JAKE LAMAR on HARLEM, HIMES and VIPER'S DREAM

My latest work, Viper's Dream, is a crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961. The inspiration for the novel was twofold: my life-long love of jazz; and my discovery, rather late in life, of the novels of Chester Himes. 

Growing up in New York City in the 1970s, I revered mid-century African American authors like Richard Wright and James Baldwin, Toni Morrison and Ralph Ellison. Nobody told me that one of their contemporaries, Chester Himes, was a major writer. While I heard adults talk about the crime movie Cotton Comes to Harlem, I never heard much about the book or its author. 

Only after I arrived in Paris in 1993, did I meet readers, American and French, black and white, who raved about Chester Himes and expressed astonishment that I, a published author, had never read him. 

Reading Himes's first novel, If He Hollers, Let Him Go, was a staggering experience. First published in 1945, it was pigeonholed as "protest" literature, an earnest plea for Negro rights, rather than being recognized as the devastatingly smart satire it was. Himes had continued to toil, prolifically if obscurely, through several more novels written in his exquisitely sardonic voice. 

Like Baldwin and Wright, Himes lived for a time in Paris, as part of the growing post-war African American expatriate community. It was thanks to an offer from the French translator of If He Hollers, Let Him Go, Marcel Duhamel, that Himes turned to the crime genre. Duhamel was also the director of the Série Noire imprint, which specialized in crime novels or, as the French called them, policiers. "Write like you did in the novel I translated," Duhamel told Himes. "Short, terse sentences. All action." 

Himes would go on to write nine crime novels set in Harlem and featuring the black police detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. Himes's Harlem Cycle constitutes an epic achievement in crime writing and, to my mind, in American literature as a whole. 

Starting with James Sallis's superb biography Chester Himes: A Life in 2000, this most egregiously overlooked of American authors began to be appreciated in his native country. But he remains better known in France and the rest of Europe. 

Why the lack of recognition in the USA? Chester Himes (1909-1984) was not a particularly nice man. His life was punctuated by horrific tragedies, bizarre misadventures and an eight-year stay in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery. Much of the time, he was ornery and broke; often drunk and anything but "woke". 

But he was a writer down to his marrow. In the second volume of his autobiography, My Life of Absurdity, he wrote about the creation of the Harlem Cycle: "The only time I was happy was while writing these strange, violent, unreal stories." 

When I set out to write Viper's Dream, I knew better than to attempt to replicate Himes's gripping phantasmagoria of hoodlums and hustlers. In my novel, the history of Harlem is intertwined with the history of jazz. My protagonist, Clyde Morton, arrives from Alabama in 1936, dreaming of becoming a great trumpet player, the next Louis Armstrong. At Clyde's first audition, the bass player Pork Chop Bradley breaks the news: the young man has no talent whatsoever. 

Clyde is devastated. Pork Chop, in an effort to console him, introduces Clyde to Mary Warner, one of the many code names for marijuana. At the time, grass was not well-known in mainstream America. But it was a precious secret among jazz musicians, who called heavy pot smokers "vipers," because of that hissing sound one makes when sucking on a joint: Ssssssss... 

Clyde Morton becomes known as the Viper, the biggest dealer of marijuana to jazz musicians in Harlem. But in the 1940s, with the jazz revolution known as bebop, a new drug appears on the scene: heroin. To Clyde Morton, heroin is killing jazz by taking the lives of its greatest artists, like Charlie Parker. Viper Morton refuses to deal heroin. And he will kill anyone in his sphere who tries to sell junk. 

I've always felt that Viper's Dream has a "Once Upon a Time in Harlem" feel about it. It's a mash-up of history, mythology and imagination. It's fiction, not documentary. In his autobiography, Chester Himes stresses in italics an important point about fiction versus reality: "The Harlem of my books was never meant to be real; I never called it real..." 

Viper's Dream by Jake Lamar (Published by No Exit Press) Out Now.

A hard-boiled crime novel set in the jazz world of Harlem between 1936 and 1961, Viper's Dream combines elements of the epic Godfather films and the detective novels of Chester Himes to tell the story of one of the most respected and feared Black gangsters in America. At the centre of Viper's Dream is a turbulent love story. And the climax bears an element of Greek tragedy. For the better part of 20 years, Clyde 'The Viper' Morton has been in love with Yolanda 'Yo-Yo' DeVray, a singer of immense talent but a woman consumed by demons. By turns ambitious and self-destructive, conniving and naive, Yo-Yo is a classic femme fatale. She is a bright star in a constellation of compelling characters including the chauffeur-turned-gangster Peewee Robinson, the Jewish kingpin Abraham 'Mr. O' Orlinsky, the heroin dealer West Indian Charlie, the corrupt cop Red Carney, the wife-beating singer Pretty Paul Baxter, the pimp Buttercup Jones and the brutal enforcer Randall Country Johnson.

More information about Jake Lamar and his work can be found on his website. He can also be found on Twitter @jakelamar

Q & A on Tell Me Lies by Teresa Driscoll

 In your own words, please tell us about Tell Me Lies. 

This novel is a dark twist on that most difficult of dilemmas – should you forgive a cheating partner? In Tell Me Lies, troubled Hannah’s world spirals to a very dangerous place where she must ask – is it even safe to forgive her cheating husband? The story is further complicated by Hannah’s childhood trauma which makes it very hard for her to decide if all the mysterious happenings around her are the result of her paranoia. Or if she’s right to be so afraid.

You worked as a BBC TV news presenter before turning to writing thrillers. What made you want to start writing? Did your career in the media help you as a storyteller? 

I wanted to write fiction from an early age and started novels in exercise books right back in primary school. A careers adviser wisely steered me to journalism which I loved, working in newspapers for years and then television. My decades as a reporter allowed me to walk through extraordinary emotional landscape. So many stories about bad things happening to good people. I never let go of the dream of writing fiction but I didn’t find space for it until my life was less hectic.

