New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From
Michael Joseph
06 July-Sept
New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From
Michael Joseph
JULY-SEPT 06
John Boyne
Next of Kin
Published July 2006 by Michael Joseph at £18.99
ISBN: 0141018798
Aristocrat, lover, gambler, and murderer - it is 1936, and London is abuzz with gossip about the affair between Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson. But the king is not the only member of the aristocracy with a hard decision to make. Owen Montignac, the handsome and charismatic scion of a wealthy land-owning family, is anxiously awaiting the reading of his late uncle's will. For Owen has run up huge gambling debts and casino boss Nicholas Delfy has given him a choice: find GBP50,000 by Christmas - or find yourself six feet under. So when Owen discovers that he has been cut out of the will in favour of his beautiful cousin Stella, it is time to prove just how cunning he can be, and Owen is nothing if not inventive even a royal crisis can provide the means for profit.
Murder is in his blood . . .
It is 1936, and London is abuzz with gossip about the affair between Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson.
Meanwhile charismatic aristocrat Owen Montignac, heir to the vast Montignac fortune, is awaiting the reading of his uncle Peter’s will. For Owen has run up huge gambling debts and Peter’s death has come not a moment
too soon . . .
Except Peter has cut Owen out of his will. And with casino owner Nicholas Delfy on his back Owen comes up with a daring plot to pay off his debts. And he is nothing if not inventive – even a royal crisis can be the means to a murderous end . . .
Featuring an anti-hero to rival Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley, Next of Kin is the first in a trilogy of Montignac crime novels.
John Boyne is also the author of Crippen, The Thief of Time, The Congress of Rough Riders and the recent critically acclaimed novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. He lives in Dublin.
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Ruth Downie
Medicus & the Disappearing Dancing Girls
Published August 2006 by Michael Joseph at £12.99
ISBN: 0718149297
Michael Joseph is delighted to introduce its biggest hardback fiction launch
of 2006 - Medicus and the Disappearing Dancing Girls. This stunningly
original detective novel set in Roman Britain, introduces a significant new
talent in R. S. Downie. Both comic and beguiling, there is already a
significant buzz building around this, the first, of what will become the
Medicus series.
Gaius Petreius Ruso, our fantastically charismatic hero, who spends his time
as a despondent army doctor turned reluctant detective, has been driven to a
distant, damp and depressing outpost of the Roman Empire: Britannia. Life
really couldn't get much worse. However when Ruso turns his hand to rescuing
attractive slave girls; sharing a house with a lazy colleague who is far too
handsome for his own good; and getting dragged into a situation that
suggests a serial killer who may be stalking his local bar, he sets himself
up to find out that being a bit too inquisitive can have far-reaching
consequences.
R.S Downie won the Fay Weldon section of BBC 3's End of Story competition;
and she was also runner-up in the Mail on Sunday's 'Start a Novel'
competition. This is her first novel. She is married with two sons and lives
in Buckinghamshire.
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Dick Francis
Under Orders
Published September 2006 by Michael Joseph at £18.99
ISBN: 0718149971
Best-selling mystery author Dick Francis is ending a six-year hiatus and publishing his first book since the death of his wife and collaborator, Mary Francis.
This fall, G.P. Putnam's Sons will release "Under Orders," his 39th novel. "I am delighted that my family has talked me back into the literary saddle," the British author, 85, said in a statement.
Francis, a former jockey and author of such popular works as "Come to Grief" and "Wild Horses," had worked closely with his wife, who served as his editor, researcher and even co-author. For decades, he averaged a book a year, but had released nothing since her death in 2000.
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Nicci French
Losing You
Pbk published September 2006 by Michael Joseph at £10.99
ISBN: 0718147839
What's more terrifying than your child going missing?
Your child going missing and nobody believing you . . .
Nina Landry's birthday will be full of surprises ? not all of them welcome ... Nina is supposed to be taking her two children on holiday today with her new boyfriend. But the road away from the isolated winter bleakness of Sandling Island seems to be littered with obstacles, frustrating her plans at every turn. Most pressingly of all, her fifteen-year-old daughter, Charlie, has yet to return from a night out . . .
