New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From
Pocket Books
2004 Jan-March
New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From
Pocket Books
JAN-MARCH 2004
Mary Higgins Clark
Pretend You Don't See Her
Pbk published February 2004 by Pocket Books at £6.99
ISBN: 0743484339
Artwork by: Cover photograph: Michael Trevillion
What happens when a young woman is accidentally caught up in a dangerous murder investigation, having merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time?
What happens when she is placed under protective care, forced to give up her identity and move to another part of the country, at least until the killer can be firmly identified and apprehended?
What happens when in her new life she meets and falls in love with the perfect man, only she can't marry him because she can't tell anyone - even him, especially him - who she really is?
Pretend You Don't See Her, Mary Higgins Clark's most brilliant and terrifying novel yet, is filled with the chilling, spine-tingling suspense which has become her hallmark.
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Mary Higgins Clark
We'll Meet Again
Pbk published February 2004 by Pocket Books at £6.99
ISBN: 0743484312
The haunting new suspense thriller from the immensely popular author of You Belong to Me and Pretend You Don't See Her
Cary Lasch, a young and respected doctor, is found dead at his desk, his skull crushed by a blow from a bronze Remington sculpture. The murder stuns his Connecticut community - especially when his beautiful young wife, Molly, is arrested and charged with his murder. Molly claims to have no memory of the crime, but the evidence against her is overwhelming.
Six years later, on Molly's release from prison, she reasserts her innocence in front of reporters gathered at the prison gates. Among them is an old schoolfriend, Fran Simmons, who is currently working as an investigative reporter for a true-crime television series.
Molly convinces Fran to research and produce a programme on Mary's death, but Fran has a second agenda in agreeing to this - to learn the truth about her own father's suicide fourteen years earlier. And she soon finds herself enmeshed in a tangled web of intrigue and menace that leads to more deaths and more unanswered questions about Cary Lasch's death. As her investigation proceeds, there are those who know they must make a choice: face ruin, or eliminate Fran.
Mary Higgins Clark is the author of seventeen novel and three short-story collections, all of which have been international bestsellers. She lives in Saddle River, New Jersey.
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Mary Higgins Clark
The Second Time Around
Pbk published January 2004 by Pocket Books at £6.99
ISBN: 0743467736
Once again told in the first person like DADDY'S LITTLE GIRL, THE SECOND TIME AROUND is Mary at her very best, with a family living in the aftermath of disgrace and the national limelight, and a corporate scandal that is straight out of today's headlines. A man who was implicated in a major corporate scandal involving billions of dollars and the bankruptcy of a great American corporation has vanished mysteriously, presumed to have killed himself. Encouraged by her psychiatrist, his widow embarks on her own investigation of the corporate catastrophe. But certain people involved, who have been living on the billions of dollars they made while blaming her husband for everything that happened, are perturbed by her meddling and are desperate to silence her. And in the process, she discovers an even more shocking surprise about her husband...
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Roderic Duncan
Breakbeat
Pbk published February 2004 by Pocket Books at £6.99
ISBN: 0743450205
'Written with confidence, skill and sheer page-turning compulsion, this is what
contemporary British crime fiction should be: unafraid to ask difficult questions of
our society, knowing the answers are never truly black and white. It's hard to believe
this is Duncan's first novel.'
Martyn Waites, author of Born Under Punches
'Duncan asks some profound questions. There's a hell of a lot going on and the pages
turn at a rapid pace. An impressive debut'
Big Issue
Backlash, was shortlisted for the CWA's John Creasey Award for the best first
crime novel of 2003.
With it's energetic pace, compelling style, gritty atmosphere and gripping plot
Breakbeat is the second novel from the acclaimed author of Backlash.
Daz Croxley. An unemployable, inner-city dwelling retro-punk. Illiterate because of
his dyslexia - but possessed of his own peculiar intelligence. Struggling to pay off his
corrupt landlord, Daz loots an electronics shop during an inner-city riot. Included in
his bounty is a handful of sequentially-numbered £20 notes.
Daz can't know that this money comes from a vastly larger hoard, the product of a
fraudulent property deal, a hoard for which men have already died. But others know.
The architect of the fraud for one - serving his jail term but still with a dangerously
long reach. Police officers - not all batting for the same team. Other criminals out for
what they can get.