Now, as an author, I never use real stories in my fiction but I do absolutely use that emotional landscape from my years in journalism. The memory of all the ripples in the pool after a crime or a tragedy. Especially the memory of the haunted look in the eyes of anyone who’s lost a loved one to a crime. That stays with you.

To me fiction feels like a safe space to explore the many difficult themes that troubled me across all those decades as a journalist. I’m not afraid to use challenging themes but I try always to write as sensitively as I possibly can. I feel it all very deeply so I do find some scenes very hard to write. Often I have to take a good long walk before a challenging chapter.

There is a tangible feeling of claustrophobia and isolation in this book after you suffered a freak accident a year ago and channelled the trauma of this into your writing. What happened?

I’d started this book (and had a deadline for it) when I suffered this terrible freak accident. A year on, I still can’t quite believe it happened …

I’d had my flu jab and felt a bit ‘off’. In the night I went to the bathroom and felt decidedly wobbly. I’m prone to fainting and thought I’d better get back to bed – but alas didn’t make it! I fainted down a single step – possibly into the door frame. Upshot was I managed to break my hip. 

And my heart!

This was just before my 30th wedding anniversary and we had big treats planned ,including a stay at the Burgh Island hotel. Instead I spent my anniversary in hospital (in shock) having an emergency full hip replacement!

Because of Covid, my husband wasn’t allowed in the ambulance and visiting was very restricted. Ambulances were queuing outside my local hospital (Derriford) the night I fainted so we had to go to Torbay hospital which I didn’t know at all. I’ve never been so thrown. Or scared.

Recovery was tough. I’m normally so fit and independent so this big mobility upset (crutches and strict rules to avoid dislocation) really knocked my confidence for a while. Also my brain was foggy for a few weeks (shock, I assume, plus painkillers ) and I couldn’t write. I knew that my lovely publisher would put the deadline back if necessary. But I didn’t want that. So once I was able to write again, I felt desperate to do nothing but write. So I finished writing Tell Me Lies in this really strange and intense place. Unable to drive. Unable to get about properly.

I realise now that I put a lot of my shock, isolation and feelings of claustrophobia and disorientation into the writing of Tell Me Lies. It wasn’t intentional but I see now looking back that my strange headspace at the time really suited the story. So, as horrible as the whole hip drama was, I think it’s made for a much stronger book. 

Thankfully I’m fully recovered now and so launching this book feels particularly special to me. (Note to self: Rebook Burgh Island Hotel to celebrate!)

This story is delightfully complex and unique. How did you come up with it? Do you plot everything out before you write? 

The character of troubled Hannah – with her childhood trauma – came to me first, very powerfully, but I wasn’t sure what story to put her in. Then I remembered a stay in an idyllic cottage in Cornwall where I’d been spooked by a reference in the visitor book to a ghost. For a night, I was listening out for every creak of the floorboards – suddenly this beautiful cottage felt alien and quite threatening!

I realised I wanted to put those two things together - Hannah with her troubled background and an idyllic cottage that somehow turns dark. The plot just grew from there.

I’m more of a ‘pantser’ than a true ‘plotter’ but I did have a short synopsis written up before I started the novel. Other themes and strands emerged in the writing.

A key theme in the book is the support given – or not – by close friends when tragedy strikes or relationships are betrayed. Should cheating spouses be given a second chance, or should we walk away from infidelity?

I don’t think anyone can reach my age without having seen someone in their wider circle face this terrible dilemma. Forgive or walk away from a cheater? How on earth do you give advice? I’ve known people get past an infidelity and others fall apart over it. There’s no right or wrong way. Ask Google and you will get MILLIONS of answers. It’s a messy and heart-breaking dilemma and that’s why I wanted to explore it in this book, adding the darker dimension of danger.

You often draw on real life locations as settings in your books. Tell us more about the house on which you based Owl Cottage? 

When my two boys were small we took many idyllic holidays on The Lizard in Cornwall. Twice we stayed in this gorgeous cottage with owls hooting at night from the nearby trees. I LOVED it but one day noticed a reference in the visitor book to a ghost. I was verily spooked and that night was listening out for every creak of the floorboards. I’m embarrassed to admit it took a while for me to get a grip and the idyllic place felt temporarily alien. So when I was thinking of a setting for this book, I had that special cottage very much in my mind. That strong memory of it suddenly seeming darker for a time. I wanted to return to the cottage to celebrate finishing the book but it’s been sold. I tweaked the layout and the geography of the property too as I’m not sure the new owners would like the idea of my dark story being set there but it helped enormously to have a real and beautiful cottage in mind when I was writing.

You live in Devon and Tell Me Lies is set in Cornwall. You’ve said before that the area around Porthleven is one of your favourite places. What is special about Devon and Cornwall?

I’ve always loved the south-west. My late mother was born in North Devon so we visited a lot in my childhood. Lots of memories of the seaside and the beautiful farmland. When I was offered the role to present the BBC regional TV news in the south-west, I genuinely couldn’t believe my luck. A glorious place to work and to bring up my family.

As much as I love Devon, we also liked a change of scene when our two boys were small so had lots of bucket-and-spade holidays in Cornwall. The Lizard was our favourite and I fell in love with Porthleven in particular. Our boys are adults now but my husband and I still visit Porthleven regularly and I often use the area in my books. It’s very special. A picture-perfect harbour with friendly people, glorious views and, for me, magical memories.

There is controversy about people having second homes in these areas, and the tensions between locals and holiday let owners features in the book. What has been your experience of this situation? Do you sympathise with one or the other, or can you see both sides?

