NEW  BOOKS FOR ALLISON & BUSBY 1997

Douglas Wynn The Crime Writer’s Handbook  pbk  Allison & Busby  July 97 0 74900 345 6  £8.99
  · 65 ways to kill your victim - in print
  · Alphabetically-listed entries on methods of murder and detection
  · Unique reference book for all crime writers
Crime writers commit murder in print.
This book shows writers how they can do it, explaining what the victim and the murder scene will look like afterwards, and what clues will give the game away. Chapters on police procedures in the UK, what happens in the court room and post mortems will help lend a convincing authority to every writer's work.
Stuck for ideas? Pore through these pages to discover a wealth of inspiration and reduce time spent on research.  Lost for words? Discover rigor mortis, corpus delicti and folie a deux.
Liberally sprinkled with examples from real life and fiction, this book is a reference must for every writer and would-be writer of crime fiction.
DOUGLAS WYNN took early retirement in 1984 after a career in research analysis to concentrate on writing and to pursue his interest in true-life crime and forensic science.  He is the author of numerous crime reviews, articles and four books. Married, he lives in Lincolnshire. 

Ann Cleeves A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy.  Pbk Allison & Busby  Aug 97  0 74900 307 3 £5.99
`Perceptive, convincing, quietly compelling' MARCEL BERLINS, The Times
`The best detective novel I have read this year' HARRIET WAUGH, The Spectator
`Exciting' SUSAN HILL, Good Housekeeping
`She is already exceptional' B A PIKE, Twentieth-Century Crime & Mystery Writers
Dorothea Cassidy, the vicar's wife, lies dead in the park's flower bed.  The parishioners were daunted by her goodness. But one of them wanted her dead. Who?
01d Mrs Bowman, dying of cancer; Clive Stringer, a disturbed adolescent; Theresa Stringer, a single mother with a child in care and a violent boyfriend - or was it someone in her own family?
Ann Cleeves lived in a North Devon village as a child where her father was the school teacher. She dropped out of Sussex University and took a variety of temporary jobs - child care officer, Women's Refuge worker, and finally as the cook for a Bird Observatory on Fair Isle where she met her husband.  They married in 1997 and she enrolled in a social work course at Liverpool University. After qualifying she worked as a probation officer for the Merseyside Probation Service.  In 1983 she moved with her family to the Midlands and started to write. In 1987 she and her family moved to the North East and her response to the area and the people provided the inspiration and background for her Inspector Ramsay novels.  In addition to writing, she runs workshops for the local education authority, libraries and Newcastle University. 

Luis Sepulveda  The Name of the Bullfighter. Pbk Allison & Busby  Au 97 0 79900 355 3  £7.99 See Review
Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Ruta
`A rare find: a thrilling, well-wrought work of literature' New York Times
`Beautifully barbed...colorful and readable'  Washington Post
`Brilliantly focused...skilful' Boston Globe
`Entertaining and undoubtedly destined for the screen' Kirkus Review
Juan Belmonte, named after a famous Spanish bullfighter, is a former South American Marxist guerrilla now working in a Hamburg strip joint.  An old man in a wheelchair approaches him with an offer he can't refuse.  During the Second World War two German police officers stole precious medieval coins from the German treasury and hid them somewhere in Chile.  Fifty years later they are trying to retrieve their spoils. Belmont must recover them - and fast.
But Belmonte is not the only one on the track of the coins.  Frank Galinsky, ex-opecative for Stasi, the defunct East German intelligence agency, is out of work with no prospects. He, too, is approached, this time by his former chief who briefs him on the coins and orders him to retrieve the treasure.  .
The chase is on...
Luis Sepulvada was born in 1949 in Chile.  He was exiled for his political activities in 1975 and worked in the Amazon jungle for UNESCO.  He moved to Germany in 1980 where he now resides.
Cover Photo. Jacqueline Purcell/Swanstock  

