“Stumbling My Way to Mystery” by Wiley Cash

Although When Ghosts Come Home is my fourth published novel, in many ways it marks a number of firsts for me. It’s the first novel I began writing after losing my father, and it’s also the first novel I began writing after having two daughters. And although I have always written about the state of North Carolina, this is my first novel set on the coast, where I’ve lived since 2013. Finally, this is the first mystery I’ve written.

Now, I’ve been accused of writing mysteries before, but I’ve always disagreed. My previous novels were mysteries inasmuch as the characters were kept in the dark about what would happen and how. In terms of those novels, the reader always knew the score. They always knew who was evil and who was innocent. But something – please forgive me – mysterious happened while writing When Ghosts Come Home: a mystery revealed itself to me, and I essentially wrote the novel to solve it. 

The book opens as a local sheriff is awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of a large, low-flying airplane on the coast of North Carolina. He climbs out of bed and drives to the small municipal airport to see if an aircraft has made an emergency landing. What he finds changes not only his life, but the life of his small community forever. An empty WWII transport plane has been abandoned and left sitting sideways at the end of the runway. In the grass nearby lies the body of a local man, shot dead and left behind. Who flew this aircraft? Who shot this man?

I didn’t know the answers to those questions until I finished writing the book. Unlike my other novels, this story did not reveal itself until it was finished. There is a first time for everything, and I hope readers are as surprised as I was. 

When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash is published by Faber (£14.99 hardback)

An abandoned plane. A dead body. A small town threatening to explode. 'A searing, thunderous, heartbreaking thriller. Wiley Cash has talent to burn.' Chris Whitaker Winston did not hear it so much as feel it as it passed over their house and into the trees across the waterway. The sheriff struggling for re-election and haunted by his past. The mystery plane which crash-lands on his island. The daughter returning home to hide from her troubles. The FBI pilot sent in to help. As the mystery of the abandoned plane and the dead body stokes long-simmering racial tensions, a moment of reckoning draws ever closer for the town of Oak Island.

What next in 2022!

So, 2021 was hard for so many of us with various things happening, specifically the pandemic. However, for me personally there were a number of good things to celebrate crime fiction wise. The Shotsblog has been going from strength to strength. Looking back in 2020 we had over 250 blog posts. We managed to surpass that in 2021 with 354. What a coup!

I found myself doing more events online last year than I expected and as much as I enjoyed doing them I did miss that face to face contact. Being able to see friends and catch up with people. I am however looking forward to various crime fiction events this year.

There were some great books released last year and my list of favourite reads can be found here. This list could have been doubled. Saying that there are also a great number of books due to be published in 2022. As much as I would like to indicate all the books that I am looking forward to reading this year, I am going to start with the ones that I am looking forward to reading in the first six months of 2022.

I have always been a big Raymond Chandler fan and if you have read any interviews that I have done then I have always mentioned him as one of my all time favourite authors. I am therefore quite intrigued to see how good the re-imaging of Philip Marlowe is going to be.  The Goodbye Coast: A Philip Marlowe Novel by Joe Ide (Orion). The seductive and relentless figure of Raymond Chandler's detective, Philip Marlowe, is vividly re-imagined in present-day Los Angeles. Here is a city of scheming Malibu actresses, ruthless gang members, virulent inequality, and washed-out police. Acclaimed and award-winning novelist Joe Ide imagines a Marlowe very much of our time: he's a quiet, lonely, and remarkably capable and confident private detective, though he lives beneath the shadow of his father, a once-decorated LAPD homicide detective, famous throughout the city, who's given in to drink after the death of Marlowe's mother. Marlowe, against his better judgement, accepts two missing person cases, the first a daughter of a faded, tyrannical Hollywood starlet, and the second, a British child stolen from his mother by his father. At the centre of COAST is Marlowe's troubled and confounding relationship with his father, a son who despises yet respects his dad, and a dad who's unable to hide his bitter disappointment with his grown boy. Together, they will realise that one of their clients may be responsible for murder of her own husband, a washed-up director in debt to Albanian and Russian gangsters, and that the client's trouble-making daughter may not be what she seems.

