Mark Hodder on Sexton Blake

I came to Sexton Blake from two directions. The first was via my teenage enthusiasm for the works of Michael Moorcock, whose debut novel CARIBBEAN CRISIS (which, back then, I'd never read) was a Sexton Blake yarn and whose famous Elric character was inspired by one of Blake's arch enemies, Zenith the Albino.

The second was through a cheerfully British breed of literary hero, which had its genesis with Raffles and reached an apotheosis with Bulldog Drummond, The Saint, The Toff, The Baron, and Norman Conquest before then being supplanted by the rather less jovial James Bond and his imitators.

I loved those yarns and was intrigued when I discovered that Berkeley Gray, the author of the Conquest novels, was actually Edwy Searles Brooks, who was apparently also responsible for a great many Sexton Blake tales. Norman Conquest, I learned, grew out of his Blake character, Waldo the Wonder-man.

Who, though, was this oft-mentioned Sexton Blake?

I found out when I discovered a battered paperback in a used bookstore: THE WITCHES OF NOTTING HILLby W. A. Ballinger, The Sexton Blake Library 5th series, 1965.

Fifth series! How many series had there been, I wondered? (The answer is six, though it’s debatable).

I almost didn't bother to find out. The novel was terrible. Blake was an uninspired Bond knock-off, the plot was risible, and the female characters were treated as little more than "totty."

My curiosity would have ended there were it not for the advent of the internet—and eBay—on which, one day, I saw advertised a set of UNION JACK magazines, "Sexton Blake's Own Story Paper," dating from 1919. I bid and, remarkably, no one else did, so I got them for next to nothing.

And … wow!

The yarns I discovered in that stack of crumbling, browned old issues were amazing. The Blake of the period was quite different to his later incarnation—a sort of Indiana Jones with the trappings of Sherlock Holmes and a dash of Batman. He, his teenage sidekick, Tinker, and their bloodhound, Pedro, ranged the world, spy-catching and solving locked-room mysteries; tussling with eccentric super-villains and trekking into deepest Africa; they discovered lost cities and caught the Spanish flu; exposed impersonators and lost their memories; threw themselves into punch-ups and somehow survived ferocious gunfights. All this, and much, much more in a single year's-worth of issues!

Blake had been published continuously from 1893 through to 1978, sometimes in multiple magazines per week, written by approximately 200 authors. During the '40s and '50s, his adventures were translated into many different languages, including Gujarati, and were particularly popular in Spain and South America. In general, the stories were aimed at a young adult market, though in the later years they split into a juvenile branch—picture strips and simplistic two-page stories in KNOCKOUT COMIC, for example—and a more adult branch, beginning when W. Howard Baker took over editorship of the Sexton Blake Library in 1956 and “Bondified” Blake. In addition, there were Blake theatre productions, many silent movies, a handful of talkies, a long-player record, two radio serials, a very popular TV series on ITV, and—sounding the death knell—a far less successful show on the BBC. 

All of this sent me on a collecting odyssey that continues to this day. From the outset, I was intrigued by the way Blake basically remained the same while the world transformed around him. While it's true that he was broody Holmes-ish at times and a bit brutal Bond-ish in the later years, essentially, he was always the ultimate, well-mannered, unemotional, stiff upper lipped Britisher; a mouthpiece for the empire when it still was one; a character whose popularity very slowly dwindled as the empire very slowly faded. For modern sensibilities, his unwavering faith in British superiority is sometimes heart-warming, sometimes risible, and sometimes downright racist—it depends on the writer—but it never fails to offer a solid slice of social history. Blake threw himself into all the huge upheavals of the twentieth century. New technologies frequently featured as centrepieces to his adventures: Radio! Telephones! Cars ("Events move pretty rapidly when one is travelling at thirty miles an hour!")! Flight! Television! And during his twilight years: The atom bomb! Computers! 

He also explored all the new industries that arose amid the changes, working undercover in a myriad of different roles, all of them giving his young readers an insight into what were, essentially, new job opportunities. 

I've never encountered history—not in fiction nor in textbooks—that has felt so palpable as it does in the Blake tales. That’s especially true of the war years, where all the attitudes and hardships jump off the pages.

