NEW  BOOK GOLLANCZ/VISTA 1997

Charles Spencer Full Personal Service.  pbk  Vista July 97  0 575 60200 7  £5.99
`Spencer is a real find as a novelist.  His books are fine examples of that rare andspecial breed, the English comedy thriller.' Sunday Telegraph
`... self-deprecatingly witty... altogether highly entertaining' The Times
`... hugely sympathetic and funny enough to make you laugh out loud' Literary Review
`Reminiscent of the kind of book written by Jack Trevor Story in his prime... Full of bawdy, Rabelaisian humour'  Crime Time
`. . a very pleasing example of the sexy, comic and suspenseful'  The Stage
We first met portly showbiz writer Will Benson in I Nearly Died, in which he learned how dangerous giving bad notices can be,  Now he has left the theatrical newspaper for the loucher but possibly safer world of soft-porn publishing. Although he is settled in connubial bliss with the lovely Kim, certain aspects of their marriage (don't ask) necessitate the occasional visit to a tart with a heart in Pimlico.  When one day Will finds that his predecessor has overstepped the mark, to say the least, he reluctantly finds himself once again forced into the role of reluctant private eye...
Praise for I Nearly Died:
`If there's a funnier, sexier or sharper showbiz novel in print today, I'm Michael Jackson's love child.  Charles Spencer knows whereof he writes - only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. It's spiteful, it's rude and I'm still laughing.'  Bob Monkhouse
`Superbly funny crime fiction... Spencer makes his fiction debut with a rare, rich panache.'
Sheridan Morley, Sunday Times 

Gerry Byrne Ruby  pbk  Vista  July 97  0 575 60233 3  £5.99
`Gerry Byrne's name should go to the top of the talent-spotter's list' Daily Telegraph
`Louche and unsentimental' Time Out
`Ruby is a refreshing and touching story about love, truth and death... The tale is compelling, the style polished, the final scene surprising and well worth waiting for' Gay Times
 Ruby is an entertaining debut novel featuring a louche and varied cast of characters, which introduces an engaging new heroine, fledgeling private eye  Haydon Aachen.
 Her first client is a strapping transvestite, whose exotic dancer friend Ruby Tuesday has gone missing, leaving behind her all her possessions.  Haydon will  need all  the  skills developed  working  in  personal social  work management to steer her through this one.
 Gerry Byrne works in a women’s hostel in Soho, where much of Ruby is set. 

Andrew Klavan
The Trapdoor  pbk  Gollancz  July 97  0 575 60230 9  £5.99 See Review
There Fell a Shadow  pbk  Gollancz  Aug 97 0 575 60229 5  £5.99
Rough Justice  pbk  Gollancz  July 97  0 575 60227 9  £5.99
Author of True Crime, winner of the WH Smith `Thumping Good Read' Award
John Wells. New York Star, Ace crime reporter and journalistic dinosaur, refuses to trade in his battered manual for a word processor, or his old-fashioned ethics for a flashy headline.
  Andrew Klavan wrote four novels featuring John Wells, under the pseudonym Keith Peterson. For the first time they are published under his own name.
Andrew Klavan, a former newspaper and radio reporter, lives in London with his wife and two
children and spends summers in Sharon, Connecticut. 

Joe R. Lansdale  Bad Chili.  pbk  Gollancz  Sep 97  0 575 06534 6  £9.99
Hap and Leonard, crime friction’s oddest couple, are back!
Fresh from a stint on an offshore oil rig and determined to make some changes in his life, Hap Collins arrives home in LaBorde, Texas, only to find his best friend, Leonard, mourning over his break-up with his lover Raul. Things seem bad for Leonard . . . but they can only get worse.
When a local biker, who also happens to be Raul's new lover. is found murdered, Leonard is the prime suspect. Complicating matters is the fact  that his house has been ransacked - and the only thing missing is his videotape collection. Hap sets out to clear Leonard's name and Investigate the robbery, but it won't be easy. Then again, nothing in Hap Collins' life is easy . . .
 Topping it all off is the behaviour of LaBorde's Chili King, an actual tornado and more dead bodies in unwelcome places. Not to mention the matter of one rabid squirrel . . .
Praise for Mucho Mojo and The Two Bear Mambo:
'The raciest, best-written piece of bad gumbo the Old South has produced for some time'
 Evening Standard 
`. . . savagely compelling' - Arena
'Joe Lansdale is destined to be a really big crime-writing star' - Independent
Joe R. Lansdale has written over 200 short stories and more than a dozen novels in the suspense, western and horror genres. He has received the British Fantasy Award, the American Horror Award, and four Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers of America. 

