Frank Lean

Page Updated: 09/09/02

Frank Lean

Above Suspicion

Boiling Point

Kingdom Gone

The Reluctant Investigator

Nine Lives

by Frank Lean

About the Author

Bibliography

Paperback - Arrow (2002)

First British Edition Heinemann (2001)

Above Suspicion
Depths of corruption at the height of the premier league.
A baby girl is kidnapped and Ł500,000 is demanded for her return. Her father refuses to contact the police, but attempts to handle the situation himself.
Dave Cunane, head of Pimpernel investigations, is surprised when he’s approached by an international football player to track down the girl’s kidnappers. He soon realises that his new employers are involved in some highly illegal activities in the premiership.
As he digs deeper it emerges that some of Manchester’s more successful criminals are being blackmailed. More extortion and more murders are taking place. And while there is a certain satisfaction in criminals getting their comeuppance, Cunane knows deep in his heart he has to stop the violence.
‘Frank Lean’s novels, featuring stroppy Manchester private eye Dave-Cunane have evolved into beguiling entertainments, skilfully interweaving the righting of wrongs with knockabout violence and comic dialogue’ Sunday Times

First British Edition Heinemann (2000)

Boiling Point
Maverick detective Dave Cunane steps in when he sees a thug knocking Marti King around. But his actions are misinterpreted not only by her heavy-duty relatives but also his own nearest and dearest - Marti's one of those girls you shouldn't get involved with.
Then Dave learns that her father, Vince, is doing life for a double murder, and she's looking for someone to prove his innocence. Dave makes tentative enquiries - and the bodies begin to pile up. Neither he nor the Manchester police can make sense of the killings, only Dave's become a little too close to be free from suspicion.
Meanwhile Janine, Dave's partner, is getting increasingly impatient with the time he's spending with Marti. Clyde Harrow, a TV celeb with career problems, is planning to use Dave as a source of colourful local stories. And the Carlyles, a powerful Manchester family, seem unhappy at the prospect of having Vince back on the streets.
All Dave wants to do is pursue his business career and set up home with Janine, but he just can’t shake off the attentions of Marti, Clyde or the Carlyle family. Temperatures are about to hit boiling point, and to cool things down, Dave needs to find answers to questions no one wants asked…
Praise for Frank Lean
‘The personality of Cunane, whose combination of grouchy, hard-boiled cynicism with a stubborn, selfless hunger for the truth an a weakness for (usually female) waifs and strays, makes him one of the most engaging of fictional detectives’ The Times
‘Lean can still run rings around most of the opposition, showing the way that the modern whodunnit must go’ Yorkshire Post
‘Witty, fast and thoroughly gripping, Kingdome Gone is a tremendous example of the modern British thriller’ Arcade
‘A very sharp novel from a British crime writer who’s making waves’ Nottingham Evening Post

Paperback - Arrow (2000)

First British Edition Heinemann (1999)

Kingdom Gone
Fred Travis woke up every morning with one wish. It was the same wish every morning. He wanted to turn on the radio and hear that the permissive society had been repealed…
When Fred Travis, leader of the Repeal '98 movement, is found with his throat cut and private eye Dave Cunane's card between his fingers, things turn nasty for the Manchester detective.
It's not only the law who want answers from Cunane. Crazies start to emerge from the Manchester hinterland. And their methods are more direct than those of the Fuzz. Aldous Arkwright, spiritual guru of the Children of Light cult, is dreaming of an awakening to rival anything achieved before. But his henchmen have other, more worldly, thoughts on their minds.
Meanwhile Melville Monckton, local pop entrepreneur, claims that the entertainment seen in Manchester is boring. His plans to spice thing up lead to serious problems for Cunane's friend, club owner Bob Lane, and his giant brother Clint.
Mix all these ingredients together and add an inspiring journalist, an iffy copper and academic skulduggery down at UNWIST, a Manchester university, and the result is trouble with a capital T.
But trouble is Dave Cunane's business…

First British Edition Heinemann (1997)

