Simon Brett --- Sicken and So Die -- Vista Pbk (0 575 60048 9) £4.99 Out December 5th.
Things are going suspiciously well for Charles Paris. He's moved back in with his ex-wife and although he's not yet a permanent fixture in her bed, he has his hopes. What's more he's got a proper part in a proper production - Sir Toby Belch in Twelth Night. But this blissful state can't last, and, true to form, Charles is soon in trouble-both on and off stage. And when two of the members of the theatre company fall suddenly ill, Charles begins to suspect that someone might actually be trying to kill him.........
"Brett's wit, panache and laugh aloud jokes carry it off with some considersble style. A joyous romp." Yorkshire Post
Rankin Davis --- Abuse of Process --- Hodder (0 340 65785 5) £16.99
Lorry Driver Trevor Speakman stands in the dock, accused of murdering seven teenage girls. Courtroom sketch artist Jack Forth, solicitor Leone Stern and junior defence barrister Toby Sloane join forces to prove his innocence. From the author of A Right to Silence
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles --- Blood Lines --- Warner Pbk (0 7515 1774 7) £5.99 Out December 5th
With his violinist lover Joanna busy rehearsing Don Giovanni at Glynebourne, Detective Inspector Bill Slider almost welcomes a call out to the BBC TV Centre at White City, where Roger Greatrex, celebrated music critic and opera aficianado, appears to have topped himself.
But there are signs that the body has been interfered with, and Slider suspects murder. One fellow panelist is known to have quarrelled violently with Greatrex just before his death. Two members of the production team also have motives for the murder, and nobody in the building has a proper alibi.
Slider is under pressure to make an arrest, and all his instincts are at odds with the evidence. But a dangerous killer is on the loose, and could kill again..........
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles --- Killing Time --- Little Brown (0 316 88103 1) £16.99 Out December 5th
Detective Inspector Bill Slider is back at work, plus a thumping headache - thoughtfully donated by the last villain he encountered - and minus Atherton, his friend and colleague, still in hospital with a knife wound where no gourmet should have one.
Slider was hoping for a quiet week. But erotic dancer Jay Paloma is murdered, only hours after complaining about poison pen letters, and Slider plunges into the seedy world of entertainment to question table-dancers, prostitutes, pimps, and cabinet ministers. Did Jay's murderer also whack popular "community cop" PC Cosgrave? What was Cosgrave's connection with protitute Maroon Brown? Who exactly was blackmailing whom? And why on earth would an animal rights group storm a tacky Sheperd's Bush night club?
"Slider and his creator are real discoveries for detection fans demanding quality and heart as well as ingenious plots." Daily Mail
"Assured and elegant" Sunday Telegraph
Jonathan Kellerman --- The Clinic --- Little Brown (0 316 87887 1) £14.99 Out Decamber 5th
She was found stabbed to death on a quiet, shaded srteet in one of Los Angeles' safest neighbourhoods. For three months the police have found no clues to the murder of Hope Devane, psychology professor and controversial author of a pop-psych bestseller, an angry indictment of young men. Now homicide detective Milo Sturgis, newly assigned to the case, turns to his friend, psychologist Dr Alex Delaware, looking for insights into Devane's life.
To both the men the cold stalking of Devane suggests calculation fuelled by hate - an execution, They discover why, as they unlock, one by one, the very compartments of her life: her marriage, her shadowy work for a Beverley Hills clinic, the Conduct Comitee she ran with an iron hand at the University, and her baffling link to another murder victim. But it is when Alex delves into her childhood that he begins to understand the formidable woman she was - the ties that entangled her life until the horrifying act of betrayal that ended it.
Deryn Lake --- Death at the Devil's Tavern --- Hodder (0 340 67426 1) £16.99
Third historical mystery featuring John Rawlings and the Blind Beak. Lake creates Georgian London with and acute eye and an impressive knowledge, telling her story with compassion and refreshing wit. See Death at the Beggar's Opera
Martha C. Lawrence --The Cold Heart of Capricorn --- Hodder (0 340 66572 6) £16.99
The second engaging and offbeat mystery thriller to feature Californian private investigator and parapsychologist Dr Elizabeth Chase. Her adversary is a brutal rapist with his own paranormal powers. Follow up to Murder in Scorpio.
Richard A Lupoff --- The Bessie Blue Killer --- HarperCollins (0 00 232623 X) £14.99 Out 2cnd DecemberClaims adjuster Hobart Lindsey is no hard-bitten PI - he's just a nice guy trying to do his job. So why does he always find himself embroiled in murder cases?
