NEW  BOOKS FOR SPRING 1997 

John Clarkson --- One way Out --- HarperCollins --- pbk --- Feb 97 --- £5.99  
John Clarkson's unforgettable hero from And Justice For One, Jack Devlin, is back in an uncompromising novel of steadfast loyalty and cold-hearted vengeance. Annie Turino was Jack Devlin's first love. He would have done anything for her. But that was a long time ago. Now Annie lives in London with her husband and child. That is, until her husband is brutally murdered - and she discovers she is next on the hit list. The men coming for her are not reckless killers: they are sadistic, professional and quite untouchable. Annie knows there is only one man she can call on to help. Jack Devlin. Who isn't afraid to go beyond friendship. Or above the law...
Praise for Jack Devlin Novels:  
'Packs a savage punch!' New York  
Times Dark, sexy; tough and fast!' Kirkus Reviews 

 The Agatha Christie Collection See Review --- HarperCollins --- April 97 --- £14.99 
A new programme of Agatha Christie hardback editions, to be released in their original order of publication.
The Mysterious Affair At Styles Various seemingly unrelated details surround the murder of wealthy Mrs Inglethorp - a classic murder mystery in which Hercules Point begins his first, and perhaps most intriguing, investigation . . .
The Secret Adversary Tommy and Tuppence, a dauntless pair detectives who, on an assignment for the sinister Mr Whittington, find themselves caught up in international intrigue and more danger than they bargained for . . .
Murder on the Links Hercule Point is summoned to France, but when he arrives his client has been stabbed to death. As he unravels the circumstances surrounding the murder, he discovers that the clue to the killer's identity lies in a crime committed more than 20 years ago . . .
The Man in the Brown Suit. Anne Beddingfield holds the clue to a mystery - a strange scrap of paper which ,may link a diamond robbery an accidental dead, a London tube station, and a murder in a remote country mansion . . .
Poirot Investigates The mystery of the film star and the diamond, a 'suicide' that was murder, the curse of a Pharaoh’s tomb, the abduction of a Prime Minister . . . eleven cases in all to challenge the brilliant deductive powers of Hercule Poirot . . .
The Secret of Chimneys Little did Anthony Cade suspect that an errand on behalf of a friend would make him the centrepiece of a murderous international conspiracy. The key to it all lies at Chimneys, the great country estate that yields an amazing secret . . .

Brian Cooper --- The Travelling Dead --- Constable --- March 97 --- £15.99 
`Norfolk's a potential charnel-house, laddie, a dumping ground for bodies. What better place for a murderer to rid himself of his victim? Strangle a girl, and there are so many lonely places to hide her she may never be found.' 
September 1950. Mike Tench, recently promoted to Detective Chief Inspector, remembered the words as he stood looking down at the girl's battered body. Who was she? 'here was she from? Was she local, or had she been killed somewhere else and dumped from a car? Was she the first of what his old chief, John Lubbock, called `the travelling dead'? Tench follows a twisting trail that leads to a final explosive confrontation as the killer threatens to kill once again.

Nicholas Coleridge --- With Friends Like These --- Orion --- Feb 97 --- £16.99 
A sensational divorce between a gorgeous socialite and one of the most dangerous men in Europe ... a beautiful journalist who can persuade people to be indiscreet ... a magazine in need of a hot story to boost circulation ... a publisher with a taste for risk-taking ... inflammable ingredients which ignite into violence and death in this gripping first thriller by the managing director of the Conde Nast group: a riveting glimpse into the glamorous, bitchy world of magazines.

Anthea Fraser --- The Ten Commandments ---HarperCollins --- April 97 --- £14.99 
`Offers shrewd look at colour supplement version of country life.' Guardian  
When the body of a man is discovered in a pub car park, DCI Webb has an uncommfortable sense of deja vu. Some years before, another body was found in almost identical circumstances, and the killer is still at large. Webb doesn’t believe in coincidences, and hopes to clear both cases at the same time. There is, however, a dissenting voice: Frederick Mace, an eminent criminologist, states publicly that in his opinion the murders were committed by different people -a view which generates publicity Webb could well do a without. During a summer heatwave, the two men pursue their separate lines of inquiry in a blaze of media interest, which almost leads to a further tragedy before both cases are satisfactorily closed.