I sprinkled a reference to the second homes controversy into this book because it’s increasingly debated across the south-west and it’s something we do need to think about. I have regularly rented cottages in Cornwall so I worry I wear an ‘hypocrisy hat’. I know that Cornwall needs the money from tourism but it also needs more affordable homes for its young people and holiday rentals are driving up prices. So I’m troubled by the debate and that’s why I put it in the book. I can definitely see both sides and feel we need to somehow find a balance. I don’t have the answer but the problem of locals being priced out of the housing market needs to be talked about.

What is aphantasia, and how does this affect your writing?

I discovered not long ago that I seem to have an unusual form of aphantasia which means my ‘mind’s eye’ doesn’t work quite like other people’s. I haven’t had a formal diagnosis but every test and survey I’ve taken online tells me that I do have this strange condition.

Aphantasia means that you can’t conjure an actual picture when you close your eyes. If you tell me to picture an apple, I close my eyes and see only black. What I do instead is I remember what it feels like to look at an apple. I can’t even conjure a picture of my family members. I mean I know what they look like and I can describe them. But if I shut my eyes, I can’t ‘see’ them.

This both shocked and fascinated me because I do have a very good memory and I would argue (and hope!) that as a writer I have a vivid imagination. What I’ve learned is that for me imagination is very sensorial rather than pictorial. Conceptual visualisation. If I’m remembering or imagining a place (like the cottage in my new book), I close my eyes and remember what it felt like to be in the space. I don’t see any pictures but I vividly recall the actual sensation of standing in the space. The smells. The sensations. I can turn my head to the side and remember all the detail of the many things I saw. What was on the fridge. The fabric of the curtains. But I don’t actually see any pictures at all.

I thought this was the same for everyone. So it was a shock to learn that many people can call up actual pictures when they close their eyes.

When I write, I experience everything very deeply. I used to say I ‘see’ scenes in my head but what I realise now is that it feels as if I’m in the scenes myself or watch them as if from a doorway. I walk through it all with my characters. It feels very real, very vivid to me – but it’s sensory, not actually pictorial.

I found all this so fascinating that I decided to weave a strand into this book and so gave my main character a form of aphantasia.

What do you think people find enjoyable about thrillers? What other thrillers have you enjoyed recently? 

I think the tension and pace of thrillers are the big draw. The questions and the stakes. What is going on? What’s already happened? Just how bad are things going to get?

Woven carefully, a good thriller with great characters is a safe space to examine scary material. And there is that stronger chance of justice and resolution in a book which life does not always offer.

I adore Lisa Jewell as a writer – also Belinda Bauer. And I think it’s hard to beat the Kate Atkinson Jackson Brodie series.

I love that there are so many sub genres within the fabulous crime umbrella. Something for all readers. I write at the emotional, psychological end of suspense but there are terrific books dealing with serial killers, fabulous procedurals as well as the upsurge in cosy crime. As I say, something for everyone.

I also love that the crime writing community is so friendly. It always makes me smile at festivals to see these lovely warm, fun people having a good time together. You’d never imagine some of the grim plots going on in our heads!

Tell Me Lies poignantly and thoughtfully explores the experience of living with trauma, and how we lie to ourselves and other people in order to cope. What inspired this plotline? 

I’ve always been drawn to the theme of loss and recovery. Or failure to recover.

I lost my mother to cancer when I was seventeen and while I had a very loving wider family, it was a difficult time in an age when many people were uncomfortable talking about loss. I think there’s a strong tendency to say ‘I’m fine’ after a loss – because what else can you say? And many people worry about what to say to someone grieving, so say nothing at all.

It’s great that there are so many charities now helping people of all ages, especially children, with bereavement. Grief is tough but it’s a process and I feel that we all need to learn how to support each other and be more open talking about death and how we get past – or rather learn to live with – losing someone beloved.

Across my decades in journalism, because of my own experience, I was inevitably drawn to stories involving loss and I felt huge compassion for anyone grieving. I often came across stories where unresolved grief or unresolved trauma had bled into later life and so I like to shine a light on this in my fiction. I’m not saying I’m any kind of expert but I’ve witnessed a lot of pain as a journalist and I feel very sad about that. And as a writer, I often feel compelled to work my way through that landscape of hurt in my fictional stories. I tend to put my characters through a lot in my books but in my heart, I’m always willing them back out into the sunshine.

Tell Me Lies by Teresa Driscoll (Thomas & Mercer ) Out Now 

Deep in a rural hideaway, it's only the owls watching them…right? After a betrayal that sent their marriage into freefall, Hannah and Sam are desperate for a fresh start with their eight-year-old daughter Lily-and where better than picture-perfect Owl Cottage in beautiful Cornwall. But something about the holiday home stirs dark memories for Hannah… When she finds dead creatures on the doorstep and hears mysterious knocks at the door, Hannah can't help wondering whether someone is messing with her-or whether the past she's been running from has finally claimed her sanity. As the disturbing events at Owl Cottage seep out into the local community and the police become involved, Hannah turns to Sam for help, but when he dismisses her worries, she wonders if she was wrong to ever trust him. Are the memories making her paranoid, or is this something more sinister than she dares imagine?

Casino Royale – 70 Years of 007

It is 2023 and 70 years ago today the first James Bond book Casino Royale by Ian Fleming was published. It was of course the start of what has subsequently become a symbolic series of books. It was the same year that Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, 14 books later and if you mention 007 everyone will know who you are talking about. 

For readers Ian Fleming's James Bond introduced us to an iconic character who is a coldblooded assassin and a hard drinker as well. You don't be come a double O without being willing to kill in cold blood. In my view it is clear that the groundwork for the James Bond character is laid out pretty much in its entirety in Casino Royale. His character has of course spawned a number of imitators. Think Sol Weinstein's Israeli Bond, Kim Newman's Anno Dracula novel  Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha whose vampire character is called Hamish Bond (this is by far my favourite), the 1981 novel Night Probel by Clive Cussler where his eponymous hero Dirk Pitt finds himself working with a retired Secret Service agent. Don Pendleton's Marc Bolan series and of course the James Coburn “Flint” films to name a few. 

