NEW  BOOKS FOR SPRING 1997
Colin Bateman --- Empire State --- HarperCollins --- April 97 --- £16.99 
A wild American adventure of two Irish exiles in the USA from the acclaimed author of Divorcing Jack, Cycle of Violence and Of Wee Sweetie Mice and Men. 
It’s Bad Enough having a name like Nathan Jones - unless you’re a Supremes fan, which Nathan isn't- but when his girlfriend leaves him for a drag-artist and he gets mugged in the street, then handcuffed to a bed and cut up in a mis- understanding with an S&M hooker, it looks as it things can't get any worse for this exile in the Big Apple. But they can! Will Nathan get his girl back? Will the President survive imprisonment on the cop floor of the Empire State Building · by a psychotic white supermacist in (rapidly melting) black- face? Will veteran lift-operator Sam McCluskv get his job back? Find out in Empire State, the latest and most dazzlingly brilliant novel yet from an author who is rapidly developing from cult success to star best-seller.

Janie Bolitho --- Snapped in Cornwall ---Constable- Feb. 97 -- £15.99 
The first in a new series of mysteries set in Cornwall and featuring photographer Rose Trevelyan, whose peaceful life is rocked by the brutal murder of Gabrielle Milton, a client whom she hoped would become a friend.
Before the murder, Rose Trevelyan's life was peaceful. Since the death of her husband four years ago she has lived in their Cornish cottage on her own, painting pictures of the local scenery and doing a little professional photography. Then Gabrielle Milton asks Rose to photograph her house for a Christmas card and Rose's life is changed for ever. The Miltons are fairly new to the area and Rose has never met them before. She senses, however, that she and Gabrielle could become friends so she is pleased when she is invited to a party at their house. Wine flows freely there's a good mix of guests and everything seems to be going well. Then Gabrielle Milton's crumpled, lifeless body is found underneath a balcony. Is Gabrielle's death an accident, or might she have been pushed? What could she have done to attract such dislike that someone wanted her dead? Was the killer a guest at the party, someone she had come into contact with locally, or someone from her previous life in London? As DI Jack Pearce investigates Rose, too, finds herself drawn into the mystery surrounding Gabrielle Milton's death, and wondering whether someone she knows could be a killer . . . SNAPPED IN CORNWALL is the first in a projected new series of mysteries featuring Rose Trevelyan, set against the beautiful backdrop of the Cornish countryside where Janie Bofitho lives. Janie Bofitho was born in Falmouth, Cornwall. She has a son and a daughter in their twenties. She has been variously employed as a bookmaker's clerk, a debt collector, a tour operator's assistant and a psychiatric nurse. She divides her life between Berkshire and Cornwal1 and writes full time.
PREVIOUS BOOKS: SEQUENCE OF SHAME (1996), FINGER OF FATE (1996), DANGEROUS DECEIT (1995), MOTIVE FOR MURDER (1994), RIPE FOR REVENGE (1994) 

Lorenzo Carcaterra --- Apaches --- Century Feb 97 £15.99 
Having told of his painful childhood experiences in a boys' reformatory in the bestselling Sleepers, Lorenzo Carcaterra has now written a novel based on the accounts of retired New York policemen that is equally compelling and moving. Apaches tells the story of a gang of renegade cops invalided out of the force for minor injuries, who decide to take justice into their own hands. Together they fight crime in the violent world of drug trafficking against the vividly realised backdrop of New York.
Lorenzo Carcaterra was born in New York where he still lives. He was a reporter on the New York Daily News before he wrote his first work of non-fiction, A Safe Place, which recounts how he discovered, at the age of fourteen, that his father had murdered his first wife. Sleepers, which became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, tells of the abuse and torture he suffered in a boys reformatorv. and is now a major Propaganda film.
Praise for Sleepers: 'A courtroom drama as cliffhanging as any by Grisham' The Times 
This true story is riveting, the boys' revenge as gripping as a good thriller, their plight unexpectedly poignant' Sunday Telegraph 
'An extraordinary read' Time Out 
'Carcaterra's passion makes it undeniably compelling' USR Today 
'Undeniably powerful, an enormously affecting and intensely human story’ The Washington Post 
'Fabulous, unbelievably good' Entertainment Weekly 
'A brilliant, troubling, important book' Jonathan Kellerman  