Alan Hunter --- The Love of Gods --- Constable --- March 97 --- £15.99 See Review  
Local poet Ambrose West is found bludgeoned to death after a meeting of Wolmering’s artistic talent. Could he be the victim of a jealous lover? Or did his sparkling performance earlier in the evening urge a rival on to kill? Chief Superintendent George Gently must eliminate the suspects from the thirtv-strong group one by one before he can reveal the murderer.

Laurie R. King --- With Child --- HarperCollins --- Feb. 97 --- £14.99 
A terrifying and moving study of innocence in peril from award winning crime writer Laurie King . . . 'If there is a new P. D. James I would put my money on Laurie King.' Boston Globe 
In With Child, the third in King's extraordinary series, San Francisco homicide detective Kate Martinelli becomes involved in a nightmare that begins in her off-duty life and turns into a crime for which she feels herself responsible. . . As the story begins, Kate is alone in the house she shares with her partner, Lee, who, slowly recovering from the gunshot wound that crippled her in A Grave Talent, decides that she must spend time on her own - a move that Kate can only interpret as rejection. Lonely, angry and contused, Kate befriends the bright, quirky twelve-year-old Jules, and when the girl's parents go on a trip, Kate agrees to care for her. But when Kate decides to drive with Jules to northern Washington, to `drop in' to the farm where Lee is staying, events spiral out of concrol. During the trip, in a rural area where a serial killer has been victimising young girls, Jules disappears. . . In its emotional impact on the novel's complex characters, Laurie King’s story has the intensity and depth of a superb literary work, spiced with the harrowing suspense of a desperate effort to rescue a young girl in mortal danger.
A Grave Talent was voted as (joint) Best First Novel of 1995 by Val McDermid  

Derek Lambert --- The Killing House --- Piatkus --- April 97 --- £16.99  
After his wife and child are killed by an IRA car bomb meant for him, revenge is all that matters to former SAS man Jack Collins. Harry Quarrick too wants to get even - but for him the British are the enemy. Collins and Quarrick: two fundamentally decent men twisted by hatred, they have no intention of surrender. Even though governments and terrorists alike are moving, albeit slowly, towards peace...

Peter Landesman --- The Raven --- HarperCollins --- March 97 --- £12.99 
A potent, haunting and compelling literary mystery-winner of the American Academy of Arts Award for Best First Fiction
On 29 June,19 41, thirty-six members of a small community near Boston go out on a picnic off Bailey Island on the pleasure craft, Raven:. Mvsteriouslv, only the women and one man, the captain, naked and tied to a keg, come back - dead, found by a lone lobsterman and his nine-year-old son. Then nothing - no other bodies and no trace of the vessel are ever discovered. Conflicting details about the disappearance of the Raven abound. Was there fog, or was the weather clear? Was it sunk by the Germans, or scuttled for insurance money? Was a bad sea at fault, or a bad captain? This eloquent novel spans decades, exploring the tragedy that echoes through the voices of those left behind. From the bank manager who okaved the trip, to the boy who should have gone but didn’t, to the woman who will always believe that her husband and child will return home safe one day, to the lobsterman and his growing son who hauled the drowned ashore. Beautifully wrought, densely evocative, gritty and shocking, this outstanding story of the sea, reminiscent of Poe, Hoeg, Melville and Proulx. heralds the arrival of a significant new literary voice.

Peter Lovesey --- Upon a Dark Night --- Little Brown --- 6 March 1997 --- £16.99 also Bloodhounds --- pbk Warner See Review  And Review 2 
Peter Lovesey's series of crime novels featuring Superintendent Peter Diamond have won him high praise and top awards in Britain and the United States.
UPON A DARK NIGHT the fifth novel in the series; opens with a young woman found unconscious in the grounds of a car park belonging to a private clinic. She wakes up with no memory of how she arrived there, nor who she is.
The police appeal for information, but are beset by other unexplained deaths around Bath. A farmer is shot in his isolated home, and a young woman falls from the roof of the Royal Crescent during a party to celebrate a win on the National Lottery. Her identity is also a mystery, and none of the guests can throw light on what happened.
Unrelenting in his search for the truth to a complex mystery, Peter Diamond makes the links to lead him to the killer, but is in danger of alienating his colleagues in the process.
Peter Lovesey's deft handling of the mystery is sure to add to his reputation as one of Britain's most accomplished crime novelists.

