Jakob Arjouni --- More Beer --- No Exit Press (1 874061 28 9) £4.99 Out on January 26th
See Review
Four members of a radical ecological group are accused of the murder of the director of a chemical plant near Frankfurt. While admitting to material damage of the plant they deny any involvement with the murder.
According to witnesses, five people participated in the sabotage but where is the fifth man? The defendents' lawyer hires private investigator Kemal Kayankaya to find him.
Born in Turkey but raised in Germany, Kayankaya encounters many obstacles in his search to unravel the complex riddle at the heart of this mystery, not only because he is a Turk but also because his acidic wit spares no one, not even the political and judicial powers who will stop at nothing to silence him.
Praise for Jakob Arjouni's Happy Birthday, Turk!:
A blistering debut: outcast Kayankaya is a perfect hard-boiled detective. Kirkus
Happy Birthday Turk! is an exceptional achievement .... It lingers in the mind, a bitter lesson but thrilling in the tellling. Library Journal
A remarkable debut. The Guardian
...tautly narrated ... not a word wasted The Sunday Times
The greatest German crime novel since World War II. Suddeutsche Zeitung
Gopal Baratham --- Moonrise,Sunset --- Serpent's Tail Mask Noir Paperback Original (1 85242 501 6) £8.99 Out on January 26th
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Hours after agreeing to marry How Kum Menon, Vanita Sundram is murdered, stabbed while asleep in her fiance's arms. More killings follow, and the reluctant and grieving How Kum is swept up in the police investigation. As time passes and the murders remain unsolved, several self-proclaimed 'experts' muscle in: How Kum's drunken 'Uncle' Oscar with his underworld links: the unlikely double-act of an American psycho-sexual healer and his matronly psychic sidekick: and a Hindu holy-man....
A political thriller in the tradition of Graham Green and Eric Ambler, Moonrise, Sunset enhances Gopal Baratham's reputation as Singapore's most brilliant and controversial writer.
Praise for A Candle in the Sun: The message is that behind the ordered facade, someone, somewhere, in flaky, stinking Singapore is informing on you. The Times
A striking critique of political corruption. The Guardian
Picks up where George Orwell's 1984 left off. Time
Gopal Baratham is a leading Singapore neurosurgeon.
Brian Battison --- The Witch's Familiar --- Constable (0 09 475230 3) £14.99
Almost 400 years ago the alderman of Bridgetown, believing that Isobel Perkins was a witch, subjected her to an horrific death. While flames licked her body, Isobel screamed a curse to the executioners and all of their future issue.
And when best-selling author Joyce Regent - hounded out of London by the tabloid press because of her sexual behaviour - takes up residence in Witch's Cottage, it seems that the witch has returned to Bridgetown - and with her, the curse.
Descendants of the alderman are frightened. But frightened enough to murder her?
Brian Battison's fourth Chief Inspector Jim Ashworth novel is a police procedural of the highest quality.
Chaz Brenchley --- Dead of Light --- Hodder & Stoughton (NEL Paperback) £5.99 --- Out on January 18th See Review 
When Benedict left home, it was maybe the first time he'd stood up against his family. It was also meant to be the last. No contact, he said, I'm disinvesting
In all honesty, they weren't sorry to see him go. Ben had never had their talent, never had the family spark. When you run a city - especially the way the Macallans ran theirs - the last thing you need is a reluctant passenger.
But suddenly Ben's learning a lot, far more than his university course could ever teach him. And his family starts to die one by one - vicious, gruesome, horrible deaths - the chief lesson is that you can't turn your back on blood. There's someone in the city with as much talent as the Macallans, and Ben's connected after all. It's there in his body, it's in his veins; and be it thick or thin, be it still pumping or leaking out, blood is very much darker than water....
Iris Collier --- Spring Tide --- Piatkus (0 7499 0316 3) £15.99 Out on January 25th See Review
The island of Lindisfarne, off the remote and windswept Northumbrian coast, isn't the sort of place where you'd expect murders to happen. But when the body of barmaid Ginny Adams is discovered in a shallow grave on the beach, it is clear that evil has come to one of the last truly holy places.
It is a young archaeologist, Anna Fitzgerald, who stumbles upon Ginny's body. She is used to dealing with dead bones - she is currently working on the mainland excavating an ancient chapel - yet she can't stop thinking about what sort of person would put an end to a young, innocent life. And, intrigued despite her better instincts by her friend the rector's talk of Satan, she becomes more and more involved in the murder investigation.
