Crime Fiction 7


71220 CLOSED CIRCLE by Robert Goddard


It is 1931 and the new and luxurious transatlantic liner Empress of Britain is on her eastward passage. Among the first class passengers on board are two English confidence tricksters, making a discreet exit from a little awkwardness they have left behind them in the US. A chance meeting on deck brings them a tempting new target in the shape


of Miss Charnwood and her niece the beautiful Diana. It’s a trick they have pulled before with some success - charm the daughter into an engagement to marry, then get the father to buy you off. Confidently they make a pact - whichever of them wins Diana’s love will share his fortune with the other. But who could imagine that a violent death would find its way into their neat little scheme or that they would stumble into something much darker and deeper. A splendidly old-fashioned affair full of thuggery and skulduggery, double cross, plot and counter plot. 430pp in paperback. New reprint of the 1993 original. £7.99 NOW £3


P. D. JAMES


‘When I settled down in the mid 1950s to begin my first novel, it never occurred to me to make a start with anything other than a detective story.’


68735 PRIVATE PATIENT by P. D. James


When the investigative journalist Rhoda Gladwyn is found murdered in a private hospital for cosmetic surgery in Dorset, strings are pulled by a fellow-patient to ensure that Commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are put on the case. Dalgliesh is in the middle of meeting his future father-in-law when he gets the call. The cast of suspects gathered


at Cheverell Manor private clinic include the Harley Street surgeon Mr. Chandler-Powell, the beautiful Helena Cressett, the assistant surgeon Marcus Westhall, about to leave for Africa, and his sister Candace, who has lost her academic job. When Robin Boyton arrives, a figure from the past intent on blackmail, the scene is set for further violence. 395pp. £18.99 NOW £4


71378 BLACK TOWER: An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery by P. D. James


Commander Dalgliesh is recuperating from a life- threatening illness when he receives a call for advice from an elderly friend who works as a chaplain in a home for the disabled on the Dorset coast. Dalgliesh arrives to discover that Father Baddeley has recently and mysteriously died, as has one of the patients at Toynton Grange. Evidently the home is not quite the caring community it purports to be. Dalgliesh is determined to discover the truth of his friend’s death, but further fatalities follow and his own life is in danger as he unmasks the evil at the heart of Toynton Grange. The pitch of the final terror is beautifully sustained in this chillingly convincing mystery. 371pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


71406 TALKING ABOUT


DETECTIVE FICTION by P. D. James


‘When I settled down in the mid 1950s to begin my first novel, it never occurred to me to make a start with anything other than a detective story.’ After nearly 50 years at the forefront of crime fiction, with more than 16 detective bestselling stories, P. D. James is ideally places to talk frankly about the craft of detective


fiction. From the tenant of 221b Baker Street to the village priest from Cubhole in Essex, from the Golden Age of detective writing between the wars to the achievements of the present and a glimpse at the future, she explores the development of a genre which has gripped and entertained like no other novel. Soft- centred and hard-boiled, formidable women, setting viewpoint and people, critics and aficionados and why some people don’t enjoy detective fiction and others do so much, the book begins with a superb cartoon captioned ‘It’s a blood curdling novel about the brutal murder of a publisher who rejected the book about the brutal murder of a publisher…’ More super cartoon illus throughout, 160pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £3.50


71404 ORIGINAL SIN by P. D. James Rich, delicious and satisfying, this is classic P. D. James crime writing, splendidly atmospheric and elegantly written. The Peverell Press, a 200 year old publishing firm, is certainly ripe for change. But the proposals of its ruthlessly ambitious new Managing Director, Gerard Etienne, have made him dangerous enemies - a discarded mistress, a neglected and humiliated author and rebellious colleagues. When Gerard’s body is discovered, there is no shortage of suspects, and Dalgliesh and his team are confronted with a puzzle of extraordinary complexity. 551pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


71408 UNNATURAL CAUSES: An Adam


Dalgliesh Mystery by P. D. James Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh has been looking forward to a quiet holiday in his aunt’s cottage on Monksmere Head, one of the furthest-flung spots on the remote Suffolk coast. With nothing to do other than enjoy wind-swept walks, tea in front of the crackling wood fire and hot buttered toast, Dalgliesh was relishing the thought of a well-earned break. However all hope of peace is soon shattered by murder. The mutilated body of a local crime writer floats ashore in a drifting dinghy to drag Dalgliesh into a new and macabre investigation. As the Evening Standard said, ‘From the moment a handless corpse in a neat city suit is found in a drifting dinghy off the east coast, and we meet the ghastly members of a literary society, we’re hooked.’ 226pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


