New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Collins Crime 1998 April-June
File Updated: 01/04/00
New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Collins Crime APRIL-JUNE 1998

Agatha Christie Why Didn't They Ask Evans? Published April 1998 by Collins Crime at £15.99 ISBN: 0 00 231884 9
See Review by Martin Edwards - author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries
A lost golf ball and a dying man's last question lead two amateur detectives into intrigue, romance and mortal danger...

Agatha Christie Three Act Tragedy Published April 1998 by Collins Crime at £15.99 ISBN: 0 00 231816 4
See Review by Martin Edwards - author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries
The late Revd Babbington was not a superstitious man - but he should never have invited thirteen people to dinner. ..

Agatha Christie Death in the Clouds Published April 1998 by Collins Crime at £15.99 ISBN: 0 00 231187 9
To commit an undetected murder on an aeroplane with Hercule Poirot in the cabin takes ingenuity of the highest order. ..

Agatha Christie Parker Pyne Investigates Published April 1998 by Collins Crime at £15.99 ISBN: 0 00 231674 9
See Review by Martin Edwards - author of the highly acclaimed Harry Devlin Mysteries
The adventures of a globetrotting private eye who advertises his services in The Times and has a knack of solving the insoluble. ..

Ruth Dudley Edwards Publish and Be Murdered Published May 1998 by Collins Crime at £15.99 ISBN: 0 00 232598 5 Artwork by: Jacket illustration: Mark Entwisle
See Review by Andrew Taylor - author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series
SHE'S FILLETED the foreign office, clobbered the Cambridge colleges, jested at the gentlemen's clubs, burlesqued the bishops - now Ruth Dudley Edwards mocks the media. Living with his fiancée and contemplating marriage, Robert Amiss feels settled at last. He even has a proper job, managing the Wrangler - a right-wing, 200-year-old English magazine of economics, politics and letters - and stemming the monumental losses incurred through the extravagance and inefficiency of its editor, William Lambie Crump. Yet Amiss is not entirely happy with his job, for the atmosphere at the paper is poisoned by rampant egocentricity and savage ideological battles. Things are so bad that not even the appointment of Baroness Troutbeck as a columnist seems likely to bring much cheer. The gloom deepens with the discovery of the deputy editor, drowned in a bowl of punch. Suspicions of foul play are brushed aside by the police. But after another death, Chief Superintendent Tim Milton takes charge, spurred on by relentless chivvying from the baroness. There is no shortage of motives and, in typical Dudley Edwards style, no shortage of laughs in this riotous farce. 'A complete delight to read ... She is unique.' Irish Independent 'This blithe series puts itself on the side of the angels by merrily, and staunchly, subverting every tenet of political correctness.' PATRICIA CRAIG, Independent Ruth Dudley Edwards was born in Dublin and now lives in London. A historian and prize winning biographer, her most recent non-fiction includes the authorised history of The Economist.

Nora Kelly Old Wounds Published April 1998 by Collins Crime at £14.99 ISBN: 0 00 232659 0 Artwork by: Jacket photograph: Jeff Cottenden.
'Kelly is as stunning on the evocative geography of workplaces as she is at dry, educated repartee. A chilling intrigue, which shrewdly examines professional jealousies and warped psychologies. John Coleman, Sunday Times
Returning to her childhood home on a year's sabbatical in order to care for her aged mother, historian Gillian Adams expects to see little in the way of excitement. The sleepy rural campus of Stanford University, though situated within easy reach of New York, has somehow escaped the violence which plagues the big city ... Until the body of a young female student is discovered on a lonely stretch of country road.
Even more shocking than the murder itself are the revelations which follow. Incriminating nude photographs and evidence of a string of affairs with married men prompt the police to conclude that the dead girl had been leading a bizarre double life.
As the murder hunt gains momentum the town finds itself in the grip of a maelstrom, with more than one of Gillian's childhood friends - and enemies - being sucked into the investigation. Can it be that one of them is the killer Like Nora Kelly's previous Gillian Adams novels, Bad Chemistry and In the Shadow of Kings, this intelligent mystery transcends the genre with its moving portrayal of complex characters embroiled in a chilling intrigue.
Nora Kelly was born in the United States in 1945. She has lived in London and Cambridge, and is now based in Vancouver, Canada. She has written three crime novels featuring Gillian Adams.

Nora Kelly Long Way Home Published April 1998 by Collins Crime at £15.99 ISBN: 0 00 232659 0
Michael Pearce The Last Cut Published June 1998 by Collins Crime at £14.99 ISBN: 0 00 232658 2 Artwork by: Jacket illustration: Colin Hadley
'Pearce takes apart ancient history and reassembles it with beguiling wit and colour.’ Sunday Times
EVERYTHING IN EGYPT depends on the waters of the Nile. So when an attempt is made to blow up a key regulator in the Cairo Barrage, Gareth Owen - the Mamur Zapt, Chief of Cairo's secret police - is hurriedly called in.
What exactly is a regulator, though, Owen doesn't know. But then, there are many things he doesn't know. Who is the Lizard Man, for example, and why does he appear to have a grudge against Egypt's irrigation system.
Quite unconnected - or is it - is the ceremonial cutting of a dam which allows water to flow through the city. It is a ceremony which always requires careful policing, but on this occasion more than ever, for it is going to be the Last Cut.
Which makes the discovery of a young woman's body at the site of the dam extremely embarrassing. Is this the traditional ritual sacrifice! Definitely not, says Owen - but this could be another of the things he doesn't know …
'Irresistible fun. Time Out
'Marvellously convoluted ... Dryly and deeply funny. Literary Review Michael Pearce grew up in the (then) Angle-Egyptian Sudan and now lives in London. This is the eleventh novel in his award-winning series set in Edwardian Egypt; the sixth, The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt won the CWA's prestigious Last Laugh Award for the funniest crime novel of the year.