Casino Royale is in my view a masterpiece. From the interesting and very clever intelligence reports that form parts of the opening chapters to the tales of an aged Cold War spy.

All the Bond books are atmospheric and obviously deserve to be recognised as the classics and best of the spy genre. Everyone has their favourite Bond book and I am no exception. My favourite Bond book unsurprisingly is Casino Royale. It is not solely because it is the first in the series, though that is part of the reason but also because for me (and possibly for others as well) it was the introduction to stubtle and not so stubtle product placement in books. It was also my introduction to spy thrillers as well. But then again, Ian Fleming mentions these things because they were things that he liked and enjoyed. Why mention food that you don't like to eat or cigarettes that you don't like to smoke. I loved the fact that he is very particuar about food and drink. Whilst Gin is my drink of choice, I will never turn down a good Martini. 

Furthermore, the thing about Ian Fleming's writing is that not only is it so quoteable but also it is the “hooks" at the end of chapters that heighten tension and pull the reader rapidly into the next chapter which one certainly wants to read. To this day reading the bit where Bond's genitals are being beaten with a carpet beater by Le Chiffre still makes me cringe. He has in my opinion and as Umberto Eco stated in his 1979 essay about the Bond books a rhythm, a polish, a certain sensuous feeling for words. For many also it is a book for boys.

All the key players of the series including MI6, Moneypenny, and M are introduced in Casino Royale, but we are also introduced to two other key characters that we will come into contact with in future books and that is Felix Leiter of the CIA who is a character in six 007 novels and René Mathis of the  French Deuxième Bureau who is also in From Russia With Love and is mentioned in Thunderball.

For me Casino Royale is the sort of thriller that for many it may not considered to be literature. However, it does in its own way read just as good as any literature book and in any event nowadays there are quite a few thrillers that should be considered not only as thrillers but also literature as well. 

The plot itself is quite simplistic and concise and whilst I certainly favour the 2006 version of Casino Royale as one of my favourite Bond films. It is the simplicity of the book which makes it standout. The final twist in the story and Bond’s bitter response to it, sets his character up for the rest of the series of books. The Bond in the books is of course mostly the same “Bond” all through the series. He does however change in that the further away from the war in the books the calmer he comes across.

Spy thrillers to this day still follow the trend set out in Casino Royale in that they continue to reflect the real world and of course good against evil.  In fact, to this day the plots and themes of Casino Royale are surprisingly current.

Casino Royale has always been for me a first-rate thriller. Whilst it’s not a very long read, I personally love this book in that it captures the reader and holds on until the end. With a breathtaking plot where by Fleming manages to keep us (or I should say) as far as I am concerned, enthralled and looking forward to more books in the series. For Casino Royale to be celebrating 70 years and for the Bond canon to still be seen as one who aet the original standard which has since been copied by others. It is not surprising that if readers are asked to name their favourite spies, Bond will always been on the list. Bond is of course one of the ultimate heroes in fiction.  Casino Royale is the best Ian Fleming novel in my opinion and if you are only going to read only one, this is it.

Nicola Williams on The Road to "Until Proven Innocent"

This sounds like the start of an old Bob Hope / Bing Crosby film, but it's much more contemporary than that.

It's wonderful to bring back Lee Mitchell for a crime and legal thriller reading audience, because there isn't another character like her. A Black woman barrister who grew up working class, she has succeeded against all the odds in a profession which, even in 2023, can still be as unwelcoming in some quarters for someone with those three ‘ trikes' –race, gender and class – against her as it was in 1997 when ‘Without Prejudice' was first published.

Until Proven Innocent represents a number of things to me. 

It represents 23 years of thinking, dreaming, losing and then regaining hope, and then 12 to 18 months of writing. 

It represents / it was that dream deferred that lay dormant for a long time and it was brought to life by three things: first, meeting my agent Jonathan Ruppin; then the first Lockdown when writing a book seemed to be the only sane response in an unrecognisable world turned both inside out and upside down, with fear and death everywhere.

And then there was Bernardine.

I actually met Bernardine Evaristo just before the March 2020 Lockdown in a real-life 'sliding doors' moment: being invited to an event that I really didn't want to go to, unaware that she would be there. Amazingly, she remembered my first book and simply said, “You should have written more: I thought it was really good." Then after she won the Booker Prize, she championed my first book Without Prejudice and five other novels she felt should have received more attention when they were first published. As a result of that Penguin expressed interest in what I was then working on – and Until Proven Innocent was born.

Now the creative taps have been reopened I intend to write a lot more. Legal thrillers, yes: Lee Mitchell is here to stay as a unique voice in crime fiction. But other projects too. I'm fascinated by ethical questions – Without Prejudice was based on a question every criminal barrister, including myself, has been asked at least once: “How can you represent someone you know is guilty?” Until Proven Innocent considers the opposite: how do you represent a truly repellent individual who has been accused of an horrific offence that has received national attention when everyone, including their colleagues, thinks they have done it, but there is a tiny possibility they are innocent? Especially when the accused is a corrupt, bigoted, racist police Sargeant and the victim is the 15-year-old Black teenager, the son of a well known community leader, who is also the pastor of the church Verna Mitchell, Lee's mother, attends? This is Lee’s dilemma.

When I was writing this book I had no idea that the Baroness Casey Review into the standards and behaviour of the internal culture of the Metropolitan Police would also be published in the same month as my book. It is sadly timely, and shows the issues I have written about (and that I had personal experience of when I was a Commissioner at the then IPCC – now IOPC – from 2004-8) are still worryingly present today in real life.