71221 DAYS WITHOUT NUMBER


by Robert Goddard Michael Paleologus, retired archaeologist and supposed descendent of the last Emperor of Byzantium, lives alone in a remote and rambling house in Cornwall. His son Nicholas is summoned to resolve a dispute which threatens to set his brothers and sisters against their aged and irascible father. An


overly generous offer has been made for the house, but Michael refuses to sell. Only after the stalemate is tragically broken do Nick and his siblings discover why their father was bound at all costs to reject the offer. Nick realises the only way to escape is to hunt their persecutor down but that involves excavating a terrible secret from their father’s past. Fusing history with crime, mysticism, guilty consciences and human fallibility. 460pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


71222 ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME


by Ruth Rendell


‘Minty knew it was a ghost sitting in the chair because she was frightened…The front room door was open and the ghost was sitting on an upright chair in the middle of the room with its back to her.’ This supernatural thriller is an exploration of what happens when personal delusions collide with reality. It is a


nightmarish urban myth of our time, a psychological thriller told with a taut and terrifying narrative. From the hugely popular author and now at a bargain price. 442pp in paperback. £8.99 NOW £3.50


70183 FROM DOON WITH DEATH by Ruth Rendell


‘Love and death,’ said Chief Inspector Wexford. ‘Those were the only two sensational things that ever happened to Margaret Parsons.’ No one believed Mr Parsons’ fears for his missing wife until two days later she was discovered in the woods, her face swollen and her clothes damply clinging to her lifeless body. With no useful witnesses and a victim known only for her mundane life, Chief Inspector Wexford has just one clue - a lipstick found at the scene. To find the killer, Wexford must first discover a motive. 226pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £2.75


70298 PATIENT’S EYES: The Dark Beginnings


of Sherlock Holmes by David Pirie A novel featuring Arthur Conan Doyle, this is subtitled ‘The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes’. As a young medical student, Arthur Conan Doyle famously studied under the pioneering forensic detective Dr Joseph Bell. Taking this as his starting point, author David Pirie has woven a dramatic literary thriller that partners Bell, widely believed to be the model for Sherlock Holmes himself and Doyle, as innovators in criminal investigation, exploring the strange underworld of violence and sexual hypocrisy running beneath the surface of the Victorian era. A combination of style and scholarship. 244pp in paperback. $14.95 NOW £2.50


70213 TWILIGHT by Peter James Three muffled thuds ring from the partially filled grave of the newly-wed girl. Only the verger hears them and he dismisses the noise as his imagination. But over the next few days others also hear faint sounds. An exhumation order is granted. Reporter Kate Hemmingway sneaks into the small suburban churchyard when the coffin is opened, and the scene she witnesses is so horrific she can never forget it. As she starts work on the story, Kate finds herself caught up in a sinister and macabre cover-up. At the centre is a respected anaesthetist who has a secret obsession. 316pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


70211 THE WIRE IN THE BLOOD by Val McDermid


The international bestseller from the Manchester crime writer who enters into the warped mind of the deviant criminal. Young girls are disappearing around the country and there is nothing to connect them to one another, let alone the killer whose charming manner hides a warped and sick mind. Nobody gets inside the messy heads of serial killers like Dr Tony Hill. Only one officer comes up with a concrete theory which is ridiculed, until one of their numbers is murdered and mutilated. For Tony Hill, the murder becomes a matter of personal revenge and, joined again by colleague Carol Jordan, he embarks on a campaign of psychological terrorism. 486pp in paperback.


£6.99 NOW £3


70199 THE REDBREAST by Jo Nesbo Down on his luck, Detective Harry Hole is having a rough time. Reassigned, having caused a high-profile embarrassment, he finds himself lumbered with surveillance duties. But working alone is just the way Harry likes it and it’s not long before he discovers that a rare, high-calibre rifle, a type favoured by assassins, has been smuggled into the country. When a former WW2 Nazi sympathiser is found with his throat slit, Harry suspects a connection. As his investigation unfolds and the bodies mount up, it becomes clear that the killer is hell-bent on serving his own justice. 618pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £2.50


70197 OXFORD BLUE by Veronica Stallwood In an attempt to come to terms with the death of her close friend Andrew, Kate Ivory has escaped Oxford and found sanctuary in a friend’s cottage a few miles away. Here in the peace of the countryside she hopes to find a healing tranquillity and the inspiration for her next novel. She has barely time to unpack before her gardener Donna is found dead in mysterious circumstances. Kate starts to uncover the feuds and illegal goings-on behind the genteel village façade. What secret is the Reverend Widdows hiding? 279pp in paperback. £5.99 NOW £3