Minute by minute, as Nina's unease builds to worry and then panic, every mother's worst nightmare begins to unravel. Has Charlie run away? Or has something more sinister happened to her? And why will nobody take her disappearance seriously?
As day turns to night on the island and a series of half-buried secrets lead Nina Landry from sickening suspicion to deadly certainty, the question becomes less whether she and her daughter will leave the island for Christmas ? and more whether they'll ever leave it again.
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Katy Gardner
Hidden
Published August 2006 by Michael Joseph at £10.99
ISBN: 0718146816
A nerve-jangling psychological thriller by the author of the acclaimed Losing Gemma
A trail of blood leads DCI Dave Gosworth to the body of Jacqui Jennings, her skull smashed with a chisel. For Dave it will be a long and puzzling case . . .
Forty miles away single mother Melanie Stenning is blissfully unaware of Jacqui’s death. But their stories are about to collide when Melanie falls in love with a stranger.
Fourteen months later, Melanie has a new husband and a new life. But when her seven-year-old daughter Poppy disappears, everything is thrown into question.
Because DCI Gosworth has come knocking on her door with some chilling questions about the man she married . . .
Katy Gardner teaches social anthropology at the University of Sussex. She lives in Brighton with her husband and three children. This is her third novel, following Losing Gemma and The Mermaid's Purse.
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Katy Gardner
Hidden
Pbk published August 2006 by Michael Joseph at £10.99
ISBN: 0718146816
A nerve-jangling psychological thriller by the author of the acclaimed Losing Gemma
A trail of blood leads DCI Dave Gosworth to the body of Jacqui Jennings, her skull smashed with a chisel. For Dave it will be a long and puzzling case . . .
Forty miles away single mother Melanie Stenning is blissfully unaware of Jacqui’s death. But their stories are about to collide when Melanie falls in love with a stranger.
Fourteen months later, Melanie has a new husband and a new life. But when her seven-year-old daughter Poppy disappears, everything is thrown into question.
Because DCI Gosworth has come knocking on her door with some chilling questions about the man she married . . .
Katy Gardner teaches social anthropology at the University of Sussex. She lives in Brighton with her husband and three children. This is her third novel, following Losing Gemma and The Mermaid's Purse.
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Kevin Guilfoile
Wicker
Pbk published August 2006 by Michael Joseph at £6.99
ISBN: 0141021926
Look twenty years or so into the future and imagine a time when it's commonplace to clone babies for infertile couples. Imagine too a world divided by this practice and a band of religious vigilantes determined to bring an end to cloning. Now take the case of Dr Davis Moore, a cloning specialist who's confronted with the brutal murder and rape of his teenage daughter. What would you do if the police drew a blank in their investigations but erroneously sent you a vial containing the killer's DNA ... DNA you could use to clone the killer? Would you be able to create a cuckoo in the nest just so that you could look your daughter's killer in the eye? Justin Finn, at three, looks like any other child. But his face, one day, will be the exact match of the cold-blooded killer of whom he is a perfect genetic replica. And Justin Finn at fifteen has an unhealthy obsession with The Wicker Man, a notorious serial killer who prowls the streets of Chicago. The question is, are you born evil or made evil?
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Doug Johnstone
Tombstoning
Pbk published September 2006 by Michael Joseph at £7.99
ISBN: 0141027576
See Review by
Cath Staincliffe
author of the popular Sal Kilkenny mysteries and the series creator of TV Blue Murder
Your best mate just fell off a cliff in mysterious circumstances and you were the last person to see him alive, what do you do? Well, if you're David Lindsay from Arbroath, you get the hell out of there and don't return. Not for at least fifteen years. Until Nicola Cruickshank - yes, that Nicola, the girl you always fancied but never had the guts to approach - gets in touch and asks - no, demands - that you go back for a school reunion. To the place where it happened. The place you've been running from for fifteen years. Of course you go. Not to belatedly lay your mate to rest, but because you still fancy Nicola. The thing is, if you are David Lindsay, then returning to Arbroath isn't going to lay any ghosts to rest. And when someone else takes a dive off the cliffs - an act the locals have taken to calling 'tombstoning' - while David's there, he has a choice: run away again, or finally find out why people keep dying around him...
