Books to Look Forward to from Hodder and Stoughton (Incl Mulholland Books)

January 2020

He had been to the limit. Then they sent him further.  Gary - 'Gaz' - Baldwin is a watcher, not a killer. Operating with a special forces unit deep in Syria, he is to sit in a hide, observe a village, report back and leave.  But the appalling atrocity he witnesses will change his life forever.  Before long, he is living as a handyman on the Orkney islands, far from Syria, far from the army, not far enough from the memories that have all but destroyed him.  'Knacker' is one of the last old-school operators at the modern MI6 fortress on the Thames. He presides over the Round Table, a little group who meet in a pub and yearn for simpler, less bureaucratic times.  When news reaches Knacker that the Russian officer responsible for the Syrian incident may be in Murmansk, northern Russia, he sets in motion a plan to kill him. It will involve a sleeper cell, a marksman and other resources - all unlikely to be sanctioned by the MI6 top brass, so it must be done off the books.  But first, he will need a sure identification. And for that, he needs a watcher...  Beyond Recall is by Gerald Seymour.

Haven’t They Grown is by Sophie Hannah.  All Beth has to do is drive her son to his Under-14s away match, watch him play, and bring him home.  Just because she knows that her former best friend lives near the football ground, that doesn't mean she has to drive past her house and try to catch a glimpse of her. Why would Beth do that, and risk dredging up painful memories? She hasn't seen Flora Braid for twelve years. But she can't resist. She parks outside Flora's house and watches from across the road as Flora and her children, Thomas and Emily, step out of the car. Except... There's something terribly wrong. Flora looks the same, only older - just as Beth would have expected. It's the children that are the problem. Twelve years ago, Thomas and Emily Braid were five and three years old. Today, they look precisely as they did then. They are still five and three. They are Thomas and Emily without a doubt - Beth hears Flora call them by their names - but they haven't changed at all.  They are no taller, no older.  Why haven't they grown?

Sally Page is an MI5 'footie', a junior Secret Service Agent who maintains 'legends': fake identities or footprints used by real spies. Her day consists of maintaining flats and houses where the legends allegedly live, doing online shopping, using payment, loyalty and travel cards and going on social media in their names - anything to give the impression to hostile surveillance that the legends are living, breathing individuals.  One day she goes out for coffee leaving the safe house from which she and her fellow footies operate. When she comes back they have all been murdered and she barely escapes with her own life. She is on the run: but from whom she has no idea. Worse, her bosses at MI5 seem powerless to help her. To live, she will have to use all the lies and false identities she has so carefully created while discovering the truth . . . The Runner is by Stephen Leather.

February 2020

The Burning Man is by Will Shindler.  When a development in South London catches fire mid-construction, a close-knit team of fire fighters runs in to save a man spotted at the window.  They come out without a body. They quit the service. They plan never to speak to each other again.  Five years later one of them is set alight at his own wedding. Soon after, a second is found, nothing but a smoking corpse. It appears that someone knows what they did that night. What they chose over their duty. And there are still three men left to burn . . . DI Alex Finn and his new partner DC Mattie Paulsen are an unlikely pairing, but they need to discover who is behind these killings before the next man faces the fire.

Circle of Death is by Chris Ryan.  Three years ago, Julian Norwood was the rising star of the political universe. As the co-founder of a wildly successful London-based political consultancy, Norwood and his colleagues used controversial tactics to help win the election for the American President and played a decisive role propping up odious governments around the world. But after a scandal broke, the company's reputation was shredded. All of a sudden, Norwood was toxic. People stopped returning his calls. Nobody wanted to work with him. In desperation, he fled to the Seychelles to escape the media spotlight. But when Norwood uncovers a terrifying secret - one that threatens to trigger a brutal new conflict - he senses an opportunity for political redemption...and a hefty payday. He reaches out to his former mentor, a close confidante of the American President and a shadowy populist puppet-master. Before he can tell his mentor what he has discovered, however, masked gunmen ambush the meeting, killing the populist and kidnapping Norwood. In Hereford, former SAS legends John Porter and Jock Bald are brought in from the cold and tasked with a dangerous new mission. A close-knit gang of ex-Navy SEALs, dishonourably discharged from the US military, have gone rogue down in the badlands of Mexico, offering their services to the highest bidder. Now American and British intelligence experts believe that the gang is plotting a sinister new attack - and they want Bald and Porter to infiltrate the gang and find out what they're up to. Amid the deadly carnage and daily, horrifying violence of the Mexican drug wars, Bald and Porter must earn the trust of the ex-SEALs and their charismatic leader, survive brutal cartel attacks and uncover a deadly conspiracy involving the 'Deep State' in both the US and the UK. When their cover is blown, however, Bald and Porter must act to stop a deadly plan to assassinate the Venezuelan President and trigger a bloody civil war. In a breathtaking finale, they must fight alongside their fellow SAS comrades, taking on the gang in a deadly battle of SAS versus Navy SEALs - and only the strongest will survive.