70192 MURDER MOST HOLY by Paul Doherty


This book was previously published under the pseudonym of Paul Harding and it concerns the Sorrowful Mysteries of Brother Athelstan. In the early summer of 1379 in London, Sir John Cranston, coroner of the city, is invited to a great banquet at the Regent’s Palace on the Thames. There he is trapped into a wager with Signior Gian Galeazzo, Lord of Cremona, who


challenges him to resolve a certain murder mystery within two weeks. Men have been found dead in the Scarlet Chamber of one of Cremona’s manors and they all have terrible expressions of terror upon their faces. Cranston seeks the help of his faithful secretarius Brother Athelstan. He however had problems of his own. One friar has died in mysterious circumstances and another has disappeared. Sir John Cranston and Athelstan are called in to investigate. 243pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3


70185 HARD LANDING by Stephen Leather Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd is used to putting his life on the line. Working for an élite undercover squad he has lied, cheated and conned in order to bring Britain’s most wanted criminals to justice. But when a powerful drugs baron stars to kill off witnesses to his crimes, Shepherd is given his most dangerous assignment yet. He has to go undercover in a top security prison, a world where one wrong move will mean certain death. As he gambles everything to move in on his quarry, Shepherd soon realises that the man he is hunting is even more dangerous than the police realise and that he is capable of striking outside the prison walls and hitting Shepherd where it hurts most. 471pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


70184 GRAVE SECRETS by Kathy Reichs The number one international bestseller at a bargain price. Guatemala, in the searing heat. The bones of a child no more than two years old are uncovered when mass graves are excavated. 23 women and children are said to lie where forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan is searching for remains, in what is one of the most heartbreaking cases of her career. Then four young girls go missing from Guatemala City. When a skeleton is found in a septic tank at the back of a run- down hotel, only someone with Tempe’s expertise can deduce who the victim was and how they died. 420pp in paperback.


£7.99 NOW £2.50


70176 DEATH DU JOUR by Kathy Reichs On a bitterly cold March night in Montreal, forensic anthropologist Dr Temperance Brennan is exhuming the remains of a nun proposed for sainthood in the grounds of an old church. Just hours later, she is called to the scene of a horrific arson. A young family has perished and there seems to be no witness, no motive and no explanation. From the charred remains of the inferno to a trail of sinister cult activity and a terrifying showdown during an ice storm, Tempe faces a nerve-shattering test of both her forensic expertise and her instinct for survival. 436pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £2.50


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70174 CAMEL CLUB by David Baldacci The man known as Oliver Stone had no official past. He spends most days as a protestor outside The White House, his only goal to keep watch on Washington politics and expose corruption wherever he finds it. But the stakes are raised when he and his friends, a group of conspiracy-theory misfits known as The Camel Club, accidently witness the murder of an intelligence analyst. The authorities seem happy to write it off as a suicide. For Secret Service agent Alex Ford, the suicide verdict doesn’t ring true. Assigned to bodyguard duties protecting the President during a visit to his home town, little did they know that awaiting them is a terrorist cell that has spent months plotting an event that will shake the world. 690pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £2.50


70172 ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? by Sidney Sheldon


In New York, Denver, Paris and Berlin, four people have died in what appears to be random accidents. When two women, widows of the dead, find themselves under merciless attack, their fear and confusion help them to form an unlikely alliance. But why are they being targeted and is there a connection between their husbands’ mysterious deaths? Meanwhile, the Chief Executive of an international Think Tank is on the cusp of a discovery which could change the world, and deliver unbelievable power into the company’s hands. Could the mysterious deaths be connected to this volatile secret? 401pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £2


70155 BOOK OF MURDER by Guillermo Martinez


By the author of the bestselling ‘The Oxford Murders’ here is a clever, chilling novel. One sleepy Sunday morning in Buenos Aires, a struggling writer receives an unexpected phone call that draws him into the tangled story of Luciana, an old acquaintance, and Kloster, a rival author. What he discovers will make him question everything he has previously taken for granted about chance and calculation, cause and effect. One by one, Luciana’s loved ones are dying, and she or her sister could be next. She is convinced that Kloster is behind the deaths, punishing her for the break-up of his family in a murderous frenzy of revenge worthy of one of his bestselling crime novels. But which comes first, murder or fiction? The line is blurred. 215pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £2.50


69977 DEAD LIKE YOU by Peter James The Metropol Hotel, Brighton. After a heady New Year’s Eve ball, a woman is brutally raped as she returns to her room. A week later, another woman is attacked. Both victims’ shoes are taken by the offender. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace soon realises that these new cases bear remarkable similarities to an unsolved series of crimes in the city back in 1997. The perpetrator has been dubbed ‘Shoe Man’ and was believed to have raped four women before murdering his fifth victim and vanishing. By delving back into the past, a time in which he and his now missing wife Sandy appear happy together, he may find the key to unlocking the current mystery. There is a desperate race against the clock. 554pp. £18.99 NOW £5