Ron McKay The Leper Colony  pbk  Gollancz  Oct 97  0 575 06474 9  £9.99
A leper, in M15 parlance, is a deniable asset. Kept a healthy distance from the source, he will infect
those around him with his poison
A small, run-down house. An old man lies dead; his son, John Downe, returns to clear away the last of his parents' possessions.
  Inside, three surprises:
  A photograph of his christening back home in Glasgow, with the wrong names on the back.
  A passbook in his name - with more money in it than his parents had dreamed about.
  And a bomb In the rental car, which kills the kids who try to drive it away. Meant for him.
  His search uncovers what he's begun to suspect; his name is no more his than the strange, new one he has to adopt - John Hamilton Bone. Just as the new home he has to travel to- Glasgow - is as welcoming as Christmas but as cold as frost.  Which is where he is turned into the leper in a war that hewants no part of - until he learns that it's all about family, all about belonging.
  In Ron McKay's bloody and bleak new thriller, Glasgow and the Highlands form a backdrop to an explosive story of revenge and salvation. Betrayal has never had such a cold-hearted cousin as
John Downe.
Ron McKay is a well-known journalist working for, among others, Scotland on Sunday. His previous books include The Catalyst, The Prophet and the bestselling Mean City. He lives with his family
outside Glasgow.
Cover by Splash. Photograph by Dirk Buwalda; Camera Press

Simon Brett Dead Room Farce  Gollancz  Sep 97  0 575 06488 9  £16.99
In Charles Paris, the ever-popular Simon Brett has created the most enduring actor-sleuth in crime fiction. Dead Room Farce will delight all his fans
It's not Beckett exactly, but a three-month run of Not on Your Wife! - a new farce by the prolific British farceur Bill Blunden - is not to be sniffed at by a jobbing actor. Especially when the presence in the cast of the much- loved comedy actor Bernard Walton makes a West End run a distinct
possibility.
  Which is why Charles Paris is standing on stage with his trousers round his ankles. Rehearsals have gone well, the laughs are coming, and if his marriage is on the skids there's always the consolation of Bell's - and the uncertain attractions of ageing ingenue Cookie Stone.
  But by the time the troupe has reached Bath a darker mood has set in. Cookie Stone seems to think she and Charles are practically married (if only he could remember what happened!), and Charles' old friend Mark, who runs a recording studio where Charles is making a talking book, has a
drink problem that amounts to a death wish.
But it's not the drink that eventually kills Mark . . .
Praise for Simon Brett
`One of the wittiest crime writers around' - Antonia Fraser
`Simon Brett writes stunning detective stories . . . I would recommend them to anyone' - Jilly Cooper
'Three cheers for Simon Brett . . . Sicken and! So Die is a complete delight' - A.N. Wilson, Evening Standard
Simon Brett is the author of numerous Charles Paris novels. A noted humorist, diarist and  broadcaster. he lives in Sussex with his family. 

  Robert Richardson  Victims  pbk Gollancz 97 Sept  0 575 0640l 3  £9.99 See Review
The perfect crime reverberates through years of pain and guilt in a tense psychological thriller worthy of Simenon.
In the summer of 1990 police discovered the bodies of three adults and two children at Tannerslade Farm, near the isolated Suffolk village of Finch.
  The killers were never caught. Why should anyone suspect Giles Lambert and Randall Jowett, Cambridge undergraduates from respectable homes, who had no connection with Tannerslade or the people who lived there?
  But six years later, crucified by guilt, Randall Jowett returns to Finch, desperately hoping that his bitter pilgrimage will lead to some sort of redemption. To people in the village he is a quietly spoken stranger renting a holiday cottage; to Joyce Hetherington he becomes a lover, so much younger but offering a happiness she had never expected to enjoy. She does not know that beneath their passion lies a terrible secret that can only end in tragedy.
  Tense, skilfully plotted and perceptively characterised, Victims is another deeply human story of psychological suspense from the author of The Hand of Strange Children and Significant Others.
Praise for The Hand of Strange of Children:
'A painful, circuitous and plausible tour de force' - Sunday Times 
`Not only well written, but a compulsive page-turner too' -Daily Telegraph
`Entertaining, unusual and packed with good writing' - The Times
Robert Richardson, a former chairman of the CWA, is also a journalist who has worked for The Times, Observer, Independent and Daily Mail. He lives in Old Hatfield, Herefordshire.
Cover by Splash

