“Absolutely riveting . . . A masterpiece. I defy anyone to foresee the outcome.”—Ruth Rendell The year is 1921. A passionate affair between voracious romance reader Alma Webster and her dentist, Walter Baranov, has led to his wife’s murder. The lovers take flight aboard the Mauretania and the dentist takes the name of Inspector Dew, the detective who arrested the notorious wifekiller Dr. Crippen. But, in a disquieting twist, a murder occurs aboard ship and the captain invites “Inspector Dew” to investigate.
The standalone novel from the critically-acclaimed Peter Lovesey. Rough Cider was nominated for an Edgar Award. It is World War II and American soldiers stationed in rural England have made friends, especially with the local girls. After a dance to celebrate the pressing of the apples into cider, the resentment of the local men leads to violence and a murder. Later, a baby girl is born. Years later, Theo, a university lecturer, is approached by an American girl called Alice. She wants to be told about her father, a GI hanged for murder in Somerset during World War II. As a boy, Theo had been a principal witness for the prosecution. Alice persuades him to revisit the farm where Theo was evacuated, staunchly determined to discover the facts. The horrors of the past take on a frightening immediacy when long-forgotten jealousies come to the surface and another murder is committed.
“If you've never read any of [Lovesey’s] 20-plus books, this wickedly clever, beautifully written story of a murderous clergyman who earns our sympathy while dramatically whittling down his flock should make you an instant convert.”—Chicago Tribune After years spent saving souls, Otis Joy, the rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Foxford, Wiltshire, has found a new calling: ending lives. His young French wife? Anaphylactic shock, what a shame. The bishop? Fell into a quarry. Tragic. It’s not Joy’s fault, really—not that he’s concerned about repentance or absolution these days. He just doesn’t want his other little secret—embezzling church funds to finance a fancy yacht—to be discovered. But when the husband of the new church secretary, Rachel Jansen, turns up dead, it isn’t long before the village starts to gossip and the local constable gets involved. As it turns out, God isn’t the only one who’s always watching.
Book four in the Inspector Lestrade series. It is 1891 and London is still reeling from the horror of the unsolved Ripper murders when Inspector Lestrade (that ‘ferret-like’ anti-hero so often out-detected by the legendary Sherlock Holmes) is sent to the Isle of Wight to investigate a strange corpse found walled up in Shanklin Chine. But this is only the start of the nightmare. It is merely the beginning of a series of killings so brutal, so bizarre and, apparently, so random, that only a warped genius – and a master of disguise – could be responsible. Even when Lestrade pieces together the extraordinary pattern behind the crimes from the anonymous poems sent after each murder, he is no closer to knowing the identity of the sinister, self-styled ‘Agrippa’, the ‘great, long, red-legg’d scissor-man’. It becomes a very personal battle and Lestrade’s desperate race to avert the next death in the sequence takes him all over the country, from London to the Pennines and back, resulting in a portfolio of suspects which covers the entire range of late-Victorian society.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “One of George’s best . . . insightful, tense, and compassionate.”—Entertainment Weekly Balford-le-Nez is a dying seaside town on the coast of Essex. But when a member of the town’s small but growing Asian community is found murdered near its beach, the sleepy town ignites. Intrigued by the involvement of her London neighbor—Taymullah Azhar—in what appears to be a growing racial conflagration, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers arranges to have herself assigned to the investigation. Setting out on her own, this is one case Havers will have to solve without her longtime partner, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley— and it’s one of the toughest she’s ever encountered. For Havers must probe not only the mind of a murderer and her emotional response to a case unsettlingly close to her own heart, but also the terrible price people pay for deceiving others . . . and themselves. Praise for Deception on His Mind “So much fun to read, it’s criminal.”—Newsday “It’s tough to resist the pull of George’s storytelling once hooked.”—USA Today “Falls smartly into place in [George’s] literate, impassioned series, one of today’s best.”—Chicago Tribune “Fascinating . . . there are wrenching stories here, and George conveys them with exceptional grace.”—People
Otto Penzler and the Mystery Writers of America Present A Time of Predators by Joe Gores, winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel The gang was restless, just looking for idle fun. They roughed up a man they thought was a homosexual--but their game got out of hand and their victim was blinded. It was Paula Halstead's bad luck to witness the attack and catch a glimpse of one of the boys. After they got through with her, she killed herself. The police have no leads and can't find the culprits. Paula's husband hires a private investigator to do what the police haven't been able to-with no success. Curt Halstead refuses to give up; he will have his vengeance on the men who raped and tortured his wife, even if it means entering into their world of sex, violence, and murder.