March 2020

The Stranger is by Simon Conway.  ISIS can't control him.  MI6 can't find him.  But he's coming...  Things change quickly in the world of espionage and clandestine operations. Jude Lyon of MI6 remembers the captured terrorist bomb-maker. He watched him being flown off to Syria, back when Syria was 'friendly'. No-one expected him to survive interrogation there.  Yet the man is alive and someone has broken him out of jail.  Bad news for the former foreign secretary who authorised his rendition. And Jude's boss Queen Bee who knew he wasn't a terrorist at all, but an innocent bystander. Now she calls Jude back from a dangerously enjoyable mission involving a Russian diplomat's wife.  He has a new job: close down this embarrassment. Fast. But embarrassment is only the beginning. Someone is using the former prisoner to front a new and unspeakably terrifying campaign. Someone not even ISIS can control.  He is like a rumour, a myth, a whisper on the desert wind. But he is real and he is coming for us ...  He is the genius known only as ... The Stranger.

The Familiar Dark is by Amy Engel.  In a small town beset by poverty in the Missouri Ozarks two 12-year-old girls are found dead in the park. Their throats have been cut.  Eve Taggert's daughter was one of them. Desperate with grief, she takes it upon herself to find out the truth about what happened to her little girl. Eve is no stranger to the dark side of life - having been raised by a hard-edged mother whose parenting lessons she tried hard not to mimic. But with her daughter gone, Eve has no reason to stay soft. And she is going to need her mother's cruel brand of strength if she's going to face the truth about her daughter's death.

April 2020

Dirty South is by John Connolly.  It is 1999, and someone is slaughtering young black women in Burdon County, Arkansas.  But no one wants to admit it, not in the Dirty South.  In an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. He is mourning the death of his wife and child, and searching in vain for their killer. He cares only for his own lost family.  But that is about to change . .. Witness the becoming of Charlie Parker.

When Elspeth arrives at the fiftieth birthday party of her ex-husband, the famous British film director Richard Bryant from whom she has been estranged for 10 years, she expects a crowd in his sprawling LA mansion. Instead, there are only eight other people, and Richard's pet octopus Persephone, floating dreamily in a wall-sized aquarium. By the morning, Richard is dead. All of the guests are suspects.  As she is interviewed by the police, Elspeth pieces together her memories of the party that evening. She also remembers her marriage, her early film career, and the consuming power of a monstrous man.  The Octopus is by Tess Little.

The Grove of the Caesars is by Lindsey Davis.  Julius Caesar left his gardens to the citizens of Rome, a peaceful sanctuary across the Tiber. Now the gardens and their sacred grove are dangerous haunts, especially for women alone.  'Don't go to the Grove,' people mutter, but when her husband has to leave Rome, it falls to Albia to supervise his building project in an old grotto. Why has someone buried tattered scrolls by philosophers - and does it involve a worse crime than terrible writing?  Soon that puzzle is overtaken. A woman disappears from her husband's birthday party; she meets a dire fate, then Albia learns that on the same night, two louche slaves given to her family by the brooding Emperor Domitian also vanished in the gardens. Apparently, it is well known that a killer lurks there.  The vigiles have failed to investigate properly for decades and this won't improve when the sinister agent Karus arrives. Albia must co-operate, in order to give the many victims justice and find answers for grieving relatives. But can she herself remain safe? And, after others have failed, can she at last identify the predator who has made the Grove his killing ground?

On a jagged, bleak lava field just outside Reykjavik stands the Gallows Rock. Once a place of execution, it is now a tourist attraction. Until this morning, when a man was found hanging from it...  The nail embedded in his chest proves it wasn't suicide. But when the police go to his flat, a further puzzle awaits: a four-year-old boy has been left there. He doesn't seem to have any link with the victim, his parents cannot be found, and his drawings show he witnessed something terrible. As detective Huldar hunts the killer, and child psychologist Freyja looks for the boy's parents, the mystery unfolds: a story of violence, entitlement, and revenge.  Gallows Rock is by Yrsa Sigurdardottir.

