New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Serpent's Tail 1999 Jan-March

File Updated: 18/12/2006

New Crime & Mystery Fiction Titles From Serpent's Tail JAN-MARCH 1999

Jimmy Boyle Hero of the Underworld Pbk published February 1999 by Serpent's Tail at Ł9.99 ISBN: 185242608X

After eleven hard year 'inside', hero is out. Having been subjected to some tortures experiences in his time, he knows a thing or two about survival. Released into a mystifying and dangers world of spivs ,crooks, bad jobs and lousy accommodation, he slowly starts to fight back.
Hero soon finds himself leading a gang of former mental hospital patients - Lockjaw, Bonecrusher and Sligo - in a stand against the might of the underworld. Not without their weaknesses, the odds are against them. But when you've nothing to loss but your chain, why not?
Hero outlandish plan to thwart his persecutors escalates from stealing a prize bull, to grand theft, and on to the most dangerous heist in town. By the end he'll either be free at last , or six feet under....

Jimmy Boyle's startling first novel is a heartfelt, tragicomic tale of the disadvantaged, of mental illness and abused. It is also a darkly humorous, uplifting story of redemption, and of getting even in the strangest way imaginable Truly an original work of fiction, it is unlike anything else you will read this year.

Jimmy Boyle was born in 1944 and brought up in the notorious Gorbals area of Glasgow. He embarked on a life of crime, eventually being sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder he did not commit. The brutality of the prison regime is graphically described in his two autobiographies, A Sense of Freedom, which was also made into a film, and The Pain of Confinement. A playwright and renowned sculptor, Jimmy Boyle and his wife Sarah run the Gateway Exchange Trust, a fund which helps people in disadvantaged areas and young people at risk.
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Woody Haut Neon Noir Pbk published February 1999 by Serpent's Tail at Ł9.99 ISBN: 1852425474
Artwork by: Cover design: Keenan. Home

Neon Noir, the follow-up to Woody Haul's highly regarded Pulp Culture, brings his story of American crime fiction up to date. From the Kennedy assassination to the Vietnam War and Watergate, through Reaganomics to Irangate and Whitewater, Neon Noir is a roller coaster ride through the American nightmare.
Haut investigates the dark side of America through the work of crime writers such as James Ellroy, Elmore Leonard, Waiter Mosley, James Lee Burke, Lawrence Block, James Sallis, Charles Willeford, Jim Thompson, Richard Stark, Jerome Charyn, Sara Paretsky, George P Pelecanos, Vicki Hendricks, KC Constantine, George V Higgins and James Crumley.
Mapping the fissures and scars of America's psychogeography and morally ambiguous shadowlands, Neon Noir also considers the difference between past and present hardboilers, the impact of war and journalism on noirists, the portrayal of cities, the aesthetics of crime fiction, and the future of this most complex genre.

Praise for Pulp Culture:
'Top marks' Time Out
'Brilliantly analyses the paperbacks that preempted the dystopian worlds of film directors David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino' The Observer
'Like the fiction it explores, Pulp Culture is a taxicab from hell, speeding its passenger, the reader, through postwar America' LA Weekly
Woody Haut is a writer and journalist and lives in both London and France.
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Chester Himes If He Hollers Let Him Go Pbk published February 1999 by Serpent's Tail at Ł6.99 ISBN: 1852427043
Artwork by: Cover design: John Oakey. Cover photo: Franck Sauvaire
See Review by John Baker - author of the Sam Turner mysteries and one of Britain's most highly acclaimed writers

Robert Jones has a lot going for him - a steady job, a steady relationship and plenty of prospects... until a white woman accuses him of rape and, all of a sudden, his prospects seem a lot less bright.
Immediately recognised as a masterful expose of racism in everyday life, If He Hollers Let Him Go is Chester Himes' first book, originally published in 1945.

'Youthful, insulting, risky, brash, bad-assed, revolutionary, violent, and struts about as if to say, here come cocky Chester Himes, you litterateurs,
and I hope you don't like it' Ishmael Reed
'The greatest, most brutally powerful novel of the best black novelist' Chicago Tribune
Chester Himes was born in Missouri in 1909 and died in Spain in 1984. He wrote several acclaimed Harlem thrillers and novels, including The Crazy Kill, The Real Cool Killers, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Lovely Crusade and an autobiography, The Quality of Hurt.
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Diane Langford Left For Dead Pbk published March 1999 by Serpent's Tail at Ł7.99 ISBN: 1852423692

Montse works for the council. She's what you might call a snooper. Far as she's concerned she's just doing her bit, making sure all's fair and equitable in our brave and properly costed New Labour world. Only person who isn't so keen is Montse's dear old mum, an old school anarchist. You ask her, she'd tell you Montse's a class traitor. That's the way she talks, you see. Old-fashioned.
Never mind though, 'cause Montse's getting so good at her job that her boss Gwendoline Rhodes - that's the one they used to call Red Owen - has lined Montse up as her personal security consultant. Montse wasn't so good at that though - Gwendoline fell out of a high window. And it would suit a lot of people if Montse took the rap.
In Montse Letkin, Diane Langford has created a true heroine for our times, a bruised and cynical young woman learning the hard way that the personal really is political.

