Catching ‘Spartan’

I have been rather enthused by a debut thriller novel entitled ‘Spartan’ [aka ‘Spycatcher’ in the US] which was released last week. It excited me so much that I lost a night’s a sleep as the powerful journey was relentless. I have no hesitation in proclaiming it as the best thriller debut I’ve read this year. I have Spartan / Spycatcher featured in a review at January Magazine thanks to my editors Jeff Peirce and Linda Richards; and here's an extract -

My favorite section of this yarn focuses on the storming of a German terror cell. It nicely illustrates the differences between how the Brits and Americans now want to look at torture (as an alternative means of extracting information from thuggish anarchists), and the more liberal German way of enforcing human rights, even for terrorists. This dichotomy poses a problem, when Cochrane wants to keep one of the terrorists alive for “enhanced interrogation.” The Germans forbid it, saying their security team was operating under strict orders to ensure that the terrorists were all killed in the operation; if there are survivors, there will be human-rights implications and media questions that pose political problems back home. The sheer drama of this scene, coupled with the political and ethical issues involved, makes for excruciating tension. And Dunn’s bold, hard and logical writing style made me feel I was actually there, attacking the building.

Will saw a body lying on its side. It was rocking back and forth. A hand clutched to one leg. Will checked the surroundings but could see no weapon. He moved closer and put the muzzle of his Glock against the body’s neck before slowly pulling it onto its back. A woman looked up at him. Will glanced down at her leg and saw that she had been shot in the thigh. Her trousers were torn and covered in blood. The bullet had clearly done severe damage.

Will bent to the woman’s face and said loudly, “Who sent you?”
The woman’s eyes blinked rapidly. She looked terrified. Tears were streaming across her face, and they were clearly caused by pain, fear, tear gas, or all of those. She looked very young.
“Who sent you?” he asked her.

The woman began coughing, and the sound instantly told Will that she had gas in her throat and lungs. He knew that he could not allow her to suffer like this. He ripped off his respirator and fixed it over the woman’s head.

He said to her, “It’s okay. I’m going to get you out of this place.”

The real cat-chasing-mouse part of Spartan/Spycatcher begins as Cochrane enlists a quartet of tough sidekicks to help him protect Lana, while they dangle her enticingly in front of Megiddo. A series of letters sent back and forth between Lana and Megiddo serves to lure the prey, and leads to assorted varieties of surveillance games. I was delighted by Dunn’s conscious chapter-length planning, as he measured out just enough plot to keep you hooked -- not the James Patterson-like chapters of one or two pages, nor 30-page Eric Ambler chapters, but something in between.

Read More and I urge you to seek this debut out

I have an upcoming interview with Matthew Dunn coming shortly; and asked him to tell Shots Readers a little about his life and how an ex-SIS / MI6 Field Operative moved to the ruthless world of thriller writing -

Matthew Dunn: Reading, Writing & Spying

I grew up in a peaceful, semi-rural, and largely uneventful part of England. My childhood couldn’t have been happier, though I craved escape and adventure and became a voracious reader of obscure novels about 18th and 19th century sea-faring adventures and early 20th century spies. These books helped fuel the fire in my belly to the extent that reading is largely responsible for my subsequent employment as a British intelligence operative.

I was talent spotted to join MI6 while at university, though I positioned myself to be noticed by the spooks. I wanted to live the adventures and lives of the characters I had read about in my books. But the real world of MI6 turned out to be quite different. When I was a spy, not one day passed when I did not feel the incredible weight of responsibility on my shoulders and the importance of the work that I and other officers did. Missions were sometimes ferociously rapid, sometimes agonizingly protracted, always intense, but never playful. And in the real world of espionage, real people die. For me, being a spy never felt like an adventurous escapade. Instead, I was in a relentless war.

Spies operate in a secret world that is all around us but can only be seen by those who are trained to spot it. When I was on missions overseas I would move through cities and other locations with the confidence of an experienced predator. And when I was at home in London I would walk in its streets, eat in its restaurants, drink in its cafés and bars, but all of the time look at people around me. I had nothing in common with them because my world was not their world. I had, to some extent, become detached from humanity. The only people I could relate to were my fellow officers, and my secret foreign agents.

When I left MI6 I was a very hard man, a million miles away from the innocent wonderment of my youth. I knew that I should try to reintegrate back into the normal world but did not know how to do so because once you’ve operated in the secret world that place stays around you forever. Most people who leave MI6 are high-achievers who go in to top jobs in industry, commerce, government, or the arts. But all of us struggle to adapt. We’ve seen and done too many unusual things.

For ten years after leaving British intelligence, I walked a solitary path between the secret world that I could still see but no longer touch and the normal world which seemed foreign. But then I started writing Spartan and the process resulted in something unexpected – I regained the same desire for adventure that I had when I was a boy. In tandem, I felt that I was weaving aspects of the secret world into the normal world. I now live and write in the place where they are interwoven.

