New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Vintage 07 Jan-March

File Updated: 25/03/2007

New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Vintage JAN-MARCH 07

Margery Allingham The Beckoning Lady Pbk published March 2007 by Vintage at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0099506084

Campion's glorious summer in Pontisbright is blighted by death. Amidst the preparations for Minnie and Tonker Cassand's fabulous summer party, a murder is discovered and it falls to Campion to unravel the intricate web of motive, suspicion and deduction with all his imagination and skill.

'Margery Allingham deserves to be rediscovered' - P.D. James

Margery Allingham was a prolific writer who sold her first story at age eight and published her first novel before turning 20. Allingham went on to become one of the preeminent writers who helped bring the detective story to maturity in the 1920s and 1930s.

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Margery Allingham More Work for the Undertaker Pbk published March 2007 by Vintage at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0099506076

In a masterpiece of storytelling, Margery Allingham sends her elegant and engaging detective Albert Campion into the eccentric Palinode household, where there have been two suspicious deaths. And, if poisoning were not enough, there are also anonymous letters, sudden violence and a vanishing coffin. Meanwhile, the Palinodes go about their nocturnal business and Campion dices with danger in his efforts to find the truth.

'Margery Allingham deserves to be rediscovered' - P.D. James

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Margery Allingham Police at the Funeral Pbk published March 2007 by Vintage at Ł6.99 ISBN: 009950734X

When Albert Campion is called in by the fiancee of an old college friend to investigate the disappearance of her uncle, he little expects the mysterious spate of death and dangers that follows among the bizarre inhabitants of Socrates Close, Cambridge. He and Stanislaus Oates must tread carefully, and battle some complex family dynamics, to solve the case.

'Margery Allingham deserves to be rediscovered' - P.D. James

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Paul Malmont The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril Pbk published March 2007 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099507331
Artwork by: Cover illustration: Š Mark Thomas

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Take a journey back to the desperate days of America post the Great Depression, when the country turned to the pulp novels for relief, for hope and for heroes. Meet Walter Gibson, the mind behind "The Shadow", and Lester Dent, creator of "Doc Savage", as they challenge one another to discover what is real and what is pulp. The two writers are rivals, locked in a feud so bitter that not even the untimely death of fellow writer H.P. Lovecraft looks likely to bring about a reconciliation. But when Lovecraft's aunt reveals the existence of a secret that may have led to her nephew's death Gibson is caught up in an encounter with a very sinister nightwatchmen, whilst Dent and his wife soon discover that a mysterious golden statue may be about to bring them some very bad luck. And over from China there is a former warrior whose determination to vanquish his old enemy may be about to bring death to them all... "The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril" is a swash-buckling, breathtaking, romantic epic of magic and love, marriage and fatherhood, ambition and loss, and writers who never forget their deadlines, even when facing the end of the world. In its pages is a tale that deftly weaves the lives of its real life characters into a lie of outrageous proportions that just may tell the truth, but is always thrillingly, unapologetically pulp.

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Tim Parks Cleaver Pbk published February 2007 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099481391

"In the autumn of 2004, shortly after his memorable interview with the President of the United States and following the publication of his elder son's novelised autobiography, cruelly entitled "Under His Shadow", celebrity journalist, broadcaster and documentary film-maker, Harold Cleaver boarded a British Airways flight from London Gatwick to Milan Malpensa, proceeded by Italian railways as far as Bruneck in the South Tyrol and thence by taxi, northwards, to the village of Luttach only a few kilometres from the Austrian border, from whence he hoped to find some remote mountain habitation in which to spend the next, if not necessarily the last, years of his life." Thus opens Tim Parks' new novel and masterpiece. Overweight and overwrought, London's most successful journalist abandons home, partner, mistresses and above all television, the instrument that brought him identity and power. His quest: to climb above "the noise line," to get beyond the e-mail and the mobile phone and the interminable clamour of the public voice of which he himself was such a master. Weeks later, snowed in at five thousand feet, harangued by voices from the past and humiliated by his inability to understand the gothic peasants he relies on for food and whisky, Cleaver discovers that there is nowhere so noisy and so dangerous as the solitary mind.

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Matthew Pearl The Poe Shadow Pbk published January 2007 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099478226

See Review by Ian Morson Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger

This title is set in Baltimore, in 1849. The body of Edgar Allan Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. The public, the press, even Poe's family and friends accept the conclusion that Poe was a second-rate writer who died a drunkard. But none of this deters a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark, an ardent admirer who risks his own career and reputation in a passionate crusade to salvage Poe's. Clark discovers that Poe's last days are riddled with vital unanswered questions. The police, it seems, may be concealing things. But just when Poe's death looks destined to remain a mystery Quentin realises he must find the one person who can solve this strange case: the real-life model for Poe's brilliant fictional detective character, C. Auguste Dupin, the hero of ingenious tales of crime and detection. Clark successfully recruits the man he believes to have inspired Poe's Dupin only to be confronted by another claiming to be the true model and a dangerous race between the two master detectives begins, each seeking to prove he is the real 'Dupin' by solving the mystery of Poe's death. In short order, Clark finds himself enmeshed in sinister machinations involving international political agents, a female assassin, the corrupt Baltimore slave trade and the lost secrets of Poe's final hours. With his own future hanging in the balance, he must turn master investigator himself to unchain his now imperiled fate from that of Poe. "The Poe Shadow" is a beautifully detailed, ingeniously plotted tale of suspense which opens a thrilling new window on the truth behind Poe's demise, literary history's most persistent enigma.

Matthew Pearl is the new shining star of literary fiction - an immensely gifted author' Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code

Matthew Pearl graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude in English and American Literature in 1997, and in 2000 from Yale Law School. He is the author of The Dante Club.