Chester Himes Cast the First Stone  pbk  Allison & Busby  Oct 97  0 74900 0716  £7.99
James Munroe was a cool cat. He took his prison sentence without blinking and by the fourth year he had it made. Then a youngster named Dido moved into his cell block and Munroe's shell began to crumble...
Chester Himes Run Man Run  pbk  Allison & Busby  Oct 97 0 74900 066 X  £7.99
Walker, not one of New York's finest cops, staggers into a restaurant on a freezing day. He kills two black workers `because they were there' and pursues a third who witnessed the murders, determined to kill him as well.
Chester Himes The End of the Primitive pbk  Allison & Busby  Oct 97. 0 74900 095 3  £7.99
Jesse Robinson wakes from his nightmare to dirty, fitful real life in a Harlem slum.  Kriss wakes up alone, divorced, disillusioned, in her plush Manhattan apartment.  They have nothing in common: just an amazing, passionate weekend seven years ago in Chicago and a desire to meet again...
Chester Himes. Pinktoes  pbk  Allison & Busby  Oct 97. 0 85031953 6  £7.99
All Mamie Mason ever wanted was to be `the hostess with the mostest'. Pinktoes is a bawdy, hilarious, Rabelaisian tale of sex, food and gossip with double entendre, puns, doubletalk and sheer action.
`The greatest find in American fiction since Raymond Chandler' The Observer
`A ruthless honesty which cannot fail to impress' The Guardian
`Bloody, bawdy and original - and as irresistible as the day they first blew into print'  Literary Review
Chester Himes was born in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1909. He began writing in prison, having been given a twenty-year sentence for a jewel theft in 1928. His early novels were unpopular in America, being too black and too aggressive, and he remained unrecognised. Soon after the Second World War he moved to Europe. He continued to write and soon won international acclaim, receiving in 1958 the Grand Prix Policier which assured his popularity on both sides of the Atlantic.  He died in
Spain in 1984. 

 J Robert Janes Sandman  Pbk  Alison & Busby  Sep 97  0 74900 315 4  £5.99
'Janes hooks you quickly' The Spectator
Paris, January 1943.
Five murders. Five young girls. All sexually violated. A girl on the run ... Will the Sandman get to her before she can reveal what she knows?
Two detectives, one French the other Gestapo, bury their differences to investigate these bizarre crimes in war-torn Paris at a time when officially sanctioned crime is rife.
Sandman is the eighth book is this series of widely acclaimed detective-mystery thrillers. The background is factual and thoroughly researched ... full of atmosphere.
J Robert Janes was born in Toronto, Canada, and now lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake. A mining engineer by profession, Janes taught geology, geography and mathematics in high school. He has been a full-time writer since 1970 and has now published over twenty-four books, including fourteen novels, five mystery novels for children and textbooks geology. 

Ted Lewis Plender  pbk Alison & Busby  0 74900 390 1  £7.99
'Peter ... lads like Brian will just hold you back. You've got to get on.' He did. So did Brian Plender. At school, Peter Knott was the top dog. Seventeen years on, Plender is. A woman dies in Knott's studio. Pender knows and uses that 'little secret'... Set against the 'sixties background of the industrial north, once again Ted Lewis has produced a masterpiece of excitement and tension.
'Traced with rare delicacy of feeling' Norman Shrapnel, THE GUARDIAN
  When it comes to dealing with your actual ... hard man, no one does it better than the late, great Ted Lewis' John Williams, ARENA
'Ted Lewis is a name to watch' SUNDAY EXPRESS
Cover illustration based on Allen Jones painting: N-J Design Ass.

Ross Macdonald, Lew Archer Omnibus vol.3  pbk  Alison  & Busby  0 74900 340 5  £9.99
'The best private eye in the business' wrote The Sunday Times. Allison & Busby is currently reissuing the classic Lew Archer stories in omnibus editions and here is the third containing:
THE IVORY GRIN Archer's new client was the rudest and most evasive woman he had ever met. He finds the girl she is looking for - in a motel room with her throat slit. Then his client disappears and Archer sets out to find her - and a killer.
THE GALTON CASE Rich boy Anthony Calton disappeared over twenty years ago leaving a mother dreaming of her son's return. Archer took on the case hoping that Tony and his mother could live happily ever after - until he uncovered a clever swindle, a scared blonde, and a very nasty murder.
THE BLUE HAMMER Finding Ruth Biemeyer's stolen painting looks simple enough ... But Archer discovers more than he bargained for - a double murder, a missing painter and the subterranean jolt as a dead man is thrown out of his grave.
PRAISE FOR ROSS MACDONALD
'... creates marvellous books'
  TIME OUT
‘.., must be ranked high amongst American thriller writers'
  TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
'... carried form and style about as far as they would go ...
  THE GUARDIAN
'... is a master of the modern detective novel'
  ROLLING STONE
'... puts it all together with breathtaking expertise'
  NEW YORK SUNDAY TIMES
Illustration by Colin Williams

