DRY BONES IN THE VALLEY by Tom Bouman

DRY BONES IN THE VALLEY Tom Bouman (www.drybonesinthevalley.com) Faber & Faber (www.faber.co.uk) £7.99 Henry Farrell is the law in the small northern Pennsylvania rural township of Wild Thyme. On a routine visit to Aub Dunigan, Henry finds a partially dismembered body on a remote part of the old man’s land. When the township’s bad boy, […]

PERFIDIA by James Ellroy

PERFIDIA James Ellroy (jamesellroy.net) William Heinemann (www.randomhouse.co.uk/…/william-heinemann) £18.99 December 6th, 1941: four members of a Japanese family living in Los Angeles are found dead in their home in what, at first glance, appears to be a ritual Japanese suicide. Hideo Ashida, the only Japanese employee of the Los Angeles Police Department, finds evidence that suggests […]

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL by Kevin Sampson

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL Kevin Sampson Jonathan Cape (www.randomhouse.co.uk/about-us/about-us/…/jonathan-cape) £14.99 Still on extended leave following the Rozaki case, DCI Billy McCartney is surprised when a girl barely out of her teens turns up on his doorstep and claims to be the daughter of Moroccan drug magnate Hassan El Glaoui. The girl’s appearance, and cry […]

GUEST POST: Writing About Drugs in the 60s by WILLIAM SHAW

Name: WILLIAM SHAW Author of: A SONG FROM DEAD LIPS (2013) A HOUSE OF KNIVES (2014) On the web: williamshaw.com On Twitter: @william1shaw Photograph © Ellen Shaw When you write a book about recent history, what’s important is the difference between then and now. There are the blindingly obvious differences. Want to set […]

THE KILLING POOL by Kevin Sampson

THE KILLING POOL Kevin Sampson Jonathan Cape (http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/about-us/…/jonathan-cape) £12.99 Detective Chief Inspector Billy McCartney is part of Merseyside Police’s Drug Squad, his focus currently on the Rozaki brothers who have a monopoly on Liverpool’s heroin trade. When McCartney’s informant, the youngest of the Rozaki brothers is found dead and dismembered in a park, McCartney knows […]

EASY MONEY by Jens Lapidus

EASY MONEY Jens Lapidus Translated by Astri von Arbin Ahlander Macmillan (www.panmacmillan.com) £12.99 Released: 2nd February 2012 When Jens Lapidus’ debut novel, Easy Money, landed on my desk, it came bearing a quote that is almost inevitable these days on the English translations of Swedish novels – the quote that compares this writer to Stieg […]

STOLEN SOULS by Stuart Neville

STOLEN SOULS Stuart Neville (www.stuartneville.com) Harvill Secker (www.vintage-books.co.uk) £12.99 Released: 26 January 2012 Stuart Neville fairly burst onto the crime fiction scene in the middle of 2009 with his first novel, The Twelve (released later that year in the US under the title The Ghosts of Belfast). The novel, bearing high praise from James Ellroy, […]