This, though, is just a bonus. The real attraction is that the stories, aside from the occasional and inevitable stinker, are an immense amount of fun. They rattle along at a furious pace, packed with perils and hair-raising escapades, often hilariously implausible but frequently amazingly inventive.

Though every period has something to offer, the 1920s were undoubtedly Sexton Blake's "golden years." With Eric Parker providing outstanding artwork for its covers, and a band of particularly talented writers at work on the stories, the UNION JACK story paper really hit its stride. This was the era of the super-crook, when Blake and Tinker battled what were, essentially, prototype Batman villains, every bit as wild and bizarre as the Joker, Penguin and Riddler but predating them by twenty years and very easily outshining them. Zenith! Doctor Huxton Rymer! The Black Trinity! The Criminals’ Confederation! George Marsden Plummer! The Owl! Miss Death! The Master Mummer! Gunga Dass! The nefarious ne’er-do-wells make for a very long list, yet each of them is unique and memorable.

I've been collecting, reading, and writing about Sexton Blake for more than two decades now and I never grow tired of it. With so much material, there's always something new to discover!

Long live Blake!

Sexton Blake and the Great War Edited by Mark Hodder (Published by Rebellion Publishing) Out 16 April 2020

 Britain and Germany are at war and Sexton Blake is in the thick of it. As the battle for the Western Front rages, adventuring detective Sexton Blake pits his intellect and physical prowess against the machinations of the Kaiser. A band of intrepid allies join Blake to take on the forces of evil in three classic stories, collected here for the first time.  From uncovering secret German naval bases to dangling from Zeppelins, fighting atop moving trains and escaping firing squads, Blake moves through war-torn Europe solving mysteries and fighting against tyranny.  Join him as he enters a war of secrets, soldiers and spies…

The Shots review can be found here.

Sexton Blake Versus the Master Crooks  (Published 25 June 2020

Sexton Blake ‘s Allies (Published 6 August 2020)

Sexton Blake on the Home Front (Published 6 October 2020)

Sexton Blake’s New Order (Published 10 December 2020)

DETECting European Audiences

Participants wanted for online survey about European crime TV!

Do you like watching crime series on TV or on streaming services? If so, the DETECt project needs you! Our DETECt colleagues in Rome and Aarhus want to find out which crime shows you like, which are your favourite detectives and which elements of crime series keep you glued to the screen.   The survey can be found here.

The survey is completely anonymous.

Acts of Separation by Graham Hurley

If you are feel like reading a free novella then here is your chance!

Graham Hurley is the author of the DI Joe Faraday and Jimmy Suttle series.  He is offering his unpublished novel Acts of Separation for free over on his website. 

Click on the Keep Calm icon and follow your nose.

Garry Disher on The Role of Home in Outback Noir

I say to my friends every year, ‘I’m going home for Christmas.’  Last year someone pulled me up on that: ‘Why do you call it home?’  And she was right, I left there when I was 17.  I lived in inner Melbourne for 20 years.  I’ve lived on the Mornington Peninsula for 26 years.

Perhaps home is where the heart is.  In this case, the mid-north of South Australia, wheat and wool country three hours north of Adelaide and three hours south of the Flinders Ranges.  I grew up on a farm there.  Family members still live there.  I went to school in Burra, where Breaker Morant was filmed and in fact one of my cousins played a Boer War horseman in the film.  A cottage row in the town is named after my mother’s family.  The region continues to exert such a pull on my imagination that I keep returning to it in fiction—mostly recently in the Hirsch (Constable Paul Hirschhausen) crime novels Bitter Wash Road and Peace.

All writing is driven by a question.  Even our shopping lists: What do we need for dinner tonight?  A common question driving crime fiction is: Whodunit (who committed the crime)?  Because in some of my crime novels we know from the start whodunit, other questions prevail: What manner of person done it, and why, and how will he or she be caught?  The question driving my Wyatt caper novels is: Will he get away with it?  If there’s no question nudging us, we only get as far as writing ‘Chapter One’ at the head of the first page.

