless until it's too late to think otherwise. Then there's Jack Cornacchia, a widower who lives with his high school age daughter Amelia and reads meters for Con Ed but also has a secret life as a vigilante, righting neighbourhood wrongs through acts of violence. A simple mission to strong-arm a Bay Ridge con man, Max Berry, leads him to cross paths with a tragedy that hits close to home.  Fast forward five years: June 2001. The summer before New York City and the world changed for good. Charlie French is a low-level gangster-wannabe trying to make a name for himself. When he stumbles onto a bowling alley locker stuffed with a bag full of cash, he brings it to his only pal, Max Berry, for safekeeping while he cleans up the mess surrounding it. Bobby Santovasco - with no real future mapped out and the big sin of his past shining brightly in his rearview mirror - has taken a job working as an errand boy for Max Berry. On a recruiting run for Max's Ponzi scheme, Bobby meets Francesca Clarke, born in the neighbourhood but an outsider nonetheless. They hit it off. Bobby gets the idea to knock off Max's safe so he and Francesca can escape Brooklyn forever. Little does he know what Charlie French has stashed there. Meanwhile, Bobby's former stepsister, Lily Murphy, is back home in the neighbourhood after college, teaching a writing class in the basement of St. Mary's church. She's also being stalked by her college boyfriend. One of her students is Jack Cornacchia. When she opens up to him about her stalker, Jack decides to take matters into his own hands.

April 2022

A Dangerous Language is by Sulari Gentill. When Rowland Sinclair volunteers his services as a pilot to fly the renowned international peace advocate, Egon Kisch, between Freemantle and Melbourne, he is unaware of how hard Australia's new Attorney General will fight to keep the reporter off Australian soil. In this, it seems, the government is not alone, as clandestine right-wing militias target Kisch...A Communist agent is murdered on the steps of Parliament House and Rowland finds himself drawn into a dangerous world of politics and assassination. Once again, he stands against the unthinkable with an artist, a poet and brazen sculptress by his side...

'When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw' - Nelson Mandela. 1964, Apartheid South Africa. Danie du Plessis, the son of a conservative Afrikaner family, is poised to start a glittering legal academic career at one of South Africa\'s leading universities, when he falls in love with a student, Amy Coetzee. But there\'s a problem: he\'s white, she\'s not. Facing arrest, imprisonment and ruin, the couple flee South Africa, and settle in Cambridge, where friends find them positions at the University. They marry and have two children, and have seemingly put the past, and South Africa, behind them. But in 1968 Art Pienaar enters their lives, and, insisting that they have a duty to fight back, enlists their help in increasingly dangerous schemes to undermine the South African regime. When Pienaar and a notorious drug dealer, Vince Cummings, are found murdered together, Danie\'s activities come to light, and he and his family find themselves in mortal danger. Danie is also threatened with criminal prosecution on behalf of a government desperate to maintain good relations with the apartheid regime. Danie knows he\'s sailed close to the wind. But has he become an outlaw? Can Ben Schroeder persuade a jury that the answer is no? To Become an Outlaw is by Peter Murphy. 

When Rowland Sinclair is invited to take his yellow Mercedes onto the Marouba Speedway, popularly known as the Killer Track, he agrees without caution or reserve.  But then people start to die... The body of a journalist covering the race is found in a House of Horrors, an English blue blood with Blackshirt affiliations is killed on the race track... and it seems that someone has Rowland in their sights... With danger presenting at every turn, and the brakes long since disengaged, Rowland Sinclair hurtles towards disaster with an artist, a poet and brazen sculptress along for the ride. Give The Devil His Due is by Sulari Gentill.

All The Tears in China is by Sulari Gentill. Shanghai in 1935 is a 20th century Babylon, an expatriate playground where fortunes are made and lost, where East and West collide, and the stakes include life itself. Into this cultural melting pot, Rowland Sinclair arrives from Sydney to represent his brother at international wool negotiations. The black sheep of the family, Rowland is under strict instructions to commit to nothing - but a brutal murder makes that impossible. As suspicion falls on him, Rowland enters a desperate bid to find answers in a city ruled by taipans and tycoons, where politics and vice are entwined with commerce, and where the only people he can truly trust are his long-term friends, an artist, a poet and a free-spirited sculptress.

May 2022

Robert B Parker's Stone's Throw is by Mike Lupica. The town of Paradise receives a tragic shock when the mayor is discovered dead, his body lying in a shallow grave on a property on the lake. It's ostensibly suicide, but Jesse has his doubts... especially because the piece of land where the man was found is the subject of a contentious and dodgy land deal. Two powerful moguls are fighting over the right to buy and develop the prime piece of real estate, and one of them has brought in a hired gun, an old adversary of Jesse's: Wilson Cromartie, aka Crow. Meanwhile, the town council is debating if they want to sacrifice Paradise's stately character for the economic boost of a glitzy new development. Tempers are running hot, and as the deaths begin to mount, it's increasingly clear that the mayor may have standing in the wrong person's way.

