Trouble Man is by Tom Benn and is due to be published in January
2014. It's Manchester, at the close of
the millennium, and Henry Bane is now manager of an exclusive nightclub. He has a beautiful mistress, a teenage son,
and is making moves in a violent underworld to which he is increasingly numbed. When a young girl is found tortured and
unwilling to go to the police, Bane offers to help, and finds horror in a feral
community with a respectable veneer. But,
by meddling, he ends up endangering those he wants to protect. Not only that, he also manages to incur the
wrath of an ailing ganglord, and soon finds himself tangled in a penthouse
robbery and an underground boxing match.
From the casual sexism of Bane's clubland, to the savage misogyny of a
killer targeting the young and dispossessed, Trouble Man takes Bane through a hell, perhaps of his own making,
where he is pushed to his limit – and the trouble only gets closer to home.
Dog Will Have his Day is the second instalment in the Three Evangelist series by Fred Vargas and is due to be published
in April 2014. How do you solve a murder
without a body? Keeping watch under the
windows of the Paris flat belonging to a politician's nephew, ex-cop Louis
Kehlweiler catches sight of something odd on the pavement. A small white object, surrounded by the
excrement of local dogs. A piece of bone. Human bone, in fact. Naturally, when Kehlweiler takes his find to
the nearest police station, he faces ridicule.
But the tiny fragment obsesses him so much that he stops shadowing suspicious
characters in Paris and follows the trail to the tiny Breton fishing village of
Port-Nicolas. Because someone there owns
a pit bull terrier. A dog that would take
a bite out of anything. Even the foot of
a corpse.
The Murder of Harriet Krohn is by Karin Fossum and is due to be published in July
2014. A man is walking through the
darkness. Nobody turns to look. How little people know. I'm moving in the midst of them and they walk
the streets immersed in their own affairs.
Charles Olav Torp has problems. He’s
grieving for his late wife, he’s lost his job, and gambling debts have
alienated him from his teenage daughter.
Desperate, his solution is to rob an elderly woman of her money and
silverware. But Harriet Krohn fights back,
and Charlo loses control. Wracked with
guilt, Charlo attempts to rebuild his life and regain his dignity. However, the police are catching up with him,
and Inspector Konrad Sejer has never lost a case yet. Through the eyes of a killer, The Murder of Harriet Krohn poses
the question: how far would you go to turn your life around, and could you live
with yourself afterwards?
London
is steaming under a summer of filthy heat and sudden storms - and Detective
Nick Belsey, of Hampstead CID, is trying to stay out of trouble. But then somebody sets him a riddle. How does a man walk into a dead-end alley and
never come out? How does he disappear? And then reappear - to snatch a girl, to dump
a body beneath a London skyscraper, to send Belsey a package of human hair. The answer lies underground, where the
secrets degenerating beneath the city's sickly glitter are about to see the
light of day. Deep Shelter is by
Oliver Harris and is due to be published in February 2014.
The Soul of Discretion is by Susan Hill and is due to be published in
September 2014. From the outside, the
cathedral town of Lafferton seems idyllic, but in many ways, it just like any other
place. It suffers from the same kinds of
crime, is subject to the same pressures from a rapidly changing world, has the
same hopes and fears as any number of towns up and down the land. When one day DC Simon Serrailler is called in
by Lafferton’s new Chief Constable, Kieran Bright, he is met by two
plainclothes officers. He is asked to
take the principal role in a difficult, potentially dangerous undercover
operation and must leave town immediately, without telling anyone – not even
his girlfriend Rachel, who has only just moved in with him. Meanwhile, Simon’s sister Cat is facing
difficult choices at work, as Lafferton’s hospice closes its bedded units; and
at home, as her daughter is presented with a glittering opportunity that they
would struggle afford. Moreover, all is
not well with Simon and Cat’s stepmother, Judith, either. To complete his special op, Simon must inhabit
the mind of the worst kind of criminal. This
takes its toll on Simon and, as the op unfolds, also on the town and some of
its most respected citizens.
The Spy with 29 Names is a gripping account of the exploits of Juan Pujol,
the most extraordinary double agent of the Second World War, who was awarded
both an Iron Cross by Germany and an MBE by Britain. After the Spanish Civil War, determined to
fight the spread of totalitarianism, Pujol moved to Lisbon with his wife,
persuading the German intelligence services to take him on. But in fact, he was determined all along to
work for the British, whom he saw as the exemplar of democracy and freedom. Seeing the impact of the disinformation this
Quixotic freelance agent was feeding to the Germans, MI5 brought him to London,
where he created a bizarre fictional network of spies - 29 of them - that
misled the entire German high command, including Hitler himself. Above all, in Operation Fortitude he diverted
German Panzer divisions away from Normandy, playing a crucial role in
safeguarding D-Day and ending the war, and securing his reputation as the
greatest double agent in history. With
his intimate knowledge of Spain, Jason Webster looks in new depth at the
character who captured the imagination in Ben Macintyre's Double Cross. He sheds light
on Pujol's charismatic personality, interweaving his bizarre picaresque tale
with vivid insights into the shady worlds of Bletchley and MI5, and the British
and German soldiers whose lives his fantasies would touch so dramatically. Meticulously researched, yet told with a
novelist's verve, The Spy with 29 Names
uncovers the reality - far, far stranger than any fiction - of one of recent
history's most important and dramatic events and is due to be published in
April 2014.