Peter Lovesey --- Bloodhounds --- pbk Warner --- March 6th 97. --- £5.99
See Review   
‘the confrontational Diamond is on top form and the book grips the attention from its start right to its unexpected solution.' Sunday Telegraph 
'No one has done this kind of thing better since Dorothy L: Sayers. A must for crime buffs' Mail on Sunday 
'worthy of the Golden Age of crimewriters...full of wit and froth.' Yorkshire Post 
Peter Lovesey was a lecturer before he wrote his first crime novel - for which he won a £1,000 prize - called Wobble to Death It introduced the Victorian detective, Sergeant Cribb, ---- who featured in eight books and two television series. Since then, a number of his novels and short stories have appeared on television, radio and film.
Since his first success, he has won many British and foreign literary prizes. Waxwork won the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger;The False Inspector Drew won the Gold Dagger; The Secret Lover won the Veüve Clicquot Prize for best short story of the year.. Swing, Swing Together was awarded the French Grand Prix de Litterature Policier, and A Case of Spirits the Prix du Roman d’Aventures; The Last Detective (which was the first in the Peter Diamond series), won the Anthony Award, and in 1995 he won the Gold Mysteries short story contest from the Mystery Writers of America for his story The Pushover. 
He has won the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger award two years running (1995 and 1996) for his Diamond series novels. The Stiminons and Bloodhounds His latest hardback, Upon a Dark Night his twentieth crime novel.

Margaret Miller --- The Soft Talkers --See Review 
Lust, deceit and betrayal. Conspiracy and - pbk. Allison & Busby --- Feb 97 --- £6.99 murder. This latest crime novel from Margaret Miller builds up a sensation of fear so strongly that at the end it hits you like a battering ram.
CRITICAL PRAISE FOR The Soft Talkers: 
'An utterly compulsive story of suspense...when Margaret Miller decides to lead her readers up the garden path, even Agate Christie has to walk behind.' - Time and Tide 
'Brilliant, superlative...The Soft Talkers is one of the most impressive additions to mystery literature - and the word 'literature' is used in its fullest sense.'- San Francisco Chronicle 
'A very clever story of psychology, of murder and conspiracy.' - John Kennedy Melling, BBC 'Wonderfully ingenious' - New Yorker 
PRAISE FOR Margaret Miller: 
'Margaret Miller has few peers, and no superior.' - Julian Symons 
'A superb writer.' - H.R.F. Keating  
'She writes minor classics.' - Washington Post  
'Mrs Millar doesn't attract fans she creates addicts.' -Dilys Winn 
Margaret Millar wrote her first story, The Invisible Woman, in 1941. Since then she has published numerous crime novels which have won her high acclaim, including an Edgar Award for the Best Mystery Writer of the Year for her classic, Beast in View, and the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award. She was a past president of writers of America. Margaret Millar died in 1994.

Ingrid Noll --- Head Count ---HarperCollins --- April 97 --- £14.99 
The new black-comedy mystery from the best-selling Ingrid Noll - Germany's Queen of Crime.' Observer 
From her earliest childhood Mava can remember being at odds with her mother and much-hated brother. Only her Father seemed to love her but he mysteriously disappeared. Nicknamed `Elephant' by schoolmates and family, life for Maya is embattled unit she meets the sophisticated, beautiful Cora. These two form an intense friendship, founded on a conviction that they are somehow separate from the rest of society and do not have to abide by its rules. They dabble in crime in a minor sort of way and live fantasy lives -but rude reality internenes in the form of manslaughter and the shattering of a precious illusion. The two grow up and seemingly apart. Maya is trapped in a conventional marriage, made worse by the visitations from her mad family, while Cora, now in Italy, is enjoying a life of luxury with a sugar daddy. But they are to join forces again, driven together by their unwillingness to conform to anything but their own desires. Inevitably, and, as it turns out, most inconveniently, other people get in their way and steps have to be taken . . . steps that will lead to murder. Beautifully written, witty and original, Head Count is the new best-selling novel from one of Europe's hottest crime writers.

Barrie Roberts --- Sherlock Holmes and the man from Hell --- Constable ---March 97 --- £15.99 
When Lord Backwater, a wealthy and reclusive philanthropist, is found beaten to death on his own estate, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson rush to the scene. On the forearms of the murdered man are two striking tattoos. `They signify' ,Holmes told Watson, `that Lord Backwater's past was more varied than the obituatists imagined.' As Holmes and the Doctor strive to unravel the secret of Lord Backwater's death many obstacles are put in their way, and the Great Detective must unravel a forty-year-old secret and pit himself against a ruthless opponent before the mystery can finally be solved.

