New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Hutchinson 1998 July-Sept

File Updated: 01/04/00

New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Hutchinson JULY-SEPT 1998

Jessica Berens The Highwayman Pbk published August 1998 by Hutchinson at Ł10.00 ISBN: 0 09 179167 7 Artwork by: Ilustration: Alan Baker

Magical, mischievous mayhem from the author of Queen of the Witches.

In the Gothic gloom of Fairview Castle (actually purpose-built in 1962), Rupert Ruthven lived with his mother, a woman addicted to psychopharmaceuticals and Special Brew.

Commuting on his trusty Honda motorbike, Rupert worked, for an almost living wage, at Lucky Bob's Amusement Arcade. There his hand/eye coordination made him a legend in his battles against the computerised forces of evil - a master of the shadow uppercut, the high kick and the acrobatic leap.

The rest of the time Rupert pushed cardboard tubes of coins at the crowd who came to play pool or Turbo Street-Fighter 111.

Then there was Grace Falconbridge - pale, beautiful, blank-eyed. Those who saw her face would never know they were looking at a wild crone who saw beauty in perversity, who was drawn only to the brutish and discarded...

One dark and windy day in March, three down-at-heel bikers screeched into town. The leader had Satan tattooed on the fingers of his right hand.

For both Rupert and Grace, life was now about to alter course, beyond their most desperate imaginings.

Jessica Belens was trained as a reporter on the Windsor, Slough and Eton Express before joining Tatler as Staff Feature Writer. In the mid-eighties she lived in New York where she worked for Vanity Fair. As a freelance writer she has contributed to The Sunday Times, the Observer, the Mail on Sunday, the Independent, the Guardian, Vogue, The Face, Arena and Tatler. She now lives in Los Angeles.

Lauren Henderson Freeze My Margarita Pbk published August 1998 by Hutchinson at Ł10.00 ISBN: 0 09 180189 3 Artwork by: Cover photograph: Paul Postle
See Review by Mat Coward
See Review by Val McDermid - Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill

'Henderson is the dominatrix of the British crime scene, capable of producing laughter even as she inflicts pain on her characters' Time Out

Sam Jones is back, and she's still wearing rubber. A chance meeting in a fetish club with an old friend from art school, now set-designing, garners her a commission to create a series of mobiles for his latest production. The cast includes an enigmatic and acidly witty actor named Hugo, possessor of a Lord Peter Wimsey drawl, Hard Candy-varnished fingernails and a perfectly-formed bottom. Now if Sam could only be sure whether or not he was gay...

This pressing question is only overshadowed by the discovery of a very dead body in the sump under the theatre.

As the mysterious deaths keep on coming and a practical joker starts to sabotage performances of the play, Sam barely has time to knock back a few frozen margaritas, sort out her sex life and save the man she loves in the midst of the maelstrom...

Lauren now divides her time between Italy and London and, when not eating pasta, writes full-time.

Richard North Patterson No Safe Place Published September 1998 by Hutchinson at Ł15.99 ISBN: 0091801850 Artwork by: Cover photograph:Photonica
The focus is on politics in the new thriller from bestselling author Richard North Patterson.
No Safe Place centres on seven days in a closely contested presidential primary, in which political violence, abortion politics and potential scandal all converge. Kerry Kilcannon is a young senator from New Jersey, the younger brother of a murdered presidential aspirant. Now Kerry, too, is seeking the presidency.
But Kerry's past and present have begun to converge. Unknown to him, he is being stalked by Sean Burke, an anti-abortion fanatic intent on killing him before election day. And Nate Cutler, a political reporter for a national newsmagazine, is trying to establish that two years before - while still married - Kilcannon had an affair with Lara Costello, another reporter covering Kilcannon, which resulted in an abortion.
Through a narrative which weaves past and present, No Safe Place introduces the compelling character, Kerry Kilcannon, and raises questions about abortion politics, the gun culture in America, and the degree to which the press is - or should be - intent on exposing the private lives of political leaders. On the eve of the election, these forces converge in a sensational and shocking climax.

Richard North PattersonDegree of Guilt, Eyes of a Child, The Final Judgment, and Silent Witness have been top 5 New York Times bestsellers.

Ruth Rendell A Sight for Sore Eyes Published September 1998 by Hutchinson at Ł16.99 ISBN: 009180101X Artwork by: Cover picture: Holly Warburton
See Review by Margaret Murphy - author of Desire of the Moth & mistress of the psychological suspence novel
'Lying in bed he thought about Francine as she had been, seated in front of his mirror, swathed in stiff silk, her reflected face looking gravely back at her real face. She must easily be the most beautiful girl in the world. A sight for sore eyes. Alfred Chance had once used that expression and it had stuck in his mind. About an object, though, not a person. It meant that looking at beauty took away pain and hurt and made you better. Francine made him better and his eyes were sore when they couldn't feast on her.’
Neither his mother nor his father took much notice of Teddy Brex. No one ever cuddled him, or played with him or talked to him. The only person he could vaguely relate to was Alfred Chance, who lived next door, and made beautiful things in his workshop.
People, Teddy suspected, were uniformly vile and rotten, vastly inferior to things. Objects never let you down.
When Francine Hill was discovered by her father, sitting by the body of her mother, her skirt red with blood, she was mute. Not until nine months after the murder did she manage to speak, but she could not tell the police or her father anything to help track down the killer.
Damaged children grow up in different ways. Some can shuffle off the horrors of the past, others perhaps cannot change who they are, or will never know how Teddy Brex became a handsome young man, Francine was beautiful. But it was death that brought them together ...

'Ruth Rendell is the ultimate anatomist of the human psyche, probing behind public facades to reveal private torment and distorted visions that change the way we view the world around us' Val McDermid