But a theme may pose a question and therefore drive a book.  We don’t generally think of crime novels as having a theme.  You read one at the beach and leave it behind in the holiday house, fingerprinted with sunblock.

I think crime novels can tell us more about human frailty and the world we live in than literary novels.  What more profound theme than crime and punishment?  But one of fiction’s enduring themes is the search for a true home—a place; the arms of a lover; peace of mind.

When I wrote the first Hirsch novel, Bitter Wash Road, I asked myself: Who is going to filter the story to the reader?  An insider?  Most urban-based investigators are insiders: Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus in Edinburgh, for example.  We readers might find Edinburgh unfamiliar or unsettling but can rest assured that Rebus, our guide, has always lived there and possesses wide-ranging and penetrating insider knowledge.

But in a cluster of recent Australian crime novels, termed ‘outback noir’, the investigations are carried out from scratch by figures who are outsiders or newcomers to varying degrees.  They lack experience and full or recent local knowledge.  

My character Hirsch is a city boy, a disgraced Adelaide detective who’s been ‘busted’ down to uniform and sent to a little one-officer police station in the outback.  He’s no V. I. Warshawski, familiar with every Chicago alleyway.  In Chris Hammer’s Scrublands we have a big city journalist writing an investigative piece about a mass shooting in an outback town he finds baffling.  In Jane Harper’s The Dry a federal policeman, returning to investigate a family annihilation in his childhood hometown, finds that he must learn the place all over again.

These investigators never feel quite at home, in other words—reinforced by the fact that their actual homes are circumscribed.  Hirsch lives in three cramped rooms at the back of the police station—which is itself the front room of a little house on a rural highway—when he’s not spending all day in his other ‘home’, his police SUV.  In Peter Temple’s The Broken Shore the main character resides mostly in two rooms of a house in need of repair (indeed, owing to injuries, he spends long periods in an armchair by an open fire).  Home for Chris Hammer’s Scarsden in a motel room, and for Jane Harper’s Falk a room above the bar of the town pub, a space he shares with a huntsman spider.  Makeshift, unloved, unlovely homes that underscore their outsider/newcomer status.

And so we have a double investigation in these novels, one tied to the other: a character trying simultaneously to decipher a crime and a place.  This imparts an extra layer of energy and suspense to outback noir and helps to account for its current popularity.

Bitter Wash Road by Garry Disher. (published by Viper Books) Out now.

One dead-end posting.  One dead body, a tragic accident?  That’s what they want you to think... Constable Paul 'Hirsch' Hirschhausen is a whistle-blower. Formerly a promising metropolitan detective, now hated and despised, he's been exiled to a one-cop station in South Australia's wheatbelt. So when he heads up Bitter Wash Road to investigate gunfire and finds himself cut off without backup, there are two possibilities. Either he's found the fugitive killers thought to be in the area. Or his 'backup' is about to put a bullet in him.  He's wrong on both counts. But Tiverton - with its stagnant economy, entrenched racism and rural isolation - has more crime than one constable can handle. And when the next call-out takes him to the body of a sixteen-year-old girl, it's clear that whether or not Hirsch finds her killer, his past may well catch up with him.

Lockdown by Peter May

“Lockdown” was the thriller I wrote to save my writing career from financial meltdown fifteen years ago. It failed.

I had spent a year researching and writing a book called “The Blackhouse”. At the time I was convinced it was the best thing I had ever written. Publishers disagreed and it was rejected by every crime editor in the UK.

I turned my attentions instead to the first book in what I hoped would become a series. It featured a Scots-Italian forensics expert living in France called Enzo MacLeod. The title was “Extraordinary People”, and it met the same fate as “The Blackhouse”. No one would publish it. I had spent two years writing these books, spending precious resources on complex research, and failing to generate any income. I needed to sell something quickly.

So I turned my attentions to writing a fast-paced thriller set in London. My knowledge and interest in viral infections had been sparked by research into one of my China Thrillers, “Snakehead”, in which bio-terrorists had isolated and weaponised the 1918 Spanish Flu virus which killed up to 50 million people worldwide. But now I was reading about what scientists were predicting would lead to the next global pandemic - Bird Flu. So I decided to use that as the backdrop to my thriller - not just to thrill and entertain, but to inform and to warn. Because, frankly, if the predictions were to come true, the consequences would be almost unimaginable.