My novel’s protagonist, Will Cochrane, is wholly fictional. However, his character, decision-making, and actions, are inspired by the man that I used to be. Happily, I am no longer someone like Will Cochrane. But it is great to write about him.

© 2011 Matthew Dunn

Latest Crime News Round-Up

A rather long over due round up of crime fiction news –

Congratulations to the nominees announced this past weekend for the annual T. Jefferson Parker Book Award for Mystery & Thrillers, presented by the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association:

• The Sentry by Robert Crais (Putnam)
• San Diego Noir edited by Maryelizabeth Hart (Akashic Books)
• Savages by Don Winslow (Simon & Schuster)
• The Informant by Thomas Perry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

There is an excellent interview in the Guardian with CWA Diamond Dagger Author Val McDermid. Certainly worth reading as she talks about football and phone hacking amongst other things!

Not sure where to start when it comes to Nordic crime authors? Well www.cleveland.com have done a eally good job of rounding up 10 examples that you could do well to take a look at. Of course Stieg Larsson is on the list!

The Irish Times have an excellent review of Declan Burke’s latest novel Absolute Zero Cool. This is one book that I am dying to get my hands on sooner rather than later. If you have not made Declan’s blog Crime Always Pays your one stop shop for all things relating to Irish crime writing then you are missing a treat.

With Bouchercon 2011 on the horizon in just over a month’s time there is a timely article in the Riverfront Times as to why you should be attending this august convention. The Shots crew will of course be there in force and I shall hopefully be doing some blogging and tweeting as @shotsblog as time permits. If you are still dithering as to whether or not you should attend, then hopefully the article will persuade you to do so. On the Friday at 8:30am I shall be on a panel Bad Blood: Celebrating Agatha Christie. The other members of the panel are Val McDermid, G M Malliet and Caroline Hart. The moderator will be Ted Hertel. At 11:30am on Saturday I shall be moderating the panel The Dead Line:Behind the White Picket Fence. The panel members are Megan Abbott, Daniel Woodrell, Thomas H Cook, Paul Doiron & P L Gaus. Ali Karim will be moderating the panel Falls the Shadow: Globalization of Crime Fiction on Saturday at 11:30am as well. The members of his panel are Mark Billingham, Sarah Blaedal, Karin Slaughter, Deon Meyer and Martyn Waites.

Interesting article on the Criminal Minds blog from one of my all time favourite authors Gary Philips on how much modern technology Ivan Monk would actually embrace.

There is an excellent article on Peter Rozovsky blog Detectives Beyond Borders where he talks about humour in Swedish Crime novels. He specifically mentions Three Seconds by Roslund and Helström. This has been followed up by a further article on the blog The Game’s Afoot where Arnaldur Indridason’s humour is discussed.

The Montreal Mirror also has an article on Nordic crime. The article discusses how Larsson’s popularity has pushed other authors into the limelight such as Henning Mankell, Analdur Indriðason and Jo Nesbø.

With the terrible massacre that took place in Utøya Brian Oliver in the Observer wonders how Nordic crime writers will deal with the incident in their writing.

In a feature at NPR Norwegian author Anne Holt says politicians would do well to read crime fiction, a mirror on society. She is also interviewed at PBS.Org where she talks about the lessons of Oslo.

Writing in the Guardian author Jo Nesbø discusses the fact that the attacks in Oslo and Utøya have changed Norway forever and it will never again be the innocent, trusting place it once was.

Excellent blog post by Maxine over on her site Petrona about crime fiction from Norway! She has also posted an equally brilliant one about crime fiction from Sweden. Certainly worth reading by those who think that Stieg Larsson is the only author who writes Swedish crime.

Not sure how I managed to miss this but there is an excellent piece in the Guardian that came out around the same time of the Harrogate Crime Festival about Partners in Crime Fiction. Authors such as Lee Child, Benjamin Black and RJ Ellory choose their favourite characters by other crime writers.

Rohan Maitzen has over at the Los Angeles Review of Books written an excellent article on the Martin Beck series by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.

So are you interested in the top ten crime writers that you should be reading as a fan of the genre before you die? I am sure you would be. First versions of this list by John Connolly and Declan Hughes were presented at the Dalkey Book Festival back in June 2011, and at the world mystery convention, Bouchercon in San Francisco. It is reproduced on the Writing i.e blog. But do you agree with all their suggestions? As a matter of fact I do. Bearing in mind the books on the list one would find it rather difficult not to.

There is an excellent review in The Independent by Boyd Tonkin on South London author Alex Wheatle’s novel Brenton Brown that is particularly on topic in the light of the recent disturbances that have taken place in London.

Tony Thompson whose novel Outlaws: Inside the Violent World of Biker Gang is published by Hodder & Stoughton writes an interesting article in The London Evening Standard about growing up in Tottenham in the light of the recent riots. Makes for interesting and sobering reading. How times have changed!