D.G.Compton --- Back of Town Blues --- Vista pbk. Pub 2lst Feb. £5.99 
Alec Duncan, King of Swing, it says on the billboard outside Tony's. A black man playing a white piano, just what you need to tart up a dodgy nightspot. Forty quid a night plus tips - about all a black Scots ex-copper with nimble fingers and a record of violence on the job can hope for. Now, though, with Trevor Bladon, his girlfriend's killer, safely banged up for the rest of his life; it's time for Trevor to put it all behind him and get-on with his life. But first he needs to and sort out a couple of things with Trevor in his cell. He's not exactly sure why, but he goes anyway, and it's not a good idea. He ends up prime suspect in another murder. In this sequel to Justice City, D. G. Compton returns to his portrayal of a tough and terrifying Liverpool, a few minutes into the future.

Frank Delaney --- The Amethysts --- HarperCollins --- March 97 --- £16.99 
An astonishing new psychological thriller of great force and pace- and unlike anything Frank Delaney has written before.
Spring 1991: English architect Nicholas Newman is on holiday in a Swiss hotel. He is still deep in confused mourning for his lover Madeleine, murdered with appalling brutality After dinner, an elegant Hungarian couple tell him of the villa they are restoring in Italy. They show him the photographs, in one of which stands a small amethyst carved of the Eiffel Tower. Concealing his shock, he recognises it as the only object missing when the police inventoried Madeleine's apartment. Immediately, Newman’s life is attacked ferociously and inexplicably. Lukas Waterman, Made1eine's hidden mentor, now appears and makes him read a document chronicling a top-secret Nazi installation, the Family Institute, where, at Gobbler’s instigation, Jewish family relationships were destroyed from the inside. Still reeling from being forced to relive the horrors of that ghastly experiment, Newman soon finds himself inextricably caught up in the increasingly violent events surrounding the few survivors. At once a compelling psychological thriller and a thoughtful novel discussing the relationship between power and personal evil, The Amethyst not only underlines Frank Delaney’s highly praised gifts for drama and characterisation, and his capacity to tell a story of unrelenting suspense, but also displays to stunning effect his ability to create a tale resonant with deeper meaning.

J.M. Gregson --- Body Politic --- Collins Crime --- March 97 --- £14.99 See Review 
`A novel in the best traditions of provincial murder.' Observer (of Watermarked ) When ambitious MP Raymond Keane is found dead in a frozen lake, Superintendent Lambert and Sergeant Hook soon discover that the politician was adept at making enemies. There is his former lover, Moria Yates, whose life he has ruined, his business partner, a disgruntled constituent and his supposed fiancee, who had been on the point of breaking the engagement off. Moira Yates seems to have the perfect alibi. Since her break-up with Keane she has been afflicted with agoraphobia and is unable set foot outside the house she shares with her adoring brother Dermot and Sangster the family friend who's hopelessly, in love with her. In fact, all the suspects have alibis but, one by one, they are challenged by the dogged Lambert and Hook, and when Lambert finds an object by the lake, he is sure he has his murderer. . .
J M Gregson worked in education for many years, but now concentrates on writing full time. He lives with his wife in Buckinghamshire.

John Grisham --- The Partner --- Century --- May 97 --- £16.99 
John Grisham's seven novels A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker and The Runaway Jury have all been number one best-sellers, and there are over 60 million copies in print in the English language. Five have been made into blockbusting movies and Grisham is widely believed to be the most popular author writing in the world today. With his eighth book Grisham returns to the legal world and weaves another gripping tale of intrigue and power play. With a combination of taut narrative, suspense and high drama this novel will again confirm John Grisham as the master storyteller of our generation.
John Grisham graduated from Law School in 1981 and for nine years ran his own law firm. Following the extraordinary success of The Firm, John Grisham gave up his practice to write full time. He lives with his wife and two children on a farm in Oxford, Mississippi.
Praise for The Runaway Jury:
‘Beautifully paced and plotted and full of delightful twists. Grisham's mastery of form has never been more evident a marvellous read' Sunday Telegraph  
This book is a joy. One of those books you regret having to finish. His pace never flags and neither does his invention' Daily Express 
`Grisham creates a terrific level of suspense. I could not put it down' Mail on Sunday  
Riveting... Grisham is a superb, instinctive storyteller' The Times  
Refreshing and totally delightful' Daily Telegraph  