I delved into the research and made a trip to London to recce the locations. A story was evolving, and using the pandemic preparedness plans of the UK and the US, I started to piece together what the social consequences of a pandemic would be in a modern capital city. Complete lockdown. Empty streets. Shops and commercial premises shut. People confined to their homes. A health service unable to cope with the numbers of sick. Crematoria that couldn’t deal with the numbers of dead. It seemed dystopian, and yet everything I read pointed to this certain outcome.

So that became the backdrop to my story, an investigation into the murder of a child whose rendered bones are found on the building site of an emergency hospital under construction in London.

It was a story that took place over just twenty-four hours, and I burned the midnight oil to write it. When I finished it, I had high hopes of finding a publisher. I was wrong.

“Unrealistic”. “Unimaginable in present-day London”. “Too dystopian for a crime novel”. These were some of the comments that greeted me as I tried to sell it. It was the third book in a row for which I had failed to get a publishing deal. Now I really was on my uppers.

Fortunately, I was rescued from complete disaster by two publishing deals in the US which just about kept my head above water.

Then came my major breakthrough. Remember “The Blackhouse”, the book that no British publisher wanted? Well, my French publisher read it, loved it, bought world rights. It was then acquired by Quercus in the UK, and the rest is history. The Lewis Trilogy which that book spawned has sold millions of copies around the world. It is little wonder, then, that I had forgotten all about that “dystopian” thriller set in London.

That is until someone on Twitter about three weeks ago suggested that I write a story set against the backdrop of a Coronavirus lockdown. Suddenly I remembered “Lockdown” itself and realised that I had already done just that.

I mentioned it to my editor at Quercus who asked to see it. He read it overnight. He loved it, and felt that readers should get access to it straight away, since it was such an accurate reflection of what they were living through right now. The manuscript was processed for publication and the e-book became available last week. The paperback will be available online and in supermarkets from April 30th.

I have always believed that popular culture should reflect the world around us, mirror our shared daily experience. And “Lockdown” does just that during the extraordinary times we are living through. The response from readers has been overwhelmingly positive. It is frustrating being confined to my own home, like everyone else, and unable to do anything positive to help. So I have pledged my entire advance to charities and individuals on the frontline of the fight against Covid-19.

Lockdown by Peter May. Published by Quercus Publishing (Out 30 April 2020)

They said that twenty-five percent of the population would catch the flu. Between seventy and eight percent of them would die. He had been directly exposed to it, and the odds weren't good.  A CITY IN QUARANTINE - London is in lockdown under martial law. A hospital is being urgently built by the river Thames to contain the thousands of victims of a flu-like epidemic. Construction is brought to a sudden halt when a leather holdall containing the bones of a child is unearthed from the rubble. A KILLER WITHOUT REMORSE - A psychopath has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified. But why are he and his handlers determined to go to such murderous lengths to hide the origins of the body? A GRIEVING INSPECTOR - DI Jack MacNeil is facing his last day on the force, his career in ruins, his marriage over and his beloved son Jack dying from the virus. He has only hours to prevent the killer from eliminating all witnesses to a conspiracy whose evil effects are beyond belief.

Dystopias, Thrillers, Ghost stories and a Booker Winner make Longlist for Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2020.

Goldsboro Books today (Monday 6th April) announced the twelve titles longlisted for the 2020 Glass Bell Award, the prize which celebrates the best storytelling across contemporary fiction. A longlist which sees an incredible range of genres represented, it includes a Booker-winning exploration of black womanhood in Britain; a speculative thriller which imagines the world 800 years after a complete technological collapse; and two serial killer thrillers – with a twist!

Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and Oyinkan Braithwaite’s debut My Sister the Serial Killer are both on the longlist – their latest literary nominations. Both were longlisted for the Booker, ultimately won by Evaristo (jointly with Margaret Atwood) and both have been shortlisted for a British Book Award. In addition, both have been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, although in different years. They are joined by international bestseller Robert Harris’s latest #1 bestseller The Second Sleep.