The Return by Rachel Harrison. Her best friend disappeared. A stranger came back.  Julie is missing, and the missing don't often return. But Elise knows Julie better than anyone, and she feels in her bones that her best friend is out there.  She's right. Two years to the day that Julie vanished, she reappears with no memory of what happened to her. But she is different. She's emaciated, with sallow skin, chipped teeth and odd appetites. In so many ways, Julie seems to be the friend they all loved and lost. But in others, she seems to be a stranger.  Along with Molly and Mae, their two close friends from college, they decide to reunite at the eccentric, remote Red Honey Inn. But when bad weather traps them inside the hotel, tensions flare. Elise begins to hear scratching within the walls, to see the slither of shadows cast by nothing. And as the weekend unfurls, it becomes impossible to deny that the Julie who vanished two years ago is not the same Julie who came back.

The Darlings is by Cristina Alger.  The Darlings of New York are untouchable. But no one is safe from a scandal this big. When Carter Darling's business partner commits suicide, it triggers a huge financial investigation. The allegations are serious. The danger of it exposing their private lives is equally threatening. In times of crisis, the Darlings have always stuck together. But with the stakes so high, how long will their loyalty last?

May 2020

Seven patients. One dark secret.  Jennifer Nielsen has her life on track. Until she gets news that her former psychiatrist, Phillip Walton, has been brutally murdered, and that she is implicated. Philip knew her darkest secrets. And circumstances of his murder suggest that someone else out there knows them too. Jenny needs to speak to old friends, and old enemies, from her dark years spent at Hillside Psychiatric Hospital. Because they are the only ones who know what really happened at Hillside, about the secret that Phil kept for them all, and that this is not the first murder.  Cracked is by Louise McCreesh.

June 2020

A Safe Place is by Anna Downes.  A beautiful home might hide dangerous secrets . . Emily Proudman has been offered the chance of a lifetime - leave her messy London life, move to a beautiful estate in France and help her boss's wife take care of their daughter. It seems like the perfect opportunity to start again.  But once there, Emily soon starts to suspect that her charismatic new employers aren't telling her the whole truth. That there are even dangerous secrets hidden beneath the glamorous facade.  Why have the family been moved to this isolated house so far from home? Why does her bosses' daughter refuse to speak or be touched? Why are there whispers in the night? The only problem is, the more Emily knows, the less chance there is she will ever be able to leave . . .

As a school nurse.  Anna Pierce is a trusted member of the community.  So when she is accused of hitting a pupil,  the reaction is one of shock and disbelief.  The pupil of Tori Carmichael – Anna’s mentee and a child known for her lies.  Anna is hurt by the accusation but determined to clear her name.  Before she can, the worst happens: Tori is fund dead.  Suspicion against Anna spreads quickly in the close-knit community.  At the very least, Anna should have protected this vulnerable girl.  At worst, she is a killer.  But which is it? I Tell a Lie is by Julie Corbin.

Also published in July 2020 is Camino 2 by John Grisham.

Books to Look Forward to from Hodder & Stoughton and Mulholland

July 2019

If you know what you're doing, you can find anything on the internet. Drugs, guns, porn, ideologies, elections, even lives and deaths are all up for sale . . . and everything must go. Elite hacker Azi Bello lives his life in the technological underbelly of the 21st century. A loner, charmer, and lover of grey areas, he works for himself and answers to no one - until his online existence crashes violently into the real world.   The secretive but intriguing Munira has reached out to Azi for help, and her story has sparked his interest: Munira's cousin has been recruited by terrorists and, in her attempts to find out more, she has attracted the attention of some very dangerous people.   Now forced to go on the run, Azi and Munira are drawn into a conspiracy, at the heart of which is Gomorrah: an exclusive online marketplace where anything can be acquired, and where the world's worst individuals lurk. As he throws himself into uncovering Gomorrah's dark secrets, it isn't long before Azi realises that the stakes are high and the risks even higher when you're no longer behind a screen.  The gates of Gomorrah have been opened.  All hell is about to break loose.  This is Gomorrah is by Tom Chatfield.

Short Range is by Stephen Leather.  Dan 'Spider' Shepherd's career path - soldier, policeman, MI5 officer - has always put a strain on his family. So he is far from happy to learn that MI5 is using teenagers as informants. Parents are being kept in the dark and Shepherd fears that the children are being exploited.  As an undercover specialist, Shepherd is tasked with protecting a 15-year-old schoolboy who is being used to gather evidence against violent drug dealers and a right-wing terrorist group. But when the boy's life is threatened, Shepherd has no choice but to step in and take the heat.  And while Shepherd's problems mount up at work, he has even greater problems closer to home. His son Liam has fallen foul of the Serbian Mafia and if Shepherd doesn't intervene, Liam will die.