I have been a huge fan of Gregg Hurwitz even before he started writing his Orphan X series. His Tim Rackley series has always been one of my favourites. However, when Orphan X was first published he created an extraordinary character that has continued to grow and fascinate readers continuously. The next book in the Orphan X series is Dark Horse (Michael Joseph) The hero - Evan Smoak: former off-the-books assassin - code name Orphan X. His world is divided into those who deserve his help and those who've brought his singular brand of justice upon themselves. The victim - A desperate father reaches out. His teenage daughter Anjelina has been kidnapped by a brutal criminal cartel and spirited over the border into Mexico. And while money is no object, Evan soon realises that his prospective client's past is as clouded and compromised as his own. The mission - If Evan is going to put his life on the line to rescue Anjelina, he must first decide whether he can act on behalf of a bad man. And even then, up against the men who are holding his daughter, there will be no guarantee of success...

Kotaro Isaka's Bullet Train was an unusual book featuring a bunch of assassins aboard a train, where not that many get off at the other end. It was one of my favourite reads in 2021 so I am looking forward to Three Assassins by Kotaro Isaka (Vintage). Once again assassins are in the mix. Their mission is murder. His is revenge. Suzuki is just an ordinary man until his wife is murdered. When he discovers the criminal gang responsible he leaves behind his life as a maths teacher and joins them, looking for a chance to take his revenge. What he doesn't realise is that he's about to get drawn into a web of unusual professional assassins, each with their own agenda. The Whale convinces his victims to take their own lives using just his words. The Cicada is a talkative and deadly knife expert. The elusive Pusher dispatches his targets in deadly traffic accidents. Suzuki must take each of them on, in order to try to find justice and keep his innocence in a world of killers. 

If you have never read any of Mick Herron's Slough House series then I would suggest that you do so. 2021 saw the publication of Dolphin Junction a collection of short stories which included a peek into the past of Slough House's top agent Jackson Lamb. Bad Actors (John Murray) sees the return to Slough House with a full length novel. Intelligence has a new home. A governmental think-tank, whose remit is to curb the independence of the intelligence service, has lost one of its key members, and Claude Whelan-one-time head of MI5's Regent's Park-is tasked with tracking her down. But the trail leads straight back to the Park itself, with Diana Taverner as chief suspect. Has Diana overplayed her hand at last? What's her counterpart, Moscow's First Desk, doing in London? And does Jackson Lamb know more than he's telling? Over at Slough House, with Shirley Dander in rehab, Roddy Ho in dress rehearsal, and new recruit Ashley Khan turning up the heat, the slow horses are doing what they do best, and adding a little bit of chaos to an already unstable situation . . . There are bad actors everywhere, and they usually get their comeuppance before the credits roll. But politics is a dirty business, and in a world where lying, cheating and backstabbing are the norm, sometimes the good guys can find themselves outgunned.

The Book of Sand (Century) is the posthumous published book by Theo Clare who for many of us is better known as Mo Hayder. This is not strictly a crime book more of a high concept thriller. But with the loss last year of Mo Hayder The Book of Sand is a welcome reminder of how good a writer she is. Sand. A hostile world of burning sun. Outlines of several once-busy cities shimmer on the horizon. Now empty of inhabitants, their buildings lie in ruins. In the distance a group of people - a family - walk towards us. Ahead lies shelter: a 'shuck' the family call home and which they know they must reach before the light fails, as to be out after dark is to invite danger and almost certain death. To survive in this alien world of shifting sand, they must find an object hidden in or near water. But other families want it too. And they are willing to fight to the death to make it theirs. It is beginning to rain in Fairfax County, Virginia when McKenzie Strathie wakes up. An ordinary teenage girl living an ordinary life - except that the previous night she found a sand-lizard in her bed, and now she's beginning to question everything around her, especially who she really is... Two very different worlds featuring a group of extraordinary characters driven to the very limit of their endurance in a place where only the strongest will survive.