Karen Hall --- Dark Debts --- Macmillan 2lst March ---£15.99 See Review 
In DARK DEBT'S, the Exorcist meets the Prince of Tides. Its focus is a seemingly cursed family in rural Georgia, afflicted by tragedy and notoriety with shocking regularity. Two brothers have already died horribly- one in the electric chair. Just hours before a third brother (a famous author) kills himself, he phones his estranged girlfriend Randa, a Los Angeles newspaper reporter, begging for help. Reluctantly re- entering her ex-lover's life, she realises she must trace the last surviving brother, Jack .. and gradually , against all her wishes, comes to recognise the unthinkable: that their entire bloodline is tainted with some kind of demonic infestation. The arrival in the small Southern town of a discredited, no longer celibate priest adds a new dimension to the horrific drama unfolding. For he too, against all his Jesuit training and expectations, comes to realise that the enemy they now jointly face is true evil in its most violent and physical form. DARK DEBTS combine, horror, Southern gothic, humour, tender romance and theological mystery in a terrifying and unforgettable masterpiece of supernatural suspense.
Karen Hall grew up in Virginia and attended the College of William and Mary. She has written for and produced many of the most acclaimed television shows of the 1980s and 1990s and received Emmy Award nominatioins for her work on M*A*S*H, Hil1 Street Blues, Moonlighting and The Women of Brewster Place. She has also been a creative consultant on Roseanne and Grace Under Fire and written for I'll Fly Away and Northern Exposure. She lives in Los Angeles and Atlanta.

Roy Lewis --- Suddenly as a Shadow. --- HarperCollins £14.99 See Review 
It is over a hundred vears since workers clearing the way for a new railway through the remote Ravenstone Fell stumbled across an ancient burial site. Now the railway itself is obsolete, servnig a ghost community, and developers want to turn the site into a business and leisure complex.
In order to get government approval and funding for their plans, the developers allow a team of archaeologists to dig at the burial site and Arnold Landon, of the Department of Museums and Antiquities, gets involved. Also interested is Cate Nicholas, an expert in an innovative branch of forensic pathology. Nicholas proves to be a controtoversial figure with a knack for making enemies, not only in the academic community·, but also, it seems. amongst the personnel at Ravenstone. And, not content with attacking her colleagues in the media, she now· hints at corrupt dealings in the bid to secure the development contract.
Landon is unwillingly drawn into this growing controversy - one that culminates in violent death. Is the answer to the murder to be found at Ravenstone Fell, or does it lie elsewhere?
Another absorbing crime novel from Roy Lewis which cleverly blends archaeological mysteries with a modern-day murder investigation.

Carol O’Connell --- Flight of the Stone Angel --- Hutchinson April 97 £15.99  
In a little town in the wetlands of Mississippi, a young woman has been detained in the local jail. The sheriff has made out a receipt for her few possessions - a 357 Smith & Wesson revolver and a pocket watch with the name Mallory inscribed upon it.
After Mallory fled New York (at the end of Carol O'Connell's last novel, Killing Critics), her artner and would-be suitor, Charles Butler, follows her trail to Louisiana, where Mallory seeks to uncover the mystery of her mother's death, But within an hour of her arrival Deputy Travis suffers a massive stroke at the wheel of his patrol car, Babe Laurie is found murdered, and Detective Sergeant Mallory is being held on suspicion of homicide.
'Three cheers for Carol O'Connell. who has now moved from neophyte writer to established literary superstar.' Booklist 
Mallory is a marvellous creation and Carol O'Connell is a major new talent.' - Jonathan Kellerman 
Born in 1947, Carol O'Connell studied at the California Institute of Ats/Chouinard and the Arizona State University. For many years she survived on occasional sales of her paintings as well as freelance proof reading and copy-editing. But with the huge commercial and critical success of Mallory's Oracle, The Man who Lied to Women and Killing Critics, Carol O'Connell is now writing full time.