For seven years, Sasza Zaluska has lived with her little girl in the north of England. Far from her previous job as an undercover cop, far from her dependence on alcohol and the traumatic case that made her flee from the police, her family and her native Poland. But now she is coming back.  This time, Sasza is looking for a quieter life. She has studied to become a psychological profiler and she soon picks up a freelance job to check out some threats made against the owner of a nightclub. But no sooner has Sasza visited the club than a man is murdered there and Sasza finds herself drawn back towards the world she left behind.  The dead man is a musician - famous for one song in particular: Girl at Midnight. Both the song and the crime seem to be connected to a double tragedy of years before, when a brother and sister both died on the same day.  Now Sasza Zaluska must follow a crooked, complex trail from a violent past to a more sophisticated criminal present, in which the gangsters have corrupted every level of society.  Girl at Midnight is by Katarzyna Bonda.

The Bone Fire is by S D Sykes.  1361. Plague has returned to England - thirteen years after the devastation of The Black Death. As destruction advances towards his estate in Kent, Oswald de Lacy leads his family to the safety of a remote castle in the marshes - where his friend Godfrey is preparing a fortress to survive the coming disaster.  The rules are clear: once the de Lacys and other guests are inside the castle the portcullis will be lowered and no-one permitted to enter or leave until the Pestilence has passed.  And then a murderer strikes.  Oswald is confronted with a stark choice - leave and face the ravages of the plague, or stay and place his family at the mercy of a brutal killer. With word of his skills as an investigator preceding him, it falls to Oswald to unmask the murderer in their midst. Host, guest, or servant - everyone is a suspect in this poisoned refuge of secrets, deceit and malice.

Girls Like Us is by Cristina Alger.  FBI Agent Nell Flynn is about to work the most personal case of her life.  Back home for the first time in a decade, Nell is getting ready to close the family estate after her father's death.  But there's one piece of unfinished business. Her father, a homicide detective, was investigating the murders of two young women. Now his partner has asked for Nell's help.  Nell soon realises that her father should be the prime suspect, and that his friends on the force are covering for him.  With no idea who she can trust, Nell also starts to question events that took place when she was a child. Could it be that the answers she so desperately needs are buried deep within her own memory?

August 2019

Outfox is by Sandra Bown. One man with multiple identities. Eight women who vanished without a trace.  The next likely victim...his wife   FBI agent Drex Easton is relentlessly driven by a single goal: to outmanoeuvre the conman once known as Weston Graham. Over the past thirty years, Weston has assumed many names and countless disguises, enabling him to lure eight wealthy women out of their fortunes before they disappeared without a trace. The only common trait among the victims: a new man in their life who also vanished, leaving behind no evidence of his existence.  Drex is convinced that these women have been murdered, and that the man he knows as Weston Graham is the sociopath responsible. But each time Drex gets close to catching him, Weston trades one persona for another and disappears again. Now, for the first time in their long game of cat and mouse, Drex has a suspect in sight.  Attractive and charming, Jasper Ford is recently married to a successful businesswoman many years his junior, Talia Shafer. Drex insinuates himself into their lives, posing as a new neighbour and setting up surveillance on their house. The closer he gets to the couple, the more convinced he becomes that Jasper is the clever, merciless predator he's sought-and that his own attraction to Talia threatens to compromise his purpose and integrity.   This is Drex's one chance to outfox his cunning nemesis before he murders again and eludes justice forever. But first he must determine if the desirable Talia is a heartless accomplice . . . or the next victim.

DI Birch joined the police to find her little brother, who walked out of his life one day and was never seen again. She stayed to help others, determined to seek justice where she could.  On the fourteenth anniversary of Charlie's disappearance, Birch takes part in a raid on one of Scotland's most feared criminal organisations. It's a good day's work - a chance to get a dangerous man off the streets. Two days later, Charlie comes back. It's not a coincidence. When Birch finds out exactly what he's been doing all those years, she faces a terrible choice: save the case, or save her brother. But how can you do the right thing when all the consequences are bad?   As she interrogates Charlie, he tells his story: of how one wrong turn leads to a world in which the normal rules no longer apply, and you do what you must to survive.  What You Pay For is by Claire Askew. 

The Art of Dying is by Douglas Lindsay.  When businessman Thomas Peterson is killed outside a football ground in the Highlands, there are several witnesses. Yet the hunt for the killer is proving as futile as the search for a motive.  Possible connections to Russian money and an eerie retirement home are soon thrown into the mix. To further complicate things, DI Westphall's MI6 past is coming back to haunt him. Guilt stalks his dreams, but could there be a message in these nightmares? Westphall is in danger of losing his head just when he needs it the most. He must find answers, and fast, before the murderer strikes again.

