22 Crime Fiction CRIME FICTION


The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.


- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles


77175 HEIRS OF THE BODY:


A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery by Carola Dunn


A fabulous country-house mystery set in the 1920s. When a claimant to the title of Lord Dalrymple comes to an unexpected sticky end, the cry goes up: ‘Was it murder?’ The Honourable Daisy Dalrymple is recruited by her cousin Edgar, the current Lord Dalrymple, to help him find the next heir to the viscountcy. With the involvement of the family


lawyer, they come up with four claimants who along with Daisy are invited to Fairacres, the family estate, to celebrate Edgar’s 50th birthday. They are a mixed bunch - a hotelier from Scarborough, a diamond merchant from South Africa, a mixed-race boy from Trinidad and a sailor from Jamaica. But then the sailor goes missing and so begins a series of inexplicable and troubling accidents, resulting in the death of one of the would-be heirs. Daisy and her husband DCI Alex Fletcher of Scotland Yard are left wondering who might be behind it all, and who more importantly, might be next. 292pp.


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ALIBI by Rebecca Tope Death shatters the calm of the Lake District. After an eventful year, Persimmon ‘Simmy’ Brown is trying to put her tragic past behind her. But just when she thinks her life is coming together, it unravels. With the delivery of a bouquet of flowers to an elderly lady, complete with a mysterious message attached, sinister secrets come creeping into the light. When another old woman is found dead,


Simmy is drawn into the centre of the murder investigation as the prime suspect names her as his alibi. While trying to rebuild her life, Simmy must untangle the murky lives of others and uncover the motive behind the mysterious killing. 380 page paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


76965 13 STEPS DOWN by Ruth Rendell The brilliant mystery writer dedicates this novel to P.D. James with affection and admiration. Mick Cellini has always been by himself. He has lived in the same crumbling house in Notting Hill for years and the only things that seem to brighten his days are stories of the notoriously brutal murderer John Christie, and a beautiful but oblivious model who lives nearby. The sole human contact he has is with his reclusive landlady. Both landlady and lodger inhabit weird worlds of their own - her’s a land of library books and half-remembered stories, and his a place of darkness and violence. Rendell’s mesmerising capacity to shock, chill and disturb is unmatched. 391pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £4


76877 NICE AND THE GOOD by Iris Murdoch


A revolver shot rings through a Whitehall office one hot summer afternoon. A government official has apparently shot himself, but the circumstances are questionable, prompting Octavian Gray, head of the department in which the dead man worked, to investigate. Lawyer John Ducane is charged with the task, interviewing other civil servants by day and by night


attempting repeatedly and unsuccessfully to break up with his mistress. When Ducane travels to Gray’s Dorset home, the mystery deepens, and nothing is quite as it seems. Superbly atmospheric and poetic. This facsimile reprint edition of the 1968 original in paperback has a new introduction by Catherine Bates. 350pp, paperback.


£8.99 NOW £4


76981 THE BAT by Jo Nesbo The first Harry Hole thriller, this was the stunning opening to the series by the musician, songwriter and economist and prize-winning author Jo Nesbo. Published in Norway in 1997 it was an instant hit and is here in first class translation. Detective Harry Hole is meant to keep out of trouble. A young Norwegian girl on her gap year in Sydney has been murdered, and Harry has been sent to Australia to assist in any way he can. When the team unearth a string of unsolved murders and disappearances, nothing will stop Harry from finding out the truth. The hunt for the serial killer is on, but the murderer will only talk to Harry. But he might just be the next victim... 425pp in paperback. £6.99 NOW £3.50


76966 KEEPER OF THE BRIDE /


WHISTLEBLOWER: Omnibus by Tess Gerritsen Stephen King ranks Tess Gerritsen as better than Michael Crichton and she certainly has an imagination as dark and as frightening as Edgar Allan Poe. In the first novel Keeper of the Bride Nina Cormier is about to walk down the aisle when she is informed that her groom would not be attending the ceremony. Then the empty church explodes. No one knows why the church was targeted, but when Nina’s car is nearly forced off the road, it becomes clear that she’s the intended target.