Richard North Patterson --- Silent Witness --- 1st May 97 Hutchinson £9.99 
Weaving through a maze of complex characters, electrifying courtroom suspense and keen insight into the psychology of crime, Silent Witness is Patterson's most stunning novel to date.
1967, Lake City, Ohio. Tony Lord and Sam Robb, both in their teens, are best friends and athletic rivals. Twenty-eight years later, Tony is a successful San Francisco attorney; Sam is an assistant principal at Lake City High School. Sam has never left home, and Tony has never returned since the trauma that changed his live: the brutal murder of his first love, Alison, of which he was wrongly accused and which turned everyone, even Sam, against him. Now Sam is a suspect. One of his female students has been murdered. Tony, reluctantly but inevitably, comes back to defend him. At once, Tony is plunged into the unfinished business of his past. In the merciless arena of a murder trial, he must confront not only his fear that Sam is a murderer but also the buried truths that obscure the real meaning of Alison's death. Powerful in its portrayal of the complexities of male friendship, of the darkest recesses of love, and of the many ways in which the past stakes its claim upon the present, SILENT WITNESS is that rare suspense novel which is far more - the kind of story we have come to expect from Richard North Patterson.
Richard North Patterson has been a San Francisco trial lawyer and a partner in the firm of McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enerson. He is now a full-time writer. His first novel, The Lasko Tangent, won an Edgar Allan Poe award and his last three books, Degree of Guilt, Eyes of a Child and The Final Judgement have been top 5 New York Times bestsellers.

William Paul --- Stranger Things --- Constable Feb 97 -- £15.99 See Review 
The harrassed DCI David Fyfe and his hard-drinking colleague DI Connor Harper are on the trail of a murderer responsible for a series of bizarre and apparently random deaths, but first they've got to find out how the victims die . . The body of a teenage girl is found in an old graveyard, no handbag, no purse, nothing in her pockets to show who she was. A postmortem reveals that she died of respiratory failure but she was healthy, no hidden diseases, no injuries and no sign of drug use. The best that the pathologist can come up with is that she was the victim of a mysterious poison, but whether this is a suicide or a deliberate killing it's hard to tell. Then another girl's found dead, and it looks like murder . . DCI David Fyfe, preoccupied by the discovery that his daughter is pregnant and on the run from a violent husband, has to hand over control of the murder case toa younger officer, DI Connor Harper. The trouble with Harper is that he reminds Fyfe too much of himself. That is no recommendation. Although Fyfe is four hundred miles away and, not for the first time, taking the law into his. own hands he is obliged to become involved in the investigation as the poison victims pile up. As the unexpected explanation finally emerges the emotional stress on Fyfe and Harper increases to near intolerable levels. STRANGER THINGS is a highly charged novel that takes the reader outside the normal boundaries of law and order to a place where the rules simply do not apply. It might seem outlandish but then, stranger things have happened.
PREVIOUS BOOKS: SLEEPING PARTNER (Constable 1996), SLEEPING PRETTY (Constable 1995), SLEEPING DOGS (Constable 1994), DANCE OF DEATH (Severn House 1991) 
William Paul was born and brought up in Scotland. He was educated at Bell Baxter High School in Fife and Aberdeen University. He is a journalist and the author of eight previous hook,. He now lives in Edinburgh with his wife, Linda. and their sons.

Peter Robinson --- Innocent Graves --- Constable Feb. 97 £15.99 
Detective Chief Inspector Banks's investigation into the brutal murder of beautiful schoolgirl Deborah Harrison brings to light plenty of guilty secrets and deadly lies in the small town of Eastvale where she lived. Detective Chief Inspector Banks had seen crimes just as savage in London, but somehow the murder of a teenage girl seemed more shocking in the village of Eastvale. Deborah Harrison was found in the churchyard behind St Mary's, strangled with the strap of her school satchel. But Deborah was no typical teenager. Her father was a powerful microelectronics financier who ran in the highest echelons of industry, defence and classified information. And Deborah, it seemed, enjoyed keeping secrets of her own, taunting her friends with teasing smiles that said `I know something you don't'. A harmless game with classmates, but positively deadly in the company of a killer. With his colleague Detective Constable Susan Gay, and fighting the pressures of a rigid, by-the-book Chief Constable, Banks moves among the many suspects, guilty of crimes large and small. An outstanding new mystery which puts a fascinating spin on the classic theme of small-town secrets, small-town lies, and small-town murder . . Peter Robinson has been a finalist for the John Creasey Award, an Edgar Award nominee, winner of the Crime Writers of Canada Best Novel Award, winner the CWC Best First Novel Award and winner of the CWC Best Short Story Award.
PREVIOUS BOOKS: WEDNESDAY'S CHILD (Constable 1996), DRY BONES. THAT DREAM (Constable 1995), PAST REASON HATED (Viking/Penguin 1990 CAEDMON'S SONG Viking/Penguin 1990), THE HANGING VALLEY Viking/Penguin 1989 

