Patricia Cornwell's new novel is another highly entertaining police procedural featuring the fast-moving adventures of Richmond's police department.
Judy Hammer has been hired with the brief to bring sanity and order to a city in escalating chaos. Aided by her Deputy, Virginia West, and Andy Brazil, now a full-time police officer, she faces the most difficult assignment of her career. Not only do the established police force resent their presence, the city's institutions have over-high expectations of the new team.
Their work to eradicate teenage gangs, prevent the robberies from cash dispensers and the infighting inside the department comes to a shuddering halt when a virus invades the police computer system. Their screens are frozen into an image of blue fish. The same blue fish also appears on the statue of Jefferson Davis which dominates the city's cemetery. The once-proud statue has been transformed by graffiti into a black basketball player with the number 12 on his jersey.
A gang called the Pikes claim it is their symbol - the same gang who are probably involved in the robberies taking place all over the city.

In Southern Cross, Patricia Cornwell brilliantly captures the character of the city as well as the quirky eccentricities of her key players.

Patricia Cornwell began her career as a police reporter, and then worked for more than six years as a computer analyst in the Chief Medical Examiner's office in Virginia where she witnessed hundreds of autopsies. This experience inspired her to create Dr Ray Scarpetta, the intelligent and compassionate Chief Medical Examiner who has featured in nine bestselling novels. Taking a break from writing about Dr Scarpetta, she wrote a police procedural called Hornet's Nest which was hailed as:
'riveting, stay-up-all-night chiller' by Elle
'believable and incisive' The Times
'fast-moving, gripping and hugely entertaining' Sunday Telegraph.

A Blackwater Bay Mystery

Laura Brandon didn't want to work for her uncle, so she recommended her friend Julie for the job of physiotherapist at the exclusive Mountview Clinic. A few months later Julie is brutally murdered in the woods that surround the clinic.
Laura, tinged with guilt, wants to find out why - so she offers to be Julie's replacement. It isn't long before she begins to regret her impulsive move. Confronted by tight-lipped nurses, inter-staff feuds, and strange tales about a shadowy evil that lurks in the woods, she realises that Mountview and the town of Blackwater may have something to hide. But playing detective is rather awkward when the clinic's owner is your uncle, and you have no idea where to begin.
As Laura and Sheriff Matt Gabriel struggle to find leads, ex-cop Tom Gilliam, a patient embittered, skilled and rude enough to put his nose where it shouldn't be, agrees to help.
Then there's another murder, eerily similar to the first.
Is there a psychotic killer on the loose? However terrifying, that would be a simple explanation. But Laura is sceptical. Why are the clinic's drug supplies being tampered with? What is the explanation for the disappearing trust fund? Is it possible that her own uncle has assisted in the sudden deaths of two apparently healthy and wealthy patients?

Fast-paced, entertaining and full of misdirections, Paula Gosling's latest tale from the Great Lakes brilliantly confirms her mastery of the art of the murder mystery.

'Gosling plots fiendishly and writes angelically' Sunday Times

Billy Straight was in Griffith Park when he saw the man and women drive into the car park. Too young to be a park alone at night, Billy then had the misfortune to witness a cruel and bloody murder.
The boy is a runaway. There is no one he can tell; no one he will ever confide in, if he wants to stay away from the trailer park called home.
The dead woman is Lisa Ramsey, the gorgeous ex-wife of Cart Ramsey, famous for playing a television sleuth. Detective Petra Conner and her partner, Stu Bishop are called in to investigate - with kid gloves. The top brass at LAPD are anxious not to court the insane media frenzy that followed the O J Simpson case.
Petra is not getting her usual support from Stu, nor have any further clues appeared to help her track down the murderer. Then Lisa's father, angry at the lack of progress, publicises a reward for finding Billy Straight. Only Petra realises the consequences of this rash promise. Billy is in mortal danger from any maniac wanting the reward - and, most of all, from Lisa's killer.
Billy is found by the caretaker of a Jewish synagogue. The man seems friendly and he offers him protection, but he is not convinced that he should give himself up to the police. The boy has only his instinct to trust, but without his vital evidence Petra cannot proceed much further. She must find young Billy Straight before he becomes the latest victim of a sadistic killer.

Jonathan Kellerman has created two powerful characters in Billy Straight and Petra Conner, whose thoughts and actions will engage the sympathy and interest of all his readers. This makes Billy Straight an unusually compelling psychological thriller of the first rank.

A Peter Diamond Mystery

The remains of a human hand are brought into Bath Police Station in a pizza box. It was found in a vault lying at the entrance to the Roman Baths.
The same vault was an underground cellar below the site of the house in the Abbey Churchyard where Mary Shelley wrote most of Frankenstein.
Superintendent Peter Diamond gets on the case, which becomes more complicated by a visiting American professor, Joe Dougan, obsessed by the under-publicised connection between Bath and the legendary horror story. Dougan attempts to track down the origins of a book of poetry by John Milton which he is sure belonged to Mary Shelley.
When the professor's wife goes missing, Diamond targets him as prime suspect. Then a woman's body is washed up in the Avon, which sets the indefatigable detective a further challenge. The corpse is Peg Redbird, a canny antique dealer, whose shop Dougan had visited earlier that day in search of Mary Shelley's writing box. A key had not been found to unlock the box, and the professor had left the shop reluctantly.
When a police colleague is found in a field after a vicious attack, Peter Diamond's dogged yet brilliantly intuitive investigative skills prove once again that he is the best in the business.

"One of the very best of the current generation of crime writers" Evening Standard

The hero is K.C. Doone, a Wall Street Trader (it's what he did best), with a beautiful younger wife (so what if she was number 3), a slightly tipsy mother (if nothing else, she was out of his way in Florida) and a constant supply of M&Ms (because he really liked M&Ms). He's a guy who thought he had life knocked. At least, he did until the day that life bit him in the nose.
Before that Monday morning was over, he lost his ob, discovered his wife in bed with her personal trainer, and learned that his mother was about to get thrown out of her tiny apartment by one of the richest men in the world.
Before that Monday was done, K.C. Doone also discovered that, sometimes, even confirmed cowards have to fight back.
It took a goulash dinner to show him how to earn a living; an unforgettable cast of misfits to help him don his suit of armour; a defrosted laptop computer to point him in the right direction; a Grand Tour of Europe to seek out the elusive Sir Tommy; a misdialed phone number to a grown-up lady to give him the courage to go on; and a faulty lift in London to change his life forever.

As for the unmistakable resemblance between Sir Tommy and Sir Jimmy, Robinson warns 'Names have been changed, but certainly not to protect the innocent.'
With warmth, humour and his unique eye for life's absurdities, Jeffrey Robinson turns one man's adventure in the real world into the 'feel good' novel of the year.

Praise for Jeffrey Robinson's previous novels:
The Margin of the Bulls and The Monk's Disciples
Fast, funny and full of wise-cracks' Mail on Sunday
'Disgracefully entertaining' Daily Mail
[Robinson] has taken stories that the libel laws would not allow him to tell as non-fiction ' Sunday Times
'A warmly funny, richly human novel crammed with great characters and wonderful digressions... like going out to dinner with your most entertaining friend ' Val McDermid