Wiley Cash has always been one of those writers whose novels have always had a great sense of place. From his brilliant debut novel A Land More Kind Than Home to his CWA Gold Dagger Award winning This Dark Road to Mercy Wiley Cash has constantly given readers lyrical, heartbreaking and haunting stories. With When Ghosts Come Home (Faber & Faber) we once again have a fascinating, nuanced meditation on life in a small town. An abandoned plane. A dead body. A small town threatening to explode. 'A searing, thunderous, heartbreaking thriller. Wiley Cash has talent to burn.' Chris Whitaker Winston did not hear it so much as feel it as it passed over their house and into the trees across the waterway. The sheriff struggling for re-election and haunted by his past. The mystery plane which crash-lands on his island. The daughter returning home to hide from her troubles. The FBI pilot sent in to help. As the mystery of the abandoned plane and the dead body stokes long-simmering racial tensions, a moment of reckoning draws ever closer for the town of Oak Island.

I have always been a big fan of (1) short stories and (2) Laura Lippman who writes phenomenal short stories.  Seasonal Work and Other Killer Stories is a collection by Laura Lippman that I am looking forward to reading. From 'The Everyday Housewife' to 'The Cougar', 'Tricks' to 'Snowflake Time', Laura Lippman's sharp and acerbic stories explore the contemporary world and the female experience through the prism of classic crime, where the stakes are always deadly. And in the collection's longest piece, the novella 'Just One More', she follows the trajectory of a married couple who, tired of re-watching 'Columbo' re-runs during lockdown, decide to join the same dating app: 'Why would we do something like that?' 'As an experiment. And a diversion. We would both join, then see if the service matches us. Just for grins...'

This is just a snapshot of some of the books that I'm looking forward to reading. There are lots more and I am in no doubt that 2022 will once again be a bumper year for great books. My thanks of course go to all the wonderful authors who have kept me busy reading. It looks as if will be the same again this year. 

Books to Look Forward to from Faber & Faber

 February 2022

The case was closed. Everyone in Adalen remembers the summer Lina Stavred went missing. At first, the investigation seemed like a dead end: there was no body, no crime scene, no murder weapon. The records were sealed. Then a local boy confessed to Lina's murder. The case opened a wound - one the whole community has spent over two decades trying to heal. But we know you remember. Now Lina's murderer has reappeared, and detective Eira Sjoedin must face the spectre of his brutal crime. This is her chance to untangle years of well-kept secrets - but the truth is something Adalen would rather forget. We Know You Remember is by Tove Alsterdal.

When Ghosts Come Home is by Wiley Cash. An abandoned plane. A dead body. A small town threatening to explode. 'A searing, thunderous, heartbreaking thriller. Wiley Cash has talent to burn.' Chris Whitaker Winston did not hear it so much as feel it as it passed over their house and into the trees across the waterway. The sheriff struggling for re-election and haunted by his past. The mystery plane which crash-lands on his island. The daughter returning home to hide from her troubles. The FBI pilot sent in to help. As the mystery of the abandoned plane and the dead body stokes long-simmering racial tensions, a moment of reckoning draws ever closer for the town of Oak Island.

March 2022

Nine Lives is by Peter Swanson. If you're on the list you're marked for death. The envelope is unremarkable. There is no return address. It contains a single, folded, sheet of white paper. The envelope drops through the mail slot like any other piece of post. But for the nine complete strangers who receive it - each of them recognising just one name, their own, on the enclosed list - it will be the most life altering letter they ever receive. It could also be the last, as one by one, they start to meet their end. But why?

From 'The Everyday Housewife' to 'The Cougar', 'Tricks' to 'Snowflake Time', Laura Lippman's sharp and acerbic stories explore the contemporary world and the female experience through the prism of classic crime, where the stakes are always deadly. And in the collection's longest piece, the novella 'Just One More', she follows the trajectory of a married couple who, tired of re-watching 'Columbo' re-runs during lockdown, decide to join the same dating app: 'Why would we do something like that?' 'As an experiment. And a diversion. We would both join, then see if the service matches us. Just for grins...' Seasonal Work and Other Killer Stories is by Laura Lippman.