Also on the longlist are the long-awaited second novels from Erin Morgenstern, whose debut The Night Circus was a New York Times bestseller eight years ago, and from author and screenwriter Stephen Chbosky, whose hugely successful coming of age novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower was made into a film starring Emma Watson, Logan Lerman and Ezra Miller. Morgenstern’s new novel The Starless Sea is an ambitious fantasy novel about a quest launched by a mysterious library book, described as ‘assuredly beautiful’ by The Guardian, whilst Chbosky’s new novel Imaginary Friend is a departure – a terrifying Stephen King-esque horror story.

As well as My Sister the Serial Killer, four other critically acclaimed debuts have made the longlist: Joanne Ramos’s The Farm, an alarming dystopia about the commercialisation of the fertility industry which was a BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick; The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, a million copy bestselling thriller with an unguessable twist; Blood & Sugar by Laura Shepherd- Robinson, a historical crime novel set in eighteenth century, about the disappearance of an abolitionist; and The Lost Ones by Anita Frank, a spine tingling ghost story reminiscent of the works of Susan Hill.

Rounding off the list is Nothing Important Happened Today by international bestseller Will Carver, a pitch black noir thriller about an unstoppable cult; Daisy Jones and the Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s breakthrough novel about the internal dramas and excesses of a 70s rock band; and Darkdawn, the epic third and final chapter of Jay Kristoff ’s celebrated Nevernight series.

David Headley, Goldsboro Books co-founder and MD, and founder of the Glass Bell, says: ‘When I launched the Glass Bell Award in 2017, it was to shine a light on the wonderful storytelling found in contemporary fiction, that can so easily be overlooked by subjective genre boundaries. As authors increasingly take risks, play with words, and push the boundaries of genre to new limits, compiling our longlist becomes more and more exciting every year.

‘The books on this year ’s longlist all spoke to our team of judges in many ways. Each one is a genuinely unique tale for our time, from unlikely serial killer thrillers, to tales of rock and roll excess from the 1970s; from terrifying ghost stories to two incredibly different, but nonetheless equally believable and relevant dystopias; four very talented debut novelists and of course the hugely deserving winner of last year’s Booker prize! Narrowing it down to a shortlist of six is both an exhilarating and daunting challenge.’

The Glass Bell Award is judged by David and his team at Goldsboro Books. It is the only prize that rewards storytelling in all genres – from romance, thrillers and ghost stories, to historical, speculative and literary fiction – and is awarded annually to ‘a compelling novel with brilliant characterisation and a distinct voice that is confidently written and assuredly realised’. The shortlist of six will be announced on 11th May, with the winner, who will receive both £2,000, and a beautiful, handmade, engraved glass bell, to be announced on 2nd July.

For further information, and to join the conversation please visit: www.goldsborobooks.com | twitter.com/GoldsboroBooks #GlassBell | www.facebook.com/GoldsboroBooks

2020 LONGLIST

Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky (Orion Books)

Darkdawn by Jay Kristoff (HarperVoyager)

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (Harvill Secker)

The Lost Ones by Anita Frank (HQ)

My Sister the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (Atlantic Books)

The Farm by Joanne Ramos (Bloomsbury)

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton)

The Second Sleep by Robert Harris (Cornerstone)

Blood & Sugar by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Cornerstone)

Nothing Important Happened Today by Will Carver (Orenda Books)

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides (Orion Books)

Books to Look Forward to from Orion Publishing

July 2020

Before - A man running along a remote clifftop path on an icy-cold February morning.  A woman standing on the cliff's edge.  A red scarf on the ground between them.  After - The man is alone on the cliff - adrenaline pumping through his veins.  The woman is on the beach below - dead.  The red scarf is also on the beach -   beautifully (and impossibly) wrapped around the woman's broken neck. What happened? Two lives colliding by chance?  Or a revenge decades in the making?  Never Forget is by Michel Bussi.

How to Be Nowhere is by Tim MacGabhann.  Life is finally on the right track for reporter

and recovering addict Andrew: he is slowly coming to terms with the murder of his photographer boyfriend Carlos, pursuing sobriety and building a new home with a new partner. Andrew has almost forgotten about the story that ruined his life - but that story hasn't forgotten about him, and a series of deadly threats forces him into helping the very man whose gang murdered his boyfriend and left him homeless.