Lisa Scottoline --- Legal Tender --- HarperCollins --- March 97 --- £14.99 
Edgar Award winner Lisa Scottoline returns to the courtroom with a taut and gripping legal thriller where the search for justice becomes a fight to the death.
Bennie Rosato may be tall, blond and built to last, but he's no sucker for a man in uniform. She's a maverick lawyer who prosecutes police misconduct and excessive-force cases, and business at the firm of Rosato & Biscardi has never been better. Bennie’s latest client, Bill Kleeb, is an activist roughed up by the police on a demo at Furstman Dunn, a pharmaceutical company. .At first it seems an open-and-shut case of police brutally, until Kleeb confesses that the protests are only part of the story. Angered at Furstman Dunn, Kleeb’s group plans a far more violent punishment for the company’s president. Then a savage murder tears Roscoe & Biscardi apart, and Bennie's world turns upside down as all the evidence points in her direction, and the cops she once prosecuted are now after her . . . To prove her innocence bennie must unmask the real killer, but just as she gets close another murder takes place, and Bennie finds herself indicted for double homicide - a crime punishable by death. So Bennie runs for her life, but she’ll find the real killer. Or die trying.

Simon Shaw --- Act of Darkness --- HarperCollins --- April 97 --- £14.99 
Combines an excellent murder story with equally excellent satire Simon Shaw's grasp of the psychological possibilities of bad behaviour is as impressive as that of Ruth Rendell.' Literary Review 
Philip Fletcher, somewhat exhausted and not yet fully recovered from his latest bout of life-threatening misdemeanour, takes a recuperative, undemanding job at the Chichester Festival. What could be more pleasant than to idle away a relaxing few months in the couutrvside at the scene of some of his greatest triumphs? Unfortunately, his peace of mind is seriously threatened by the discover that his most hated rival, the loathsome and (in Philip's view) utterly un-talented Richard Jones, is also appearing at the same theatre. And when the becomes apparent that both of them are eyeing up the same girl, serious ructions are sure to follow. But there's more at stake than mere amorous pride. An undercurrent of sinister goings-on disturbs Philip's rural idyll, and when the object of his ardent attentions becomes the quarry of an obsessive stalker, there's once again a premium on his dubious criminal skills. And in the quiet of the Sussex country side , the hunter soon becomes the hunted. . .

James Patterson --- Jack and Jill --- HarperCollins --- Feb 97 --- £16.99 
The spellbinding new Alex Cross thriller from the No 1 best-selling author of Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls. James Patterson burst onto the thriller scene with his No 1 best-seller Along Came the Spider, which first introduced Washington homicide detective Alex Cross. His memorable hero returned in spectacular fashion in another No 1 best-seller, Kiss the Girls, which is now being made into a major film, starring Morgan Freeman. Now - in James Patterson's most explosive and powerful novel yet -.Alex Cross is back on home territory, tangling with a pair of killers who are picking off the rich and famous one by one with chilling professional efficiency. As the whole country awaits the identity of the next celebrity victim, only Alex Cross, with his ability to get into the minds of deranged killers, has the skills and the courage to crack the case - but will he discover the truth before `Jack and Jill set their sights on Washington’s ultimate celebrity target? A relentless rollercoaster of heart-pounding suspense and jolting plot twists, Jack and Jill proves once again that no one can write a more compelling thriller than James Patterson - the master of the non-stop nightmare.

Michael Weaver --- The Lie --- pbk Little Brown --- March 97 --- £8.99 
Dunster, the secretly ailing US President, is determined to make the International Conference on Human Rights at Wannsee his final triumph. The Vice-President and Deputy Intelligence Director, however, plan to control that final triumph to meet their own ends. Unbeknownst to either faction there lurks in the wings a fanatic who sees no hypocrisy in taking the President hostage to further his 'noble' cause for world peace. In fact the whole conference is a lie, and Paul Walters, CIA agent, is drawn deeply into the vortex of the deception as he tries to rescue the President and identify the terrorists. It isn't until his lover reveals her connections to one of the groups behind the kidnapping that he realises he is facing two enemies-or three if he counts himself as he has to choose between honour and passion.