May 2022

1 September, 1939. As the mass evacuation takes place across Britain, thousands of children leave London for the countryside, but when a little girl vanishes without trace, the reality of separation becomes more desperate and more deadly for those who love her. In the chaos and uncertainty of war, Josephine struggles with the prospect of change. As a cloud of suspicion falls across the small Suffolk village she has come to love, the conflict becomes personal, and events take a dark and sinister turn. Blending a Golden Age mystery with the timeless fears of a child's abduction, Dear Little Corpses by Nicola Upson is an atmospheric snapshot of England in the early days of war.

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.

Criminal Splatterings!

According to the Bookseller, publishing house Quercus is up for sale!  This is despite less than a week after c.e.o. Mark Smith saying that a merger was not on the cards for the firm.

According to Booktrade.info Harlequin Mira have won the rights to three crime novels by Death in Paradise creator and writer Robert Thorogood.  More information can be read here. Harlequin will publish the first novel in hardback in January 2015, with the paperback edition following in June 2015.

One should not be surprised, but according to USA Today Dan Brown’s novel Inferno was the bestselling novel of the year.  The full article can be found here.

Really good article in the Guardian by Anne Cleeves on crime books in translation.  She talks about her favourite ones which include Simenon and Camillieri. The full article can be read here.

The British Library are to host the biggest British Comic Exhibition this year.  Comics Unmasked Art and Anarchy in the UK is due to take place at the British Library from 2 May until 2014 until 19 August 2014 and will feature some of the biggest names in comics, including Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta), Neil Gaiman (Sandman), Mark Millar (Kick-Ass) and Grant Morrison (Batman: Arkham Asylum), the British comics tradition stretches back to the Victorian era and beyond.  More information can be found at the BBC and in the Guardian and The Telegraph.  The British Library are also due to host Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination between 3 October until 27 January 2015 an exhibition that will examine how Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto in 1764 influenced the likes of Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe and Bram Stoker.  Coinciding with the exhibition will be a BBC Four season on gothic literature, due to be broadcast in the autumn.

Laura Wilson’s round-up of crime fiction in the Guardian includes the final book in Malcolm Mackay’s Glasgow trilogy, Eva Dolan and Willey cash.

And if you missed this news in between Christmas and New Year a legal ruling has given film-makers and authors the right to create their own Sherlock Holmes stories in the US without having to pay a licence fee. The article in the Guardian can be read here.

Interesting article in The Telegraph by Jon Stock on what is supposed to be the latest book craze “Chick Noir”. He talks not only about Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl but also Season to Taste by Natalie Young which has just been published by Tinder Press.

According to the BBC and Deadline it appears that the plug has been pulled on the planned remake of Murder, She Wrote.  The new version was due to star Oscar winner Octavia Spencer. 

According to the BBC the hugely successful Father Brown series based on the stories by GK Chesterton, has been recommissioned for a third series by BBC One Daytime in collaboration with BBC Worldwide.

Also for the first time in 20 years Michael Palin is to head the cast of a supernatural thriller.  Remember Me is due to be shown on BBC One and Palin will play Tom Parfitt, a frail, old Yorkshire man seemingly alone in the world, whose admittance to a nursing home triggers a series of inexplicable events.  More information can be found here.

 

Deutscher Krimi Preis have announced the winners of the thirtieth Deutscher Krimi Preis with the German-language prize going to M, by Friedrich Ani, with second place going to Robert Hültner’s Am Endes Des Tages ( At the End of the Day) and third place going to Matthias Wittekindt’s Marmormanner (Marble Men).  The translated prize going to Ladrão de Cadáveres by In Praise of Lies-author Patrícia Melo.  Second plac went to John Le Carré's  Delicate Truth  whilst Jerome Charyn’s Under The Eye of God took third place.

