On the Radar — Yes, today’s On the Radar brings you new books featuring dirty dealings of every kind. Drugs come to the fore in a new book by Robert K Lewis and in a Rex Burns reprint from the 70s. Corruption in sport is the focus of Steve Lowe’s pulp release, and we have off-the-books killers working for state law enforcement in a debut by Mason Cross and in a latest release from that old hand David Baldacci. It’s a dirty old world, but Happy Easter anyway…

Critical Damage by Robert K Lewis
The book is the second in a series featuring Mark Mallen, an ex-cop and recovering drug addict. Mallen is called upon to help find two missing prostitutes. He operates in one of the darker and more grimy areas of San Francisco, so he expects to deal with a cast of petty crooks, vicious hustlers and grifters. When he senses that he is being leaned on by men in suits rather than street lowlife in sweaty t-shirts and baseball caps, Mallen knows that his usual street-smarts are not going to be enough to get the better of his adversaries, Critical Damage is out now. Read our review of the previous book, Untold Damage, here.
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The Fix by Steve Lowe
The Fix is firmly rooted in the sleazy, bottom-dollar world of pulp fiction. And no activity is more crooked, more devoid of honesty and staffed by as many fixers, gamblers and outfit soldiers than professional boxing. True to its milieu, the book presents a lurid cast of characters including Buster, Ronnie Piccolo and Jimmy ‘Two Tickets To’ Paradise. Throw in a roll-call of heroin addicts, grifters and pregnant girlfriends, and we’re all set for a bleak and revealing journey through Chicago’s underworld. Just in case you’re still not sure what to expect, how about this from Steve Lowe’s Amazon profile: “…a false prophet, a superstition, a bastard from a basket. They should have put him in a jar on the mantelpiece.”
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The Alvarez Journal by Rex Burns
This is a long-overdue UK paperback edition of a novel first published in hardback way back in the mid 1970s. Burns writes solid and well-researched police procedurals, and just as we can link Ed McBain with New York, Robert B Parker with Boston, Raymond Chandler with Los Angeles and James Lee Burke with New Orleans, Rex Burns ties his stories to the mountain glories of Denver, Colorado. The city might be a mile high, but the crimes are as down and dirty as they come. Police Detective Gabriel Wager, (the central character) must act as the relatively harmless drug trade in California grass expands into something much more dangerous, as heroin takes hold amongst the lowlifes of Denver. Available from 24 April.
Pre-order now on Amazon

The Killing Season by Mason Cross
Carter Blake is a special kind of killer. And, if you think he sounds like a novelist’s poor attempt at naming a tough guy, then you might be surprised to learn that Carter Blake agrees with you. “The first thing you should know about me is that my name is not Carter Blake,” he says at the outset. So, who exactly is he? Well, he’s an independent and ruthless killer who does the dirty work when law enforcement agencies such as the FBI find themselves powerless. In this first Blake novel, he and his reluctant partner Elaine Banner try to track down and eliminate Caleb Wardell, the infamous ‘Chicago Sniper’, who has evaded conventional justice. Though the book is set in the United States, Mason Cross is a born and bred Glaswegian. The Killing Season is available on 24 April.
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Enemies at Home by Lindsey Davis
Fictional detectives seem to span the ages. We have recently seen someone investigating crime in Neolithic times, but Lindsey Davis brings us just a little closer to the present day. She made her name with her Marcus Didius Falco books, about a sleuth in Roman times. After 20 Falco books, the author moved on to his adopted daughter, Flavia Albia. We first met Flavia last year in The Ides Of April, but now she is back. The brutal death of a pair of newly-weds and the all-too-convenient guilt of their slaves send Flavia and her friend Manlius Faustus on a quest to find out who the real culprits are. It’s out today.
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Shroud of Evil by Pauline Rowson
We have already had one famous Portsmouth copper – Graham Hurley’s late, and very much lamented Joe Faraday. But Pauline Rowson has developed another character to stand on the Pompey waterfront and contemplate the unruly mix of crime and opportunism that threads through daily life in the city. There have been 10 previous novels featuring the flawed, vulnerable but dogged DI Andy Horton. In Shroud of Evil, Horton investigates the disappearance of a local businessman, and we share his anxiety as every fresh lead points to his own involvement in the case. Available from 30 April.
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The Target by David Baldacci
Will Robie and his partner Jessica Reel are assassins. Pure and simple. But they are killers who are good enough that the government of the USA is prepared to employ them – secretly, of course – when things get difficult. Not that Robie and Reel don’t face real dangers, and this case involves infiltrating a camp in North Korea and taking down their target. Maybe it will help prevent an Armageddon, but what does a dying man in Alabama have to do with these affairs? The Target is released on 24 April.
Pre-order now on Amazon
Pre-order now on Amazon

After the Silence by Jake Woodhouse
Jake Woodhouse is a British author whose career before crime writing is rather varied. He was professional oboe player, and a wine-maker in New Zealand. Now, he’s secured a publishing deal with Penguin for a series of books featuring an Amsterdam detective – Jaap Rykel. This debut novel is set in a wintry Dutch city and involves East European gangsters, a mysterious arson attack involving a missing child, and Rykel’s new female partner, who is not lacking in traumatic psychological baggage. Out on 24 April.
Pre-order now on Amazon