New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Orion 04 Jan-March

File Updated: 15/04/2009

New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Orion JAN-MARCH 04

Ed McBain The Frumious Bandersnatch Published January 2004 by Orion at Ł12.99 ISBN: 0752855859

The brand new 87th Precinct Novel from the master himself - Ed McBain.
The 53rd instalment in one of the longest running and most influential crime series still going in the world today. The 87th Precinct series has been going since the 1950s and offers a blueprint for all aspiring crime writers, wonderfully evoking a fictionalised Manhattan. This new novel will star McBain's wonderful creations, the laconic Steve Carella and his unorthodox sidekick Ollie Weeks.

Ed McBain (1926--) was born Salvatore Lambino in New York. He changed his name to Evan Hunter and under that name is known as the author of The Blackboard Jungle and as the writer of the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. The 87th Precinct series numbers over fifty novels. McBain is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and is the only American writer to be awarded the CWA Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement.

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Moose C & Fleming C Three Weeks in October The Hunt for the Washington Sniper Published February 2004 by Orion at Ł16.99 ISBN: 0752861069

Chief Moose resigned from the Montgomery County force to write this book.
Charles Fleming is the author of High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture ofExcess.

Wednesday evening, 2nd October 2002, a man is suddenly shot dead in a parking lot in Maryland, Washington DC. There are no witnesses. The killing fails to make the following morning's papers. As Montgomery County Police Chief, Charles Moose notes this, and rues the cheapness of modern life, another call comes in - a man has been shot dead mowing a lawn; half an hour later a taxi driver lies dead on the forecourt of a Mobil station. Chief Moose's worst nightmare is about to unfurl - a serial sniper is on the loose in the affluent Washington suburbs. This is the inside story of America's worst sniper case on record. Chapters detailing the tense, day-by-day unfolding of the killing - there were ultimately 13 victims before John Allen Muhammad and his young nephew Lee Malvo were arrested asleep in a beaten up car - are intercut with the life story of one of America's most high-profile police chiefs. Moose worked his way up the ranks against the backdrop of the mean streets of Portland, Oregon. Shy, often unorthodox in his methods, but ultimately very popular in the force - a cop's cop - Moose's story is all the more remarkable given the colour of his skin. Or, in the words of a psychiatrist Moose was once referred to after one outburst too many: "You are a black policeman, and the police department is a racist institution. The history of police departments in America is a racist history. You better get used to it, or get out. You cannot get angry."

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Steve Mosby Third Person Published January 2004 by Orion at Ł9.99 ISBN: 0752860062 Artwork by: Jacket design: Š www.blacksheep-uk.com

Irish Examiner ' A cracking futuristic thriller.'

A dark, uneasy and brilliant debut crime novel.

'This isn't some kind of 'dear John' letter. I'm coming back again'. But Amy Sinclair didn't come back. That note on the kitchen table was the last that her boyfriend, Jason, heard of her. At first, he had let her have her space but as the weeks turned to months the worries had set in... and eventually he went after her. What he found appalled him. It seems that Amy had had a secret life on the internet and had met some people she shouldn't have. And one of them took her. Now Jason sits at home and cruises the same horrific websites that she once walked through to find her kidnapper. But when he lays a trap for a monster that he meets in a chat-room he gets more than he bargained for. He finds that nothing in this story is as it seems and that the clues lie in the mistakes of his own past...

This is Steve Mosby's debut novel, though he has been writing for soem years. He lives in Leeds.

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Ridley Pearson The Pied Piper Pbk published January 2004 by Orion at Ł5.99 ISBN: 0752843516
Artwork by: Cover photo: Getty/image Bank. Cover design: www.hen.uk.com

Featuring Lieutenant Lou Boldt, the Seattle cop who stars in Ridley Pearson's deservedly popular series
A wave of babynappings has terrified parents from San Diego to Portland. And when the Pied Piper named for the penny flute he leaves in the cribs of his victims claims his first Seattle infant, the investigation draws in homicide detective Lou Boldt. Assigned temporarily to Intelligence so he can spend more time with his kids while his wife is hospitalized for chemotherapy, Boldt's role is to keep the FBI out of the Seattle Police Department's way. But FBI special agent Gary Flemming is a tough adversary so tough it almost seems as if he's intentionally sabotaging the SPD's investigation. Then the Pied Piper snatches Boldt's own daughter, promising that unless Boldt throws both the Feds and the SPD off his trail he'll never see his child again. Caught between his professional obligations and his fear for Sarah's life, Boldt launches his own private manhunt with the help of John La Moia, his replacement in homicide, and police psychologist Daphne Matthews, his closest friend in the department. They form a sub rosa task force under the noses of the Feds and the SPD, and soon discover how the Piper has managed to stay a step ahead of the police, elude capture, and find his small victims. The chase moves from Seattle to Portland to New Orleans, culminating in a thrilling denouement in the daffodil fields of Washington's Skagit Valley.

