New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Corgi 1998 July-Sept
File Updated: 01/04/00
New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Corgi JULY-SEPT 1998

Wycliffe and the Redhead
W.J. Burley Wycliffe and the Redhead Pbk published July 1998 by Corgi at £4.99 ISBN: 0552 14661 7 Artwork by: Cover shows Jack Shepherd as Detective Superintendent Wycliffe from Wycliffe, an HTV ptoduction for ITV. Photo: Mike Alsford HTV. Cover painting: Brian Sanders.
See Review by Andrew Taylor - author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series
Detective Superintendent Wycliffe, Cornwall's laconic and methodical career policeman, returned to ITV with a new 6-part series. Featuring Jack Shepherd as the irascible, sometimes irritable Wycliffe and Helen Masters as his sidekick Lucy Lane. Now in its fifth season, Wycliffe has become ITV's most popular summer series, with an average audience of 10 million viewers.
Simon Meager was a lonely middle-aged man. With a broken marriage behind him, his life was centred on his antiquarian bookshop. In his past was the memory of a murder trial where his evidence had resulted in the conviction of a man who had subsequently killed himself. Now, to his horror, the daughter of that man was applying for a job in his shop and, almost mesmerised by her, Simon found he was agreeing to her employment. Cleverly, over a period of time, Morwenna manipulated herself into his work, his life, and finally into his flat above the shop, And then she disappeared.
When her body was discovered in a flooded quarry, at first suicide was considered. Morwenna was suffering from a fatal disease and perhaps she had taken her own life. But everything pointed to murder and, inevitably, suspicion fell on Simon Meager.
Wycliffe became increasingly disturbed by a case which grew more and more complicated as he explored many dark and murky secrets from the past.

W J Burley is a retired engineer and teacher who, until his retirement, was Senior Biology Master in a large mixed Grammar school in Newquay. He is married with two sons and now lives in Holywell near Newquay. His detective creation Wycliffe solved his first case, The Mystery of the Three Toed Pussy, in 1968.

Arthur Hailey Detective Pbk published July 1998 by Corgi at £5.99 ISBN: 0 552 14376 6 Artwork by: Cover photo: The Telegraph Library/Hywel Jones

Sergeant Malcolm Ainslie of the Miami police homicide department is about to take a well-earned family holiday when he is called away on an urgent mission. A criminal on Death Row with only a few hours left to live before being sent to the electric chair has requested that Ainslie hear his confession. Will Elroy 'Animal' Doil finally confess to the series of grisly double murders for which Ainslie hunted him down? Or, as Ainslie is a former Catholic priest, does the convicted man's desire to 'confess' have a totally different meaning?
So begins Arthur Hailey's compelling new novel. Hailey has made it his speciality to pinpoint precisely what goes on behind the scenes in a big organization or institution, how people really do their jobs; and so Detective bristles with the sights, sound, and authentic details of a contemporary urban homicide division. In Ainslie, the priest turned cop, it has a morally complex hero; it is also a page-turning thriller full of the narrative suspense that has made Arthur Hailey one of the bestselling writers of our time.

'With the publication of this book, ingredients for the perfect summer holiday are now complete...hugely readable' Daily Telegraph
Highly readable' Evening Standard
'Very readable and his unrivalled reputation for research is well deserved' Morning Star
A sizzling read' Mail On Sunday
Arthur Hailey was born in England and began his writing career while an RAF pilot during the Second World War. After the war he lived and wrote in Canada, becoming a Canadian citizen as well as British; he also lived briefly in the United States. For the past twenty-eight years Arthur Hailey and his wife Sheila have made their home in the Bahamas. Hailey's novels have been published in thirty-nine languages; an estimated 160 million copies are in print worldwide. Most of his books have been made into films or TV series.


The Sleeper

Buy at Bol Price Gillian White The Sleeper Pbk published September 1998 by Corgi at £5.99 ISBN: 0552145610 Artwork by: Cover photograph: Oliver Hunter

Violet Moon is a medium in her seventies who, just before Christmas give a séance in her bungalow in Plymouth. Amongst the regulars is a stranger. No one knows anything about her. She is prim, quiet, dressed in grey and her name is Miss Bates.
That Christmas an old woman goes missing from her residential hotel for the elderly, the inappropriately named Happy Haven. And in a remote farmhouse not far away, Violet joins her son and his family for the holidays. Clover Moon, her daughter-in-law thinks that Violet regards her as an inadequate and unsuitable wife for her beloved only son. But would she go so far as to try and kill her? And what are the dark secrets in Violet's past' As terrible storms cut off the power and maroon the Christmas gathering, where did the body come from which is swept into the farmhouse cellar by the rising floodwater''

The Sleeper is a wonderfully dark and suspenseful psychological thriller. Gillian White's powerful story telling has led to comparisons with Barbara Vine, Fay Weldon, and Minette Waiters. She has even been called "Martin Amis with heart." Glasgow Herald

Gillian White is the author of The Rich Deceiver and The Beggar Bride, both recent major BBC TV drama productions. She lives in South Devon.