There is a round up of in the Guardian of thrillers by John O’ Connell. His choices include Luther: The Calling by Neil Cross and Burned by Thomas Enger. There is also an interview in the Guardian with Neil Cross who explains why he does not get on with novelists.

Jake Kerridge of the Telegraph interviews Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine.

Absolutely cool interview in the Independent on Dennis Lehane by James Kidd. He talks about his life, writing and bankers!

On her brief trip to the UK the Daily Express managed to nab an interview with Megan Abbott.

According to USA Today (Books) Author Jamie Freveletti is to continue writing Robert Ludlum’s Covert One series. Her first novel Running From the Devil won the International Thriller Writers award for best first novel. The third novel in the Emma Caldridge series The Ninth Day is due to go on sale on 27 September 2011. Furthermore David Baldacci books may also be coming to television.

As part of its Crime in the City feature NPR talk to Michael Harvey co-creator of A&E's real-cop TV series, Cold Case Files. Harvey is also the author of 4 crime novels The Chicago Way, The Fifth Floor, Third Rail and We All Fall Down. His main protagnonist is Michael Kelly, a former Chicago cop.

In another feature they also talk to George Pelecanos about racially divided Washington DC. Pelecanos has a new book out The Cut which features a new protagonist Spero Lucas an Iraq veteran who is a special investigator for a criminal attorney. George Pelecanos also talks to CS Monitor.com about his new novel.

According to the Bookseller Polygon have bought a novel by Private Eye writer and cartoonist Bruce Fantoni. The book has been described as "an intoxicating blend of Raymond Chandler and Woody Allen", is about the world's oldest private eye, who is based in modern-day Miami. It will be published as a small format hardback in summer 2012.

The American Culture have an interesting article on Raymond Chandler by Curt Evans where he looks at Raymond Chandler and British Detective Fiction. Part one can be found here and part two here.

Interesting article at Salon.com about series that have been continued by other authors after the death of the original author.

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting profile on author James Sallis whose 2005 novel Drive is due to be released shortly in the cinema on September 16. His latest novel The Killer is Dying is also due to be published later on this year.

John Grisham has been awarded the inaugural Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction for his work in The Confession. The new literary award is co-sponsored by The University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal, the flagship magazine of the American Bar Association. The judges included David Baldacci and Linda Fairstein.

According to the Bookseller Random House have produced an app to go along with the Wallender series. The app “In the Footsteps of Wallander", is available to download in English, Swedish and German through an iPhone or Android phone.

According to the British Film Institute’s magazine Sight and Sound Scorsese’s Shutter Island which is based on the best selling novel by Dennis Lehane is as much as it is being an excellent film as it is a testament to the cinema era of the 1940s and 1940s. There is a spoiler in the essay so you might want to give it a miss if you do not want it to spoil your enjoyment of the film.

Film News

According to Deadline News after a bidding war 20^th C Fox have nabbed the rights to a series of books by renowned Swedish criminologist and novelist Leif G.W. Persson for Stephen Gaghan to develop as a TV series. The TV project will be based on the central character in Persson's books -- Evert Backstrom. The full article can be found here. Meanwhile Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series and Three Seconds, by Anders Roslund & Borge Hellstrom have been sold to Working Title and Shine/New Regency respectively.

For fans of the new Sherlock Holmes series Mark Gatiss talks about the second series over at DarkHorizons.com.

And more things Sherlock Holmes, director Guy Ritchie popped down to Empire Presents… Big Screen on 13 August and revealed some titbits about Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows the sequel to Sherlock. A trailer can be seen below-

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is due out in the UK on 16 December 2011.

Fans of Spooks will be disappointed to hear that the BBC have cancelled the spy drama after a decade. The full reason can be found here in the Guardian article.

According to Empireonline.com John C McGinley who is best known for playing insult-flinging medical genius Perry Cox on Scrubs is joining the cast of I, Alex Cross.

According to The Australian a number of Hollywood’s leading ladies are scrambling to play the lead character in the film version of S J Watson’s overnight success of a novel Before I Go To Sleep. The full article can be found here.

I am sure that I am not the only one looking forward to the remake of Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy which is based on John le Carré's novel. A further trailer has been released and can be seen below –

Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy is due out on September 16 2011.

According to the Hollywood Reporter Millennium Films have bought the film rights to Noah Boyd’s debut novel The Bricklayer. Actor Gerald Butler is set to star as former FBI Agent turned bricklayer Steve Vail. He is called on by his ex-colleagues to help stop a criminal group that is demanding increasingly high series of ransom payments and finds himself working alongside a female deputy director of the FBI.

Variety News reveal that ABC have ordered a script from Lionsgate that could convert "The Lincoln Lawyer" feature film into a drama series.

Robin Collin of the Telegraph in his article does not sound to keen about the prequel of Morse that is due to be shown on ITV. The one-off drama is called Endeavour. A further article about the prequel can also be found here. The press release from ITV can be found here.

