New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Little Brown 1998 July-Sept

File Updated: 01/04/00

New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Little Brown JULY-SEPT 1998

Christopher Brookmyre Not the End of the World Published July 1998 by Little Brown at Ł12.99 ISBN: 0 316 64065 4
See Review by Lynda Ross

Santa Monica CA, 1999· There's nine months to go but already Sergeant Larry Freeman has had enough of the goddamn millennium - in a town that's never needed excuses to get crazy this latest strain of insanity is something he could seriously live without. Babysitting Hollywood pond-life as LAPD liaison to the American Feature Film Market, he's less than delighted to discover that billionaire televangelist Luther St. John is staging a "Festival of Light" in protest - right across the street.

Like it's not enough to be playing referee between the film market's trash-peddlers and the Festival's moral militia, Larry Freeman's also stuck with trying to figure out how four scientists vanished without trace from a research vessel three hundred miles out in the Pacific. And if he's got any time left over, he can always spend it wondering why the Reverend St. John's cataclysmic predictions sound so worryingly confident.

Into this mounting chaos steps freelance photographer Steff Kennedy: jet-lagged, hungry and about to discover that his native Lanarkshire is not, after all, the global capital of religious stupidity

Bullets. Bombs. Carnage. Slaughter. Depravity. Hysteria. Human sacrifice. Mass destruction. Bad hair. It's not the end of the world, but you can certainly see it from here.

'The defining quality of Brookmyre's writing is that it is perpetually in-your-face: sassy, irreverent, stylish' The Times

Carol Higgins Clark Twanged Published July 1998 by Little Brown at Ł16.99 ISBN: 0 316 64058 1

Branson, Missouri. Home of country music superstars and the starting point for Regan Reilly's latest case, as she's assigned to protect Budget, a singer whose life has been threatened. It soon becomes clear that Regan must follow her client to Ireland, where Budget is to warble in an ancient castle as part of a concert. Irish eyes aren't smiling, however, as Regan must thwart a murderer's plans and keep everyone on key in this rollicking international romp.

Carol Higgins Clark is the daughter of Mary Higgins Clark and a bestseller in her own right. She is also an actress and divides her time between Los Angeles and New York

Patricia Cornwell Point of Origin Published September 1998 by Little Brown at Ł16.99 ISBN: 0316644404 Artwork by: Cover photograph: Adrian Mott
There could be only one reason why Dr Kay Scarpetta and police detective Pete Marine were called out to investigate the burned-out remains of a horse farm - if the suspicion was murder. Twenty highly-prized horses owned by the media moghul Kenneth Sparkes were dead in their stables, and then they found the body of a young white woman.
When news of Carrie Grethen's escape from a psychiatric prison hospital reaches, Kay Scarpetta, she feels her blood chill to ice. Carrie's partnership with the serial killer Temple Gault sealed her fate, but she was now free again to wreak her pent-up revenge on all those involved in her capture - Pete Marine, Benton Wesley, Scarpetta and her niece, Lucy.
Scarpetta's imagination goes into over-drive, visualising Carrie as a monster with supernatural powers who could evade every security system. In the meantime, there is another fire, and another murder victim. As a pattern of related deaths emerges, Carrie's cryptic messages to Key about her plans for revenge puzzle and frighten her. Could these deaths be traced to Carrie - even though she was inside the hospital when the horse farm was burned?
Key is anxious that Carrie will ensnare any one of those she blames for Gault's death. As Benton Wesley and Pete Marine concentrate on the investigation, they must follow up each clue, each secret tip-off. But what if one of these is a trap laid by a cunning woman whose only goal is murder?

Point of Origin with its sophisticated plot, authentic forensic details and above all, the driving emotional and intellectual powers of its heroine, shows Patricia Cornwell scaling new heights as the most popular crime thriller writer today.
'Imitators now abound, but - pathologically speaking - nobody does it like Cornwell' Literary Review

Patricia Cornwell began her career as a police reporter, and then worked for more than six years as a computer analyst in the Chief Medical Examiner's office in Virginia, where she witnessed hundreds of autopsies. This experience inspired her to create Dr Kay Scarpetta, the tenacious, intelligent and compassionate Chief Medical Examiner.
She introduced Dr Scarpetta in her first novel, Postmortem, which won five international awards as the best crime novel of the year. She received the Gold Dagger Award for her fourth, Cruel and Unusual. She has written a total of nine novels featuring Dr Scarpetta, as well as Hornet's Nest, a police procedural set in North Carolina. She lives in Richmond, Virginia and New York.