Lisa See --- The Flower Net --- Century --- April 97--- £12.99 
A gripping thriller mixing the oldest and youngest of cultures - a Chinese Gorky Park On a January morning in Beijing a child skating on a frozen lake finds the corpse of a white man under the ice... Hong Liu. a woman detective, is assigned to head what will be a delicate investigation. The murder victim Is the son of the American Ambassador. Thousands of miles away, Tom Stone, an assistant U.S. attorney, boards the China Peony: a barely sea-worthy freighter carrying hundreds of illegal immigrants to America. On board he finds the badly decomposed body of a Red Prince'. a child of one of China's top officials. The murders appear to have nothing in common until rare plant fibres are found to be coating the respiratory tracts of both victims, and the Chinese and American Governments agree to work together. Named for a method of Chinese fishing in which a fisherman throws a hand-woven net into the air where it opens like a flower, settles on the surface of the water. sinks into the dark depths and surreptitiously makes its catch, The Flower Net contains all the same elements: beauty. intrigue, romance - and death.
Lisa See is the critically acclaimed, best-selling author of On Gold Mountain, a memoir detailing the rise of her ancestors, the first Chinese dynasty in modern America.

Timothy Williams ---Big Italy ---pbk. 21st Feb. Vista £5.99 
See Review Commissario Trotti is looking forward to his retirement rearing chickens in his lakeside villa. His boss wants him to head up a child abuse unit, and a seedy journalist, who says he is being threatened, keeps bothering him with a conspiracy theory about a murdered doctor. These are things he ought to be able to cope with, surely. Then the journalist is murdered...
Timothy Williams was born in Walthamstow and now lives in Guadeloupe in the French West Indies where he is a secondary school teacher. He has previously lived in Italy which he revisits every year, France (he is a naturalised Frenchman) and Romania, where he worked for the British Council. He is the author of four previous Trotti novels, Converging Parallels, The Puppeteer, Persona Non Grata and Black August, which won the Crime Writer's Association 1992 Award.

Don Winslow -- The Death and Life of Bobby Z -- Century March 97 £9.99 
A lifetime A loser a lifetime legend - a lifetime's dream
Small-time crook Tim Kearney is given the chance to win his freedom by impersonating big-time crook and drug lord Bobby Z. Problem is. everyone seems to be after Bobby Z: the Mexican drug lord Bobby's partner stitched up. Bobby's partner who wants to keep the money he stole from Bobby. And there's more trouble from the other people who seem to be after Tim himself: the Hell's Angels whose friend he killed in prison, the DEA agent who set him up as Bobby Z in the first place, and the hispanic gang leader whose death he may have caused.
Tim/Bobby has to run the gauntlet of assassins with Bobby Z's 6-year-old son in tow. With the net closing and the bullets flying. and with a bit of help from a street crazy, will Tim finally get where he needs to be and manage to find the freedom he is looking for?
The Death and Life of Bobby Z, as stylish as Elmore Leonard, as pacy and funny as Carl Hiaasen, is a brilliant thriller set in the underworld of the American-Mexican borders.
Don Winslow was born in New York in 1953. He received a BA in African History from the University of Nebraska before moving back to New York where he worked as a private investigator while putting himself through an MA in Military History. He now works as an independent consultant on issues involving litigation that arises from criminal behaviour. He lives with his wife and son in Riverton, Conneticut and Dana Point, California. His first novel, Isle of Joy, is available in Arrow.