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Now Detective Sam Navarro is determined to discover why, but he doesn’t expect to become emotionally involved with the woman he has been assigned to protect. In the second novel, Whistleblower, Victor Holland runs straight into the path of Catherine Weaver’s car. She tries to help the wounded man but he has uncovered a terrifying secret which leads all the way to Washington. Victor is running for his life. Is Cathy giving her trust to a man in danger or trusting her life to a dangerous man? 251 plus 251 pages in blockbuster omnibus paperback. £7.99 NOW £4


76950 SET IN DARKNESS by Ian Rankin Edinburgh is about to become the home of the first Scottish Parliament in nigh on 300 years. Detective Inspector John Rebus is charged with liaison, thanks to its being housed bang in the middle of his St Leonard’s patch. Queensbury House is home not just to the new Scotland’s rulers to be, but to the legend of a young man roasted on a spit by a madman. When the fireplace where the youth died is uncovered, another more recent murder victim is revealed. Days later a third body is found. This time the victim is a prospective MSP and the powers that be are on Rebus’s back demanding instant answers. Somebody is going to make a lot of money out of Scotland’s independence, and where there is big money at stake, darkness gathers. Deadly myths have never been more alive. Rankin’s canvas of Scotland’s criminal underclass has a panoramic breadth. With reading group notes, illus, 466pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


76959 BLOOD HUNT by Ian Rankin Writing as Jack Harvey, Rankin is perhaps the best and most complex thriller writer in Britain today - and a real live Bibliophile customer! Gordon Reeve has a funeral to go to. His journalist brother has been found dead in a car, presumed suicide. When he gets there it seems that nobody wants to answer his questions. Why was the car found locked from the outside? Why does the local cop act like his shadow and prevent him talking to the friend who last saw Jim? Why does he have a sinking feeling that it wasn’t a ghost he saw parked outside the crematorium? Ex-SAS, a professional killer with an anger management problem, it’s not in Reeve’s nature to let such questions go unanswered, particularly when the murder’s come knocking on his own front door. 421pp in paperback.


£7.99 NOW £3.50


76976 FRIEND OF THE DEVIL by Peter Robinson


The victim is no older than DCI Banks’s own daughter. Just 19, she is found raped and strangled in the dark tangle of cobbled alleyways they call The Maze. There are no shortages of suspects and Banks finds himself missing DI Annie Cabbot. Their personal problems aside, he could do with her sharp instincts on this case, but Annie has troubles of her own. On loan to the Eastern Area, she has been called to investigate the cold-bloodied killing of a woman in a wheelchair. On the face of it, the two deaths have nothing in common, but as Annie digs deeper she finds something disturbingly familiar in the case. Robinson once again puts his skills to work in a police procedural that grips like pliers. 515pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


76548 DEATH OF A


DUSTMAN: A Hamish Macbeth Murder Mystery by M. C. Beaton


When Fergus Macleod, Lochdubh’s abusive drunkard of a dustman, is put in charge of the local recycling centre as ‘Environment Officer’, Hamish Macbeth smells trouble. Soon Fergus, imbued with his new powers, becomes a bullying Jack-in- office and when his dead body is


found stuffed into a recycling bin, no one is very sorry, not even his long-suffering family. But Macbeth is surprised to find that many former victims of his bullying refuse to talk. Befuddled, earnest and utterly endearing, Hamish makes his triumphs sweetly satisfying. 279pp in paperback.


£6.99 NOW £3.50 76549 DEATH OF A SCRIPTWRITER: A


Hamish Macbeth Murder Mystery by M. C. Beaton


Patricia Martyn-Broyd, now in her 70s, has retired to the Highlands. She hasn’t written a word in years and her books are out of print, but now a TV company is about to film her last detective story, featuring the aristocratic Scottish detective Lady Harriet Vare. Even though the snobbish author doesn’t care to mix with the locals, she can’t help but share her excitement with local policeman, Hamish Macbeth. Imagine her horror when she discovers that the screenwriter is known for his violent and scurrilous scripts and that Lady Harriet is going to be portrayed as a pot-smoking hippy by the scene-stealing trollop Penelope Gates. When she is accused of murdering the scriptwriter and the leading lady, Patricia turns to her one friend, Hamish Macbeth, to help clear her name. 296pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


76552 DUST by Patricia Cornwell After working on one of the worst mass killings in US history, Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta returns home to recover, but an unsettling call drives her straight back to work. The body of a young woman has been discovered inside the sheltered gates of MIT, draped in an unusual cloth and posed in a way that is too deliberate to be the killer’s first strike. A preliminary examination reveals that the body is covered in a fine dust that under ultra-violet light fluoresces blood-red, emerald-green and sapphire-blue, and physical evidence links this to another series of disturbing homicides in Washington, DC. Scarpetta is drawn with her team deeper into the dark world of designer drugs, drone technology and shocking corruption at the highest level. 544pp, paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.25


