Kenneth Abel --- The Blue Wall --- Orion Pbk (1 85799 476 0) £15.99/£9.99 (1 85797 618/0 75280 542 8)
A scorching new thriller from the author of the acclaimed first novel Bait. A young woman is found dead in the water, her eyes missing; a Mafia informant is persuaded to sing; and Detective Dave Moser of the NYPD starts to make a series of connections which leads him inexorably to a circle of bent cops. Stunning, taut and bristling with suspense, The Blue Wall races to an explosive climax that will echo in the memory.
John Baker --- Poet in the Gutter --- Vista Pbk (0 575 60045 4) £4.99 Out 5th September
Sam Turner went to the men's group because his flat was cold, and because he was off the booze, and because another marriage had gone bust. They were talking about Iron John and how men were alienated. Sam said that he was a private detective, and they all said that was really interesting. It was nearly true - he'd been thinking about being a private eye all his life, although he wasn't sure how much of a future there was for it in York.
Terry Deacon was especially interested. He suspected his wife was fooling around. Sam thought he could just fit some surveillance into his busy schedule. But when it turned out he was dealing with a killer, Sam found his career in detection was really taking off.
"Exceedingly cunning, laid back plot....Genial, fast and funny." Philip Oakes Literary Review.
"Neatly plotted and engagingly and wittily written: Sam's next case is something to look forward to" Tim Binyon, Daily Mail
Lawrence Block --- The Devil Knows You're Dead --- Orion Pbk (1 85799 476 0) £5.99 Out 16th September See Review
Scudder is back, tracking a killer through the alleys of Hell's Kitchen and mapping the darker regions of the human soul.
Glen Holtzmann sits on top of the world, watching the sun set from his penthouse.....half an hour later he's just another statistic, gunned down in a phone booth on Eleventh Avenue. When the cartridge casings of the fatal shots turn up on a well-known local Vietnam Vet, the whole of the Big Apple knows it's an open and shut case. But not Scudder - this Yuppie lawyer had skeletons in his closet and Matt can hear them rattling.
"Lawrence Block is a master.......The Matt Scudder novels are among the finest detective books penned in this century." Johnathan Kellerman
Lawrence Block --- The Matt Scudder Mysteries Vol. I --- Orion (0 75280 492 8/0 75280 536 3) £15.99/£9.99
The first three Matt Scudder mysteries collected here launched one of the greatest career PI’s of the last twenty years. Matt is an alcoholic ex-cop now doing favours for friends who take him deep into the underbelly of urban New York to mix with call girls, drug dealers and bent government officials.
"Block is awfully good … a gift for fast and effortless storytelling" Los Angeles Times
Lawrence Block --- Even The Wicked --- Orion (0 75280 437 5/0 75280 438 3) £15.99/£9.99
An anonymous letter writer targets prominent criminals and evil-doers that the law cannot reach - and kills them. His victims include a child-murderer, a Mafia leader, an anti-abortion terrorist campaigner and a black demagogue. All of them are dubbed ‘society offenders who might as well be underground’. But his next target is a Criminal Defence Attorney … and this potential victim calls in Scudder.
Chaz Brenchley --- Dispossession --- Hodder (0340 65991 2) £14.99
Jonty wakes up in hospital not believing the woman who claims to be his wife. Until she mentions his very own private fallen angel.... A sophisticated thriller with a touch of horror.
Gwendoline Butler --- A Double Coffin --- HarperCollins (0 00 232575 6) £14.99 Out 19th September See Review 
"Gwendoline Butler writes detective novels that both in method and atmosphere are things apart … she achieves that real whodunit pull" Marcel Berlins, The Times
John Coffin, Commander of the Second City of London is having a good day (as far as his complicated life will allow), and is certainly feeling happy with his mercurial wife, actress Stella Pinero. But then he is called upon by Dr John Bradshaw, a scholar who is writing a life of a Grand Old Man - Richard Lavender, a former prime minister, long retired and almost forgotten, who lives in Spinnergate.
Curiosity and respect for what he recalls of the old man take Coffin to the flat overlooking the river, where Lavender has a confession to make: he tells Coffin his father was a serial killer, and as a boy Lavender helped to bury one of the victims. Feeling death is near, he wants to repair and reclaim the past - and Coffin is to find the body.
Unsure whether Lavender is caught up in a fantasy or telling the truth, Coffin agrees to investigate. But then a young woman journalist who has been digging around in Lavender’s past is found murdered on a foggy November night, and all too soon the sins of past and present come together in a terrifying dénouement …
Gwendoline Butler's many awards for crime writing include the CWA's Silver Dagger.
Mark Chisnell--- The Delivery --- Century (0 7126 7554 X) £9.99 Out 5th September
Faced with the choice of self-interest or selflessness, how do most people act? This is the dilemma at the heart of The Delivery - can a man who has been a ruthless games player in business and who is forced on pain of death to courier drugs into a foreign country turn his back on his past and risk his life for others?
Martin Cormac has fled from Thailand, played cat and mouse in Sydney and is now on a yacht in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. He did the right thing and went to the police, but Janac, the man he betrayed, will keep his side of the bargain and pursue him to the ends of the earth. Not even the ocean can hide Martin. Soon he knows he will have to play the Prisoner's Dilemma again - will the final game set him free - or will it kill him?