To the Top of the Mountain is by Arne Dahl and is due to be published in June
2014. After the disastrous end to their
last case, the Intercrime team - a specialist unit created to investigate
violent, international crime - has been disbanded, their leader forced into
early retirement. The six officers have
been scattered throughout the country. Detectives
Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm are investigating the senseless murder of a young
footballer supporter in a pub in Stockholm, Arto Soderstedt and Viggo Norlander
are working on mundane cases, Gunnar Nyber is tackling child pornography while
Jorge Chavez is immersed in research. However,
when a man is blown up in a high-security prison, a major drugs baron comes
under attack and a massacre takes place in a dark suburb, the Intercrime team
are urgently reconvened. There is
something dangerous approaching Sweden, and they are the only people who can do
anything to stop it.
A
man is burnt alive in a suburban garden shed.
DI Zigic and DS Ferreira are called in from
the Peterborough Hate Crimes
Unit to investigate the murder. Their
victim is quickly identified as a migrant worker and a man several people might
have had good reason to see dead. A
convicted arsonist and member of a far-right movement has just been released
from prison, while witnesses claim to have seen the dead man fighting with one
of the town's most prominent slum landlords.
Zigic and Ferreira know all too well the problems that come with dealing
with a community that has more reason than most not to trust the police, but
when another migrant worker is attacked, tensions rapidly begin to rise as they
search for their killer. Long Way Home is the debut novel by Eva
Dolan and is due to be published in January 2014.
The Son is by Jo Nesbø and is due to be
published in April 2014. Sonny is a model prisoner. He listens to the confessions of other
inmates at Oslo jail, and absolves them of their sins. Some people even whisper that Sonny is
serving time for someone else: that he doesn't just listen, he confesses to
their crimes. Inspector Simon Kefas is a
dedicated police officer Simon has worked for the Oslo police force for years. He's just been assigned a new murder
investigation and a new partner, all on the same day. Both of them knew Sonny's father To Sonny he
was the man he idolised, to Simon he was his best friend. Both were left devastated when his corruption
was revealed. But neither of them knew
the truth.
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. However, Lennon is facing his own problems,
not least of all his suspension from the police force. The
Final Silence is by Stuart Neville and is due to be published in July 2014.
Blood Med is by Jason Webster and is due to be published in June
2014. After months away in Madrid, Chief
Inspector Max Camara is back in Valencia, with his partner Alicia and his
anarchist, marijuana-growing grandfather Hilario. In the old police headquarters, the mood is
tense, as the chief hunts for cuts - who will go, Camara or his friend Torres? The two men are flung into action on
seemingly separate cases, the suicide of an ex bank-clerk and the brutal murder
of a young American woman. Around them,
the city is erupting into demonstrations and near riots. The king is ill, banks are closing, hospitals
are in chaos, homes are lost, demonstrators riot and right wing thugs patrol
the street. The tunnels beneath the
streets are at once a refuge and a source of anger. And as the blood flows Camara roars on his
motorbike straight into the heart of trouble.
Dear Daughter is the debut novel by Elizabeth Little and is due to
be published in July 2014. LA It girl
Jane Jenkins has it all. The looks, the
brains and the connections. The criminal
record. Ten years ago, in a trial that
transfixed America, Jane was convicted of murdering her mother. Now she’s been released on a technicality,
she’s determined to unravel the mystery of her mother’s last words. Words that send her to a tiny town in the
back of beyond. But with the whole of
America’s media on her tail, convince that she literally got away with murder,
she has to do everything she can to throw her pursuers off the scent. She knows she really didn’t like her mother,
but could she have killed her? And if
not, who did?
Some
cases aren’t as cold as you’d think. Kurt
Wallander’s life looks like it has taken a turn for the better when his offer
on a new house is accepted, only for him to uncover something unexpected in the
garden – the skeleton of a middle-aged woman. As police officers comb the
property, Wallander attempts to get his new life back on course by finding the
woman’s killer with the aid of his daughter, Linda. But when another discovery is made in the
garden, Wallander is forced to delve further back into the area's past. An Event
in Autumn is by Henning Mankell and is due to be published in September
2014.
Also
due to be published in August 2014 is Reykjavik Nights by Arnaldur Indridason.