  Dannie M, Martin In the Hat pbk  Gollancz  Sep 97  0 575 06503 6  £9.99
`Think of Chester Himes, Edward Bunker . . . now add Dannie M. Martin to the list' -Crime Time
Aside from the hundred grand he's blown this past year betting on chickens, Vernon's life is A-OK. He has two gorgeous working girls to support him and a fighting cock who's already battled an alligator to a standstill. But someone wants Vern dead - his name Is 'in the hat' -and the only person who can help him is his brother Weldon. The only problem is that Weldon's serving sixteen years for armed robbery.
  This explosive tale of cops and robbers, murder and mayhem -told with gritty realism from the wrong side of the taw - is a worthy successor to Martin's lauded fiction debut, The Dishwasher, which has been described as 'vicious as a fist to the groin . . . the best novel to bust out of the joint since E. Richard Johnson's Silver Street almost thirty years ago'.
Praise for for Dishwasher:
'A raw slice-of-Iife Import . . . bleak, powerful and explosive stuff, this gripping debut is both poignant and mean 'n' nasty . . . violent but compelling' - Time Out
'The author himself has done time, so he knows what he's on about' - Loaded
`A novel of rare power and balance' - Val McDermid, Manchester Evening News
Dannie M. Martin spent many years in correctional institutions for a variety of offences before being paroled in 1994. He lives in San Francisco. 

Alastair MacNeill Double Blind  Gollancz  Aug 97  0 575 06499 4  £15.99
The gamble? Outwitting a major drugs cartel
The prize? Ten million dollars
The forfeit? Your life
Melissa Wade is a DEA agent, a legend in the Latin American bureau. Except now she's dead, leaving her superior, Tom Kellerman, with only one option if he's ever going to entrap James Doyle, enforcer for the Salcido cartel, the most feared in Mexico.
  Melissa was essential to the plan if It was to have any chance of success. The answer to Kellerman's problem is Melissa's identical twin sister, Laura.
  The perfect sting is about to go down: question is, who can be trusted?
Alastair MacNeill was born in Scotland in I960. His family moved to South Africa when he was six years old, where he lived until returning to the UK in 1985. 

Alistair MacNeill Moonblood  Pbk  Vista  Aug 97  0 575 60198 1  £5.99
Deep in the Amazon jungle, Donald Brennan has uncovered a secret to die for. Unfortunately for him, he does.
Kelly McBride, owner and captain of the 48-foot tramp Shamrock Gal, has problems of her own just keeping body and soul together, and the only way she'll help Ray Brennan find out what happened to his brother is if he pays her - handsomely. Ray, a New York City cop, is accustomed to being in charge: at the mercy of Indians who understood his brother better than he did, and having to rely on a woman who's running from her past; he couldn't feel more exposed.
Until, that is, Kelly and Ray are forced back to a domain infinitely tougher than the jungle: the
world of politics, money - and deceit.
And Kelly learns that there are things more important than money, things more important
even than the ties of blood . . . 