According to ABC Entertainment News John Cusack claims that Edgar Allan Poe was something of a rock star in his day. The actor is due to play Poe in the film The Raven that is due out next year. His comments were made at Comic-Con San Diego where the film was previewed for fans.

Copies of Stuart Neville’s Collusion up for grabs!

An LA Times Book Prize Finalist, and sequel to Stuart Neville's award winning debut, The Twelve /The Ghosts Of Belfast is up for grabs on the Shots Ezine.

Collusion

Former paramilitary killer Gerry Fegan wanders New York City, hiding from a past he escaped at terrible cost. But he made a fatal mistake: he spared the life of Bull O'Kane, a ruthless man who will stop at nothing to get his revenge. Too many witnesses survived a bloody battle at his border farm, and now he wants them silenced, whether man, woman or child. O'Kane calls the Traveller, an assassin without pity or remorse, a killer of the purest kind.

Back in Belfast, Detective Inspector Jack Lennon, father of one the witnesses, is caught up in a web of official secrets and lies as he tries to uncover the whereabouts of his daughter. The closer he gets to the truth about the events on O'Kane's border farm, the more his superiors instruct him to back off.

When Fegan realises he can't shake off the trail of violence that has followed him across the world, he has no choice but to return to Belfast and confront his past. The Traveller awaits Fegan's return, ready for the fight of his life.

So if you want to get your hands on one of the 5 copies of this excellent book I would suggest that you hurry over to the Shots Ezine competition page.

The Life of a novelist in Bangkok is not what you think!!

Jake Needham is our guest blogger. Jake has published four contemporary crime novels set in Asia and his fifth will be published this fall. Jake's books have appeared in more than a dozen separate editions in four languages as well as optioned for motion pictures.

Two of Jake's titles, THE AMBASSADOR'S WIFE and THE BIG MANGO, are now available in the UK from Marshall Cavendish International. Two other titles, KILLING PLATO and LAUNDRY MAN, will be available by the end of this year.

About twenty years ago, I was living in Los Angeles and earning an embarrassingly substantial living writing and producing crap movies for American cable television. Then, to my complete surprise, HBO offered a deal on a far classier feature film script I had written a couple of years earlier, a political thriller set in Asia, and abruptly my life spun off in an entirely unanticipated direction. It was that deal which led directly to me living for the last two decades in what is surely the world's most notorious city.

This is how that happened. The production company thought it would be cool to shoot the film in Bangkok and they wanted a producer on the project who had at least a remote idea of where Bangkok actually is. I put up my hand. Looking back, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. If I had, I think I would have kept my hands in my pockets.

The good news here is that while we were in production in Bangkok I was lucky enough to meet the lovely and long-suffering woman who is now my wife. She was born in Thailand, but had gone to boarding school in the UK from the age of twelve and graduated from Oxford. After that she returned to Thailand and signed on as the editor of the Thai edition of Tatler Magazine. After all, other than becoming prime minister, which almost everyone avoids, what else can you do in Thailand after graduating from Oxford?

Anyway, she came out to the set one day while we were shooting in order to interview the writer of the film for a Tatler article. I modestly made my appearance. A year later, to the complete horror of her very prominent and highly respected Thai parents, we were married. We have lived in Bangkok ever since.

I am now a novelist and occasional newspaper columnist, having come to the realization a dozen or so years ago that I don't particularly like movies. Over the past ten years I've published four contemporary crime novels set in Asia. The fifth will be published this fall and the sixth early in 2012. And here is what I have learned as a result of that. Living and writing in ASia requires coping with that two-edge sword you here so much about these days. Yes, the place is a cornucopia of inspiration and a fountain of material for the crime novelist, but the asumptions many peoplemake about who you are when you live in a place like Bangkok can be very heavy baggage indeed.

My first clue as to what I was up against came from the puzzled looks and hostile stares I attracted back in the States when I first told people I was taking up residence in Bangkok. Years later, in a novel of mine called LAUNDRY MAN which became the first in the Jack Shepherd series, the main character related a similar experience. Jack Shepherd was a lawyer in Washington DC who, on a whim, decided to take a job teaching international business at a Thai university. This is how he described what happened to him then:

When people in Washington first began to hear that I was leaving to live in Bangkok and teach at Chulalongkorn University, a few of them jumped to the conclusion I was making a point of some kind, abandoning the land of my birth for reasons that were probably political and no doubt wacky. Others who heard what I was doing—and I noticed this group seemed to be composed mainly of women—attributed my change of address to middle-aged male angst fueled by overly moist fantasies of slim, submissive Thai women serving me brightly colored tropical drinks with little umbrellas in them.

Most people, of course, fell into neither of those categories. Most people just assumed I had lost my damned mind.

Part of the problem was that the whole idea of living in a foreign country was just so strange to most Americans, particularly since very few of them had ever seriously entertained the thought, however fleetingly, themselves. After all, everyone wanted to come to America, didn't they? Half the population of the earth was fighting to live in Orange County and work in a 7-Eleven, wasn't it? Why in God's name would an American even think of living anywhere else?