But to end on a positive and optimistic note, I hope the return of Lee Mitchell will shown to any writer who has lost heart, who feels their chance to be published has gone forever, that it truly is never too late. And here's to not having to wait as long as 25 years!

Until Proven Innocent by Nicola Williams (Penguin Random House) Out Now

The gripping new courtroom thriller following barrister Lee Mitchell in her most controversial case yet. Lee Mitchell is a young barrister from a working-class Caribbean background: in the cut-throat environment of the courtroom, everything is stacked against her. On her doorstep in South London the 15-year-old son of the pastor at the local Black church is shot, and the local community is shattered. All evidence is pointing to infamously corrupt, racist police officer Sergeant Jack Lambert as the irredeemable suspect. His own boss - rebel-turned-copper Danny Wallace - is certain he is guilty. Against her will, Lee is strong-armed into defending him. With cries of 'Black Lives Matter!' echoing in the streets, Lee is at the centre of the turmoil as lies, anger, and mistrust spiral out of control. With the line between her personal and professional life becoming increasingly blurred, Lee keeps asking herself the same question: How can she defend the indefensible?

Forthcoming books from Profile Books (Incl Serpent's Tail and Viper Books)

 July 2023

Sanderson's Isle is by James Clarke. 1969. Thomas Speake comes to London to look for his father but finds Sanderson instead, a larger-than-life TV presenter who hosts 'midweek madness' parties where the punch is spiked with acid. There Speake meets Marnie and promises to help her find her adoptive child, who has been taken by her birth mother to live off-grid in a hippie commune in the Lake District. Forced to lie low after a violent accident, Speake joins Sanderson on a tour of the Lake District, where he's researching a book to accompany his popular TV series, Sanderson's Isle. Fascinated by local rumours about the hippies, Sanderson joins the search for their whereabouts. Amid the fierce beauty of the mountains, the cult is forming the kind of community that Speake - a drifter who belongs nowhere - is desperate to find but has been sent to betray.

Elliott has never thought of himself as a hero. Until one dark night he meets Rebecca, a scared and vulnerable young woman who needs his help. There's a man harassing her, following her; would he mind pretending to be her boyfriend, just while she walks home, to put him off? And that is that - just a favour for a stranger - until there is a knock at Elliott's door. It's the man who was following Rebecca. He claims he's her ex-boyfriend, but it's clear that he's been stalking her. He's obsessed, dangerously so. He wants Rebecca, and will do anything to have her. When Elliott eventually tries to tell him the truth, the man doesn't believe him. The only way to save himself is to get Rebecca to explain. There's just one problem: Rebecca is nowhere to be found. And now it looks like one good deed will cost Elliott everything. One Good Deed is by David Jackson.

August 2023

When hate runs deep the innocent suffer. Constable Paul Hirschausen's rural beat in the low hills of South Australia is wide. Daybreak to day's end, dirt roads and dust. Every problem that besets small towns and isolated properties, from unlicensed driving to arson. But now, just as Hirsch has begun to feel he knows the fragile communities under his care, the isolation and fear of the pandemic have warped them into something angry and unrecognisable. Hirsch is seeing stresses heightened and social divisions cracking wide open. His own tolerance under strain; people getting close to the edge. Today he's driving an international visitor around: Janne Van Sant, whose backpacker son went missing while the borders were closed. They're checking out his last photo site, his last employer. A feeling that the stories don't quite add up. Then a call comes in: a roadside fire. Nothing much - a suitcase soaked in diesel and set alight - but two noteworthy facts emerge. Janne knows more than Hirsch about forensic evidence. And the body in the suitcase is not her son's. Day's End is by Garry Disher.

I have a gift. I see people as ghosts before they die. Of course, it helps that I'm the one killing them. The night after her father's funeral, Claire meets Lucas in a bar. Lucas doesn't know it, but it's not a chance meeting. One thoughtless mistyped email has put him in the crosshairs of an extremely put-out serial killer. But before they make eye contact, before Claire lets him buy her a drink, even before she takes him home and carves him up into little pieces, something about that night is very wrong. Because someone is watching Claire. Someone who is about to discover her murderous little hobby. The thing is, it's not sensible to tangle with a part-time serial killer, even one who is distracted by attending a weekly bereavement support group and trying to get her art career off the ground. Let the games begin... You'd Look Better as a Ghost is by Joanna Wallace. 

October 2023

Secrecy came naturally to John le Carre, and there were some secrets that he fought fiercely to keep. Adam Sisman's definitive biography, published in 2015, provided a revealing portrait of this fascinating man; yet some aspects of his subject remained hidden. Nowhere was this more so than in his private life. Apparently content in his marriage, the novelist conducted a string of love affairs over five decades. To these relationships he brought much of the tradecraft that he had learned as a spy - cover stories, cut-outs and dead letter boxes. These clandestine operations brought an element of danger to his life, but they also meant deceiving those closest to him. Small wonder that betrayal became a running theme in his work. In trying to manage his biography, the novelist engaged in a succession of skirmishes with his biographer. While he could control what Sisman wrote about him in his lifetime, he accepted that the truth would eventually become known. Following his death in 2020, what had been withheld can now be revealed. The Secret Life of John le Carre by Adam Sisman reveals a hitherto-hidden perspective on the life and work of the spy-turned-author and a fascinating meditation on the complex relationship between biographer and subject. 'Now that he is dead,' Sisman writes, 'we can know him better.'