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Michael Symmons Roberts Patrick's Alphabet Pbk published March 2007 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099483785
Artwork by: Cover photograph Š Alamy Images

When a teenage couple is found murdered in their car, Adam Sligo is the only suspect. He is missing, and a manhunt begins, but the letter A is found blazoned on the wall at the murder scene. A killer is at large, and the alphabetical messages he leaves seem to be personal messages. Who is leaving them, and why, is the centre of this urban fear.

Michael Symmons Roberts was born in Preston, Lancashire, in 1963. He has published three previous books of poetry, Soft Keys (1993), Raising Sparks (1999) and Burning Babylon (2001) and is a frequent collaborator with the composer James MacMillan. He is also an award-winning radio writer, and makes documentary films for the BBC.

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Roberts, Michael Symmons Patrick's Alphabet Pbk published March 2007 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099483785

When a teenage couple are found murdered in their car, a boy called Adam Sligo is the only suspect. A manhunt begins. The letter A is found blazoned on the wall at the murder scene and is soon followed, around town, by the other letters of the alphabet, each immaculately painted in red. What do the letters mean? Is Sligo playing games with the police? Or putting a spell on the town? Perry Scholes is mixed up in all this from the start: a man haunted by cars and death - and photographic images of both. He trawls the motorways and edgelands listening to police radio, getting to the car-crash or the crime scene before them. He makes a living selling these shots to the papers. He is the one who spots the painted letters, and begins to document their appearances. As the town is paralysed by fear and paranoia, a vigilante cult emerges, arming itself for the battle against evil. Perry finds himself trapped in a nightmare. A killer is at large, and the alphabetical messages he leaves seem to be personal messages for him.

Thrilling first novel by award-winning poet

Michael Symmons Roberts has published four collections of poetry, including Burning Babylon, which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, and Corpus, which won the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award. He is a frequent collaborator with the composer James MacMillan and is also an award-winning radio writer and documentary film-maker. His first novel, Patrick's Alphabet, was published in 2006.

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D.J. Taylor Kept A Victorian Mystery Pbk published February 2007 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099488744

Egg-stealing in the Scottish highlands, fraud and felony on the streets of London, and strange goings-on in the fens...Captivating and ingenious, full of suspense and teeming with life, "Kept" is a Victorian mystery about the extreme and curious things men do to get what they want. Set in August 1863. Henry Ireland, a failed landowner, dies unexpectedly in a riding accident, leaving a highly-strung young widow. Not far away lives Ireland's friend James Dixey, a celebrated naturalist, who collects strange trophies, a stuffed bear, a pet mouse, and a wolf that he keeps caged in the grounds of his decaying house, lost in the fog on the edge of the fens. The poachers, Dewar and Dunbar, with their cargo of pilfered eggs; Esther the observant kitchen maid, pining to be re-united with her vanished admirer; the ancient lawyer Mr Crabbe made careless by snobbery; John Carstairs, in search of his cousin, the elusive widow; an enigmatic debt-collector, busily plotting an audacious robbery; various low-life henchmen; and Captain McTurk of Scotland Yard, patiently investigating the circumstances of the Mr Ireland's death and many other things besides - all are drawn into a net of intrigue with wide and sinister implications. Ranging from the lochsides of Scotland to the slums of Clerkenwell, and from the gentlemen's clubs of St James's to the Yukon wilds, "Kept" is a gorgeously intricate novel about the urge to possess, at once a gripping investigation of some of the secret chambers of the human heart and a dazzling re-invention of Victorian life and passions.

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Chad Taylor Departure Lounge Pbk published February 2007 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 009948126X

Mark Chamberlain is a man who has everything - a job he loves; the jail tattoos to prove it; a cop on his trail; and a houseful of stolen electrical goods. All he's missing is Caroline May, and she's been gone for twenty-five years. Nobody knows what happened to Caroline, though they still tell the stories. One afternoon, her parents came home and she just wasn't there. They searched all of North Head, all of Auckland, looking for a blonde fourteen-year-old. They covered the city with posters; the cops drowned in paperwork. She was seen on the ferry, on a plane, with a stranger, on her own. She wasn't seen again. Each time Mark breaks into a house - and that's just about every night - he's looking for Caroline. One night Mark's in an apartment and he finds her - well, not her, but a shrine: scrapbooks, photos, her as a baby, her in a swimsuit; Them at school, together. And that sends him spiralling out of control, in a search to solve the puzzle that's haunted him his entire adult life. Chad Taylor is one of New Zealand's finest young writers. His brilliant new novel is at once a gripping thriller and a moving meditation on loss and obsession.

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Fred Vargas The Three Evangelists Pbk published January 2007 by Vintage at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0099469553

See Review by Ian Morson Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger

Sophia Simeonidis, a Greek opera singer, wakes up one morning to discover that a tree has appeared overnight in the garden of her Parishouse. Intrigued and unnerved, she seeks help from her neighbours: Vandoosler, an ex-cop fired from the police for having helped amurdererto escape, and three impecunious historians, Mathias, Marc and Lucien - the three evangelists. They agree - both because they need the money and out of sheer curiosity - to dig around the tree and see if something has been buried there. They find nothing but soil. A few weeks later, Sophia disappears and nobody worries too much until her body is found burnt to ashes in a car. Who killed the opera singer? Her husband, her ex-lover, her best friend? Or could it be her lovely niece recently moved to the capital? They all seem to have a motive. Vandoosler and the three evangelists set out to find the truth.

Fred Vargas was born in Paris in 1957. As well as being a best-selling author in France, she is by training an historian and archaeologist.

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