When the subject of my residence in Bangkok comes up with people back in the States these days, everyone I know talks of one of two things. The first of those things is food. Everyone I meet claims to love Thai food. Sending out for Chinese is cheap. Sending out for Thai is cheap, too, but is seems a lot more exotic. Most Westerners have no real idea what they are actually eating in either case, but Thai food is both cheap and exotic and how can you beat that.

The second is, of course, sex. Bangkok is inexorably linked in most people's mind with stories they have heard somewhere, although few will admit to remembering exactly where, of an unabashedly dissolute life and the easy availability of free sex. Well, perhaps not exactly free, but certainly pretty inexpensive. Thai sex is generally thought of as a little like Thai food. Cheap but with an exotic flare to it. Can't beat that combination in any context, can you?

With all that going for it, you would think that the idea of living in Bangkok would be pretty interesting to a lot of people, wouldn't you? You might think so, but you'd be wrong.

A couple of times I tried defusing the scowls that generally appeared at the mere mention of my residential status by joking that, well, a man could sure make a worse choice than taking up residence in a city internationally famed for food and sex but when I saw the solem expressions that quip provoked in most Americans, I quickly eliminated it from my repertoire. Maybe the suggestion that food ands sex are actually an interesting part of life makes Americans uncomfortable. Maybe I ought to have more friends from France.

Anyway, the reaction I typically got when people found out I was living in Bangkok inevitably went like this. Oh, the place is no doubt exotic and interesting, people murmured, but…it's a city where a lot of people go who aren't particularly nice, isn't it?

Sadly, I never found a way to deny that with a straight face. Even the New York Times just a few days ago said more or less the same thing about Thailand, making the observation that "the world's wretched refuse seems to show up there in droves" (their story is here); and heck, who can argue with the New York Times?

At its most benign, Bangkok is part Miami and part Beirut, but most of the time Bangkok is anything other than benign. I have always thought there must be some kind of international network devoted to coaxing social misfits and dropout cases worldwide into coming to Bangkok, because come they do by the thousands. They walk away from third-shift jobs in places like Los Angeles, London, Sydney, Berlin, and Toronto, buy a cheap airline ticket, and make their way to the Land of Smiles.

Some are looking for a cheap tropical paradise. Others think they've found Sodom and Gomorrah. And almost every one of them is hoping in some way or another to make a fresh start on a life that probably had until then very little to recommend it. Many of these refugees from reality probably couldn't have located the city on a map before they decided it was the place for them. Maybe they still can't, but now Bangkok is their last, perhaps their only hope.

Deep in the empty hours, it is this army of the socially dispossessed and the downright criminal that takes control of the small part of the city that is friendly to foreigners. Tuk-tuks, little three-wheeled motorcycle taxis, fly back and forth most of the night ferrying carousers between the two clumps of go-go bars that anchor the neighborhood: Nana Plaza on the west, and Soi Cowboy about a mile to the east.

They are all there. The lonely, the frightened, the guilty, the depressed, and the psychotic. Soaked with sweat, they rush from one bar to another, reeking of that peculiarly sour, metallic odor habitually given off by the emotionally overmatched and underachieving. After midnight, it is this floodtide of the lost and abandoned that owns Bangkok.

The problem with being a novelist who lives in Bangkok is that a lot of people assume you're there because you one of those guys; and that you're writing books, probably very bad ones, only because you're on the lam from another life and can't get a real job. Even worse from my point of view, they assume your novels are tales about the ocean of cheap hookers and crappy beer in which most people are absolutely certain all foreign men living in Bangkok are perennially adrift.

I had a literary agent once who told me that more than half of the American editors to whom he submitted my novels refused to read them at all. We have no interest in that kind of material, they sniffed, and returned my manuscripts to him unread.

Hey, my agent shouted back, Needham doesn't write those kinds of books, but he found that no matter how loudly he shouted he was still facing a formidable wall of presumption based solely on my personal geography. One editor even asked my agent if I was a pedophile, because why the hell else would anyone live in Bangkok?

Seriously. I am not making that up.

So, please, allow me to take this opportunity to set the record straight.

I write crime novels that are set largely in modern Asian cities. My books are about the people who ride the margins and work the netherworld of contemporary Asia. They aren't about Thai prostitutes and western sex tourists.

Happily, Marshall Cavendish International, a very fine publisher owned by a major Singapore media group, now publishes my novels. They distribute the print editions of my books throughout Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, and -- beginning this month with THE AMBASSADOR'S WIFE and THE BIG MANGO -- in the UK and Europe as well. In addition to that, by the end of this year e-book editions of all my novels will be available internationally in every popular format.

So now hear this. I no longer give a damn what American publishers think about my place of residence or what my choice of it might say about me.

