Page Updated: 22/09/99
Campbell Armstrong
blackout.jpg
BlackoutBlackout
The Surgeon's Daughter Newpbk 06 Sep 99
SilencerSilencer
Trader's Wife
Heat
About the Author
Bibliography


First British Edition Doubleday (1998)
Blackout
See Review by Catherine Laws
In a spectacular storm, a car skids across a flooded field and overturns. Gregory Samsa survives. His passenger doesn't. Instead of reporting the accident, in a frenzied panic Samsa drags his passenger to a lonely place and conceals her body. He has his reputation to think about, his career, his daughter. So when he does report the incident he leaves out one important detail - the death of the young hooker, Almond, who had been riding in his car.
This one moment of weakness, a moral blackout, draws Samsa into a dark downward spiral of deception, fear and violence. When Almond's body is discovered by chance, the shadowy figure of Lee Boyle, small-time pimp and speed – freak, emerges from the underworld. Cunning, vicious and predatory, Boyle is on the trail of Almond's killer - it's payback time. And that trail is leading him to the very cop investigating her death…
"Campbell Armstrong is thriller writing's best-kept secret " - Sunday Times
"Near to unputdownable' - GQ Magazine
"Erotic seduction mixes with bare knuckle Chandleresque prose in an intriguing psycho-drama that keeps you guess right up to the last page " - Cork Examiner
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The Surgeon's Daughter
Andrea Malle is invited by her father to visit him in his reclusive home in the countryside in the dead of winter. He doesn't tell her why he is so persistent. She goes. She finds his home empty, cold and dark. She also finds his body in the snow behind the house. He's been murdered by someone using a shotgun at close range. From this moment, Andrea is plunged into an icy world of mysteries, half-truths and outright lies involving her father's strange hermetic existence and the reasons for his retreat from the world. She's faced with menace and violence as she steps inside the shadowy and terrifying reality of Dennis Malle's history. Andrea fights back, determined to go all the way to the bottom of the mystery. But in the winter chill of a godforsaken landscape she keeps hearing the words that will haunt her for ever: 'You really don't have a clue about your precious Daddy, do you?'

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Paperback - Corgi (1998)
Silencer
Imagine a world where you can trust nobody - no friend, no stranger, no lover…
Reuben Galindez was a star prosecution witness in the trial of big-time arms smuggler Angel Sanchez. He was promised a new identity, a new life, by the US Federal Witness Protection Program he was promised safety.
But when his bullet-ridden corpse is discovered floating in a river, former state prosecutor Amanda Scholes has to ask some difficult questions. Did Galindez foolishly cut loose from those protecting him, or has the high security surrounding the Program been penetrated by someone intent upon exacting their own brutal form of justice?
Silencer is Campbell Armstrong's most compelling thriller to date, a dizzying descent into an underground world of corruption and vengeance, where anonymity is no protection…
'A masterly work of suspense… like an icecube down the back of the neck' The Times
'Armstrong is among the most intriguing of blockbuster writers...near to unputdownable' GQ
Praise for Jigsaw:
'Armstrong creates electric tension' Daily Telegraph
'Campbell Armstrong has outdone both Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follett with Jigsaw. Jigsaw features a villain to die for, plus the most unusual and haunting romance I've encountered in a thriller' James Patterson, author of Along Came a Spider
'Armstrong has created a thriller where the sex is sexy, the horror horrific, and the plot is, as it should be, the skeleton for a well fleshed-out piece of storytelling' The Times
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Trader's Wife
Imagine waking up one morning to find your husband has gone missing, you're a number one crime suspect, and you've got twenty-four hours to save yourself...
Sarah Klein is everybody's golden girl. Twenty six years old and six months pregnant with her first child, she has the perfect marriage, the perfect husband and the perfect house overlooking Long Island Sound. Until today, she has never broken a law in her life.
Now Sarah's husband is missing, along with millions of pounds from the accounts of the Wall Street broker he worked for. The Federal Agents who raid her house at dawn believe she knows where the money is, and they'll grind her down until they get some answers. Friends and colleagues stop returning her calls, and someone is tailing her.
Sarah Klein, the trader's wife, has just 24 hours to find out the truth and safe herself, her child, and everything she lives for... 'Armstrong is a wonderfully atmospheric writer who shines a light into the dark corners of the human heart' Sunday Telegraph Campbell Armstrong was born in Glasgow and now lives in Ireland. His previous books include Jig, Agents of Darkness, Jigsaw, and Heat. This is his first novel writing under the pseudonym Thomas Weldon.

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Heat
Frank Pagan, Special Branch's counter-terrorist agent, is being observed, his every movement tracked and recorded. His flat is broken into. The only object stolen is a photograph of his dead wife, which is later returned to him grotesquely disfigured.
But it is more than Pagan's home that has been invaded. His dreams, his every waking moment, are filled with hot, obsessive thoughts of a mortally alluring woman. For it is the most critical assignment of Pagan's career, as well as his fate, to bring to justice the enigmatic and ruthless terrorist Carlotta, who is wanted the world over for her hideous crimes.
Indifferent to the horror and destruction she leaves in her wake, yet curiously fixated on Pagan, Carlotta sends emotional depth-charges into his life to the point where his pursuit of her crosses the line that separates duty from sexual obsession. In a deadly cat-and-mouse chase, Pagan is destined always to stay just a step behind Carlotta, until the fatal day he catches up with his nemesis.
Riddled with intrigue, violence and sexual tension, Heat takes the reader on a thrilling journey into the darkest reaches of a man's soul.
One hell of a fast-moving thriller' Daily Telegraph
'Armstrong has discovered a way with words that raises him above the routine level of the marketplace.' The Times
'Erotic seduction mixes with bare knuckle Chandleresque prose, in an intriguing psyche-drama that keeps you guessing right up to the last page ... A book that has all the staples of the thriller genre plus a little extra class ... crafted with surgical and seamless precision ... Elmore Leonard, watch your back' Cork Examiner
'A consummate psychological thriller ... Without doubt, Armstrong is now in the front rank of thriller writers' Books Magazine
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About The Author
Campbell Armstrong is perhaps the only thriller writer to have a degree in philosophy. His previous novels include Jig, Jigsaw, Heat and Silencer. He was born in Glasgow, moved to Arizona where he taught Creative Writing and now lives in a haunted seventeenth century mansion in Ireland.

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Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

  • Blackout (Doubleday, 1998)
  • The Surgeon's Daughter (Simon Schuster, 1998) Simon Schuster Aug 98 New Pocket Books Pbk Sep 99
  • Silencer (Doubleday, 1997) Corgi Pbk May 98
  • Agents of Darkness
  • Trader's Wife Pocket Books Pbk Sep 98
  • Concert of Ghosts
  • Heat (Doubleday)
  • Jig
  • Jigsaw
  • Mambo
  • Mazurka

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