Left For Dead is a taut, subversive London thriller set about ten minutes into the future. In a city where privatisation is the watchword and politics a dirty word. In a city where the weak and the homeless had best fend for themselves. In a city of secrets and lies. The legacies of Graham Greene and Alice Miller collide in this unsettling, visionary slice of millennial noir.

Diane Langford is the author of Shame About the Street, a novel about Fleet Street. She was born in New Zealand and moved to England in 1963, since when she has been active in the trade union, women's liberation and anti-racist movements.
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Martin Limon Slicky Boys Pbk published February 1999 by Serpent's Tail at Ł7.99 ISBN: 1852425784

Sometimes anything can be bought - secrets of state, secrets of the soul, secrets of the flesh. For two peace time soldiers living on the edge, the line between trust and betrayal, life and death is razor thin - and just as dangerous.
George Sueno and Ernie Bascom, the maverick duo who first appeared in Limon's hugely successful, Jade Lady Burning, are back on the case. George is steeped in the rhythms of East LA while Ernie, from the mean streets of Detroit, dances to his own, strange internal drummer. In the Criminal Investigation Division of the US Army in Korea, both are pulled into an exotic, lethal underworld of a culture they barely understand, dominated by the fearsome slicky boys, kings of the black market. Checking every bar to ensure the bourbon is chilled, and the women hot, Sueno and Bascom are drawn into a savage murder that could end their careers.., or their lives.

'Simply oozes star potential... Sergeants Bascom and Sueno look set to become one of the great sleuth double-acts of contemporary culture' Arena
'Cliff-banging action... thrilling.. unexpected' The Wall Street Journal 'Quietly brilliant.. the moral vision is as cold as a Seoul bar girl's gaze' The Oregonian
Martin Limón served for 20 years with the US Army, 10 of them in Korea. His first novel, Jade Lady Burning, launched him straight into the top rank of American thriller writers.
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Eric Reich The Lost Son Pbk published February 1999 by Serpent's Tail at Ł8.99 ISBN: 1852425466

London. Leonard Spitz is thirty years old and missing. Mrs Spitz is a worried mother, Mr Spitz a resigned father, and their daughter Deborah as proud as her looks and as cold as the family's money. All reckon the, missing man has succumbed to his fondness for drugs again. But private detective Xavier Lombard finds out that before vanishing Leonard had got involved with people who get up in the morning to sell children for a living.
Meanwhile, Bill the pet shop owner gets himself a puppy for company, Perkins the butcher-landlord has to raise his rent, and three bored Los Angeles teenage girls kill time in a children's playground. And on Hampstead Heath, a little man with a cell-phone and a pony-tail finds life really hard trying to shoot a movie scene;..
For Lombard, an ex-cop who's lying low in London after things in Paris got a bit too hot, this is a job with hidden costs, a journey to a he'd rather not visit.

The Lost Son is a stylish contemporary thriller and a journey into a heart of darkness. It marks the debut of a remarkable novelist and an unforgettable private detective.

Eric Reich was born in Paris in 1960 and lived in France, Belgium and Israel before moving to Britain. He has written drama for television and film.
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Juan Jose Saer The Investigation Pbk published January 1999 by Serpent's Tail at Ł9.99 ISBN: 1852422971

Translated by Helen Lane

He's called 'the monster of the Bastille'. He's brutally murdered 27 elderly women in one area of Paris and Chief Inspector Morvan is in charge of the investigation into this macabre and sinister case. Every victim seems to have invited the killer into her home, to have enjoyed a meal, even celebrated, before her death. And each time, the killer has meticulously bathed himself, leaving the scene of the crime without a single fingerprint.
In Argentina, meanwhile, an untitled manuscript by an unnamed author is discovered amongst the papers of a missing poet, known for his hatred of the novel.

The Investigation seeks to unravel two cases - one criminal, one literary. Part police investigation, part historical account and part novel, it shows Saer at his virtuoso best, orchestrating the different layers effortlessly. Hitchcockian, blending suspense with superb descriptions of everyday life, The Investigation is both a crime novel and a journey into the psyche of horror.

Juan Jose Saer was born in Santa Fe in 1937 and has lived in Paris for 30 years. In 1988 he was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize for his novel The Event. The leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation, Saer's work has been translated into all major languages.
Helen Lane's translations from Spanish and French have earned her the National Book Award and the Gulbenkian and PEN Club Translation Prizes.
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