 

According to Booktrade.info Northern Irish crime fiction writer Anthony Quinn's The Blood-Dimmed Tide his first historical crime thriller, featuring W.B. Yeats, to Ion Mills at No Exit Press, in a three-book deal, for publication in 2014, by Paul Feldstein at The Feldstein Agency

 

Books To Look Forward to From Transworld Publishers

In this second instalment of Persson's trilogy of police procedurals featuring the "small, fat and primitive" Evert Backstrom, the grand master's most appallingly repulsive (and funniest) character is finally given his fifteen minutes of fame by way of his patented combination of laziness, luck, and an unbelievable sense of timing. A seemingly ordinary murder puzzles Backstrom, who is struggling with strict orders from his doctor to lead a healthier life. His gut feeling proves him right: within days, his team has another murder linked to the first on their hands, and reports of alleged ties to a Securicor heist gone out of control, killing two. The nation needs a hero, and the newly appointed head of the Vasterort police force Anna Holt needs somebody to kill the dragon for her. Who better to heed to the task than Evert Backstrom: self-sufficient, ostentatious, devoid of moral, Hawaii shirt-clad, and, latterly, armed?  He Who Kills the Dragon is by Leif G W Persson and is due to be published in October 2013.

 Kings’s Return is by Andrew Swanston and is due to be published in April 2014.  Spring 1661: Thomas Hill travels from his home in Romsey to London to attend the coronation of King Charles II.  His sister Margaret has died and both his nieces are now married.  At a dinner party after the Coronation, Thomas meets the charming Chandle Stoner, and Sir Joseph Williamson, security advisor to His Majesty, and in charge of the newly restored Post Office.  Learning of Thomas’s skill with code, Williamson asks him to take charge of deciphering coded letters intercepted at the Post Office.  Reluctantly Thomas agrees.  A spate of murders take place in London – including two employees of the Post Office.  Thomas finds himself dragged into the search for the murderer – or murderers.  It soon becomes apparent that those responsible are closer to Thomas  - and his loved ones – than he imagined. But can he ensure that they are apprehended for their crimes before it’s too late?

A young woman has been found dead and covered in snow behind a nursery school in a Stockholm suburb.  She is the fourth murder victim in a short time and with the same characteristics: a young mother, stabbed from behind.  The offices of the Evening Standard are awash with rumours of a serial killer, but journalist Annika Bengtzon dismisses it as wild fantasy.  As the murder spree continues in Stockholm, the police too begin to think that they have a serial killer on their hands.  Meanwhile Annika is dragged into a violent hostage situation in Nairobi that involves her husband – a situation that shakes both Europe and East Africa.  The demands of the kidnappers are both impossible and unreasonable.  But when the demands are rejected, the kidnapper begins to execute the hostages, one by one…. Borderline is by Liza Marklund and is due to be published in February 2014.

There are no other women on earth like Angela Lassey. That’s not her real name, of course. In her purse there are six different drivers’ licenses and twelve different passports, each with a different name and photograph. Over the course of twenty years she's pulled robberies on five continents and stolen things more valuable then many people could even imagine. She speaks four languages with the clarity and confidence of a native speaker and racks up stratospheric shopping bills where ever she goes.  She's been a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead. She's been dark-skinned and light, blue-eyed and brown, young and old. She's gained weight and lost it again, she's worn platform shoes and slouched to conceal her height, and she's smoked like a chimney and bleached her teeth. She’s never the same woman from one week to the next.  She doesn’t call any place home.  There's no real term for what Angela Lassey does for a living. She is a bank robber, sure, and a crook and a thief and a heister, but Angela's particular talent has no proper, accepted name. In Sweden someone had called her a skyggemannen. In the Netherlands they'd called her a spook. In South America she was a desaparecido.  In America, she was simply a ghostman.  She is the master of the disappearing act. She can make anything or anyone disappear, for the right price. She has worked with some of the best crooks in the world, the best boxmen and jugmarkers and hacks, but she's never met anyone better at disappearing then she was.  Angela Lassey is like human mist.  So she’s the perfect person to call when you need to hide. Like Sabo Park does after unexpectedly stumbling across treasure during a sapphire heist on the China Sea. What he has is so valuable that those who know of its existence will never stop their search. He has to vanish, like a ghost. Because now he has it, he is the richest criminal in the world.  Vanshing Games is by Roger Hobbs and is due to be published in July 2014.