My Jack Shepherd Series - LAUNDRY MAN, KILLING PLATO, and LAWYERS, GUNS, AND MONEY coming this fall - is about a high-flying international lawyer who has swapped the fierce intrigues of Washington for the lethargic backwater of Bangkok where he is now just an unremarkable professor at an unknown university in an unimportant city. Or is he? A lawyer among people who laugh at the law, a friend in a land where today's allies are tomorrow'a fugitives, Jack Shepherd is a man perpetually tantalized by the moral labryrinth that bedevils all western expatriates in Asia.

My Inspector Samuel Tay series – THE AMBASSADOR'S WIFE and, coming next spring, BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA – is about a police inspector in the Singapore CID who is something of a reluctant detective. He is a little overweight, a little lonely, a little cranky, and he smokes way too much. When he thinks back, he can't even remember why he became a detective in the first place. All he knows is that he is very, very good at what he does, and probably not much good at anything else.

Sorry, but there's neither a Thai hooker nor a western sex tourist to be found in either series.

I just hope you're not too disappointed.

More information about Jake and his novels can be found on his website www.JakeNeedham.com

History in the Court

Goldsboro Books will host the first History in the Court evening on the 29th September 2011 following on from the success of Crime in the Court earlier in the year. This will become an annual event that will be an informal gathering for fans of history and historical novels to meet some of the best historical writers published today. History in the Court will take place between 5pm till 9pm.

Cecil Court may have been "fit for good inhabitants" but we have good reason to suppose that eighteenth century Cecil Court was not an especially salubrious address. The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, fully searchable online, give an insight into life in the street at the time, whenever the inhabitants fell foul of the law. Residents crop up regularly in the trial transcripts, mostly for petty theft but also for highway robbery, forgery and arson. In 1735 Elizabeth Calloway, keeper of a Brandy Shop in Cecil Court where her clientele could be found "drinking, smoking, and swearing, and running up and down Stairs till one or two in the Morning" seemingly over-insured her goods and set the place alight. Her neighbours' houses were also burned to the ground while she sat smoking her pipe and drinking good Sussex beer with friends a few streets away. It was the first London address of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his family (1764-5), arguably where he composed his first symphony.

Long before Cecil Court became the home for Goldsboro Books it has a history that makes it the world famous street it is today. Cecil Court was laid out in the late seventeenth-century, filling in open land between St Martin’s Lane and Leicester Square as London spread steadily west. It is still owned by the family from which it takes its name, the Cecil family of Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, who are the descendants of Robert Cecil, created first Earl of Salisbury by James I after he smoothed over the transition from the house of Tudor to that of the Stuarts. It was the first London address of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his family (1764-5), arguably where he composed his first symphony; film pioneers such as James Williamson and Cecil Hepworth regarded ‘Flicker Alley’ as the heart of the early British film trade and a young Arthur Ransome honed his writing skills while doing as little work as possible for Ernest Oldmeadow at the Unicorn Press at No. 7 Cecil Court. More information about Cecil Court can be found on their website www.cecilcourt.co.uk

Over 30 authors have been invited and are due to attend. They include - AL Berridge, Richard Blake, Nick Drake, Stella Duffy, James Forrester, Seth Hunter, Michael Jecks, Ben Kane, Karen Maitland, Manda Scott, C J Samson, Laura Wilson and Robyn Young to name a few.

Tickets are available and can be purchased here.

Forthcoming books to look forward to from Transworld Publishers

The Affair is the latest book by Lee Child in the excellent series featuring Jack Reacher. March 1997. A woman has her throat cut behind a bar in Carter Crossing, Mississippi. Just down the road is a big army base. Is the murderer a local guy - or is he a soldier? Jack Reacher, still a major in the military police, is sent in undercover. The county sheriff is a former U.S. Marine - and a stunningly beautiful woman. Her investigation is going nowhere. Is the Pentagon stonewalling her? Or doesn't she really want to find the killer? The adrenaline-pumping, high-voltage action in "The Affair" is set just six months before the opening of "Killing Floor", and it marks a turning point in Reacher's career. If he does what the army wants, will he be able to live with himself? And if he doesn't, will the army be able to live with him? And is this his last case in uniform? The Affair is due to be published in September.

Seven days. Three killings. And one woman who knows too much...Crime reporter Annika Bengtzon is woken by a phonecall in the early hours of a wintry December morning. An explosion has ripped apart the Olympic Stadium. And a victim has been blown to pieces. As Annika delves into the details of the bombing and the background of the victim, there is a second explosion. These chilling crimes could be her biggest news story yet. When her police source reveals they are hot on the heels of the bomber, Annika is guaranteed an exclusive with her name on it. But she is uncovering too much, and soon finds herself the target of a deranged serial killer... The Bomber is by Lisa Marklund and is due to be published in November 2011