Victor Davis Queens’ Ransom  Gollancz  Nov 97  0 5l5 06532 X  £15.99
The heir to Frederick Forsyth comes back with another dynamite thriller
Lord Brewster 'Bruiser' Monmaxton, ex-Etonian thug-about-town, is a desperate man, Having recently become one of a number of Lloyd's 'names' facing bankruptcy, he's keeping his options open. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and he is quick to appreciate the money-making potential of a plot to kidnap fifty women from the international 'Queen of the Earth' Beauty contest, and hold them for ransom.
  This cleverly conceived plot is the brainchild of the attractive, entrepreneurial and utterly plausible Lucius Frankel. Making use of inside information supplied by a mysterious informer known only as The Source, Lucius's complex plan seems to work flawlessly: the young women are soon in captivity and the demand for cash has been made. But there is an informer amongst the members of his assembled team, and it is only a matter of time before things start to go drastically - and fatally - wrong.
Praise for The Ghostmaker
‘Victor Davis spins a compelling and conceivable yarn' - Daily Express
'One of the best thrillers I have read in years' - Mail on Sunday
Victor Davis was Showbusiness Editor of the Daily Express, and then the Mail on Sunday. 

Christopher Newman  Killer.  pbk Vista  Sep 97  0 575 60240 6  £5.99
A police procedural and a chase story that'll keep you awake into the small hours . . .
The shooter knew just where Lt. Joe Dante would be and just when to bring him down. But when the gunfire stopped and the blood seeped out on to the Manhattan pavement, Dante was still alive. And now he's bent on revenge.
  A maverick detective who socializes with New York's rich and famous and arrests society's scum, Joe Dante had busted a Colombian drug enforcer and earned a price on his head. Now Dante is back at work, trying to find the killer who came after him, and finding more murders every step of the way.
  From New York to Miami, a trail of broken bodies and shattered lives leads the New York cop closer to his quarry. But In a puzzle with a thousand pieces, Dante is missing the most dangerous one of all: who is the traitor on his own side?
Christopher Newman lives in Missouri and has written seven previous Joe Dante novels.
Photograph by Nick Marchant

Gonzalo Lira  Counterpart  pbk Vista  Jan 98  0 575 602414  £5.99
Twenty-eight year-old Gonzalo Lira's blistering debut thriller was sold in the US for $ l m, and subsequently all over the world
Four people are drawn together in a web of conspiracy and a tangle of lies.
  Adrenalin-junky Margaret Chisholm, a liability within the FB1. The last thing she expects is the assignment she's handed.
  Nicholas Denton chose to construct an empire built on paper. But the power he carved out for himself doesn't protect him from being posted to the most hazardous operation the CIA's ever been
involved with.
  Sepsis, the world's top assassin, also has a career, a goal to reach. No matter if no one else sees this; his trademark, completing the impossible job, is enough for him. Until he faces Chisholm and
Denton, guarding his next target: Sister Marianne, the nun.
  No one knows why Sepsis wants her dead. As a hired gun, he must be doing this for money. But who would want to kill a nun?
Chisholm and Denton must learn her secret before they can face the most dangerous man in the world.
A native of Chile, Gonzalo Lira attended a British school there before moving to the United States and Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. He now lives in Los Angeles. 

Andrew Klavan The Rain   pbk  Vista  Oct 97  0 575 60228 7  £5.99
Mayforth Kendrick III had something to sell: photographs. Bedroom photographs. The man was running for the Senate. But this was no campaign material - not undressed like that. And the only the woman had that wasn't tied up was her vote.
Not the stuff for a family newspaper like the New York Star. John Wells refused the deal.
Which turned out to be a professional mistake when Mayforth Kendrick III, small-time sleaze, was found with a hole through his forehead and John Wells had to face the Men in Suits who wanted to know why their ace reporter had missed out on the biggest story in town.
He had one card left to play - the girl - but only one week to play it in.
Andrew Klavan, a former newspaper and radio reporter, lives in London with his wife and two children and spends summers in Sharon, Connecticut.
Photograph by Nick Marchant 

Victor Davis --- The Ghostmaker --pbk Vista Nov 98  0 575 60199 X  £5.99Captain Jack Boulder was his regiment's rifle champion, and runner-up for the Queen's Prize. Now, thanks to a spot of unauthorised freelance activity in Northern Ireland, he's just plain mister, running a gun club in the City.
So when the spooks send him £500 in the post just for picking up the phone and listening, he listens. In spite of the ruthlessness with which the army dumped him, the notion of serving his country still means something to him, and of course it's flattering to be told that you're the only man for the job.......
Cover: Splash