Morning Frost is the third book in the D I Jack Frost prequel by James Henry and it is due to be published in November 2014.  It's been one of the worst days of Detective Sergeant Jack Frost's life. He has buried his wife Mary, and must now endure the wake, attended by all of Denton's finest. All, that is, apart from DC Sue Clark, who spends the night pursuing a bogus tip-off, before being summoned to the discovery of a human hand. And things get worse. Local entrepreneur Harry Baskin is shot inside his nightclub, fake fivers are being circulated, and a famous painting goes missing. As the week goes on, a cyclist is found dead in suspicious circumstances, and the more body parts appear. Frost is on the case, but another disaster - one he is entirely unprepared for - is about to strike...

 'Call your mother.' In the Devonshire countryside, a masked stranger is preying on young women - luring them into his car, taking them to a place they can never be found, and then ordering them to call home. At first he doesn't kill. His motive for terrifying the women seems unclear. But every killer has to start somewhere, and soon enough he will get a taste for something even more sinister. Meanwhile 10-year-old Ruby Trick, living with her parents in a damp, crumbling house by the sea, is about to come of age in the most terrifying way possible...  The Facts of Life and Death is by Belinda Bauer and is due to be published in March 2014

'Somebody!' I half-sob and then, more quietly, 'Please.' The words seem  absorbed by the afternoon heat, lost amongst the trees. In their aftermath, the silence descends again. I know then that I'm not going anywhere...Sean is on the run. We don't know why and we don't know from whom, but we do know he's abandoned his battered, blood-stained car in the middle of an isolated, lonely part of rural France at the height of a sweltering summer. Desperate to avoid the police, he takes to the parched fields and country lanes only to be caught in the vicious jaws of a trap. Near unconscious from pain and loss of blood, he is freed and taken in by two women - daughters of the owner of a rundown local farm with its ramshackle barn, blighted vineyard and the brooding lake. And it's then that Sean's problems really start...Stone Bruises is by Simon Beckett and is due to be published in January 2014

 Silencer is the latest book in the Nick Stone series by Andy McNab and is due to be published in October 2013.  1993: Under deep cover, Nick Stone and a specialist surveillance team have spent weeks in the jungles and city streets of Colombia. Their mission: to locate the boss of the world's most murderous drugs cartel - and terminate him with extreme prejudice. Now they can strike. But to get close enough to fire the fatal shot, Nick must reveal his face. It's a risk he's willing to take - since only the man who is about to die will see him. Or so he thinks... 2012: Nick is in Moscow; semi-retired; semi-married to Anna; very much the devoted father of their newborn son. But when the boy falls dangerously ill and the doctor who saves him comes under threat, Nick finds himself back in the firing line. To stop his cover being terminally blown, he must follow a trail that begins in Triad-controlled Hong Kong and propels him back into the even more brutal world he thought he'd left behind. The forces ranged against him have guns, helicopters, private armies and a terrified population in their vice-like grip. Nick Stone has two decades of operational skills that may no longer be deniable - and a fierce desire to protect a woman and a child who now mean more to him than life itself.

Young policewoman Lacey Flint knows that the Thames is a dangerous place – after all, she lives on it and works on it – but she’s always been lucky. Until one day, when she finds a body floating in the water. Who was this woman and why was she wrapped so carefully in white burial cloths before being hidden in the fast flowing depths.  DCI Dana Tulloch hates to admit it, but she’s fond of the mysterious Lacey. Even if she keeps on interfering in her investigations, and is meddling with the latest floater case. But now she's got to break some terrible news to her - news that could destroy Lacey's fragile state of mind.   And Lacey will need to keep her wits about her because there's a killer that's lurking around her boat, leaving her gifts she'd rather not receive . . .  A Dark and Twisted Tide is by Sharon (SJ) Bolton and is due to be published in May 2014.

The Sisters - Easter and her little sister Ruby are waiting it out in a foster home. Their mum died after a drug overdose, and their dad is a loser who walked out on them all. The Dad - Wade has no claim to them - he signed away his rights years ago, and Easter doesn't even want a father who'd give them up that easily. But one night he turns up unannounced and takes them anyway. The Psychopath - Robert Pruitt is just out of prison when he gets the chance to settle an old score with the man who ruined his life. He's got to find him first, but luckily the trail is easy to follow. Because the guy's just kidnapped his two girls...  The Dark Road to Mercy is by Wiley Cash and is due to be published in January 2014.