Andrew Taylor The Judgement of Strangers Published June 1998 by Collins Crime at £15.99 ISBN: 0 00 232558 6 Artwork by: Jacket photograph: Mark pennington
See Review by Liz Lees
See Review by H.R.F.Keating - Cartier Dagger winner & creator of Inspector Ghote
The Roth Trilogy, Book 2
'Andrew Taylor digs deep to explore the tangled roots of sex, violence and religion. This is a fine thriller, with clues complex enough to tax a Morse. Reginald Hill (of The Four Last Things)
NESTLING IN LONDON'S vast commuter belt, Roth is not so much a village as a suburban state of mind. Even the dawning of the seventies and the arrival of hippies in their midst cannot dislodge the grip of the past on some o Roth's inhabitants: Lady Youlgreave slides towards death in the company of her equally senile dogs, Beauty and Beast; Audrey Oliphant, churchwarden and spinster, nurses a hopeless passion for the vicar; while the vicar's second wife develops a fascination for a Victorian poet-priest with local connections - Francis Youlgreave, opium addict, suicide, and author of The Judgement of Strangers.
The present, however, is not without its own power to disturb. And when present and past combine, with echoes of bygone crimes and blasphemies reverberating through the village, murder and mutilation are not far behind. ..
'Taylor is marvellous and devilishly clever. Frances Hegarty, Mail on Sunday
'This author knows precisely how to wield suspense. Independent on Sunday
Andrew Taylor is the award winning author of a number of crime novels, including the Dougal series, the Lydmouth books and The Barred Window. He and his wife live with their children in the Forest of Dean.

All the Dead Lie Down
Mary Willis Walker All the Dead Lie Down Published May 1998 by Collins Crime at £15.99 ISBN: 0 00 225725 4
See Review by Margaret Murphy - author of Desire of the Moth & mistress of the psychological suspence novel
'In Under the Beetle's Cellar, Mary Willis Walker gives us a kidnap story of rare intensity and mounting tension. No, I didn't steal that from the blurb, the book actually is a superb suspense thriller.' Irish Times
In this completely compelling novel from the Edgar Award-winning author of The Red Scream and Under the Beetle's Cellar, crime journalist Molly Cates is dragged into the underworld of the homeless, threatened by vigilantes and brought face to face with the violence in her own past. In the heat of the Texan summer, there are few cool places for the homeless to hide. Cow Lady guards her patch under a creekside restaurant with grim ferocity, at least safe in the knowledge that nobody uses the deck area at night. Until the men with the strange voices arrive one evening and talk of guns and gas.
Cow Lady realizes that their plot against the State Senate is in deadly earnest, but why should she do anything about it Who'd believe her, anyway? Only the journalist covering the lives of her bag-lady companions - Molly Cates.
Molly's also following the passage of a bill which will legalize the carrying of hidden weapons. She doesn't know that a faction of extremist vigilantes believe that the bill will work against them, and that the right to bear arms is more important than any other, including the right to live. Chilling, convincing, powerfully entertaining, this is suspense writing at its best.
'Under the Beetle's Cellar is an instant classic in mystery and suspense. The best chiller-thriller of the year.' James Patterson
Winner of the Edger and Agatha Awards, Mary Willis Walker is one of the most exciting writers to emerge in any genre in recent years. She lives in Texas.

Robert Wilson A Darkening Stain Published April 1998 by Collins Crime at £15.99 ISBN: 0 00 232626 4
'For once a novelist influenced by Raymond Chandler is not shown up by the comparison, matching his mentor's descriptive flourishes and screwball dialogue.' Sunday Times
BRUCE MEDWAY does not see the disappearance of schoolgirls off the streets of Benin as any of his business. That is the domain of the police. Bruce has the more pressing matter of a visit from two sweet-natured Mafiosi, employees of the Lagos-based Roberto Franconelli, who want him to locate a French businessman who is definitely in for more than a wristslapping.
But then an eighth and very important schoolgirl goes missing and Bruce finds himself descending into a dark world of police corruption, sexual depravity, illegally mined gold, mafia revenge, and the privileged but psychotic existence of Nigerian heiress, Madame Sokode. To save himself he must conceive a scam which, when executed, will result in death and destruction. But then innocence has always been the burden of dark experience.
'If I come across as original and blackly funny a thriller again this year, I'11 feel myself doubly blest. Irish Times (of The Big Killing)
'Potent, fiercely imagined and not a little frightening.' Literary Review
Robert Wilson has spent several years in West Africa and he draws on this experience for his Bruce Medway novels. He and his wife now live in Portugal.