Books to Look forward to from No Exit Press

August 2020

Robert B Parker’s Grudge Match by Mike Lupica.  When Sunny’s long-time gangster associate Tony Marcus comes to her for help, Sunny is surprised–after all, she double crossed him on a recent deal, and their relationship is on shakier ground than ever. But the way Tony figures it, Sunny owes him, and Sunny’s willing to consider his case if it will clear the slate.    Tony’s trusted girlfriend and business partner has vanished, appears to have left in a hurry, and he has no idea why. He just wants to talk to her, he says, but first he needs Sunny to track her down. While Sunny isn’t willing to trust his good intentions, the missing woman intrigues her–against all odds, she’s risen to a position of power in Tony’s criminal enterprise. Sunny can’t help but admire her, and if this woman’s in a jam, Sunny would like to help.  But when a witness is murdered hours after speaking to Sunny, it’s clear there’s more at stake than just Tony’s love life. Someone–maybe even Tony himself–doesn’t want this woman on the loose…and will go to any lengths to make sure she stays silent.

Play the Red Queen is by Juris Jurjevics. It’s the early years of the Vietnam War. A female assassin is hunting American officers in Saigon. Two officers are tasked to finding her. But in war, nothing is as simple as it seems. Vietnam, 1963. A female Viet Cong assassin is trawling the boulevards of Saigon, catching US Army officers off-guard with a single pistol shot, then riding off on the back of a scooter. Although the US military is not officially in combat, sixteen thousand American servicemen are stationed in Vietnam “advising” the military and government. Among them are Ellsworth Miser and Clovis Robeson, two army investigators who have been tasked with tracking down the daring killer. 

Where God Does Not Walk is by Luke McCallin.  The Western Front, July 1918. Gregor Reinhardt is a young lieutenant in a stormtrooper battalion on the Western Front when one of his subordinates is accused of murdering a group of officers, and then subsequently trying to take his own life. Not wanting to believe his friend could have done what he is accused of, Reinhardt begins to investigate. He starts to uncover the outline of a conspiracy at the heart of the German army, a conspiracy aimed at ending the war on the terms of those who have a vested interest in a future for Germany that resembles her past. The investigation takes him from the devastated front lines of the war, to the rarefied heights of Berlin society, and into the hospitals that treat those men who have been shattered by the stress and strain of the war. Along the way, Reinhardt comes to an awakening of the man he might be. A man freed of dogma, whose eyes have been painfully opened to the corruption and callousness all around him. A man to whom calls to duty, to devotion to the Fatherland and to the Kaiser, ring increasingly hollow... 

Debt to Pay - A Q & A with Reed Farrel Coleman

Reed Farrel Coleman is an award winning author who has won a Best Novel Award from Crimespree Magazine, a Shamus Award, a Macavity Award, an Anthony Award and a Barry Award.  As part of the Debt to Pay blog tour he kindly answered my questions about writing Robert B Parker’s Jesse Stone Series.

Ayo:   Whilst I have known you and have been reading your work for quite some time you are a lot more well known in the States than you are here.  How would you introduce yourself to UK readers?

Reed:  I would say I am a direct descendant of the Raymond Chandler branch of crime fiction. One of our more respected book critics on National Public Radio, Maureen Corrigan, called me a “hard-boiled poet” and I was called the “noir poet laureate” in the Huffington Post. But twenty-seven novels into my career, I would say that my current writing is more a mashup of Philip Kerr and Lawrence Block. I hope that helps.

Ayo:   How did you get involved in writing the Jesse Stone series?

Reed:  Ah, the magic question. I thought I got the gig because I had written a piece about Jesse Stone in a collection of essays entitled In Pursuit of Spenser. It was put together by Otto Penzler as a way to honour Bob Parker after his passing. I thought the estate and my editor-to-be, Chris Pepe, who had been Bob’s editor for over twenty years, read the piece and thought I understood the essence of the character. When I mentioned this to Chris during our first conversation, she confessed that she had never read the essay nor was she even aware of the collection. What it came down to was that Chris had always loved my writing, knew I was available, and thought I could handle it. The estate agreed and the rest is history. 

Ayo:   What was your first reaction?

Reed:  I said yes in about a nanosecond. I saved the panic for afterwards.

Ayo:   Were you a fan of Robert B Parker’s work before you began to continue the series and which one of his books would you consider to be your favourite and why?

Reed:  I wouldn’t say I was a devotee of Bob’s in the same way as Ace Atkins, who writes the Spenser novels, is. I liked and respected Bob’s writing. And I was fortunate to be offered the Jesse Stone series, which I preferred as a reader. It turns out that when I was researching the Jesse series for my piece in In Pursuit of Spenser, that Bob chose to write Jesse for some of the same reasons I didn’t love Spenser in the way Ace does. It seemed Bob was tired of writing what he perceived as a too-perfect character in Spenser. Jesse Stone was his attempt at writing a deeply flawed protagonist. I am all about flawed characters, being one myself.  My favourite book of Bob’s is the original Jesse Stone novel Night Passage. It shows a master author at work and at his best.