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69976 DEAD MAN’S GRIP by Peter James Carly Chase is traumatised ten days after being in a traffic accident which killed a teenage student from Brighton University. The drivers of the other two vehicles involved have been found tortured and murdered. Now Detective Superintendent Roy Grace of the Sussex Police Force issues a stark and urgent warning to Carly - she could be next. The dead student had deadly connections that stretched across the Atlantic. Someone has sworn revenge and won’t rest until the final person involved in that accident is dead. The police advise Carly to go into hiding and change her identity but she disagrees. The killer is one step ahead of her, watching, waiting and ready. 407pp. £18.99 NOW £5


! JOSEPHINE TEY The classic mystery writer.


Josephine Tey’s The Man in the Queue (published 1929) introduced the world to Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard. In 1937 she returned to crime writing with A Shilling for Candles. She died in 1952, leaving her entire estate to the National Trust.


71235 THE DAUGHTER OF


TIME by Josephine Tey Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard is recuperating from a broken leg and becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world’s most heinous villains, a venomous hunchback who may have killed


his brother’s children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the usurpers of England’s throne? Grant determines to find out with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar what kind of man Richard Plantagenet really was and who killed the Princes in the Tower. 222pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


71238 TO LOVE AND BE WISE by Josephine Tey


It was rumoured that Hollywood stars would go to any lengths for the privilege of being photographed by the good-looking, brilliantly talented and ultra- fashionable portrait photographer Leslie Searle. But what was this gifted creature doing in such an English village backwater as Salcott St Mary? And why, and how, did he disappear? If a crime had been committed, was it murder or fraud, or simply some macabre practical joke? 256pp in paperback by the talented writer.


£7.99 NOW £3.50 71237 THE SINGING


SANDS by Josephine Tey On his train back to Scotland for a well-earned rest, Inspector Grant learns that a fellow passenger, one Charles Martin, has been found dead. It looks like a case of misadventure, but Grant is not so sure. Teased by some enigmatic lines of verse that the deceased had apparently scrawled on a newspaper, he follows a trail to the remote


Outer Hebrides. And although it is the end of his holiday, it is also the beginning of an intriguing investigation into the bizarre circumstances shrouding Charles Martin’s death. Another first class read. 246pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


71236 THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR by Josephine Tey


Marion Sharpe and her mother seem an unlikely duo to be found on the wrong side of the law. They have led a quiet and unremarkable life in their country home, The Franchise. Unremarkable that is until the police turn up on their doorstep with a demure young woman. Not only does Betty Kame accuse them of kidnap and abuse, she can back up her claim with a detailed description of the attic room in which she was kept, right down to the crack in its round window. But there is something about Betty’s story that doesn’t quite add up. Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard is stumped. It takes Robert Blair solicitor turned amateur detective to solve the mystery. With an un-guessable ending, 278pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


70173 BRAT FARRAR by Josephine Tey A stranger enters the inner sanctum of the Ashby family posing as Patrick Ashby, the heir to the family’s sizeable fortune. The stranger, Brat Farrar, had been carefully coached on Patrick’s mannerisms, appearance and every significant detail of Patrick’s early life, up to his 13th birthday when he disappeared and was thought to have drowned himself. It seems as if Brat is going to pull off this most incredible deception until old secrets emerge that threaten to jeopardise the imposter’s plan and his very life. 275pp in reprinted paperback from the 1949 original. £7.99 NOW £3


70190 MISS PYM DISPOSES


by Josephine Tey


Leys Physical Training College was famous for its excellent discipline, and Miss Lucy Pym was pleased and flattered to be invited to give a psychology lecture there. But she had to admit that the health and vibrant beauty of the students made her feel just a little inadequate. Then there was a nasty accident - and


suddenly Miss Pym was forced to apply her agile intellect to the unpleasant fact that among all those impressively healthy bodies, someone had a very sick mind. Elegantly written. 249pp in reprinted paperback from the 1946 original. £7.99 NOW £3


70209 MAN IN THE QUEUE by Josephine Tey


Outside a London theatre, a throng of people wait expectantly for the last performance of a popular musical. But as the doors open at last, something spoils all thought of entertainment - a man in the queue is found murdered by the deadly thrust of a stiletto. Inspector Alan Grant fascinatingly identifies the body then chases the suspect up to the Highlands of Scotland and all around the town. An original and mysterious plot with an unguessable ending. 247pp in paperback 1953 reprint of the 1929 original. £7.99 NOW £3


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