A series of gruesome killings take place in Dubai, Ghana and America. The victims are all connected with the SAS. In Hereford Danny Black realises they have something more specific in common - they were all involved in training a young Muslim soldier, Ibrahim Khan.  Khan has been working under cover in Islamic State in a mission organised by MI6. Danny Black sets out to track him down with the help of Khan's MI6 handler on a trail that leads him to a library of ancient manuscripts in Damascus, the Syrian desert and finally back in the Brecon Beacons. There Danny discovers that he has finally met his match, his deadliest enemy - and it is the last person he ever expected.  Black Ops is by Chris Ryan.

Bad Day at The Vulture Club is by Vaseem Khan. In the gripping new Baby Ganesh Agency novel, Inspector Chopra and his elephant sidekick investigate the death of one of Mumbai's wealthiest citizens, a murder with ramifications for its poorest.  The Parsees are among the oldest, most secretive and most influential communities in the city: respected, envied and sometimes feared.  When prominent industrialist Cyrus Zorabian is murdered on holy ground, his body dumped inside a Tower of Silence - where the Parsee dead are consumed by vultures - the police dismiss it as a random killing. But his daughter is unconvinced. Chopra, uneasy at entering this world of power and privilege, is soon plagued by doubts about the case.  But murder is murder. And in Mumbai, wealth and corruption go in hand in hand, inextricably linking the lives of both high and low...

The shot is impossible.  In the middle of a blizzard, down a busy New York avenue, into a moving car. And there's nothing worse than hunting a killer with a rifle in a city of windows. The agent in charge knows only one man with the skills to work out where the bullet came from. Lucas Page, physics professor and maths prodigy, quit the FBI after it nearly cost him his life. But he can't resist the call to help, to prove that he is still capable of extraordinary things. Because Page is wired to see crime from a different angle. The science that explains the impossible shot. The geometry that reveals the killer's location. The logic that tells him this shooter has killed like this before. And will do it again, and again, until they are stopped... City of Windows is by Robert Pobi.

September 2019

Missing-linc.com comprises a group of misfit sleuths scattered across the States. Their macabre passion is giving names to the unidentified dead. When Ellie Caine starts investigating the corpse known as the Boy in the Dress, the Boy's killer decides to join the group. The closer they get to the truth, the closer he will get to them. The Boy was Teddy Ryan. He was meant to have been killed in a car crash in the west of Ireland in 1989. Only he wasn't. There is no grave in Galway and Teddy was writing letters from New York a year after he supposedly died. But one night he met a man in a Minnesota bar and vanished off the face of the earth.  Teddy's nephew, Shaun, is no hero, but he is determined to solve the thirty-year-old mystery. He joins forces with the disparate members of Missing-linc to hunt down the killer. The only problem: the killer will be with them every step of the way . . .  Missing Person is by Sarah Lotz.

Sam is doing well in her career, she has a husband and a baby and life is going well. That is until she gets the note through her door that stops her heart in her chest. Never Have I Ever Been Punished For What I Have Done.  Sam is catapulted back to those teenage years spent with her best friends, teasing out each other's secrets by announcing things they had Never, ever done. Pushing each other's boundaries, growing closer and growing up.   If only they had stopped there. But they added their own rules. They went from sharing secrets to sharing firsts. First kisses, first drinks, first fake IDs. And that was before it all went spiralling out of control. Before that day in the woods ended it all.  Because no matter how far it goes, you have to obey the rules of the game. Even if what you've never done should stay that way. And now Sam is about to discover that the game isn't over.  Never Have I Ever is by Lucy Hay.

She Lies in Vines is by Benjamin Stevenson.  Four years ago Eliza Dacey was brutally murdered.  Within hours, her killer was caught.  Wasn't he?  So reads the opening titles of Jack Quick's new true-crime documentary.  A skilled producer, Jack knows that the bigger the conspiracy, the higher the ratings. Curtis Wade, convicted of Eliza's murder on circumstantial evidence and victim of a biased police force, is the perfect subject. Millions of viewers agree.  Just before the finale, Jack uncovers a minor detail that may prove Curtis guilty after all. Convinced it will ruin his show, Jack disposes of the evidence and delivers the finale unedited: proposing that Curtis is innocent.  But when Curtis is released, and a new victim is found bearing horrifying similarities to the original murder, Jack realizes that he may have helped a guilty man out of jail. And, as the only one who knows the real evidence of the case, he is the only one who can send him back...

