New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Vintage 08 Jan-March

File Updated: 30/03/2008

New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Vintage JAN-MARCH 08

Margery Allingham Hide My Eyes Pbk published January 2008 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099506092

A quiet, ruthless killer strikes in London's theatreland. Superintendent Luke thinks he has seen the pattern before. Mr Campion wonders what became of the old couple in the country bus who must have witnessed the crime ...The trail leads to an eccentric museum in west London, and to a scrapyard in the East End. As an exercise in suspense, "Hide My Eyes" is the equal of "The Tiger in the Smoke."

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Margery Allingham The China Governess Pbk published January 2008 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099506114

Appearance and reality are not always the same. Timothy Kinnit is rich, handsome and well-bred. He seems to have everything. Then, on the eve of his elopement, he learns that he was adopted, and he is desperate to know who he really is. Someone seems no less keen to stop him finding out. Violence, deception and death bedevil the post-war housing estate that has grown from the ashes of the notorious Turk Street Mile, and the shadow of a long-forgotten murder hangs over it all - until Luke and Campion are finally able to dispel the darkness.

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Niall Griffiths Runt Pbk published March 2008 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099461153

On leaving school a sixteen-year-old boy goes to live with his uncle on a remote Welsh hill-farm. His aunt has recently committed suicide after losing her livestock in the foot-and-mouth epidemic and his uncle has turned, once again, to the bottle. The boy is an innocent, a spiritual savant; a shaman. In one of his ecstatic trances the boy learns that he has an appointed role in the world, which he must discover for himself. During an episode of brutal and climactic violence, he does exactly that. "Runt" is a powerful, disturbing and moving novel that reinvigorates the language of fiction and illuminates domestic tragedy with a penetrating epic light.

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Hitomi Kanehara Autofiction Pbk published February 2008 by Vintage at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0099515989

Rin is flying back from her honeymoon. She's madly in love with her husband, Shin, and the future looks rosy. Then Shin disappears to the bathroom while he thinks Rin is sleeping and she starts to imagine that he has gone to seduce the flight attendant. As her thoughts spiral out of control the phrase 'madly in love' takes on a more sinister meaning. Prizewinning author Hitomi Kanehara's sensational new novel, "Autofiction", follows Rin's life backwards through time from this moment so that we see her when she is eighteen, sixteen and finally fifteen, and a picture of the dark heart and violent past of this disturbed young woman gradually develops.

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Natsuo Kirino Grotesque Pbk published February 2008 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099488930

See Review by Bob Cornwell

Two prostitutes have been murdered in Tokyo. Yuriko had been working as a prostitute all her adult life, starting while still at school, where her stunning beauty compensated for what she lacked in intellect and commanded attention from older men. Kazue worked for a blue-chip company and had good career prospects, but was unpopular with colleagues and felt isolated. She chose to walk the streets at night where she hoped to get noticed. Twenty years previously, both women were educated at an elite school for young ladies, and both exhibited exceptional promise prior to their brutal , unnecessary deaths. How and why did this tragedy occur? With narration from Yuriko's embittered, unattractive sister and through the girls' journals and diaries Kirino allows their shocking story to unfurl. As with "Out", "Grotesque" gets under the skin, and Kirino's analysis of the female psyche grips the reader. The extreme need to succeed, and the vicious desire to be accepted in the bewildering environment of modern life is explored here with acute and chilling insight. "Grotesque" is a masterful and haunting achievement.

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Ian McEwan On Chesil Beach Pbk published January 2008 by Vintage at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0099512793

It is June 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come..."On Chesil Beach" is another masterwork from Ian McEwan - a story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

A short novel of quite remarkable depth, power and poignancy by a writer at the height of his powers

Ian McEwan is a critically acclaimed author of short stories and novels for adults, as well as The Daydreamer, a children's novel illustrated by Anthony Browne. His first published work, a collection of short stories, First Love, Last Rites, won the Somerset Maugham Award. His novels include The Child in Time, which won the 1987 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award, The Cement Garden, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize, Atonement and Saturday.

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Jed Mercurio Ascent Pbk published February 2008 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099468522

Yefgenii Yeremin is a flyer and he is a phantom. In the Korean War, he shoots down more American jets than any other pilot in history. He becomes the legendary ace dubbed 'Ivan, the Terrible'. But the Soviet Union's involvement in Korea must be kept secret, so his name remains unknown, his victories uncelebrated. Exiled to a remote Arctic base, he becomes a spectator to the new battlefield of Cold War rivalry: space. Yefgenii longs to do battle once more with America's finest aviators, but he remains invisible, forgotten ...until the day in 1964, when a man arrives from Moscow, from the Space Committee, in search of a volunteer. Five years later, Yefgenii Yeremin sets off on the greatest mission of all, in a ship named Voskhodyeniye. His destination is the Moon. "Ascent" is the story of how a single act can not only define the meaning of a man's life, but also that of a nation and a species. It is a story of power, beauty and ultimately grace, and it is like no novel you have ever read before.