July 1910: A gruesome discovery has been made at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden. Chief Inspector Walter Dew of Scotland Yard did not expect the house to be empty. Nor did he expect to find a body in the cellar. Buried under the flagstones are the remains of Cora Crippen, former music-hall singer and wife of Dr. Hawley Crippen. No one would have thought the quiet, unassuming Dr. Crippen capable of murder, yet the doctor and his mistress have disappeared from London, and now a full-scale hunt for them has begun. Across the Channel in Antwerp, the S.S. Montrose has just set off on its two-week voyage to North America. Slipping in among the first-class passengers is a Mr. John Robinson, accompanied by his teenage son, Edmund. The pair may be hoping for a quiet, private voyage, but in the close confines of a luxury ocean liner, anonymity is rare. And with others aboard looking for romance, or violence, or escape from their past in Europe, it will take more than just luck for the Robinsons to survive the voyage unnoticed. An accomplished, intricately plotted novel, John Boyne's Crippen brilliantly reimagines the amazing escape attempt of one of history's most notorious killers and marks the outstanding American debut of one of Ireland's best young novelists.
Imagine a man who does the most unspeakable things. Imagine the forgiveness he needs. Imgine the pain he gives. Imagine forgiving him. You will. Kris, Tamara, Frauke, and Wolf are four friends who are drifting through their twenties, underemployed and unfulfilled. Sick of being treated badly at work, they decide to start a business of their own: Sorry, an agency that brings the human touch back to corporate life by offering to apologize to those who’ve been unjustly accused, unfairly dismissed and otherwise mistreated. The corporate clients are more than happy to let someone else handle their emotional dirty work, making Sorry an instant success. But one client hides a darker agenda. Expecting an ordinary apology job, Wolf is dispatched to the scene of a crime. In an abandoned apartment, there is a dead woman nailed to the wall. Then his phone rings and the nightmare begins: The client wants to make sure his apology is properly delivered.
Henry Kendall went to sea as a cabin boy at the age of 15. By the time he was 32 he was the captain of an Atlantic liner, and in 1910 shot to fame when he sent a celebrated wireless transmission from the SS Montrose, as she headed out into the Atlantic Ocean: "Have strong suspicions that Crippen, London cellar murderer and accomplice, are among saloon passengers." The message sparked off an extraordinary chase as Inspector Walter Dew of Scotland Yard raced by train to Liverpool, boarded a fast ship to Canada, aiming to arrive before the Montrose, to arrest Dr Crippen. The world watched the drama unfold as the power of wireless communication in law enforcement was proved for the first time. Four years later Kendall was the commander of the RMS Empress of Ireland when she was hit and sunk by a Norwegian coal freighter in the St Lawrence estuary. There were 1,012 lives lost but, by a quirk of fate, Kendall lived. During his life he survived attempted murder, shipwrecks, torpedoes, icebergs, scorpion bites, cannibals, sharks, fevers, flying bombs and even a marauding leopard. Kendall's amazing life is told by Joe Saward, the author of the best-selling "Grand Prix Saboteurs." Four years after Crippen's arrest, Kendall was in command of the RMS Empress of Ireland when she was sunk by a Norwegian coal freighter. There were 1,012 lives lost that night but - by a quirk of fate - Kendall survived. These extraordinary stories are told by the author of best-selling "Grand Prix Saboteurs."
The third detective story in the award-winning Peter Diamond series, from Peter Lovesey. The summons comes at night. Two policemen collect Peter Diamond from his West London flat and drive him to Bath. Once head of the murder squad there, he is now out of touch in his retirement, unaware of an audacious escape from Albany Prison. Four years previously, Diamond headed the investigation of the bizarre murder of a Swedish woman journalist, her mouth stuffed with red roses. Now the convicted murderer is at large and has already kidnapped the daughter of the Assistant Chief Constable. He is demanding that the case be re-examined and he will deal only with Diamond. Winner of the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger and shortlisted for the Edgar Award.