Some family secrets demand to be told . . . Connie lost her words at the age of five, the day she witnessed her mother and father's untimely death. Since then she has been all but mute, only being able to choke out a few select words. Now, years on, Connie's husband is on his deathbed and all she can do is quietly sit by his side.   But there are so many dreadful secrets locked up in Connie's silent prison. And time is running out to set them free . . .  Don’t Say A Word is by Rebecca Tinnelly.

A skinny young boy is found dead - his body carelessly stuffed into wheelie bin. Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his team are called to investigate. Who is the boy, and where did he come from? Was he discarded as rubbish, or left as a warning to someone? He looks Middle Eastern, but no one on the East Side Estate has seen him before.  As the local press seize upon an illegal immigrant angle, and the national media the story of another stabbing, the police are called to investigate a less newsworthy death: a middle-aged heroin addict found dead of an overdose in another estate, scheduled for redevelopment.  Banks finds the threads of each case seem to be connected to the other, and to the dark side of organised crime in Eastvale. Does another thread link to his friend Zelda, who is facing her own dark side? The truth may be more complex - or much simpler - than it seems . . .  Many Rivers to Cross is by Peter Robinson.

October 2019

London 1963. The Beatles, Carnaby Street, mini-skirts. But the new mood hasn't reached the drab and fearful corridors of MI5 and MI6. Many agents joined the secret service to fight the Nazis. Now they are locked in a Cold War against the Russians.  And some of them are traitors.  The service has been shaken to its core by the high-profile defections of Cambridge-educated spies Burgess, MacLean and now Philby. Appalled at such flagrant breaches of British security, the Americans are demanding a rigorous review.  Harry Vaughan is brought back from Vienna to be part of it. The Chief asks him to join two investigators - Arthur Martin and Peter Wright - who are determined to clean out the stables, and the first target of their suspicions is the Deputy Director General of MI5, Graham Mitchell.  Harry slips back into a relationship with an old flame, Elsa, and joins the hunt - somewhat reluctantly. He is sceptical of the case against Mitchell and wary of the messianic fervour of the two spy-catchers. But the further the investigation goes - and the deeper his commitment to Elsa becomes - the greater the sense of paranoia and distrust that spreads through the 'wilderness of mirrors' that is the secret service. The only certainty is that no-one is above suspicion. Including Harry Vaughan. Witchfinder is by Andrew Williams.

November 2019

A cold case for Captain Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido of the Hawks - not what they were looking for. And a difficult case too, surrounded by mystery, lies and evasion. The body of Johnson Johnson, ex-cop, has been found by the side of a railway line. He appears to have jumped from the world's most luxurious train, and two suspicious characters seen with him have disappeared into thin air. The regular police have already failed to make progress and others are intent on muddying the waters.  Meanwhile in Bordeaux, Daniel Darret is settled in a new life on a different continent. But his skills as an international hit-man are required one more time, and Daniel is given no choice in the matter. He must hunt again - his prey the corrupt president of his homeland. Two strands of the same story become a race against time - for the Hawks to stop the assassination, for Daniel to evade the relentless Russian agents tracking him, for Benny Griessel to survive long enough to finally ask Alexa Bernard to marry him . . .  The Last Hunt is by Deon Meyer.

Yorkshire, 1845.  A young woman has gone missing from her home, Chester Grange, leaving no trace, save a large pool of blood in her bedroom and a slew of dark rumours about her marriage. A few miles away across the moors, the daughters of a humble parson, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte are horrified, yet intrigued.  Desperate to find out more, the sisters visit Chester Grange, where they notice several unsettling details about the crime scene: not least the absence of an investigation. Together, the young women realise that their resourcefulness, energy and boundless imaginations could help solve the mystery - and that if they don't attempt to find out what happened to Elizabeth Chester, no one else will.  The path to the truth is not an easy one, especially in a society which believes a woman's place to be in the home, not wandering the countryside looking for clues. But nothing will stop the sisters from discovering what happened to the vanished bride, even as they find their own lives are in great peril...  The vanished Bride is by Bella Ellis.  

You're at home with your family. You think you're safe. You're wrong... Ava's life is the kind other people envy: loving husband; great kids; beautiful house. Until the night a violent home invasion turns the dream into a nightmare, and leaves her beautiful daughter fighting to survive. And then things get worse. Ava realises that the attack wasn't random. Someone is targeting her family. Why? Who could hate them enough to kill?  Ava must find out what really happened that night, to save those she loves from even greater danger. But when everyone around you has been lying, how do you decide who to trust? And Ava has secrets of her own... In Her Eyes is by Sarah Alderson.