76562 GENTLY WHERE SHE LAY by Alan Hunter


When the naked body of a woman is found lying serenly on a forest floor showing no signs of a struggle, it looks almost as if she lay down to sleep, having folded her clothes in a neat bundle by her side. Known as Vivienne, the victim led a bizarre life, estranged from her husband, alone in her isolated cottage except when visitors came to call. Those visitors included a group of sixth form students from a local girls’ school and when Chief Inspector George Gently discovers the reasons for their visits, the case descends into a sinister, secretive world of sleaze and vice. 217pp, paperback. £6.99 NOW £3.50


62730 CASEFILES OF MR J. G. REEDER by Edgar Wallace


Let us introduce you to the enigmatic J. G. Reeder, a gentle, middle-aged man who carries a furled up umbrella and wears an old-fashioned flat-topped bowler hat. He is one of the great unsung sleuths of mystery fiction, created by the prolific Edgar Wallace. Reeder is a cold and ruthless detective who credits his success to his ‘criminal mind’ which allows him to solve a series of complex crimes outwitting the most cunning of villains. Contains the first three volumes in the Reeder canon: two novels, Room 13 and Terror Keep and the short stories The Mind of J. G. Reeder. 434pp. Paperback. ONLY £3


68850 AN ARSENE LUPIN OMNIBUS by Maurice Leblanc


Enter Arsène Lupin, Gentleman - Cambrioleur, the ‘Prince of Thieves’, one of the most daring and dashing individuals who ever lifted a diamond necklace from under the noses of the authorities. Young and handsome, laughing his way through difficulties and danger, Lupin is also the master of disguise and languages. His sense of humour and conceit make life difficult for the police who attribute most of the major crimes in France to Lupin and his gang of ruffians and urchins. Maurice Leblanc’s stories are lively and witty, occasionally taking on the air of burlesque. 739 paperback pages. ONLY £3


71176 THE EYES OF MAX CARRADOS by Ernest Bramah


Max Carrados is one of the most unusual detectives in all fiction. He is blind - and yet he has developed his other faculties to such an amazing degree that they more than compensate for his lack of sight. Carrados can read a newspaper headline with the touch of his fingers, detect a man wearing a false moustache and shoot a villain by aiming at the sound of his beating heart. Assisted by his sharp-eyed manservant, Parker, Carrados is the mystery-solver par excellence. 670 page paperback. ONLY £2.50


74521 VENDETTA by Michael Dibdin Inspector Zen has an impossible murder to solve. An eccentric billionaire was killed inside a heavily fortified Sardinian fortress where every room was monitored by video camera. But although the cameras captured the billionaire’s grisly death, they did not record the face of his killer. As Zen gets to work, he is plunged into a menacing and violent world where his own life is soon at risk. Originally published in 1990, 400 page paperback reprint.


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74580 WHAT DARKNESS BRINGS by C. S. Harris


Set in Regency England in September 1812, after a long night spent dealing with the tragic death of a former military comrade, heartsick Sebastian learns of a new calamity - Russell Yates, the dashing onetime privateer who married Kat a year ago, has been found standing over the corpse of Benjamin Eisler, a wealthy gem dealer. Yates insists he is innocent, but surely he will hang unless Sebastian can unmask the real killer. Eisler’s clients include the Prince Regent and Napoleon, and he was a despicable man with many enemies and a number of dangerous, well-kept secrets, including a passion for arcane texts and black magic. Central to the case is a magnificent blue diamond that disappeared on the night of Eisler’s death. 353pp. Remainder mark. $24.95 NOW £2.50


74581 ACCORDION CRIMES: A Novel by Annie Proulx


Proulx brings the immigrant experience in America to life through the eyes of the descendants of Mexicans, Poles, Africans, Irish-Scots, Franco-Canadians and many others, all linked by their successive ownership of a simple green accordion. The music they make is their last link with the past - a voice for their fantasies, sorrows and exuberance. Proulx’s prodigious knowledge, unforgettable characters and radiant language make this an exhilarating, soulful and magical novel. 431pp, paperback. $16 NOW £2.50


74668 FANTOMAS


by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain First published in 1915 and is here in unabridged translation. A noblewoman is hacked to death in her chateau, a Russian princess is boldly robbed at a posh hotel, and a lord’s lifeless body is found stuffed into a trunk. Everyone recognises the deeds of Fantômas, a master of disguise, and his daring and diabolical crimes paralyse Parisians with terror. One man is sworn to bring the phantom killer to justice - Inspector Juve. This was the very first volume in a series of wildly popular French thrillers. 300 page paperback. £10.49 NOW £3.50


59982 THE CASEBOOK OF SEXTON BLAKE edited by David Stuart Davies


For the greater part of the 20th century, the countless escapades of super sleuth Sexton Blake kept millions of readers on the edge of their seats. This thrilling collection presents seven exploits from his ‘golden age’: ‘The Slave Market’ in the dangerous depths of Africa, Blake races to the rescue of an old school friend. ‘A Football Mystery’, Blake and Tinker join the England team to beat the cheating opposition. Plus five more gripping yarns. 560 page paperback. ONLY £3


