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


Buy at Bol Price Michael Dibdin A Long Finish Published September 1998 by Faber at £16.99 ISBN: 0571193412
See Review by Val McDermid - Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill
After his adventures under sun-drenched Neapolitan skies in Cosi Fan Tutti, Aurelio Zen finds himself back in Rome, sneezing in a damp wine cellar and being given another unorthodox assignment: to release the jailed scion of an important wine-growing family who is accused of a brutal murder.
Zen travels north to an Italy as outwardly serene as Naples was manic. Amid the quiet fields, autumn al skies and crumbling farmhouses of Piedmont, Zen must try to penetrate a traditional culture in which family and soil are inextricably linked. Here secrets can last for generations, and have a finish as long and lingering as that of a good Barbaresco. Zen must also face up to the mysteries from his own past, as well as grapple with the greed, envy, hatred and love that are the human components of any landscape.

Time Out has said Aurelio Zen 'is among the most engaging of fictive policemen.
'Michael Dibdin is an absolutely sensational writer.' The Scotsman

Michael Dibdin was born in 1947, and attended schools in Scotland and Ireland and universities in England and Canada. He lives in Seattle, is married to the writer Katherine Beck, and reviews regularly for the Sunday Times.

Other Zen titles include: Ratking, Vendetta, Cabal, Dead Lagoon and, Cosi Fan Tutti.

Kinky Friedman When the Cat's Away Pbk published July 1998 by Faber at £5.99 ISBN: 0 571 19413 3 Artwork by: Cover illustration: Mick Brownfield
Winnie Katz's lesbian dance class was like God. Mankind never saw it, but you always knew it was there ... I listened to the rhythmic thuddings in the loft above me. I wondered what the hell was going on up there. If somebody's wayward daughter from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, was being broken down like a double-barreled shotgun, it'd be a hell of a lot of early ballroom lessons gone to waste. On the other hand, what did I know about modern dance?
It was a chilly evening in late January and I was sitting at my desk just sort of waiting for something besides my New Year's resolutions to kick in. If you're patient and you wait long enough, something will usually happen and it'll usually be something you don't like ...

A purloined feline from Madison Square Gardens' cat show is the tip-off to a trail of murders, drug rings and gang wars that only Kinky Friedman can follow, with plenty of off-the-cuff wisecracks in tow. But there's more than one way to skin a cat, and Kinky may soon be wishing for nine lives ...

'If you like deadbeat, wisecracking humour, there's no one better.' Sunday Express

When the Cat's Away, his third mystery, is Kinky Friedman at his funniest and sharpest.

Roadkill
Kinky Friedman Roadkill Pbk published July 1998 by Faber at £5.99 ISBN: 0 571 19599 7 Artwork by: Cover illustration: Mick Brownfield
The Kinkster does it again, outdoing his own genius for the outrageous as he tries to save his friend Willie Nelson from an old Indian curse.
Once again holed up in his New York loft, reflecting that his career as a country singer turned private investigator appears to have taken a turn for the worse, the Kinkster agrees to join his old country music pal for a tour for a much-needed R&R. But Willie has problems of his own, and when he disappears from the tour bus and his lookalike valet is shot through the window of his motel suite, it becomes apparent that Willie is indeed in danger.
With a little help from the Village Irregulars, a lot of Jamesons, an Indian buckskin medicine pouch, a silver shell casing, and, of course, his inscrutable cat, Kinky is hot on the trail in a wild and wicked new adventure.