The Portland Spy Ring was one of the most notorious spy cases from the Cold War. It seized international attention and revealed the shadowy world of deep cover KGB spies operating under false identities ('illegals').  The CIA's revelation to MI5 that a KGB agent was stealing crucial secrets from the sensitive submarine research base at Portland in Dorset looked initially like a dangerous but contained lapse of security by a British man and his mistress. But the unsuspecting couple passed the secrets to a Canadian businessman, Gordon Lonsdale. Lonsdale in turn led MI5's spycatchers to an innocent-looking couple in suburban Ruislip called the Krogers, who were transmitting the vital information to Moscow. A sudden defection forced the arrest of the spy ring.  The Krogers were discovered to be two of the most important Russian 'illegals' ever. The Americans had been searching for them for years. In a previous undercover life they had been a conduit to the KGB atomic spies at Los Alamos. And Lonsdale was no Canadian, but a senior KGB controller called Konon Molody - who years later turned out to have been running other key Soviet agents in the UK.  This astonishing but true story of MI5's spyhunt is straight from the world of John le Carre. It criss-crosses the world between the USSR, USA, Canada, New Zealand, Europe and the UK, and ends with dramatic spy swaps familiar to viewers of Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies. This extraordinary story is a fascinating vignette of the Cold War stand-off between the USSR and the West, and a case that fully justified the West's paranoia about infiltration and treachery.  Dead Doubles: The Portland Spy Ring is by Trevor Barnes.

The only thing the three women had in common was their husband. And, as of this morning, that they're each accused of his murder.  Blake Nelson moved into a hidden stretch of land - a raw paradise in the wilds of Utah - where he lived with his three wives:  Rachel, the chief wife, obedient and doting to a fault.  Tina, the other wife, who's everything Rachel isn't.  And Emily, the youngest wife, who knows almost nothing else.  When their husband is found dead under the desert sun, the questions pile up.   What are these women to each other now that their husband is dead? Will the police uncover the secrets each woman has spent her life hiding? And is one of them capable of murder...?  Black Widows is by Cate Quinn.

Fifty-Fifty is by Steve Cavanagh.  Two sisters on trial for murder. They accuse each other.  Who do YOU believe?  '911 what's your emergency?'  'My dad's dead. My sister Sofia killed him. She's still in the house. Please send help.'  'My dad's dead. My sister Alexandra killed him. She's still in the house. Please send help.'  One of them is a liar and a killer.  But which one?

Like Mother, Like Daughter is by Elle Croft.  If what they said was true, then the grotesque and the monstrous ran in her blood. It was imprinted within her very core, her DNA, a part of every cell in her body.   Kat's children are both smart and well-adjusted. On the outside.  Kat has always tried to treat Imogen and Jemima equally, but she struggles with one of her daughters more than the other.   Because Imogen's birth mother is a serial killer. And Imogen doesn't know.  They say you can't choose your family, but what if your family chooses you?

August 2020

'The Sleeping Nymph': a work of art of magnetic beauty, painted by a young partisan fighter during the last days of the Second World War. A painting carrying a shocking secret hidden in the red pigment on the canvas, made with the blood of a human heart. But whose heart?   There is no body, no confession. Only that faint trace of blood. And that's what leads commissioner Teresa Battaglia - herself hiding an unspeakable truth - to the Resia Valley, in the north eastern part of Italy: a perfect genetic enclave protected for centuries from the outside world.   The valley and the portrait are the only clues for a murder that occurred more than 70 years before. A red thread leading to the shadow of someone hell-bent on protecting a sacred secret.  Painted in Blood is by Ilaria Tuti.

Nancy, Eleanor and Mary met at college and have been friends ever since, through marriages, children and love affairs. Nancy married her college sweetheart and is now missing that excitement of her youth.  Eleanor put her career above all else and hasn't looked back, despite her soft spot for Nancy's husband.  Mary fell pregnant far too young and is now coping with three children and a mentally unwell husband.  But when Nancy is killed, Eleanor and Mary must align themselves to uncover her killer. And as each of their stories unfold, they realise that there are many ways, different truths to find, and many different ways to bring justice for those we love...  Imperfect Women is by Araminta Hall.