On a rainswept London night, the wealthy unscrupulous Robert Kramer hosts a party in his penthouse just off Trafalgar Square. But something is wrong. The atmosphere is uncomfortable, the guests are on edge. And when Kramer's new young wife goes to check on their baby boy, she finds the nursery door locked from the inside. Breaking in, the Kramers are faced with an open window, an empty cot, and a grotesque antique puppet of Mr Punch lying on the floor. It seems that young Noah Kramer was thrown from the building, but the child was strangled, and the marks of the puppet's hands are clearly on his throat...what's more, there was a witness. It's a perfect case for the Peculiar Crimes Unit. As John May and his team interrogate the guests, Arthur Bryant heads into the secret world of automata and stagecraft, illusions and effects. His suspicions fall on the staff of Kramer's company, who have been employed to stage a gruesome new thriller in the West End. As a second impossible death occurs, the detectives uncover forgotten museums and London eccentrics, and take a trip to a seaside Punch & Judy show. Then Bryant's biographer suddenly dies. Was it a tragic accident, or could the circumstances of her death be related to the case? There's just one hour left to solve the crime, but Bryant has buried himself away with his esoteric books. The stage is set for a race against time with a surprising twist... Bryant and May and the Memory of Blood is by Christopher Fowler and is due to be published in September.

Driver: Nemesis is by Alex Sharp. "The Driver": John Tanner is the wheelman, an undercover cop with an awesome driving ability. He earned his stripes racing stock cars through city streets and now he's the best in the business. But his legendary skills are about to be put to the ultimate test..."The Mission": Tanner must infiltrate the criminal underworld of The Indian, the most feared gang leader in New Orleans - a man so terrifying that people claim he has voodoo powers. But when a figure from his past appears, Tanner must face an even more deadly enemy..."The Nemesis": Jericho is an ice cold hitman with a longstanding grudge against Tanner, who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Tanner is going to have to drive for his life to survive, complete his mission and stop the city being brought to its knees. Driver is due to be published in August.

Defender of Rome is by Douglas Jackson and is due to be published in August. Gaius Valerius Verrens returns to Rome from the successful campaign against Boudicca in Britain. Now hailed a 'Hero of Rome', Valerius is not the man he once was - scarred both physically and emotionally by the battles he has fought, his sister is mortally ill, his father in self-imposed exile. And neither is Rome the same city as the one he left. The Emperor Nero grows increasingly paranoid. Those who seek power for themselves whisper darkly in the emperor's ears. They speak of a new threat, one found within the walls of Rome itself. A new religious sect, the followers of Christus, deny Nero's divinity and are rumoured to be spreading sedition. Nero calls on his 'Hero of Rome' to become a 'Defender of Rome', to seek out this rebel sect, to capture their leader, a man known as Petrus. Failure would be to forfeit his life, and the lives of twenty thousands Judaeans living in Rome. But as Valerius begins his search, a quest which will take him to the edge of the empire, he will discover that success may cost him nearly as much as failure.

Snuff is by Terry Pratchett and is book 39 in the Discworld Series. According to the writer of the best-selling crime novel ever to have been published in the city of Ankh-Morpork, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse. And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder. He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, and occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment. They say that in the end all sins are forgiven. But not quite all... Snuff is due to be published in September.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 sent shockwaves around the financial world. Never before had such a large and prestigious organisation been allowed to fail, and to fail so quickly. It began a domino effect, hitting banks and economies around the world. Theories abound as to the cause of the collapse - the sub-prime bubble, bad management, even good old-fashioned greed. But what if it was none of the above. What if Lehman Brothers had been brought to its knees by the deliberate and wilful act of one man bent on a course of financial terrorism? Moreover, what if it was only a dry run for a bigger and even bolder attack on the financial capital of the world, the City of London? Samuel Carver is about to find himself on the biggest mission of his life. Carver is by Tom Cain and is due to be published in August.

It's Egypt, 1320 BC. The future of Egypt lies in the hands of chief detective Rahotep when he undertakes a clandestine mission across enemy empires and rogue states to deliver a top-secret letter, written by the Queen to her arch-enemy, the King of the Hittites. It is a mission from which Rahotep may not return. But he also has a wildly personal motive; to seek out a depraved murderer at the heart of a mysterious and brutal new opium cartel that has emerged within the criminal underworld of Thebes. His quest brings Rahotep face to face with his own dark demons, which he must conquer if he is to return home in time to save Egypt's greatest dynasty and his own family from the terror that threatens them all... Egypt: The Book of Chaos is by Nick Drake and is due to be published in August.

A murder committed on paper, safely within the confines of a novel, is one thing. To see that same crime in the real world, is something else entirely...Frank Fons is a very successful crime writer. His novels, famed for their visceral descriptions of violent death, have made him a household name. But now someone is copying his crimes. For Frank what once seemed a clever, intriguing plot twist, has suddenly become a terrifying, blood-spattered reality. In the novel, a redhead who was scared of water is drowned. In the mirror-image of the real world, she has become an ex-girlfriend chained and left to die at the bottom of the harbour. A corrupt police-officer tortured to death becomes a contact who dies with fear in his eyes. Someone is taking Franks' fiction and using it to destroy his life. The writer must become the detective. In fiction, the bad guy always gets caught, but in real life there is no such guarantee. Fear becomes real. The knife cut hurts like hell. Our narrator may not survive. No-one is promising you a happy ending. For Frank what had once been a game is now a matter of life and death. Death Sentence is by Mikkel Birkegaard and is due to be published in September.