Scarlet Town is by Leonora Nattrass. A rigged election. A feuding Cornish town. A suspicious death. And a perspicacious pig. Disgraced former Foreign Office clerk Laurence Jago and his larger-than-life employer the journalist William Philpott have escaped America - and Philpott's many creditors - by the skin of their teeth. They return to Laurence's home town of Helston in Cornwall in the hope of rest and recuperation, but instead find themselves in the middle of a tumultuous election that has the inhabitants of the town at one another's throats. Only two men may vote in this rotten borough, and when one of them dies in suspicious circumstances, Laurence is ordered to investigate on behalf of the town's political patron, his old master the Duke of Leeds. Then the second elector is poisoned and suspicion turns on the town doctor, the gentle Pythagoras Jago, Laurence's own cousin. Suddenly Laurence finds himself ensnared in generations of bad blood and petty rivalries, with his cousin's fate in his hands... 

One dead Santa. A town full of suspects. Will you discover the truth? Christmas in Lower Lockwood, and the Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their festive pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk, to raise money for the church roof appeal. But despite the season, goodwill is distinctly lacking amongst the amateur dramatics enthusiasts. Sarah-Jane is fending off threats to her new position as Chair, the fibreglass beanstalk might be full of asbestos, and a someone is intent on ruining the panto even before the curtain goes up. Of course there's also the matter of the dead body. Who could possibly have had the victim on their naughty list? Join lawyers Femi and Charlotte as they read the round robins, examine the emails and pore over the police transcripts. Will the show go on? The Christmas Appeal is by Janice Hallett.

November 2023

No Exit is by Simon Lewis. Inspector Jian and his daughter Weiwei just want to go back to their home in China: but Jian is facing a corruption charge in his absence and risks arrest. Instead he tries to scrape a living on London's meanest streets as an illegal immigrant, reduced to hustling Mah Jiang for cash. A bleak future looks to be growing bleaker still when a triad gang blackmail him into tracking down an unlikely young robber. In No Exit Jian and Weiwei scramble between London's grimiest bedsits and its swankiest penthouses as they penetrate the glittering world of 'princelings' - the rich children of the Chinese elite, who treat the city as their playground. Locked in a desperate struggle, with no way out in sight, It will take all their wiles, as well as some lucky gambles, to come out of this latest venture alive.

Forthcoming books from John Murray

 July 2023

Australian inventor and geo-engineer Clive Winner is the genius who brought the Great Barrier Reef back from the brink, yet his ambition goes well beyond that. He wants to save the planet. To Winner, climate change is just another engineering problem, and he is determined to find the solution. For the all-powerful fossil fuel industry, Winner is their 'get out of jail free card'. If he can engineer a solution to a rapidly warming planet then this trillion-dollar business can continue as usual. The stakes - both financial and moral - are high. But does Winner still believe his own lucrative brand of ambitious climate engineering holds the answer? With the Paris Climate conference looming on the horizon, scientists in the same field as Winner begin to disappear in suspicious circumstances. Old-school journalist William Carver is given a tip-off by a trusted Whitehall source. His gut instinct tells him there's a story there, but he'll need help to tell it, and time is of the essence. With scientists, green campaigners and well-intentioned politicians in the firing line, William Carver and his colleagues have to move fast. They know the journalist's job is to speak truth to power - but first you must uncover that truth and this time it's buried deeper than ever. Racing between Sydney, New York, Seville and London, The Burning Time by Peter Hanington is a smart, fast-paced and action-packed international thriller for the 21st century.

September 2023

The Secret Hours is by Mick Herron. Monochrome is a busted flush - an inquiry into the misdeeds of the intelligence services, established by a vindictive prime minister but rendered toothless by a wily chief spook. For years it has ground away uselessly, interviewing witnesses with nothing to offer, producing a report with nothing to say, while the civil servants at its helm see their careers disappearing into a black hole. And then the OTIS file falls into their hands … What secrets does this hold that see a long-redundant spy being chased through Devon's green lanes in the dark? What happened in a newly reunified Berlin that someone is desperate to keep under wraps? And who will win the battle for the soul of the secret service - or was that decided a long time ago? Spies and pen-pushers, politicians and PAs, high-flyers, time-servers and burn-outs ... They all have jobs to do in the daylight. But what they do in the secret hours reveals who they really are.

October 2023

Edinburgh, 1923. Evelyn Hazard is a young Scottish woman living a comfortable and unremarkable middle-class life until her quiet existence is shattered when her staid, reliable husband Robert suddenly announces that he can communicate with the dead. As the couple are pulled into the spiritualist movement that emerged following the mass deaths caused by the First World War and the Spanish Flu, dark secrets from Evelyn's past threaten to surface. Faced with the prospect of losing all that is dear to her, Evelyn finds herself asking: is the man she loves a fraud, a madman or - most frighteningly - is he telling the truth? Hazardous Spirits is by Anbara Salam.

November 2023

The year is 1795 and evil lurks in the winding alleys of eighteenth-century Stockholm. The sinister, vengeful landowner, Tycho Ceton, remains at large after he set a devastating fire that claimed many lives. In 1795, the third and final trilogy we are reunited with Mickel Cardell and Emil Winge as they attempt to catch Ceton before he can wreak further havoc on the city. They must act quickly before the city sees its darkest days yet. 1795 is by Niklas Natt och Dag

Forthcoming books from Hodder and Stoughton

 July 2023

Everyone believes that Lenora Hope is a mass murderer.  When the Hope family was massacred decades ago, she was the only one left after that tragic night. Mute, paralysed and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora has never been able to tell her side of the story. Until her new live-in caregiver Kit brings her a typewriter.  And with one working finger Lenora begins to type: I want to tell you everything. The Only One Left is by Riley Sager

Murder at Church Lodge is by Greg Mosse. Maise Cooper is no detective, thak you very much . But she might Just solve a murder...  Maisie left the picture-perfect village of Framlington years ago. But when her brother asks for her help out of the blue she soon finds herself back among the windy lanes and open green fields. But it's not the family reunion she hoped for - upon arrival she learns that she's too late. Stephen is dead. And not just dead – murdered. Frustrated by the slow police investigation headed up by handsome Sergeant Wingard, Maisie determines to start asking questions herself. In a village where everyone knows everyone, surely someonehas some information about Stephen. But the longer Maisie stays, and the deeper she digs, the more she begins to sense something sinister at the heart of the village. What secrets are the residents so desperate to keep hidden? And what exactly was her brother going to tell her before his mysterious demise? And when another death rocks the community, Maisie fears that she needs to catch the killer before they catch her...