Relentless pace, spiced with philosophical debate, breathless action and the most original ending to a thriller in years, The Delivery announces the arrival of an outstanding new talent on the British thriller writing scene.
J.D.Christilian --- Scarlet Women --- Hodder (0 340 68187 X) £16.99
In this highly-acclaimed debut novel, a fallen woman dies in 1870s New York, and Harp, the tortured but charismatic detective, searches for her murderer in both the glittering mansions of high society and th desolate dockside slums.
Micheal Connelley --- The Concrete Blonde --- Orion Pbk (1 85799 478 7) £5.99 Out 16th September
When Maverick LAPD detective Harry Bosch shot and killed Norman Church the police were convinced it marked the end of the hunt for the Dollmaker - the city's most bizarre serial killer.
But now Norman Church's widow is accusing Bosch of killing the wrong man - and to make things worse Bosch has received a taunting note, apparently from the Dollmaker himself.
Is the Dollmaker still alive? Or is this the work of a vicious copy-cat killer, determined to repeat the Dollmaker's grisly feats and destroy Bosch's career in the process?
"A cracker....it fairly coruscates with all that goes to make a good crime thriller better." Irish Times
Michael Connelly --- The Last Coyote --- Orion Pbk (1 85799 479 5) £5.99 Out 16th September
Suspended from the LAPD pending psychiatric treatment, his house condemned and his girlfriend long gone, Harry Bosch has time on his hands........
With nothing better to do, Harry opens the ancient file on his prostitute mother's murder and is irresistibly drawn into the shadowy past.
Confronting his personal shame at his mother's profession, he discovers a trail leading to the high-ups in the Hollywood Hills - and finds that flames of ancient passion don't die, they kindle fresh fires.
"Joins the top rank of a new generation of crime writers." Los Angeles Times
Robin Cook --- Contagion --- Macmillan (0 333 66279 2) £16.99 See Review
From the undisputed master of the medical thriller comes this story of a deadly epidemic spread not merely by microbes but by sinister sabotage.....
After losing his Midwestern ophthalmology practise to a for-profit medical giant, and then his family to an airline tragedy, Dr John Stapleton retrains in forensic pathology and moves to find himself an uneasy niche in a city that suits his new cynical perspective; the cold, indifferent, concrete maze of New York. Stapleton believes himself beyond pain and caring, yet his suspicions are aroused as a series of virulent and lethal illnesses begin to strike the young, the old and the innocent alike. When the apparent epicenters of these various outbreaks are revealed to be in hospitals and clinics controlled by the same for-profit giant that destroyed his old ophthalmology practice, Stapleton senses that he has stumbled on a diabolical conspiracy. Could this same corporation be engaged in the systematic elimination of its more costly subscribers.
Jeffrey Deaver --- A Maiden's Grave --- Coronet Pbk (0 340 65375 2) £5.99 Out 12th September See Review
Michael Dibdin --- Cosi Fan Tutti --- Faber (0 571 17920 7) £14.99
In this,the fifth book in the acclaimed Aurelio Zen series, Zen finds himself in Naples, in disgrace - and having the time of his life. Like the rest of Italy, Naples is concerned about its image and trying to clean up its act. Unfortunately it seems that someone is taking this rather too literally. Corrupt politicians, shady businessmen and eminent mafiosi are disappearing off the streets at an alarming rate.
This is all very tedious for Zen, whose commitment to his work is at an all time low. He would rather amuse himself by sorting out the romantic entanglements of his landlady's nubile daughters and putting the fidelity of their unsuitable lovers to the test. But in the end he discovers that even in the "New Italy" of the 1990's, some things, above all love and deception, never change.
In this chilling new thriller Michael Dibdin once again "reminds us how short-changed we often are by lesser practitioners of the genre" Independent on Sunday
Michael Dibdin --- Dark Spectre --- Faber Pbk (0 571 17753 0) £5.99
First paperback release for Dibdin's 1995 thriller together with the re-printing of four Aurelio Zen titles: Dead Lagoon, Ratking, Cabal and Vendetta.
Praise for Dark Spectre:
"The best thriller to have appeared for a very long time." Evening Standard
"Lean, taut, fast-paced and exciting......superb entertainment and quite unputdownable." Independent on Sunday
"A chilling thriller and a sizzling love affair......This electrically exciting read displays Dibdin's galvanising ability to charge the thriller form with social and political force." Sunday Times
Marjorie Eccles --- Species of Revenge --- HarperCollins (0 00 232616 7) £14.99 Out on 19th September
"Superior police procedural… well put together and written in an easy style with believable characters" Susanna Yager, Sunday Telegraph (of Late of This Parish)
A man lies face down in the mud and puddles of a Lavenstock allotment. He has no identification, only some car keys and Belgian francs in his pocket. Detective Inspector Abigail Moon, investigating the death, soon finds herself getting nowhere fast. The occupants of Ellington Close and other nearby houses, including the eccentric Kendrick twins and the recently widowed Dermott Voss and his children, can offer no help, being more preoccupied with their own problems. But another murder is to traumatise the entire community, and Superintendent Gil Mayo has to get personally involved. Could any or these people, many of whom he knows well, be capable of such a brutal crime? And can there really be two murderers loose in Lavenstock?