Inspector Douglas McBride agrees with the rector - murder is the devil's work. University drop-out Alexander Dee, currently staying on Lindisfarne to research his study of the Satanic myth, is the obvious suspect in McBride's eyes. But as the days pass, and the police are unable to uncover the eidence needed to keep Dee in custody, the islanders fear that the killer may strike again. To McBride's horror, they are proved right - and now he must fight against time, to root out evil where he least expects it...
Spring Tide is a particularly gripping mystery of enormous atmosphere and power.
About the author
Iris Collier is the author of five romantic thrillers. Spring Tide is her first venture into crime fiction; like all Iris's writing, it reflects her deep feeling for the atmosphere of remote and spiritual places.
Iris is the daughter of a professional musician and was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she read History. She now teaches Creative Writing. She married a diplomat and for twenty eight years, travelled a great deal. She lives in Boxgrove, West Sussex, where she helps look after an ancient Priory.
Marele Day --- The Disappearances of Madalena Grimaldi ---New English Library (pbk) --- (0 340 64719 1) £5.99 --- Out on January 18th
See Review  and Feature on Marele Day & Claudia Valentine PI.
The return of Claudia Valentine, the gutsy and glamorous private investigator. Her character and her Sydney have now become as recognisable and compelling as Linda Barnes' Boston, Sara Paretsky's Chicago and Sue Grafton's California.
It is the start of a long, hot summer and Madalena Grimaldi has disppeared. Claudia is hired to find the missing schoolgirl but she's already working on a case - the death of Guy Valentine, her father.
Jeffrey Deaver --- A Maiden's Grave --- Hodder & Stoughton --- (0 340 65372 8) £15.99 --- Out on January 4th See Review 
The countdown begins at noon ...... when two teachers from a school for the deaf and their students stop to help at a car crash on an isolated road.... and are immediately captured by three escaped convicts.
Stark against the sun-bleached prairie stands an ancient, disused slaughterhouse, a building that still reeks of decades of spilled blood. It is here that Lou Handy will bring his hostages.
A Maiden's Grave is the thriller of the year - a terrifying excursion into the criminal mind and a heart-stopping twelve hours of terror with an ending that will take your breath away.
Margaret Duffy --- Prospect of Death --- Piatkus (0 7499 0327 9) £15.99 Out on January 25th See Review
As a loyal Scotsman Inspector James Carrick always makes a point of celebrating Burns Night, even though his career has taken him hundreds of miles away to Bath. But on one fateful Burns Night he comes close to destroying both his reputation and his life. Carrick is found unconscious at the wheel of his crashed car - somehow, he has escaped serious injury. His colleagues fear that his resignation from the police force must be the next step, whilst expressing their surprise that Carrick, of all people, should have decided to drink and drive.
And no one is more surprised than Carrick himself. For he had arranged to stay at an hotel that night and cannot explain how he came to be driving away. While he fights to clear his name, the Bath police get to grips with another mystery: the battered corpse, discovered floating in the River Avon only a day later, of a local TV producer, Marvin Gilchrist.
Gilchrist had lived life on the edge: an inveterate womaniser, he loved to dabble in controversy, and his hard-hitting films were bound to have made him enemies. But does this include former police detective Alan Terrington, exposed by Gilchrist in a film about a supposed miscarriage of justice? And is there any connection with what has happened to Carrick? It is down to private detective Joanna MacKenzie, the woman of Carrick's life, to untangle what rapidly becomes a very complex web indeed. About the author:
Margaret Duffy is married and lives with her husband Gordon and two cats in Beith, Ayrshire. She has written nine previous thrillers, including Corpse Candle, Gallows Bird and Dressed To Kill, all of which have been published by Piatkus.
Peter Haining (ed) --- London after Midnight Little & Brown (0 316 87573 2) £15.99
This unique fictional tour around the criminal heartland of the capital brings together classic stories by some of the undisputed masters of the crime and mystery genres - a homage to that area of London bounded by Limehouse to the east and Bayswater to the west, home of some of the most despicable villains and ingenious sleuths brought to life by masters of the mystery genre. Includes stories by: Ruth Rendell, P.D.James, Agatha Christie and Graham Greene.
Peter Haining lives in Suffolk. He has been a writer and anthologist for almost thirty years and has edited over one hundred collections of horror and mystery stories.