Douglas Kennedy The Job Published August 1998 by Little Brown at Ł10.00 ISBN: 0 316 64383 1
Douglas Kennedy's outstanding new novel, The Job, is a thrilling page-turner involving downsizing, blackmail and murder in the Manhattan business world.
Ned Alien is young, attractive, and upwardly mobile. Several years into his career as an ad salesman for a successful computer magazine, Ned feels that he's finally left his small-town roots behind, and that the sophisticated Manhattan world he covets is his forever. His wife Lizzie is also a rising star of a prestigious PR firm. It seems that Ned's made it. Then his company is sold and he's suddenly and brutally fired. Empty handed and on the verge of losing Lizzie, Ned desperately solicits employment from a high-flying real estate tycoon of dubious morality. But all too soon he realises the terrible, irrevocable repercussions of his Faustian bargain.

An adrenaline-pumping story that also delivers some shrewd ruminations on the frustrations of modern life, The Job is another fresh, exciting and sophisticated thriller from the author of The Dead Heart and The Big Picture.

Praise for The Big Picture:
'Palm-tingling tension ... meticulously plotted ... captivating ... a completely convincing imaginative performance ... enthralling' The Times
'A ferociously plotted, hip and funny thriller' Independent on Sunday
'Unfailingly effective ... relentlessly readable' Daily Telegraph
'The kind of book you'll find yourself reading until 2 a.m.' Cosmopolitan
Douglas Kennedy's novel, The Big Picture, was a national bestseller in the United States and has been translated into fourteen languages. His previous novel, The Dead Heart, has recently been filmed as Welcome to Woop Woop. He is also the author of three highly acclaimed travel books: Beyond the Pyramids, In Gods Country and Chasing Mammon. Born in New York City in 1955, he lives in London with his wife and two children.

James Morton Mad Frank and Friends Published August 1998 by Little Brown at Ł16.99 ISBN: 0 316 64566 4

In the spring of 1943 Frankie Fraser took part in a daring raid to release an army deserter from a squad collecting him from Wandsworth prison. The exercise left two people dead.

From these earliest criminal forays to the influential role he played in the gangland wars of the 1950s and 1960s, Fraser remained fiercely loyal to the men of his circle. In this, his second extraordinary volume of memoirs, he looks back at friendships with figures such as 'Ruby' Sparks, the famous pre-war burglar, and Sparks' girlfriend, the 'Bobbed Haired Bandit', the first woman on a smash and grab team, with Billy Hill and Bert Marsh, the self-styled Bosses of the Underworld, and with the thieves they employed. He introduces his girlfriend Marilyn Wisbey, the daughter of a Great Train robber, and tells of how she grew up with a father in prison.

Now in his mid-seventies, Fraser can still use his name to 'see things are right'. Others were not so lucky. He recounts the fates of the friends who have suffered violent deaths at the hands of gangland culture, and the jail sentences being served by his most illustrious peers, Reggie Kray and Eddie Richardson.

Fascinating in their own right, Fraser's recollections also provide a compelling portrait of life growing up in poverty in South East London, with its money lenders, prostitutes and abortionists; of the days of the great shoplifters, and of the horrors of mid-20th century prison life.

James Morton edits the New Law Journal. He is the author of several true crime books, including Gangland Volumes I and 2 and Supergrasses and Informers.

