David Baddie
The Secret Purposes
Pbk published April 2005 by Abacus at £6.99
ISBN: 0349117462
The Secret Purposes, David Baddiel's third novel, takes us into a little-known and still somewhat submerged area of British history: the internment of German Jewish refugees on the Isle of Man during the Second World War. Isaac Fabian, on the run with his young family from Nazism in East Prussia, comes to Britain assuming he has found asylum, but instead finds himself drowning in the morass of ignorance, half-truth, prejudice, and suspicion that makes up government attitudes to German Jews in 1940. One woman, June Murray, a translator from the Ministry of Information, stands out - and when she comes to the island on a personal mission to uncover solid evidence of Nazi atrocities, her meeting with Isaac will have far-reaching consequences for both of them. A haunting and beautifully written tale of love, displacement and survival, The Secret Purposes profoundly questions the way that truth - both personal and political - emerges from the tangle of history.
Alexander McCall Smith
The Sunday Philosophy Club
Pbk published June 2005 by Abacus at £7.99
ISBN: 0349118698
Amateur sleuth Isabel Dalhousie is a philosopher who uses her training to solve unusual mysteries. She edits the Review of Applied Ethics - addressing such questions as 'Truth telling in sexual relationships' - & she also hosts The Sunday Philosophy Club at her house in Edinburgh. Behind the city's Georgian facades its moral compasses are spinning with greed, dishonesty & murderous intent. Instinct tells Isabel that the young man who tumbled to his death in front of her eyes at a concertl didn't fall. He was pushed.
The Sunday Philosophy Club marks new territory - but familiar moral ground - from the author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. With Isabel Dalhousie Alexander Mccall Smith introduces a new & pneumatic female sleuth to tackle murder, mayhem - & the mysteries of life. As her hero WH Auden maintained, classic detective fiction stems from a desire for an uncorrupted Eden which the detective, as an agent of God, can return to us. But then Isabel, being a philosopher, has a thing or two to say about God as well.
McCall Smith is is a Professor of Medical Law as well as an author who has written over 50 books on a wide range of subjects: from Forensic Aspects of Sleep to The Criminal Law of Botswana, The Perfect Hamburger(children's fiction) to Portuguese Irregular Verbs (short stories).
'There is something almost divinely appealing about the way Alexander McCall Smith writes about daily life in Botswana… it is hard to think of a contemporary writer more genuinely engaging…(his) novels are also extremely funny: I find it impossible to think about them without smiling' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday
Jose Carlos Somoza
Art of Murder
Pbk published June 2005 by Abacus at £6.99
ISBN: 0349118833 Artwork by: Cover photograph: © Getty Images
In 2006, the art world has moved far beyond sheep in formaldehyde and the most avant-garde movement is to use living people as artwork. Undergoing weeks of preparation to become 'canvases', the models are required to stay in their pose for ten to twelve hours a day and, as art pieces, they are also for sale. After being exhibited, the 'canvases' can be bought and taken to the purchaser's home, where they are rented for weeks or months. Many beautiful young men and women long to become a 'canvas' - knowing they are a masterpeice and worth millions seems to make all the sacrifices worthwhile - especially if they can be 'painted' by the celebrated artist Bruno Van Tysch. But there is a darker side to this art movement when it is found that the models/works of art are sometimes used in interactive works - snuff movies, where the 'art' is filmed being tortured and killed. Van Tysch's work is being targeted and the investigators must find the killer before the displays of imitations of Rembrandt's masterpieces - the biggest exhibition of 'hyperdramatic art' yet seen - is put on show.