Jed Mercurio trained at the University of Birmingham Medical School and worked at various hospitals in the West Midlands before becoming a full-time writer in 1994. He wrote the highly acclaimed television drama Cardiac Arrest. His first novel, Bodies, was chosen as one of the five best debuts of 2002 by the Guardian and his television adaptation won the Royal Television Society Award for Best Drama Series of 2005. His second novel,

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Deborah Moggach In the Dark Pbk published March 2008 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099507129

It is the year 1916, pretty young Eithne Clay runs a shabby genteel South London boarding house while her gentle, dreamy husband is off at the War. Her 14 year old son Ralph dotes on his mother, but has adolescent thoughts he'd rather hide from her. Winnie, the young maid, is a homely, goodhearted country girl, rejected by Archie, the cheeky butcher's boy before he too is called up. When the dreaded telegram arrives at the house... things turn from difficult to desperate for the two young women. The lodgers are a curious but necessary burden - the Spooner family, with shell-shocked husband, sad wife and tiny, knowing daughter; Boyce Argyle, man about town and hero to young Ralph but recently missing; and blind Alwyne Flyte, communist and cynic, victim of a gas attack in the trenches. And then along comes the butcher, Neville Turk, big handsome ladies' man, irresistible for his meat, money and brutish confidence, who throws flighty Eithne into a turmoil, but has sinister plans of his own. Winnie and the blind lodger, meanwhile, conduct a strange, erotic liaison based on the fact that he can't see her... And young Ralph, ignored by his mother in favour of the butcher, looks on - feeling the undercurrents of desire, seeing more than he should (of sex, of the nightime dealings of Mr Turk, and what Flyte and Winnie get up to). All the strands come together in a shocking denouement, which turns a coward into a hero, and young Ralph into a man. They are all in the dark, with their dreams, secrets and fantasies. Electric light, new to their world, may be a boon but it reveals both grime and secrets. News of the war is never far away and casts a long shadow. Life is tough on the home front and they're all making do and working the system in different ways, sometimes comic, sometimes tragic and very human.

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Richard Powers The Echo Maker Pbk published February 2008 by Vintage at Ł7.99 ISBN: 0099506025

On a winter night on a remote road in Nebraska, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter's truck turns over in a near fatal accident. His older sister, Karin, his only close relative, returns reluctantly to their hometown to nurse Mark back from a traumatic head injury. But when he emerges from a protracted coma, Mark believes that this woman - who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister - is really an identical impostor. Shattered by her brother's refusal to recognise her, Karin contacts the cognitive neurologist Gerald Weber, famous for his case studies describing the infinitely bizarre worlds of brain disorder. Weber recognises Mark as a very unusual case of Capgras syndrome and is keen to investigate. But what he discovers in Mark begins to undermine even his own sense of self. Meanwhile, Mark, armed only with a note left by an anonymous witness, attempts to learn what happened on the night of his accident. The truth of that evening will change the lives of all three beyond recognition. Set against the spectacular spring migrations of American Sandhill cranes, "The Echo Maker" is a profound and riveting novel that explores how memory, instinct and relationships make us who we are.

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Charles van Onselen The Fox and the Flies: The Criminal World of the Whitechapel Murderer Pbk published March 2008 by Vintage at Ł9.99 ISBN: 0099502828

At the end of the nineteenth century European pimps and 'white slavers' established a hugely successful global market for commercial sex and for three turbulent decades before the First World War, Joseph Silver was central to this hidden world of betrayal, intrigue, lust and sexual slavery. Burglar, gun-runner and trafficker in women on four continents, Silver was a disturbed adolescent, youthful predator and adult misogynist whose notoriety was captured in the most confidential correspondence of a dozen countries in the western world. But what those in charge of law-enforcement agencies kept to themselves was how their officers had attempted to use Silver as an informer to infiltrate syndicates, only to have him outwit them as he moved in the dangerous space between police and prostitutes.In this brilliant study, Charles van Onselen situates the private life of one man amidst the demi-monde of the Atlantic world and casts a brilliant light on the most infamous serial killer of all time - Jack the Ripper.

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Fred Vargas Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand Pbk published January 2008 by Vintage at Ł6.99 ISBN: 0099488965

Between 1943 and 2003, nine people have been stabbed to death with a most unusual weapon: a trident. In each case, arrests were made, suspects confessed their crime and were sentenced to life in prison. One slightly worrying detail: the presumed murderers lost consciousness during the night of the crime and have no recollection of it.
Commissaire Adamsberg is convinced all the murders are the work of one person, the terrifying Judge Fulgence. Years before, Adamsberg's own brother had been the principal suspect in a similar case and avoided prison only thanks to Adamsberg's help. History repeats itself when Adamsberg, who is temporarily based in Quebec for a training mission, is accused of having savagely murdered a young woman he had met. In order to prove his innocence, Adamsberg must go on the run from the Canadian police and find Judge Fulgence.
This is the finest novel yet from the incomparable Fred Vargas.

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