Inside Out is by Chris McGeorge.  Cara Lockhart has just commenced a life sentence in HMP

New Fern - the newest maximum security woman's prison in the country. She was convicted of a murder she is adamant she didn't commit.   One morning she wakes up to find her cellmate murdered - shot in the head with a gun that is missing. The door was locked all night, which makes Cara the only suspect. There is only one problem - Cara knows she didn't do it and she has no idea who did.   Being the only one who knows the truth, Cara sets about trying to clear her name, unravelling an impossible case, with an investigation governed by a prison timetable. Cara starts to learn more about her fellow prisoners, finding connections between them and herself that she would never have imagined.   Indeed it seems that her conviction and her current situation might be linked in strange ways...

The Dance of the Serpents is by Oscar De Muriel.  There are many bad days in Edinburgh police's subdivision 'The Commission for the Elucidation of Unsolved Cases Presumably Related to the Odd and Ghostly'. And in the pantheon of the worst days - today takes the podium.  Because the English Inspector Ian Frey, and his Scottish boss 'Nine-Nails' McGray are called into a meeting in the middle of the night with none other than the Prime Minister himself.  And he tells them that Queen Victoria - the most powerful woman in the world - wants them both dead.

September 2020

Thomas Bexley has become a drunkard and recluse, haunted by terrible visions of the dead.  But when he learns of a spate of kidnappings – in which his dear friend and former mentor, Elijah hawthorn, is the lead suspect – Thomas embarks on a journey to find the missing Hawthorn and prove his innocence,  Though as the mystery of Hawthorn’s disappearance deepens, so too does Thomas’s apparently growing insanity.  How can Thomas be certain of the truth when he can’t trust anybody around him, not even himself …?  Letters from the Dead is by Sam Hurcom.

The Unwanted Dead is by Chris Lloyd.  Paris, June 1940.   The Nazi occupation of Paris begins. Detective Eddie Giral - a survivor of the last World War - watches helplessly on as his world changes forever. But there is something he still has control over.   Finding whoever is responsible for four murdered refugees: the unwanted dead, forgotten amid the headlines.  To do so, he must tread carefully between the Occupation and the Resistance, all the while becoming whoever he must be to survive in this new and terrible order descending on his home.

October 2020

When struggling photojournalist Harper tries to return a dress she bought that morning for a job that's fallen through something catches her eye: the same little girl who was waiting there that morning is still there.  The sales assistant doesn't know   whose she is. The security guard at the mall hasn't had anyone come looking for her. Same goes for the local police, and the media.   In fact, no one seems to be looking for little May at all.  Harper knows from bitter experience what awaits May in Child Protection Services. But, without any clues, how do you put the needle back in the haystack? And who would just leave a child like this? And what if finding her home was the worst thing   you could do?  Take Me Home is by Alex Hart.

Nowhere to be Found is by Louisa de Lange.  She found the body.  Now Lucy Barker is missing … Lucy Barker has disappeared, and her distraught husband Scott says he has no idea where she is.   But rumours abound about this seemingly perfect couple. Why is Scott behaving so strangely? And why was Lucy lying to him about where she went every Tuesday night?  Then, while investigating the recent murder of man found floating in a lake, DS Kate Munro learns that it was Lucy Barker who discovered the body and called the police.  Now she must find out if the two crimes are connected. Before Lucy's time runs out . . .

Also due to be published in October is the new John Rebus book entitled A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin.

November 2020

33 women...one big secret.  When sisters Celine and Pip get a call telling them their mother has died, the two women are forced to return to their family home in Arundel to pick up the pieces. But someone is missing - their sister, Vanessa, brutally murdered years ago and the victim of an unsolved .  . As the sisters confront ghosts from the past, the discovery of another body in the town throws new light on Vanessa's death. Could there be more to her case than the police first thought? And what do the mysterious women of Two Cross Farm, the women's commune in Arundel, have to do with it? What secrets are lurking behind their gates?  Two Crosses is by Isabel Ashdown.

