New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Simon Schuster 1998 July-Sept

File Updated: 01/04/00

New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Simon Schuster JULY-SEPT 1998

Campbell Armstrong The Surgeon's Daughter Published August 1998 by Simon Schuster at Ł16.99 ISBN: 0 684 81991 0
Andrea Malle is invited by her father to visit him in his reclusive home in the countryside in the dead of winter. He doesn't tell her why he is so persistent. She goes. She finds his home empty, cold and dark. She also finds his body in the snow behind the house. He's been murdered by someone using a shotgun at close range. From this moment, Andrea is plunged into an icy world of mysteries, half-truths and outright lies involving her father's strange hermetic existence and the reasons for his retreat from the world. She's faced with menace and violence as she steps inside the shadowy and terrifying reality of Dennis Malle's history. Andrea fights back, determined to go all the way to the bottom of the mystery. But in the winter chill of a godforsaken landscape she keeps hearing the words that will haunt her for ever: 'You really don't have a clue about your precious Daddy, do you?'

Mary Higgins Clark You Belong To Me Published August 1998 by Simon Schuster at Ł16.99 ISBN: 0 684 82130 3 Artwork by: Jacket photo: Michael Trevillion/The Trevillion Picture Library
A nailbiting tale of intrigue, brimming with edge-of-your-seat suspense, from the pen of the Queen of Suspense
Regina Clausen was forty-three, successful in her career but insecure and unfulfilled in her personal life. Travelling alone on the luxury liner Gabrielle, she disembarked in Hong Kong saying she would rejoin the ship when it docked in Japan. She was never seen again ...
Five years after Regina's disappearance, radio presenter Susan Chandler does a series about vanishing women on her radio talk show. When a caller rings in with a story that is uncannily similar to Regina's, Susan begins to suspect that she has uncovered something dangerously sinister.
Setting out to do some investigating of her own, Susan suddenly finds herself confronted with the possibility that one of the men who have only recently become figures in her life might actually be a killer…….

Andrew Coburn Birthright Published September 1998 by Simon Schuster at Ł14.99 ISBN: 0684 81529X
A dramatic blend of fact and fiction that stunningly re-imagines the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby
On March 1, 1932, the sleeping infant son of American hero Charles Lindbergh was snatched from his crib. Four years later, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was executed for the baby's murder, but six decades later, the crime of the century retains its hold on the world's imagination.
Birthright stirs the ashes of this gripping tragedy by supposing that the kidnapping is the work of Hauptmann and his two childhood friends: Rudy and Shell. But all their fates are sealed when Shell's emotionally disturbed wife accidentally kills her own new born baby, and Shell decides to bring the Lindbergh baby home and present him to his dazed wife as her own. In this moving and compelling novel, Andrew Coburn has woven an extraordinary tale of desire and grief, of deception and trust - and of love and how it can destroy as easily as it can heal.

Andrew Coburn's previous novels include Voices in the Dark, No Way Home, Love Nest and Goldilocks, for which he received on Edger Nomination. A former investigative reporter for The Boston Globe, he lives in Andover, Massachusetts.

Natasha Cooper Creeping Ivy Published July 1998 by Simon Schuster at Ł15.99 ISBN: 0 684 81979 1
See Review by Andrew Taylor - author of the highly acclaimed Roth & Lydmouth Series
See Review by Val McDermid - Gold Dagger winner & creator of Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan & Tony Hill

The disappearance of a child is one of our worst nightmares. Especially when it' s your child who has disappeared from the local playground.
When Antonia Weblock's four-year old, Charlotte, disappears no-one is above suspicion. The police asking the questions in everyone's mind: Did Charlotte wander off or was she kidnapped? Could her "devoted" nanny have had a hand in this? Why wasn't her stepfather looking after her as promised? And where was her real father when she went missing? The tabloids blame Antonia, saying she's selfishly put her child at risk for the sake of her career. And when Antonia turns to her cousin, Trish Maguire - a barrister who specialises in cases involving children - it isn't long before Trish then comes to the attention of the police.

Written before any of the recent sensationalist news stories, Natasha Cooper's crime novel Creeping Ivy explores the sensitive issues which arise when a child goes missing - a menacing story of manipulation and betrayal which stays in the mind long after the book is finished.

Natasha Cooper is an active member of the Crime Writers Association, and is regularly asked to talk about her work at conferences, and review for publications including The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and the New Law Journal. She recently featured in The Times One Hundred Masters of Crime supplement which included an article by her on about psychological crime fiction. Creeping Ivy - her eighth crime novel

Nigel McCrery The Spider's Web (Silent Witness) Published August 1998 by Simon Schuster at Ł16.99 ISBN: 0 684 84013 8 Artwork by: Cover disign & illustration: Black Sheep
See Review by John Foster
The third book in the brilliant Silent Witness series, now a major television drama starring Amanda Burton
A teenage boy is killed in a tragic joyriding accident and the results of the post mortem seem clear - he died of multiple injuries consistent with a high-speed car crash.
Dr Sam Ryan has paid little attention to this case, since her colleague Trevor Stuart performed the post mortem. So when the boy's parents beg her for a second opinion, she is reluctant. But something in the file persuades her to go ahead, and what she finds convinces her that this was no ordinary accident. But neither Trevor nor the police accept her findings.
Determined to prove her case, Sam begins her own investigation and unravels a bizarre series of murders that has her searching the Internet for her killer as she realises, to her horror, that her own nephew could be in terrible danger.

Nigel MrCrery worked as a policemen and investigated several murders before he left the force to become on undergraduate at Cambridge University. After being awarded on honours degree in history, he went on to work for the BBC Drama Department. He is married with children and lives in Nottingham.

Christopher Priest The Extremes Published August 1998 by Simon Schuster at Ł16.99 ISBN: 0 684 81632 6
A groundbreaking, highly original new novel by the award winning author of The Prestige, about the human capacity for violence and the virtual reality computer games that encourage it.
British-born Teresa Simons, recently widowed, returns to England in the hope of coming to terms with her grief. Her husband Andy, an FBI agent, was killed by an out-of control gunman while on assignment in a small Texas town, one hot day in June last year.
Teresa arrives in Bulverton, a town on the South coast, sensing that in this run-down resort she might find some new understanding. A shocking coincidence has drawn her to the place: Bulverton too suffered the horror of a gunman's spree, a massacre with haunting similarities to the murders in Texas, on the same hot day in June last year.
Finding no explanation for the mystery, Teresa turns to the virtual-reality world of Extreme Experience. She had trained on ExEx in the US, a way of learning how to handle violent situations, but now ExEx has become commercially available. The best and worst of human experience can be found in virtual reality. Seeking the best, Teresa has to confront the worst. In the extremes of violence she finds that past and present combine, and that her own future may be glimpsed.

Praise for The Prestige:
'Priest's mesmeric power is formidable. Magnificent, utterly alarming and genuinely moving' Independent
'Few recent novels have felt so vividly imagined. A magnificently eerie novel' Sunday Times
Christopher Priest is the author of nine previous novels and two collections of short stories. His last novel, The Prestige, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction end the World Fantasy Award, and was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clark Award. He lives in Hastings with his wife and twin children.