The Reluctant Investigator
Shortlisted for the CWA gold Dagger Award
How much do you know about serial killers?
How much does anyone?
'When I'd said that I'd see if there was something l could dig up about Fox that hadn't already been raked over a thousand limes before, I'd been whistling in the dark. I knew no more about multiple murderers that anyone else. This is one type of crime that isn't covered in the private detective's handbook.'
The discovery had been accidental... A property repairer, working on the Fallowfield house where Billy Fox rented an attic flat, had decided to cut a few corners. While looking for a way to get out onto the rafters he found the key to the locked cupboard where Billy kept his collection of severed heads. Billy Fox has disposed of fourteen women, and, with this gruesome evidence, it's an open-and-shut case. But when David Cunane, private investigator, is employed to research Billy's 'true life' story, he quickly concludes that nothing is as it seems. Somebody is adding to Billy's total. Is it a new killer? Or have the Manchester police - headed by the intrepid Chief Inspector Sinclair got the wrong man? In His Own Words Dave is a humble fellow who normally works investigating theft by supermarket employees, debt collecting, process serving etc. However he has a congenital urge to interfere in the doings of powerful criminal elements in Manchester and receives many bruises because of it. In Reluctant Investigator Dave's partner Kath Headlam is a disgraced TV producer who worked at Alhambra studios in Manchester. She sees a chance to get back into the big time by preparing scripts for a TV miniseries on Billy Fox a serial killer who had killed fourteen young women in the Manchester area. A book is being prepared about Billy by Cedric Liptrot a Yorkshire playwright who has achieved financial success not by his plays but by writing an account of the depredations of 'Albert Clark' the Bradford Basher credited with many murders in the 80s. Liptrot is dominated by his mother and is nervous about going round Manchester on his own. Kath Headlam will only get the job as scriptwriter if Dave agrees to act as Liptrot's body guard. Of course he does reluctantly because he can't refuse Kath her chance of fame and fortune. In the course of his duties Dave uncovers many illuminating facts. The psychological profile which helped to convict Billy was prepared after his arrest, but even worse as Dave and Cedric tour Manchester it becomes clear that another serial killer, possibly imitating the techniques described in Cedric's book about the Basher 'A Son To Us All', is at work. The effort to find the truth involves Dave in a struggle with policemen unwilling to allow any revision of their findings as well as against the real serial killer for whom Billy Fox, who is a 'mosaic' (i.e. a sufferer from a congenital abnormality which renders him highly susceptible to certain forms of persuasion,) was a convenient fall guy.
'What the English thriller genre has needed for years. Sharp, hip-shooting prose with a refreshingly nasty twist' Arena
'Frank Lean breathes much needed life into the genre' Sunday Times

British Pbk Original - Mandarin

Nine Lives
Eight down, one to go.
Christmas morning greets Dave Cunane sourly. Manchester's most intrepid private eye is in jail. Often known to take the law into his own hands, he now finds himself in the hands of the law.
Framed and arrested for a cold-blooded murder he hasn't committed, Cunane turns to the ever-tricky Delise, his part-time lover and full-time assistant, to save his neck and find the murderer. But as the plot thickens and the corpses pile up, Cunane realises that more than one party wants him out of the way, for good.
'This is the kind of stuff the English thriller has been begging for' GQ
'Wicked, as they say… the author should give up his day job' Time Out

About The Author
In his own words…
I was born in Bolton but have always worked as a teacher in Manchester in an inner city comprehensive school. I have now given up teaching to write full time. I'm married, with a family. I taught history and computer studies. 'Red for Rachel' was the first book I've written. It has sold well and has been published in Holland and the Czech Republic as well as England.
The TV rights for my books have been bought by Ian McShane of Lovejoy fame. Ian hopes to persuade the BBC to produce a series based on the books. As I understand it he will not be playing the lead role himself but his TV company will produce the programmes. This may or may not happen.
In my writing I'm trying to capture some of the flavour of life in inner city Manchester. The character of the detective hero who frequently gets badly beaten for interfering with powerful criminals and shunned by the police when he finds things they'd like left covered up is obviously psychologically interesting. To do what Dave does you'd have to be more than slightly mad. I chose to write about a private detective not because I was nervous about doing a policeman -- lack of knowledge of police procedure doesn't seem to restrain many other writers -- but because I find the theme of the lone character struggling against the forces of darkness more attractive. I was surprised to find that the reaction of many publishers who will gladly publish books about detectives in Milwaukee or New Orleans was that nothing interesting can possibly happen north of Watford or that books set in Manchester must necessarily have limited appeal. Possibly by reaction the book I'm writing now is about a doctor in a fictional Northern city who becomes involved in crime when a policeman blackmails him into murder but much of the action occurs in the south of England even in such tremendously well known places as Islington! I'm under contract to Heinemann Mandarin for another book in the Cunane series but this is not the current book.
There has been some comment in the local press about the appropriateness of a teacher who writes about crime. This isn't applicable now because I'm not teaching but the angle seems to be how can a teacher write about serial killers? etc.
In fact I try to maintain a certain ironical tone. I'm striving for realism but not gore. I find American crime novels generally much more interesting because they are more credible. We've all heard about the Chicago and New York Mafia. In Manchester there has been a long stream of drug related killings and when they started the local police seemed strangely detached. Some of these killings involved former pupils but obviously I'm not writing about them. I just hope to capture some of the ambience. Above all I hope to entertain. I know that all fiction involves suspension of doubt but I just find some of the material, particularly on TV at the moment, is so incredible that it ceases to be entertaining.

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

Above Suspicion (Heinemann, 2001) Arrow Pbk Mar 02

Boiling Point (Heinemann, 2000) (Dave Cunane)

Kingdom Gone (Heinemann, 1999) Arrow Pbk Mar 00 (Dave Cunane)

The Reluctant Investigator (Heinemann, 1997) shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award (Dave Cunane)

Nine Lives (Mandarin Pbk, 1996) (Dave Cunane)

Red for Rachel (Mandarin, 1994) (Dave Cunane)