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76937 MURDER ON THE MINNESOTA by Conrad Allen


Edwardian shipboard sleuths Genevieve Masefield and George Porter Dillman are a handsome pair. Warned that there could be suspect cargo aboard the Minnesota, Genevieve uses her beauty and charm to make friends with the gregarious all-American Langmeads, the enigmatic feminist divorcée Fay Brinkley, the Japanese Natsukis with their fierce defence of the Shinto religion and the formidable entrepreneur Rance Gilpatrick with his young opera singer wife Maxine. When Fr. Slattery, a crusading Catholic missionary, is garrotted in his cabin, there are two mysteries to solve. A page-turning winner. 274pp, paperback. £7.99 NOW £3.50


76935 MURDER ON THE LUSITANIA by Conrad Allen


It is the maiden voyage for the Lusitania - can she capture the acclaimed Blue Riband for achieving the fastest crossing from Liverpool to New York? Vaguely recalling the flavour of mystery stories from the likes of Christie and Sayers, this novel vividly recreates the indolent atmosphere of life aboard a luxury liner in the 1900s. Debonair, undercover detective George Porter Dillman has been given the task of unmasking conmen and thieves - people who delight in cheating the rich passengers. A murder takes Dillman by surprise. Add to that the charms of a beautiful woman, and you have all the ingredients of a cracking mystery. Paperback, 271pp. £7.99 NOW £3.50


76936 MURDER ON THE MAURETANIA by Conrad Allen


It is the Mauretania’s maiden voyage, and private detective George Porter Dillman and Genevieve Masefield are working undercover. Some property disappears including an eyeglass and a set of solid silver cutlery. More worrying is the 12 tons of gold bullion in the hold, which the duo are meant to be minding. When a storm batters the boat, a passenger goes missing - did he fall overboard, or was he murdered? Can George and Genevieve solve the problem? Of course they can, but not before Genevieve finds herself in danger. Set in 1907, this captures the luxury and ambience of life aboard a sumptuous liner, with a mystery which will keep you guessing till the end. Paperback, 303pp. £7.99 NOW £3.50


77289 CONRAD ALLEN: Set of Three by Conrad Allen


Buy all three paperbacks and save even more. £23.97 NOW £9


74592 A TOUCH OF FROST: A DI Jack Frost


Investigation by R. D. Wingfield Detective Inspector Jack Frost, officially on duty, is nevertheless determined to sneak off to a colleague’s leaving party, but first the corpse of a well-known local junkie is found blocking the drain of a public lavatory. When Frost attempts to join the revelry later on, the nubile daughter of a wealthy businessman is reported missing. A robbery occurs at a strip joint, the pampered son of a local MP is suspected of a hit-and-run offence, and to top it all, a multiple rapist is on the loose. Frost is under pressure with his paperwork piling up. 427pp, paperback.


£7.99 NOW £3


74833 FULL DARK, NO STARS by Stephen King


All the stories deal with people encountering the darkest aspect of themselves and those they love. Through his mastery of detail and his deceptively effortless narrative voice, Stephen King transforms this disquieting material into a disturbing and fascinating book, a brilliant scrutiny of humanity and inhumanity. What tips somebody over the edge to commit a crime? For a Nebraska farmer, the turning point comes when his wife threatens to sell off the family homestead. A cosy mystery writer plots a savage revenge after a brutal encounter with a stranger. Harry Streeter gets the chance to cure himself from illness if he agrees to impose misery on an old rival. And Darcy Anderson discovers a box containing her husband’s dark and terrifying secrets. He is not just the man who keeps his nails short and collects coins, now he is heading for home. Fine stories to take with us into the night, 453pp in paperback with bonus short story. £8.99 NOW £3.50


74582 OPENING NIGHT MURDER by Anne Rutherford


At the dawn of the Restoration period, Suzanne Thornton hopes to find a second life in the theatre, but instead on opening night, she finds a dead body on stage. The triumphant return of King Charles II in 1660 and no longer a kept woman since her man fled, she sees an opportunity to re-open a theatre and stage the greats - Shakespeare, Marlowe and the like and now, thanks to Royal decree, women can openly tread the boards. Suzanne secures financing from an old lover, assembles a troupe and restores the venue, none other than the historic Globe Theatre. Suzanne undertakes her own investigation. 309pp, paperback. Remainder mark. $14 NOW £2


www.bibliophilebooks.com CONRAD ALLEN Mysteries which will keep you guessing...?


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