 When Jenny, an ordinary schoolgirl on the island of Gotland, is discovered by a modelling agency, her life changes overnight.  Soon she is considered one of the hottest stars and is thrown into a world of VIP parties and glamour.  While Jenny is enjoying her new exciting life in Stockholm, Agnes, a few years her junior, has been hospitalised due to a serious eating disorder.  She too dreamt of living in the limelight, but is now fading away.  Watching at Agnes’ beside is her worried father.  Since Agnes’ mother and brother were tragically killed in a car accident a few years previously, his daughter is all he has. But tragedy also lies in wait for successful Jenny.  During a lavish fashion shoot on Gotland’s barren isolated peninsula, Furillen, her new boyfriend, the fashion photographer Markus falls victim to a murder attempt.  He is found in an isolated spot, covered in blood and brutally assaulted – but alive.  Will he be able to tell police inspector Anders Knutas anything that will lead the police to the perpetrator before it’s too late?  For along time Jenny and Agnes remain unaware that their lives are entwined.  But someone is keeping an eye on them.  Someone with plans to intervene in their lives an deliver their own kind of Justice.  The Dangerous Game is by Mari Jungstedt and is due to be published in March 2014.

Don’t Stand So Close is the debut novel by Luana Lewis and is due to be published in February 2014.  What would you do if a young girl knocked on your door and asked for your help? If it was snowing and she was freezing cold, but you were afraid and alone? What would you do if you let her in, but couldn't make her leave? What if she told you terrible lies about someone you love, but the truth was even worse? Stella has been cocooned in her home for three years. Severely agoraphobic, she knows she is safe in the stark, isolated house she shares with her husband, Max. The traumatic memories of her final case as a psychologist are that much easier to keep at a distance, too. But the night that Blue arrives on her doorstep with her frightened eyes and sad stories, Stella's carefully controlled world begins to unravel around her. Don't Stand So Close is a chilling and suspenseful read.

 For thousands of years we guarded it. But now it has been found. This could be the end - for us; for our organisation; for the world. You must destroy it, and those who have taken it. An ancient object is discovered in a Cairo souk. Hours later, the market trader who sold it is tortured to death. As the bodies begin to pile up, a request for help is sent to British Museum historian Angela Lewis. Angela travels to Spain with her ex-husband, undercover police officer Chris Bronson. There they discover the key to the greatest secret in the history of Christianity. Their only problem is deciphering it before they are brutally murdered like those before them... The Lost Testament is by James Becker and is due to be published in November 2013.  The Brotherhood of the Skull also by James Becker will be published in July 2014. At the turn of the 13th century the religious order known as the Knights Templar was ruthlessly chased down, tortured and eliminated. Fast-forward to the present day, where we are thrust into a nail-biting chase for the truth behind the myth of the Templar Treasure.

A Pleasure and a Calling is by Phil Hogan and is due to be published in February 2014.  You won't remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, suggested a sustainable financial package, negotiated a price with the owner and called you with the good news. The less good news is that, all these years later, he still has the key. That's absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine? The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all. William Heming's every pleasure is in his leafy community. He loves and knows every inch of it, feels nurtured by it, and would defend it - perhaps not with his life but if it came to it, with yours...

On a cold December morning in 1841, a small boy is enticed away from his mother and his throat savagely cut. But when the people of Dublin learn why John Delahunt committed this vile crime, the outcry leaves no room for compassion. His fate is sealed, but this feckless Trinity College student and secret informer for the authorities in Dublin Castle seems neither to regret what he did nor fear his punishment. Sitting in Kilmainham Gaol in the days leading up to his execution, Delahunt tells his story in a final, deeply unsettling statement...Dublin in the mid-19th century was a city on the edge - a turbulent time of suspicion and mistrust and the scent of rebellion against the Crown in the air. Beautifully written, brilliantly researched and with a seductive sense of period and place, this unnervingly compelling novel boasts a colourful assortment of characters: from carousing Trinity students, unscrupulous lowlifes and blackmailers to dissectionists, phrenologists and sinister agents of Dublin Castle who are operating according to their own twisted rules. And at its heart lie the doomed John Delahunt and Helen, his wife. Unconventional, an aspiring-writer and daughter of an eminent surgeon, she pursued Delahunt, married him and thereby ruined her own life. And as for Delahunt himself, we follow him from elegant ballrooms and tenement houses to taverns, courtrooms and to the impoverished alleyways where John Delahunt readily betrays his friends, his society and ultimately, himself.  The Convictions of John Delahunt is by Andrew Hughes and is due to be published in March 2014.