Terrorists have shot down a British helicopter in West Africa and taken the crew hostage. Their lives are on the line and the British government is refusing to negotiate. The pilot is Liam Shepherd, and only his father - Dan 'Spider" Shepherd of MI5 - can help. Shepherd and an SAS team fly out to the badlands of Mali to rescue the kidnapped Brits. But the mission takes Shepherd away from an investigation in a high security prison that is about to explode into violence. Hundreds of lives are at risk, and Shepherd is running out of time... Clean Kill is by Stephen Leather.

If you put one step wrong on these streets, you might... wind up dead. One boy dead. Craig Malton rules Manchester, solving crimes for criminals and flying under the police's radar. When he's called to a murder scene before the cops can get their hands on it, he senses something is wrong. Someone is trying to make Zak Alquist's murder look like something it's not. One boy missing. Lesha's son was murdered years ago, so when a local boy goes missing, she feels the sting only a bereaved mother can. But this is more than just a teenage runaway. On the missing boy's phone is a photo of him - and murder victim Zak Alquist. A dark conspiracy. Can Lesha and Malton uncover the rot at the heart of the city and cut it out before another life is taken? Wind Up Dead is by Sam Tobin.

August 2023

Death of a Lesser God is by Vaseem Khan. Can a white man receive justice in post-colonial India? Bombay, 1950 - James Whitby, sentenced to death for the murder of prominent lawyer and former Quit India activist Fareed Mazumdar, is less than two weeks from a date with the gallows. In a last-ditch attempt to save his son, Whitby's father, arch-colonialist, Charles Whitby, forces a new investigation into the killing. The investigation leads Inspector Persis Wadia of the Bombay Police to the old colonial capital of Calcutta, where, with the help of Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, she uncovers a possible link to a second case, the brutal murder of an African-American G.I. during the Calcutta Killings of 1946. How are the cases connected? If Whitby didn't murder Mazumdar, then who did? And why? 

'I am waiting for someone to kill me. Tonight would be a good night for it.' Agent Seventeen, the most infamous hitman in the world, has quit. But whoever wants to become Assassin Eighteen must track him down and kill him first. So when a bullet hits the glass inches from his face, he knows who fired it - doesn't he? But the sniper isn't the hardened killer he was expecting. It's Mireille - a mysterious, silent child, abandoned in the woods with instructions to pull the trigger. Reuniting with his spiky lover, Kat, Seventeen must protect Mireille, and discover who sent her to kill him, and why. But the road he must travel is littered with bodies. And the answer, when it comes, will blow apart everything Seventeen thought he knew. Assassin Eighteen is by John Brownlow. 

September 2023

The Land Of Lost Things is by John Connolly. Twice upon a time - for that is how some stories should continue . . .Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident. She is a body without a spirit, a stolen child. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud to Phoebe the fairy stories she loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world. But it is hard to keep faith, so very hard. Now an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, and to journey - to a land coloured by the memories of Ceres's childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father, to a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; to a land where old enemies are watching, and waiting. To the Land of Lost Things.

Holly is by Stephen King. When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down. Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harbouring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless. Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmanoeuvre the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.

My client's just confessed to the crime I committed. The therapist - Sara seems to have it all - a thriving practice as a trauma counsellor, a comfortable home, a loving husband and two children. A world away from her troubled childhood. She's the only one who knows that her entire is built on a lie. The client - until a new patient confesses to a crime that hits too close to home. Sara is thrown into a quest to hide the truth: from her family, her co-workers, and most importantly, the police.The confession - How can this client know about Sara's past? And how can Sara silence her before it's too late?  One thing is certain: she will do anything to keep her family safe. Trust in Me is by Luca Veste. 

Murder Town is by Shelley Burr. Gemma Guillory has lived in Rainier her entire life. She knows the tiny town's ins and outs like the back of her hand, the people like they are her family, their quirks as if they were her own. She knows her once charming town is now remembered for one reason, and one reason only. That three innocent people died. That the last stop on the Rainier Ripper's trail of deaths fifteen years ago was her innocuous little tea shop. She knows that the consequences of catching the Ripper still haunt her policeman husband and their marriage to this day and that some of her neighbours are desperate - desperate enough to welcome a dark tourism company keen to cash in on Rainier's reputation as the murder town. When the tour operator is killed by a Ripper copycat on Gemma's doorstep, the unease that has lurked quietly in the original killer's wake turns to foreboding, and she's drawn into the investigation. Unbeknownst to her, so is a prisoner named Lane Holland. Gemma knows her town. She knows her people. Doesn't she?

October 2023

Voices of Rome by Lindsey Davis consists of four novella length tales of ancient Rome. The Spook Who Spoke, Vesuvius by Night, Invitation to Die and The Bride of Bythinia, with an introduction by the Author.

Lucy Darkwater has always made her own rules. One of the first women to graduate with a degree from Oxford, she is now the proprietor of London's newest antiquuarian bookshop, with a sideline in scandalous new novels and Ancient Egyptian curios – when she is not attending the lates parties as a woman about time. So whena rival bookshop is chosen to exhibit a selection of extraordinary new Egyptian artefacts, Lucy's pride is piqued – and when the grand opening ends in a gruesome murder she finds herself uniqely placed to unravel the mystery. The Bookshop Murders is by Jennifer Gladwell.