Promoted to International Surety's Special projects Unit/Detached Status Lindsey must oversee the filming of a movie about black World War Two pilots. But before shooting begins a corpse is found amid the vintag aircraft, and suddenly and unexpectedly Hobeart Lindsey is flying through a murder investigation by the seat of his pants. Definitely not what he had anticipated on promotion.
"One of the year's best" Drood Review
"As charming and as durable as durable as the antiques about which so much mayhem is committed."San Francisco Chronicle
Gavin Lyall --- Flight from Honour --- Hodder (0 340 68189 6) £15.99
Following the success of Spy's Honour comes an exciting new novel of intrigue and adventure set in the early days of modern espionage .
"Anything by Gavin Lyall is bound to be original, intelligent and well written." Times Literary Supplement.
Philip Margolin --- Heartstone --- Warner Pbk Original (0 7515 1463 2) £5.99 Out December 5th
Richie Walters and Elaine Murray were the perfect couple. And that evening out at Lookout Point - Richie fumbling at the buttons of her blouse, Elena thrilled and terrified - they were about to take the final step. But the step would never be taken.
Richie Walters would die that night, in a hot and savage ecstasy of violence. Elaine Murray would also die, but would live long enough to know how lucky Richie had been....
Their killlers hated the rich and the priveleged with a brutal passion - and detective Roy Schindler will not rest until they have paid for their unspeakably sadistic crime. Esther Freemont saw everything that happened that night, but, half-mad and suicidal, represssed what she dared not remember. Seven years later her memory returns under hypnosis. Or is it her love for Schindler, encouraging her to say precisely what he wants to hear?
Sara Paretsky (ed) --- Women on the Case --- Virago (1 86049 104 9) £16.99 Out 5th December
Sara Paretsky presents women's stories of crime and punishment on a global stage, with voices from home and abroad in a chorus whose individual voices celebrate women today and who take us from private eye to tourist's paradise, from the mean streets of despair to gilded hell in consumer heaven.
Ruth Rendell, Elizabeth George, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Antonia Fraser, Sara Paretsky and Linda Barnes demonstrate their keen insight into the twisted byways of the human mind. Irina Muravyova shows what powers women may call on in order to survive. Nevada Barr digs too deep for lies to go undetected. Linda Grant turns to Shakespeare to solve a murder. Liza Cody depicts how a race to plastic surgery for a fresh face and empty mind leads to oblivion.
Here indeed are Women on the Case, from favourite sleuths such as Jemima Shore, Carlotta Carlyle and V.I.Warshawski, to wives, mothers, lawyers, politicians,writers, professional assasins and more, in twenty-six tales that plumb the depth and breadth of woman's art.
Anne Perry ---Traitors Gate --- HarperCollins (0 00 232580 2) £15.99 Out December 2cnd
The most heinous of crimes: treason. Superintendant Thomas Pitt of Bow Street is up against the most sensitve and politically damaging case of his career, as it becomes clear that there is a traitor at work in the Colonial Office. The field of suspects is limited to a handful of highly distinguished public servants, all with formidable reputations to maintain, all with considerable power to defend themselves from intrusive investigations.
Simultaneously, Pitt is quietly looking into the death of his childhood mentor, who has apparently taken an overdose of laudanum. What possible connection can there be to the hidden traitor? Pitt begins to wonder if personal grief is clouding his judgement, as he can find no way forward, It takes a sensational death to reveal the tangled truth, and to put at risk not only Pitt's life but that of his wife, Charlotte.
Oscar Zarate --- It's Dark in London --- Serpents Tail / Mask Noir Pbk (1 85242 535 0) £9.99 Out December 2nd
Comics have thrived in London for centuries with Gilray, Hogarth, and the "Comic Magazine" in the eighteenth century, Tomas Rowlandson's "Doctor Syntax" in 1809 and the first edition of "Punch" in 1841. In this century , there have been attempts to reserve comics for the kids. But the comic strip is too rich an art form to be just for kids - in recent years, a new generatio of British artists has developed a rich synthesis of the Continental graphic novel and American comic strips. In It's Dark in London the work of some of these artists is featured - Alan Moore, Ilya, Neil Gaiman, David McKean, Carol Swain, Dix - in tandem with the stories of London writers like Iain Sinclair, Graeme Gordon, Christopher Petit and Stella Duffy. This fusion produces a portrait of London that captures the city's fundamental essence as mixture of lofty towers and gutter sleaze.
It is a book that is as graphic as it is visionary.