Murder at the Castle is by M B Shaw.  After uncovering the mystery of the mill, amateur sleuth iris Grey returns with another crime to solve.

December 2020

Fool Me Twice is by Jeff Lindsay.  Riley Wolfe, the master thief and master of disguise is back with Fool Me Twice, with a bigger take and much higher stakes.  Can he steal a fresco in Rome, an actual painted wall, for the arms dealer who has captured him and threatened him in the most personal way?   If anyone can get away with it, it's Riley Wolfe. He's always liked a challenge, and there is nothing more satisfying than robbing, and perhaps even double-crossing, the rich!

Faith Diamond grew up on the wrong sides of the track.  With a family incapable of abiding by the law, her future is more about survival than dreams.  But then a series of prostitutes are murdered, necks broken and stripped naked , their only connection the pimp, Marshall Vella – a man connected in more ways than one with the Diamond family.  And Faith is forced to consider the possibility that the people in her life might be more evil than even she could ever imagined.   Loaded is by Niki Mackay

The List is by Cary Jones. Beth Belmont runs every day, hard and fast on the trail near home. She knows every turn, every bump in the road. So when she spots something out of place - a slip of white paper at the base of a tree - she's drawn to it.  On the paper are five names. The third is her own.  Beth can't shake off the unease the list brings. Why is she on it? And what ties her to the other four strangers?  Then she discovers that the first two are dead. Is she next?  Delving into the past of the two dead strangers, the truth Beth finds will lead her headlong into her darkest, deadliest and most dangerous nightmares...

January 2021

Buenos Aires, 2001:  the streets are overflowing with protestors, frustrated by the Government’s inability to face a mounting economic crisis.  Inspector Alzada is convinced of the futility of yet another doomed Argentinean attempt at democracy and is determined to remain a detached bystander.  But the disappearance of a woman from one of the city’s wealthiest families brings back painful memories of Alzada’s work in the Buenos Aires police force during the Dirty War of the 80s, a war that tore a nation apart and destroyed the inspectors family for ever.  Repentance is by Eloĺsa Dĺaz

The Wanted is by Holly Seddon. What would you do if you found your name on a hit list? And your late husband put it there?  Things go from bad to worse for Marianne when she discovers that not only has her seemingly ordinary late husband, Greg, been accessing the dark web, but that her name is also on a hit list on his laptop.  Marianne must figure out whether Greg was trying to protect her or whether he was complicit in the conspiracy to murder her.  As she is pulled deeper into an underworld that Greg was seemingly hostage to, she gets closer to meeting Sam – the assassin hired to kill her.

The Grove of the Caesars by Lindsey Davis

In the video below, Lindsey Davis talks about her career and her new book The Grove of the Caesars which is out now.


Lindsey Davis talks about The Grove of the Caesars from Lindsey Davis on Vimeo.

The Grove of the Caesars by Lindsey Davis (Hodder & Stoughton) Out Now.

Don't go to the Grove . . .

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 obscure 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?

Facebook Live! Lynda La Plante discusses Buried

EXCLUSIVE OPPORTUNITY TO JOIN AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR LYNDA LA PLANTE FOR A FACEBOOK LIVE TO DISCUSS HER BRAND NEW NOVEL BURIED

Lynda La Plante has decided to reach out to her readers and invite them to a Facebook Live with her at 6 pm on Thursday 2nd April to share a G&T and chat all things Buried.

 Lynda will be reading from the novel and answering questions (submitted in advance) through her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LyndaLaPlanteCBE/

If you would like to submit a question for Lynda please email lynda.laplante@myreadersclub.co.uk ahead of the Live.

If you would like to join in with us this Thursday- please share the image at the top of this email on your social media pages.

If you haven't read Buried yet, but would like to read and review, please click on the link to read on Netgalley: https://www.netgalley.co.uk/widget/228193/redeem/5f258430efbedaba1633f491140681ab9421d3f0f3d129adab781f428e54d77c

We look forward to seeing you all there and sharing a drink and a chat with the fabulous Lynda La Plante.