The Exchange is by John Grisham. What became of Mitch and Abby McDeere after they exposed the crimes of Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert and Locke and fled the country? It is now fifteen years later, and Mitch and Abby are living in Manhattan, where Mitch is a partner at the largest law firm in the world. When a mentor in Rome asks him for a favour that will take him far from home, Mitch finds himself at the centre of a sinister plot that has worldwide implications - and once again endangers his colleagues, friends and family.

The Legend - 1913.Captain Scott and his four companions reach the South Pole to find their Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen has won the race. Defeated, they set out on the 850-mile journey to their ship. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the explorer sent out to meet them at One Ton depot, peering South through thick spectacles, sees only an infinity of white, and turns back. A year later Scott's pitched tent is found, just ten miles from the depot, and the bodies within speak of hunger, the unbearable strain of hauling the sledge, and the brutal winter cold. They lie in a tomb of ice. Cherry is left forever tormented by thoughts of what might have been. The Truth - 1969. Ten years after Cherry's death, Falcon Grey - who as an orphan of the Blitz was brought up at the explorer's country estate - receives a bequest: a small red notebook that was found in Scott's tent. It is a diary: and it states that they were not victims of the cold, or hunger, but murder, in the coldest of blood. Suspects range from envious foreign powers - such as the Kaiser's Germany - to revolutionaries and even Scott's own men. Vital clues lie in the tent, so Falcon goes South to the ice to see it for himself, but someone is desperate to conceal the truth and will kill to keep the secrets under the ice. The White Lie is by J G Kelly.

The Prey is by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. A box of photo albums is found in the attic of a recently sold house in Hoefn, a small fishing village on the south coast of Iceland. The new owners return it to the seller in Reykjavik, a man who inherited the house along with his brother. Besides the box, the owners hand him a muddied child's shoe, saying they found it during the removal of the lot's old flagpole. The seller cleans the shoe, searching for a mark like the one his mother used to put on his brother's clothing. He finally finds one, but the name is neither his nor his brother's. It's a girl's name: Salvoer. The man is baffled; they never knew a girl named Salvoer. Shortly after the phone rings - it's the nursing home where his mother, an Alzheimer's patient, lives. She's suffered a heart attack and the doctors don't expect her to live much longer. The nurse asks him to let his brother know as well as their sister, Salvoer. Their mother has been asking for her.  Johanna is a member of a search and rescue team in Hoefn and she's searching for two couples from Reykjavik. Their phones' last location has been pinpointed as the road leading up into the highlands. It's far from clear why these people would have made such a risky trip in the middle of the harsh winter, and they soon find the first dead body. Hjoervar works at the Stokksnes Radar Station, remotely situated on a small peninsula approximately 30 minutes away from Hoefn. He is working alone when the phone connected to the gate rings. It's the first time it's done so since he began working there five months ago. He picks up the phone but can hear only interference and what might be a woman's or a child's voice. Peering outside, he sees no one. The day after, he tells his colleague about the strange events, and the other man is strangely alarmed at the news, He finally he tells Hjoervar that the man he replaced had begun acting oddly just before his death, reporting events very similar to these before he climbed onto the rocks outside and drowned. The Prey tells the story of the two couples who made the journey into the highlands, and how the trip of their dreams slowly transformed into a nightmare. What connects this doomed expedition to the ghostly happenings at the radar station and a little girl that died decades ago?

November 2023

Murder at Bunting Manor is by Greg Mosse. Maisie Cooper is ready to return to Parisafter solving her brother's murder. But when she receives a mysterious invitation to Bnting Manor, the lady of the house requesting her help, she can't say no. There's been a mysterious disappearance in the village – but why is no one asking questions? As Maise begins investigating, the murder attempts starts... Will Maise solve the case before the killer comes for her.

It's spring in Shady Hollow, and romance is in the air. Even reporter Vera Vixen is caught up in the season as her relationship with new police chief Orville Braun blossoms. But true love is not always smooth sailing, as two of the hollow's young residents come to find. Jonah Atwater and Stasia von Beaverpelt find themselves battling their families in order to be together. And when Jonah's father, Shelby, goes over the top of Twilight Falls, all signs point to Stasia being the murderer. The evidence against Stasia appears overwhelming, and Orville arrests her. It looks like the case is closed, but Vera isn't so sure. There are almost too many clues indicating Stasia is the killer, leading her to suspect someone is setting Stasia up. Besides, what about the mysterious ghostly creature skulking around town at night? Maybe he or she was involved? As Vera investigates further, her sleuthing puts her in direct opposition to Orville, and soon she's stirred up a hornet's nest of trouble. Twilight Falls is by Juneau Black.

The Party Season is by SJI Holliday, It's the most deadly time of the year... The festive season is in full swing - parties, champagne and Christmas crackers abound. You're having a breather at the hotel bar when a stunning young woman catches your eye. Could she really be interested in you? She flutters her eyelashes and takes your hand. Her Christmas party dress glitters with sequins.  What you don't know is that your life is now in her hands - as she leads you up to her room there's only one thing that will determine whether you live or die.  Are you a good person? Are you really?

Her is by Mira v Shah, You want to be just like her. But do you really know her? Rani has always felt like an outsider. First growing up among her white, wealthy peers. And now next to her successful, child-free friends. From the tiny rented flat she lives in with her family, she imagines being the kind of woman who owns the beautiful house across the street. Then Natalie moves in. With her expensive clothes, adoring husband and high-powered job, she has everything Rani wants, and Rani can't help but be drawn to her new neighbour. But as the two women strike up a friendship and begin open up, Rani wonders - is Natalie's perfect-seeming life too good to be true?