The Return of DS Aector McAvoy

It’s been a busy week for the London based book reviewers, journalists and critics that trawl the darkest edges of literature, namely crime mystery and thriller fiction; as publishers are preparing their 2016 work for market. Last week we attended the Hodder & Stoughton, Headline and Quercus Publishing Party, held alongside the Embankment of London’s Thames. All three publishers form a significant segment of the Hachette Publishing group, and fitting within the Hodder & Stoughton imprint is the UK division of Mulholland Books, which showcases some of the more unusual offerings, such as David Morrell’s award-winning historical series featuring Thomas De Quincey and the DS McAvoy series from Hull based journalist David Mark, to name just two of their authors.

Just out from Mulholland is Mark’s fifth novel DEAD PRETTY, and what a dark ride it is indeed, as our reviewer discovered. So it was a delight to attend the launch party that Hodder and Stoughton had organised in-conjunction with London’s Goldsboro Books, in Covent Garden. The Hodder Team were out in force with Nick Sayers, Kerry Hood and David’s editor Ruth Tross.

The wine flowed like water, as did the conversation. It was great to bump into colleagues in the reviewing world such as Mike Carlson, Jon Coates, Jake Kerridge, as well as Bloggers such as Milo Rambles, and “Steph” aka the mysterious crime thriller girl. It was also great fun to bump into various writers who had come to support David, such as Mari Hannah, who writes the Kate Daniels series. It was a few years ago at a Crimefest Convention in Bristol where Mari and I found ourselves seated together for the Gala Dinner with her publishers Pan Macmillan. I took the opportunity to congratulate her on publishing her first standalone The Silent Room, and the acclaim it had gathered was extraordinary. Barry Forshaw commented in The Independent –

There are two kinds of crime writer. There are the high-profile, starry figures, routinely called upon to be pundits for the genre – and whose prestige allows them to get away (almost scot-free) with the odd misfiring book. And then there are the others: the quiet, hard-working professionals who simply get on with the job, delivering reliable, readable fiction that may not have any truck with innovation or experiment, but delivers the kind of reader-pleasing product (misfires discouraged) that ensures their contracts are renewed regularly. Mari Hannah is in the latter group, and over a solid series of books has built up a faithful following.

With her pithily drawn Northumbrian settings, Hannah has produced a compellingly readable series featuring gay copper DCI Kate Daniels, which has maintained a satisfyingly dark and tense atmosphere, the pungent characterisation matched by persuasive detail of forensic and policing methods.

Read More Here

I was also delighted to have a chat with writers Susi S J Hollliday and Alexandra A K Benedict. Susi and I had been in communication prior to Bouchercon Raleigh on the panel planning, and the curious thing was during the event in North Carolina, due to my frantic programming tasks, I actually hadn’t seen her at the event, but then again attendance was over 1,400 people, and I was never in one place for more than a minute or two, as I wondered around checking panels, sorting last minute problems, and basically ensuring the event ran as smoothly as our team could manage. 

I was looking forward to Alexandra Benedict’s follow-up to her debut novel The Beauty of Murder – which was titled Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts due for release in February from Orion Publishing, as her work is in a favourite subgenre / hybrid of mine, one that merges crime and mystery with horror and the weird.

Anyway, with much mingling, and Kerry Hood ensuring our glasses of wine were kept topped up; Ruth Tross, took to the front to introduce David Mark and his new work, DEAD PRETTY followed by David himself giving his usual self-deprecating welcome to all the guests who came to celebrate his latest DS McAvoy thriller. His speech was very amusing, in fact I have noticed that the writers that write the toughest narratives tend to be the nicest of people, and David is no exception.

David is gaining traction in the US and I was delighted to hear that he and his wife Nicola are planning attending Bouchercon “Blood on the Bayou” in New Orleans later this year. This will be David and Nicola’s first Bouchercon so they were keen to listen to the experiences of Mike Stotter and I, and we were delighted to hear that Ruth Tross of Hodder / Mulholland was also going to attend, so the British Contingent was taking shape. The event is being chaired by the best-selling author and musician Heather Graham, so click here for a free eBook on why Heather loves New Orleans.

More Information on the work of David Mark is available Here from Crimefiles and Here from Shots, while the Shots review is available Here and we have discounted copies available from the Shots Bookstore Here and if you are planning to attend Bouchercon this year in New Orleans, here’s the link

So after the party, we thanked David Headley of Goldsboro Books, and the team from Hodder and Stoughton / Mulholland Books for their hospitality, and headed for some dinner, where Mike and I discussed plans for our trip to New Orleans, as well as priorities on reviewing and upcoming Shots features. We were both very encouraged at the exclusive telephone call with David McCallum which though concise [due to his busy schedule] revealed details on his engaging debut crime novel, “Once a Crooked Man”.