When word leaks out that Daz knows the location of the money, his life and the lives
of his few real friends are in peril. His only hope is to play his pursuers off against
each other in a deadly game of bluff and double bluff.
Leicester-based Rod Duncan is a house-husband in his mid-
thirties, whose wife teaches English to asylum seekers. Born in Wales, Rod Duncan
moved to Taiwan in 1989, where he established an environmental education
development programme on behalf of the Baha'i community. He returned to live and
work in Leicester in 1993.
Further information at www.rodduncan.co.uk.
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Joseph Geary
Spiral
Pbk published January 2004 by Pocket Books at £6.99
ISBN: 0743460944
The most compelling and disturbing thriller since Silence Of The Lambs.
For six years, Nicholas Greer has been working on a biography of the late British painter, Frank Spira. Then comes the call that changes his life forever. Former art critic Barb Segal informs Nick that she's just bumped into Spira's ex-lover, Jacob Grossman: who disappeared in 1972 and has never been seen since - until now. When Nick tracks him down in New York, Grossman mentions a mysterious painting, The Incarnation, which Spira was alleged to have painted in Tangier in the late 1950s. If it really exists, this painting would be worth over USD 6 million. An hour after this meeting, Grossman is brutally murdered. A prime suspect in the ensuing police investigation, Nick's only hope of proving his innocence is to find out the truth about the painting. What exactly happened in Tangier in 1957? And just who is the sinister Collector who seems to be shadowing Nick? The truth about Spira's elusive masterpiece is more horrific, more shocking than Nick could ever have imagined.
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Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Lucifer's Dragon
Pbk published March 2004 by Pocket Books at £6.99
ISBN: 0743478274
See Review by
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger
'Grimwood packs every sentence with so much meaning that you'll
want to go back„, dazzling, seductive and pointed' - Independent
'Dazzling panache and an acute satirical eye'- The Times
Passion di Orchi is no more than the obscenely rich daughter of a West Coast mafia
boss - until she decides to rebuild Venice.
In the middle of the Pacific.
A century later, with New Venice ossified into a puritanical elegance, the
daughter of Count Ryuchi slips away from her father's palazzo, out to the
levels to play Lucifer's Dragon. A multi-level, self-perpetuating, true 3-D trawl
through the Apocalypse, Lucifer's Dragon is coded so the game never repeats
its own failures. But an altercation in a bar puts Karo on a collision course with
NVPD officer Angeli, drafted in by media giant CySat to investigate a murder
she knows way too much about.
And then there's Razz, the silver exotic. Too tired and jaded to keep living,
she takes on the job of guarding CySat's ultimate boss, the ten-year-old
Aurelio. With all the high tech security in place, it should be a walk in the
park. But the last thing Razz sees is CySat's child-ruler making too close an
acquaintance with an Uzi, and then she wakes up in Zurich. Dead...
- '... the British writer most likely to emulate
William Gibson's mainstream success'- SFX
'Grimwood has successfully mingled fantasy with reality to make an
unusual, believable and absorbing mystery'- Sunday Telegraph
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Denis Hamill
A Long Time Gone
Pbk published January 2004 by Pocket Books at £7.99
ISBN: 0743407105
A 49-year-old divorced journalist returns to his old neighbourhood for his father's wake and tries to exorcise the demons of 1969 - a year that saw his life shattered in a purple haze of drugs and violence between the working class and the counter-culture. He also pieces back together the lost love of his life with a woman, now a widowed businesswoman, whose father's unsolved murder remains part of the puzzle of his life.
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Michael McClelland
Oyster Blues
Pbk published March 2004 by Pocket Books at £6.99
ISBN: 0743477316
No description really does this book justice - only reading it does. But let us say this is about a man, a woman, a boat, the mob, guns, oysters and a mysterious coffin.
This fast-paced and funny thriller, to quote the author, 'was inspired by a blood-thirsty deerfly that once came after me on an otherwise pleasant North Florida beach. I found myself doing the beach-bug shuffle-step, slap, swat, step a little faster - and wondering if the locals carried that walk with them wherever they went. If one of those locals, say, a bright but unhappy waitress from an Appalachicola oyster bar - took that walk south to Miami, what would the big city make of her? And what would she make of the big city? Would she be enchanted, or would she come down with a bad case of Oyster Blues?'