The Day Before You Came is by Paula Daly and is due to be published in April 2014.  Natty and Sean Wainwright are happily married.  Rock solid in fact.  So when Natty’s oldest school friend, Eve Dalladay appears – just as their daughter’s appendix explodes on a school trip in France – Natty has no qualms about leaving Eve helping Sean out at home.  Two weeks later and Natty finds Eve has slotted into family life too well.  Natty’s husband has fallen in love with Eve.  He’s sorry, he tells her, but their marriage is over.  With no option but to put a brave face on things for the sake of the children, Natty embarks on building a new life for herself.  And then she receives a note.  Eve has done this before, more than one and with fatal consequences …..

I believe, from what I can hear, that either my daughter or my wife has just been attacked. I don't know the outcome. The house is silent. Fourteen years ago two teenage lovers were brutally murdered in a patch of remote woodland. The prime suspect confessed to the crimes and was imprisoned. Now, one family is still trying to put the memory of the killings behind them. But at their isolated hilltop house...the nightmare is about to return.  Wolf is the seventh novel in the Jack Caffery series by Mo Hayder and it is due to be published in February 2014.

 Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart is the latest book in the Bryant & May series by Christopher Fowler and is due to be published in March 2014. It's a fresh start for the Met's oddest investigation team, the Peculiar Crimes Unit. Their first case involves two teenagers who see a dead man rising from his grave in a London park. And if that's not alarming enough, one of them is killed in a hit and run accident. Stranger still, in the moments between when he was last seen alive and found dead on the pavement, someone has changed his shirt...Much to his frustration, Arthur Bryant is not allowed to investigate. Instead, he has been tasked with finding out how someone could have stolen the ravens from the Tower of London. All seven birds have vanished from one of the most secure fortresses in the city. And, as the legend has it, when the ravens leave, the nation falls. Soon it seems death is all around and Bryant and May must confront a group of latter-day bodysnatchers, explore an eerie funeral parlour and unearth the gruesome legend of Bleeding Heart Yard. More graves are desecrated, further deaths occur, and the symbol of the Bleeding Heart seems to turn up everywhere - it's even discovered hidden in the PCU's offices. And when Bryant is blindfolded and taken to the headquarters of a secret society, he realises that this case is more complex than even he had imagined, and that everyone is hiding something. The Grim Reaper walks abroad and seems to be stalking him, playing on his fears of premature burial. Rich in strange characters and steeped in London's true history, this is Bryant & May's most peculiar and disturbing case of all.

 'I don’t like killing, but I’m good at it. Murder isn’t so bad from a distance, just shapes in my scope. Close up work though, the garrotte around the neck, the knife in the heart, it’s not for me. Too much empathy, that’s my problem. Usually. But not today. Today is different…’ The year is 1955 and something is very wrong with the world: Churchill is dead and WW2 didn’t happen. Europe is in thrall to a nuclear-armed Nazi Germany. Only Britain and its Empire holds out, bound by an uneasy truce and all the while German scientists are experimenting with terrifying forces beyond their understanding - forces that are driving them to the brink of insanity and beyond. Berlin is a hotbed of suspicion and betrayal - a lone British assassin is fighting a private war with the Nazis; the Gestapo are on the trail of a beautiful young resistance fighter and the head of the SS plots to dispose of an increasingly decrepit Adolf Hitler and become Fuhrer. While in London, a sinister and treacherous cabal will stop at nothing to conceal the conspiracy of the century.  Four desperate scenarios that are destined to collide with catastrophic effect. And it all hinges on a single kill in the morning . . .  A Kill in the Morning is by Graeme Shimmin and is due to be published in June 2014.