Ayo:   Debt to Pay is the third book in the Jesse Stone series that you have now written. Has it gotten any easier?

Reed:  Yes, it has. As I’m now more comfortable in my own skin as the author of the series and feel less in Bob’s considerable shadow, it comes easier for me. I am no longer so worried about fan reaction. The people who like how I do it will continue to like it. The fans who don’t have made their feelings clear. 

Ayo:   Where did the idea for the story come from and how did you go about doing your research for it?

Reed:  Last part first. I don’t generally do a whole lot of research. The juice for me is making stuff up. I did travel down to Dallas for several days to get a feel for the town. I spent time with my then agent who lives there and two close writer friends, Dan Hale and Harry Hunsicker. It was an education. And between us, I love Texas BBQ. I wrote Debt To Pay because I love a good revenge story. Who doesn’t love the revenge aspect of Moby Dick or The Count of Monte Cristo? I thought I’d try my hand at it.

Ayo:   One of the main characters that returns is the evil Mr Peepers whom we first meet in the very first Jesse Stone book you wrote Blind Spot.  What made you want to return to this character?

Reed:  Well, I sort of threatened his return at the very end of Blind Spot and thought the timing worked. Plus, I loved writing Mr. Peepers. He’s actually a very complex character and I think crime writers have a lot more fun with complex bad guys than heroes.

Ayo:   There is a sense of foreboding at the end of Debt to Pay and given the way in which Jesse Stone’s life has been and him giving up alcohol was this intentional and can we anticipate anything hopeful happening to him in the future?

Reed:  Yes, it’s damn near pitch black for Jesse at the end of Debt To Pay. I’ve taken a lot of heat from American readers for it. I wonder how UK fans will react. But Jesse needs to change. Could be that the events at the end of Debt To Pay will spark a change in him … or not.

Ayo:   If you had the opportunity to talk face to face with Robert B Parker what would you say to him?  Whilst Jesse Stone is a character what advice (if you could) would you give to him as well?

Reed:  I actually met Bob Parker once. He was gracious and attentive, though I can guarantee you he hadn’t a clue who I was. I always appreciated that in him. I’m afraid what I would say to Bob would probably bore readers. It would be writerly stuff or, as we say in the States, inside baseball. My advice to Jesse is best expressed in the next two Stone novels, Robert B. Parker’s The Hangman’s Sonnet and Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind. 

Ayo:   Whilst there is a not so happy ending what next for you and the series?

Reed:  Next for me personally is a big career and life changing project. I’ve been hired by film director Michael Mann to write the prequel novel to his magnum opus movie Heat.

In the series comes RBP’s The Hangman’s Sonnet. Imagine this, a Bob Dylan-esque singer is re-emerging after forty years in seclusion to attend a gala 75^th birthday party in his honour in Paradise. He went into seclusion because the master recording tape of his greatest album, The Hangman’s Sonnet, was stolen and has never resurfaced. How does the death of an elderly Paradise woman relate to the surge of rumours that the master tape may soon reappear? Oh, and Spenser makes an appearance.   

Ayo:   One would say that the crime fiction genre (in all its connotations e.g. thrillers, detective novels, mystery) is in a very robust way. Aside from yourself which authors would you suggest people keep an eye on and read?

Reed:  Here’s a long list: Peter Spiegelman, Philip Kerr, Megan Abbott, Ken Bruen, Ingrid Thoft, Don Winslow, SJ Rozan, Peter Blauner, Daniel Woodrell …

Robert B Parker's Debt to Pay by Reed Farrel Coleman (No Exit Press)

All is quiet in Paradise, except for a spate of innocuous vandalism. Good thing, too, because Jesse Stone is preoccupied with the women in his life, both past and present. As his ex-wife, Jenn, is about to marry a Dallas real-estate tycoon, Jesse isn’t too sure his relationship with former FBI agent Diana Evans is built to last. But those concerns get put on the back burner when a major Boston crime boss is brutally murdered. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Jesse suspects it’s the work of Mr. Peepers, a psychotic assassin who has caused trouble for Jesse in the past.  Peepers has long promised revenge against the Mob, Jesse, and Suit for their roles in foiling one of his hits—and against Jenn as well. And though Jesse and Jenn have long parted ways, Jesse still feels responsible for her safety. Jesse and Diana head to Dallas for the wedding and, along with the tycoon’s security team, try to stop Peepers before the bill comes due. With Peepers toying with the authorities as to when and where he’ll strike, Jesse is up against the wall. Still, there’s a debt to pay and blood to be spilled to satisfy it. But whose blood, and just how much?

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