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Ridley Pearson The Art of Deception Pbk published January 2004 by Orion at Ł5.99 ISBN: 075285870X
Artwork by: Cover design & photo: www.hen.uk com

Seattle Police forensic psychologist Daphne Matthews, who volunteers as a teenage runaway counselor, is haunted by the loss of a suicide, a 'jumper', of a year earlier. When a woman's body is found beneath the Aurora Bridge, Matthews is one of the first at the scene and begins a puzzling investigation that is entangled with the pasts of Matthews, the victim, and even Seattle itself. Mary-Ann's boyfriend has a record of physical abuse, and an attitude that Matthews finds difficult to crack. When the victim's grieving brother surfaces, throwing blame onto the boyfriend and craving revenge, Matthews gains an unstable ally she does not want. Then the stalking begins: the eerie phone calls, the noises outside the house, the shadows that move in the night. Someone has their eye on Matthews - but to stop her, kill her, or to help her solve the crime? While her colleagues, police lieutenant Lou Boldt and sergeant John LaMoia, pursue a hotel room peeper in hopes of solving a series of disappearances, the police and Matthews herself are led into the 'Underground' - a perfectly preserved city-under-a-city, hidden beneath present-day Seattle. Faced with the stalking that is wearing her down and terrifying her, Matthews engages in a mental game of cat-and-mouse, never knowing whom she can trust. She knows that she is caught up in something that could kill her if she can't solve the homicide. Criss-crossing Seattle, diving below the streets to ancient tunnels, running for her life, Matthews must unlock the psychological secrets behind Mary-Ann's death, before she herself is buried alongside her. Matthews' very survival will depend on her skills at the art of deception.

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George Pelecanos Hard Revolution Published March 2004 by Orion at Ł12.99 ISBN: 0752856308
See Review by Bob Cornwell

It's the spring of 1968, the sun shines down on an America on the brink of civil war. Martin Luther King preaches in vain for non-violent protest and the ghettos of Washington DC seethe with anger. In the middle of this powder-keg is thrust a young black cop, barely out of school himself. Derek Strange believes passionately that he can make a difference, but his friends and family think he's a traitor and a patsy of the white establishment. On April 4th, 1968, Dr King is assassinated on the balcony of his motel in Memphis, Tennessee. And black America rises as one to condemn the slaying of their hero. For one week, it seems that the whole country will fall. And Derek, his brother, his father, his mother and his whole community find themselves at the heart of a battle for the heart and soul of the new world.

George Pelecanos was born in Washington, DC in 1957. He worked as a line cook, dishwasher, bartender, shoe salesman, electronics salesman, construction worker, and retail general manager before publishing his first novel in 1992.
He is the author of nine crime/noir novels set in and around Washington, DC. The Big Blowdown was the recipient of the International Crime Novel of the Year award in both Germany and Japan; King Suckerman was shortlisted for the Golden Dagger award in the UK. His short fiction has appeared in Esquire and the collections Unusual Suspects and Best American Mystery Stories of 1997. He is an award-winning journalist and pop-culture essayist who has written for The Washington Post.
Pelecanos served as producer on several feature films. As a screenwriter, he has written an adaptation of King Suckerman, and was co-writer on the recently completed feature Paid In Full. Most recently, he has written a script based on a team in the American Basketball Association for HBO Films.

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Laura Wilson Hello Bunny Alice Pbk published January 2004 by Orion at Ł5.99 ISBN: 0752858858
Artwork by: Cover photo: Gluliana Cassarotti
See Review by Cath Staincliffe author of the popular Sal Kilkenny mysteries and the series creator of TV Blue Murder

"I had the dream again last night. I'm at the bottom of a lake looking through the window of a car. Everything's green and murky and there's a skeleton behind the wheel, dressed as a Bunny Girl. The ears are perched on the skull, jaunty, the collar and bow tie are hanging round the neck vertebrae and the body's dressed in the satin costume black, the colour we all used to want because it was slimming with two empty cone shaped cups sticking out in front of the ribcage ... "
In 1967 Bunny Girl Alice Jones met Lenny Maxted one half of the brilliant comic duo, Maxted and Flowers and fell deeply in love with him. But, like so many great comics, Lenny had a dark side. Their love affair ended when Alice found his body hanging from a beam in a Wiltshire cottage. Seven years after his death, in the long hot summer of 1976, Alice is leading a quiet, almost reclusive life in an Oxfordshire farmhouse when, out of the blue, Lenny's partner, Jack Flowers, turns up on her doorstep. Alice has not seen him since Lenny's funeral, but her surprise and pleasure turn into an all too familiar sense of unease when she discovers that he is distressed and drinking heavily. At the same time a car containing human remains is fished out of a Wiltshire lake...

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