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Jim Kelly
The Coldest Blood
Published July 2006 by Michael Joseph at £16.99
ISBN: 0718147537
A man lies hidden in an abandoned boat. Stifling screams, he draws a knife across his arm, letting the blood flow free. Soon he'll be dead - and life can begin again. Three decades later Declan McIlroy, a 39-year-old loner, is found frozen to death in his flat as Arctic temperatures grip the cathedral city of Ely. His is not the only cold death that winter, but nevertheless reporter Philip Dryden has worrying doubts - for it seems Declan may not have been alone as he slowly froze to death. Dryden's suspicions harden when days later he finds the body of Declan's best friend Joe - frozen within a shell of ice on the doorstep of his secluded Fenland farmhouse. Soon, Dryden is picking his way along a disturbing trail of cruelty and betrayal to a brilliantly executed crime, and to a chilling, half-remembered mystery from his own childhood.
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Lesley Pearse
Hope
Published September 2006 by Michael Joseph at £16.99
ISBN: 0718147073
Somerset, 1836, and baby Hope is cast out from a world of privilege as living proof of her mother's adultery. Smuggled away from the Harveys and Briargate House to a nearby village, Hope grows up in the arms of the warm and loving Renton family, unaware of her true identity. But fate has harsh plans for Hope and a chain of events sees her forced to lead a vagabond's existence until she finds the courage to fight back and prove herself a fearless and able nurse, a vocation that takes her to the horrific battlefields of the Crimea. But the secrets of the past are not yet done with Hope Renton and she must return to England to face the legacy of her birth. With the storytelling magic that has won Lesley Pearse millions of fans, "Hope" is the portrait of a remarkable woman who will never let the world - or injustice - bring her down.
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Daniel Silva
Prince of Fire
Published August 2006 by Michael Joseph at £18.99
ISBN: 0718149300
On a bright, late-winter morning in Rome, a terrible explosion rips a hole in the Israeli embassy. Moments later, four gunmen cut down the survivors as they stagger from the burning building. Art restorer Gabriel Allon, working in Venice on an altarpiece, is hastily recalled to Israel and drawn back into the heart of the secret service he had hoped to leave behind. For the repercussions of the blast have led to a disturbing revelation: a dossier that strips away Allon's secrets and lays bare his history - a dossier that fell into terrorist hands. Now Allon must track an elusive master terrorist across a landscape drenched in generations of blood. And soon the trail turns in on itself, until - finally - he can no longer be certain who is stalking whom.
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P.J. Tracy
Snow Blind
Published September 2006 by Michael Joseph at £12.99
ISBN: 0718147596
When the first snow falls in a small Minneapolis town, the whole community takes part in a carnival of innocent fun. By the end of the day, the park is full of snowmen. But when the snow melts, it becomes graphically obvious that somebody's fun wasn't entirely innocent. Two bodies are found in the snowmen, and a day later, in a nearby county, rookie sheriff Iris Rikker makes a similar discovery. Soon Detectives Gino and Magozzi are heading north in the midst of the worst blizzard seen in Minneapolis for years to join the two investigations. But some things should remain buried. And as the cases unravel, it seems the snowmen weren't alone in hiding dark secrets. The old barn next to Sheriff Rikker's isolated farmhouse also appears to have some strange connection to the killings. Could the ghosts said to haunt the place be real? Or will the truth turn out to be even more shocking and far more dangerous?
Superbly thrilling from the first page to the last, the latest best-seller from the author who brought you "Want to Play?", "Live Bait" and "Dead Run" is back at his terrifying best.
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