The Colour of Death is by Michael Cordy and is due to be published in August. In a residential neighbourhood of Portland, Oregon, an unknown young woman uncovers a shocking crime scene by inexplicably sensing the evil within its walls. To the police, she is a mystery. She can't even tell them her own name. They christen her Jane Doe. Suffering terrifying hallucinations, Jane is assigned to Nathan Fox, a forensic psychiatrist struggling with his own demons. Together they must piece together the jigsaw that is Jane's identity. Then a sequence of brutal killings terrorizes the city and Fox learns Jane is the only cryptic link between the unrelated victims. To solve the murders, Fox must discard his black and white preconceptions, look beyond the spectrum of normal human experience and confront the dark truth of her past...And his own.

Dead Centre is the latest Nick Stone novel by Andy McNab. Indonesia, January 2005. Nick Stone is working undercover, to retrieve incriminating material from amongst the tsunami-ravaged chaos of a devastated landscape. His team is attacked and a man dies -- but not before he makes an agonising promise that will return one day to haunt him...Moscow, March 2011. Semi-retired but restless, Stone finds himself at the centre of an extraordinary encounter which turns his world upside down. An oligarch's young son and heir has been snatched -- with his mother -- from aboard a luxury yacht in the Seychelles, and only one man has what it takes to track them down and bring them home. The fuse is lit, and Stone is hurtled into his most complex and compelling mission yet -- a mission that leads him from the Alpine enclaves of the super-rich to the savage underbelly of war-torn Somalia. And in a world where piracy, extortion and betrayal lurk in the twisted wreckage of imperial ambition, Stone's principal objective turns remorselessly from liberation to revenge... Dead Centre is due to be published in September.

Adult movie actress, Raven Lane, is one of the most lusted after women in America, with millions of fans to prove it. But when a headless corpse turns up in the trunk of her car, she realises that fame carries a terrible price. Fearing for her life, and with the LAPD seemingly unable to protect her, Raven turns to elite bodyguard, Ryan Lock for help. Lock stops bad things happening to good people, but can he stop the tidal wave of violence now threatening the city of Los Angeles as Raven's predator targets - and kills - those closest to her? As events spiral out of control, Lock is drawn into a dangerous world where money rules, where sex is a commodity to be bought and sold, and where no one can be trusted, least of all his beautiful new client. But what he cannot know is the terrifying price he's about to pay - just for getting involved... Gridlock is the third book in the series by Sean Black to feature Ryan Lock and is due to be published in August.

The Silent Girl is the latest book in the Isles and Rizzoli series by Tess Gerritsen. In the murky shadows of an alley in Boston's Chinatown a hand has been discovered. On the rooftop above lies a woman's severed head. Two strands of silver hair - not human - cling to the body that lies nearby. These are Detective Jane Rizzoli's only clues, but they are enough for her and Dr Maura Isles to make a startling discovery: that this violent death had a chilling prequel. Seventeen years early a horrifying attack in a Boston restaurant left five people dead. Only one woman connected to the massacre is now still alive - a mysterious martial arts master who knows a secret she dare not tell. A secret that lives and breathes in the shadows of the city. A secret that may not even be human. It soon becomes clear than an ancient evil is stirring in Chinatown: an evil that has killed before, and will kill again - unless Jane and Maura can track it down, and defeat it. The Silent Girl was published in July.

August 1942. North Africa. The desert war hangs in the balance. Although their retreat has finally been halted, morale in the British Army is at rock bottom. When the commander of the Eighth Army, General Gott, is killed, it seems that foul play is at work. An impenetrable Axis spy circuit could be compromising any hope the Allies have of stemming the Nazi tide. Jack Tanner, recovering from wounds in a Cairo hospital, is astonished to receive a battlefield commission, which will propel him into a very different world when he returns to action. Fit once more, he finds himself facing the full onslaught of Rommel's latest offensive. In its aftermath, Tanner and his trusty sidekick Sykes are recruited to work behind the Axis lines in a desperate attempt to take the fight to the Nazis. But the murky world of subterfuge, deceit and murder they find themselves in is a million miles away from the certainties of the battlefield and somehow they must discover who they can trust in the cat-and-mouse world of counter-espionage. Hellfire sees Tanner fighting his way through his most dangerous adventure yet - one that takes him from the dark backstreets of Cairo to the open Mediterranean and finally to one of the decisive clashes of the entire war - the Battle of Alamein. Hellfire is by James Holland and was published in July