As we left the restaurant, by sheer serendipity, we noticed Ruth Tross, David Mark and Nicola East with some others standing outside a bar and of course David’s booming laughter – so we joined them for a night cap, and toasted the success of Journalist David Mark, turned best-selling crime-writer, a man with a pitch-black imagination, but with a sense of humour and wit that makes his work, dare I say unique.

If you haven’t discovered the world of DS McAvoy, then you are in for a treat, but be warned these are very gritty and tough detective novels, but are striated with a knowing eye, and with a social conscience.

This link explains more, because Detective McAvoy takes his readers to Hull and Back……

Criminal Snippets

Qiu Xialong’s Inspector Chen Series, published by Mulholland Books, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, has been turned into a "major" BBC Radio 4 drama.
The adaptations of the first three novels in the Inspector Chen mysteries, Death of a Red Heroine, A Loyal Character Dancer and When Red is Black will be broadcast weekly from 5th December at 2.30pm in episodes lasting 90 minutes, 60 minutes and 60 minutes respectively.
The drama is already live on R4’s ‘online first’ service, meaning that the programmes are exclusively available via iPlayer Radio for the 7 days preceding each broadcast.
The character of Inspector Chen was described as the ‘Morse of the Far East’ by the Independent and the series is said to offer “a true insight into today’s China, from corruption to pollution to the traditional food that Chen delights in”.
There are now seven books in the Inspector Chen series. The first three were reissued in March this year and are available as part of an e-book bundle.

         

Shots' friend, David Morrell, apart from being Bouchercon 2016's recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award, will see his character Rambo on the small screen.  Rambo: New Blood, a TV series based on the hit feature franchise, with Sylvester Stallone executive producing.  Some sources indicate that the actor would reprise his role as the famous renegade soldier, which he has played in all four Rambo movies to date, while others say that he won’t appear in the series.
Written by feature writer Jeb Stuart (Die Hard, The Fugitive), the Rambo TV series, from Entertainment One and Avi Lerner’s Millennium Films, pays homage to the films, exploring the complex relationship between Rambo and his son, J.R., an ex-Navy SEAL. J.R. is a new character not been featured in the movies that has been added as a way into the series. As the logline suggests, Rambo would be a key character on the show unlike other TV series followups, like the proposed Beverly Hills Cop series for CBS, which centered on the son of Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley, with Murphy only slated to make occasional appearances.
Signed collector’s edition of FIRST BLOOD (see cover three above) with extras. 500 copies are now available. Click here to purchase through the publisher, Gauntlet Press, or here to purchase from Borderlands Press.

Writing team Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse have closed a deal to rewrite The Gray Man (Sphere Books), based on the novel by Mark Greaney. Christopher McQuarrie is attached to direct with Charlize Theron attached to star. The project is believed to be a priority for the studio, which is looking at a start of production in the first half of 2016. The script was previously written by Joe and Anthony Russo, who were at one time attached as directors before they got busy with Captain America: Civil War and the next two installments of The Avengers. The project, which at one point had Brad Pitt attached to star, has undergone a gender swap to allow for Theron to be involved. The thriller focuses on an expert CIA op-turned-assassin who is forced to evade adversaries as she saves the lives of daughters she didn’t know were still alive.
Mark Greaney has a degree in International Relations and Political Science. In researching The Gray Man series he travelled to ten countries and trained extensively in the use of firearms, battlefield medicine, and close range combative tactics.

Did you ever think this was possible?  Future Proofing Your Thriller by Kevin Wignall. Well, it is according to Kevin.  And he talks about that and his new book A DEATH IN SWEDEN (Thomas & Mercer Jan 01, 2016) over on the website.
About the book:

Jacques Fillon is killed in a bus crash in northern Sweden. His last act is one of selfless heroism, to reach out and save the life of the passenger sitting nearest him. For over ten years, Jacques lived in this quiet rural community, keeping to himself, and only death reveals his secret: Jacques Fillon never existed. Dan Hendricks is a man with a murky past and a shaky future. He's a freelancer, employed to track down fugitives for foreign powers, but a lot of his colleagues have died in the last few months, and it's becoming clear that he could be next. So he jumps at the chance of one more job with his former employer, to find out who Jacques Fillon was and why he disappeared, and perhaps in the process to lift the contract from his own head.