Oyster blues is all fun, with memorable and quirky characters, including our heroine, Jane Ellen Ashley, a dirt-poor oyster-schucker with electric blue eyes who loves nothing more than to read - until she meets Happy Harry Harper and then the games and suspense begin.
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Jill Morrow
Angel Cafe
Pbk published March 2004 by Pocket Books at £6.99
ISBN: 0743475739
An unexpected psychic reading at trendy Angel cafe confirms Katerina Piretti's belief that her fiance, reporter Peter Dulaney, did not commit suicide two years earlier. Compelled to learn the truth behind Peter's death, Kat ventures into the world of fortune-telling. In the process, she ends up trying to prove her suspicion that Tia Melody, Angel Cafe's all too accurate psychic reader, is nothing but a fraud. Maybe she'll figure out why Stephen Carmichael, Angel Cafe's sceptical owner, has started receiving unexplained 'messages' that seem to shed light on Peter's death. However, the most intriguing of all, is the question that Kat neither expects or wants to answer: What if Valentine, the entity Tia claims to channel, is not fictional after all? Despite her own scepticism, Kat finds herself in a battle for survival against a foe whose reach stretches far beyond the lace curtains and whimsical memorabilia of Angel cafe.
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Jonathan Nasaw
Fear Itself
Pbk published February 2004 by Pocket Books at £6.99
ISBN: 0743450647
A spine-tingling psychological thriller from the author of The Girls He
Adored
Dorie Bell contacts FBI Special Agerrt E.L Pender because she is afraid.
Last year she attended a convention for Persons with Specific Phobia
Disorder- Since then, three attendees have died under strange circumstances.
Carl Polander was afraid of heights. So why would he have jumped from the
nineteenth floor of a building? Mara Agajanian was afraid of blood. So how
could she have cut her own wrists in the bathtub? Kimberley Rosen had
pnigophobia. Fear of suffocation. She was fished out of a canal - but there
was no water in her lungs.
Dorie herself suffers from prosoponophobia. Fear of masks. She suspects
there may be a serial killer on the loose. Someone who, qurte literally,
enjoys scaring his victims to death. Dorie's right. But she has no idea just
how close to herthe killer is ...
Jonathan Nasaw lives in Pacific Grove, California. Fear Itself is his
second riveting thriller to feature FBI Agent Pender.
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Harold Schechter
Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial
Pbk published March 2004 by Pocket Books at £6.99
ISBN: 0671014501
They call nurses 'angels of mercy' - and to all appearances, Jane Toppan fit that description. Besides her obvious competence, she seemed to be a sensitive, sympathetic woman who had worked for some of Boston's best families. Of course, none of her employers know anything about Jane's early years. They didn't know about her mother's tragic death when Jane was just an infant - or her father's subsequent insanity, which impelled him to stitch his eyelids together one day in his Boston tailor shop. They weren't aware of Jane's own suicide attempts after being jilted by her fiance, or the morbid obsessions she displayed during her student nursing years at a Cambridge hospital, where her bizarre fascination with autopsies became a source of dismay to her supervisors. It wasn't until members of the Davis family began dropping like flies in the summer of 1901 that the terrible truth about the skilled, seemingly compassionate nurse finally came to light. Far from being an 'angel of mercy,' Jane Toppan turned out to be one of America's most bloodthirsty 'angels of death.'
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Martyn Waites
Born Under Punches
Pbk published March 2004 by Pocket Books at £6.99
ISBN: 0743449517
See Review by
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series
'One of the brightest stars in the British crime writing firmament
John Connolly
Set in the author's native north east and centring on the miners' strike of
1984 – one of the 20th century's longest and most bitter labour disputes -
this tautly-plotted thriller follows the intertwined lives of five
characters all linked in various ways to the strike. Moving seamlessly
between 1984 and the present day, Born Under Punches reveals the strike's
unforeseen and devastating repercussions - not only for those directly
involved, but for future generations too.
'Martyn Wartes stands out in the crowded field of young British noir writers
.. . with his bruised characters, raw-edged dialogue and extraordinary night
vision' New York Times
Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Martyn Waites now lives in Essex. A former
market trader; bar manager and stand-up comic, he is now a professional
actor; a career he combines with writing. Martyn is Writer in Residence at
Huntercombe Young Offenders' Institution.
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