Elise Title Chain Reaction Pbk published September 1998 by Little Brown at Ł9.99 ISBN: 0316643823 Artwork by: Image: Attard Photo Library

Dr Caroline Hoffman is a psychiatrist specialising in the treatment of sexual addictions. When first a stranger, then Caroline's lover and then a male patient of hers are all found raped and strangled to death by a chain within a matter of days, she becomes the prime suspect.
Accused of these heinous sex crimes, Caroline is plunged into a terrifying labyrinth where, over the course of a heart-stopping ten days, she must not only prove her innocence but risk her career and ultimately her life to bring the true killer to justice.
After a link is made between the killings and a painting depicting the myth of the goddess Aphrodite and her lover in chains, suspicion shifts to a deeply troubled beauty in Caroline's therapy group. In fiercely defending her patient, Caroline is cunningly led into a lethal, horrifying trap ... where the denouement is a revelation of shattering truth.

Following Bleeding Hearts, another thriller of high suspense with a frisson of eroticism.

Barbara Wood Perfect Harmony Published August 1998 by Little Brown at Ł16.99 ISBN: 0 316 64652 0

Charlotte Lee has twelve hours to clear her company's name - or face terrifying consequences. As owner of Harmony Biotech, successful manufacturers of ancient Chinese herbal medicines, Charlotte is shocked to discover that her products - rigorously tested by the most modern methods - have been held responsible for the deaths of three people. Someone must be tampering with them, adding deadly poison. But who? And why?

A message appears over the Internet telling her to confess her company's guilt - or more people will die. With time running out, she enlists the help of Jonathan Sutherland, computer hacker turned security expert. He not only taps into the nightmarish world of virtual technology to identify her e-mail stalker, but opens a door on to a piece of family history that could unravel the mystery

And what Charlotte discovers - about Mei-Ling, her grandmother and founder of the company, about the killer and, ultimately, herself - will change her life forever ...

'Wood shows herself a wizard at juggling action and romance, maintaining the momentum and sparkle of both' Kirkus Reviews

Margaret Yorke False Pretences Published August 1998 by Little Brown at Ł15.99 ISBN: 0 316 64438 2 Artwork by: Cover photo: Oliver Hunter
See Review by John Boyles
Margaret Yorke prises open a baffling mystery lying beneath the calm of an unremarkable commuter village in her latest novel, False Pretences.
Isabel had not seen her god-daughter, Emily, for years. Arrested during an anti-roads protest in the West Country, Isabel feels duty-bound to help her out of trouble.
She is shocked when she meets Emily at the police station. She had not expected the small fair-haired child to have turned into an overweight, shaven-headed young woman. Emily belies her unkempt appearance by helping Isabel around the house, and unwilling to remain idle, soon finds a job as a nanny.
Her charge is Rowena, an illegitimate child born to Alice, the over-protected daughter of elderly parents, who had fallen for the easy charms of a builder called Godfrey.
Isabel's god-daughter settles down easily in her new job, and has even made friends with another stranger to the village. His interest in Rowena and her family, however, disguises his real motive for wanting to get close to the family.
Danger lurks beneath the placid surface of all their lives, and it seems no one will be immune to the consequences.
Margaret Yorke once again reveals her steely prowess at unmasking a dark plot beneath the veneer of respectability.

"The mistress of the skilfully spun suspense novel...her quiet, unemphatic style of narrative makes the story a compelling read" Sunday Telegraph
'Yorke has an extraordinary feel for the passions that lurk beneath unremarkable facades' Sunday Times
Margaret Yorke was born in Surrey, but lived in Dublin until 1937, before moving back to England. During the war, she served in the Woman's Royal Naval Service as a driver. She then worked in the libraries of two Oxford colleges, the first woman ever to work in Christ Church library. A campaigner for Public Lending Rights for authors in Britain, she was also chairman of the Crime Writers' Association between 1979 and 1980.
Her first novel was published in 1957, but after eleven `problem' novels, she turned to the subject of crime with Dead in the Morning which was published in 1970. With No Medals for the Major (1974), she began writing novels of suspense, which include The Point of Murder, Serious Intent and, most recently, Act of Violence.
In 1982, she won the Swedish Academy Detection award for the best translated novel, The Scent of Fear. Her books are translated and published in 16 countries, including the United States and the Czech Republic. In 1993, she won the Golden Handcuffs award which is given in recognition of the popularity of the country's leading crime writer within the library service and to its borrowers.
She lives in a small village in Buckinghamshire.