John Gano Inspector Proby 's Christmas pbk  Alison & Busby  Nov 97 0 74900 381 2  £5.99
'A top class debut' David Hughes, Mail on Sunday
'Skilfull ... entirely plausible' Literary Review
'An eye as good as Lovejoy's but his contacts are better ... I enjoyed it'  Jessica Mann, Daily Telegraph
Bodies are piling up in Hampton's morgue just before Christmas. Then another woman is savagely killed. Inspector Proby works overtime. At home his wife is having an affair; at work he can't trust his men. Of one thing only he is certain - the killer's identity. But, outwitted at every turn, he must act as human bait and face his prime suspect - alone, unarmed and terrified ...
John Gano is the pseudonym of  the well-known writer Freddie Stockdale. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge where he read law with a particular interest in criminology. Several years as a prison visitor gave him first-hand experience of prison life.
Cover photograph: Ray Humphrey. Design: N-J Design Associates 

Frank Palmer.  Dark Forest  pbk  Alison & Busby  Dec 97  0 74900 325 1  £5.99 
Introducing Phil 'Sweeney' Todd, Frank Palmer's new detective taking over from his popular D.I. 'Jacko' Jackson, now happily retired and writing his long-awaited crime novels.
'Disillusioned, disaffected, dangerous' -  just some of the labels the police are attaching to their new high flier Phil 'Sweeney' Todd. A blast from a killer's shotgun leaves him lame and seeking medical discharge from the force with compensation.
His flame-haired, hot-tempered lawyer offers him employment as her enquiry agent on a missing person's case.  Todd finds himself in the cut-throat world of commercial drug manufacturing, pitting himself against a powerful multi-national company and politicians with secrets to hide.
Praise for Frank Palmer’s  “Jacko” series
Blood Brothers  'Excellent whodunit' Philip Oakes, Literacy Review
Nightwatch  'Formidable action-crammed teaser' John Coleman, Sunday Times
Dead Man 's Handle  '...engrossing story' Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph
Frank Palmer was born in Lincoln and educated at the City School.  After leaving school he took up journalism, working as a reporter with the Lincolnshire Chronicle and, after National Service, with the Lincolnshire Echo.  He then worked for the Liverpool Evening Express and The Daily Express in Manchester and Fleet Street before joining the Daily Mirror in 1968. He covered many major crimes, including the arrest of the Black Panther and the case of the first killer to be captured by DNA screening.   He left the Daily Mirror in 1990 to write the now-completed 'Jacko' series, highly acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic. He now lives near Nottingham.
Cover photograph: Telegraph Colour Library.  Design: Design N-J Ass. 

Frank Smith. Fatal Flaw  Pbk  Allison & Busby  Dec 97  0 74900 320 0  £5.99
Monica Shaw, a pupil at Thornton Hill an exclusive school for girls, has killed herself. Or has she? The coroner is forced to close the case. DCI Paget is not satisfied.
A week later Paget is called to a brutal murder at the riding stables that adjoin Thornton Hill. Is there a coincidence? The victim is Victor Prestcott, a man with a past. He has a photograph of Dr Andrea McMillan and a child. Andrea McMillan is Paget's girlfriend.
Paget the policeman struggles with Paget the man as he refuses to accept the obvious - that Andrea is guilty.  As he strips away the evasions and half-truths, is he unwittingly setting the scene for another murder...?
Frank Smith was born in Canada and moved to England at an early age where he continued his education.   In 1948 he returned to Canada working in the communications field in Calgary, Alberta.  He began writing in the mid-sixties. Fatal Flaw is the first in his Chief Inspector Paget series.
Cover photograph : Ray Humphrey.  Design: N-J Design Ass.