On the Radar — One of America’s top female authors – Janet Evanovich – is top of our pile this week as we look at the latest crime fiction releases. Meanwhile, we’ve also got some hot new summer picks from Steve Mosby, Jonas Winner and James Carol. Which ones will make it onto your reading pile?
Here we have a new adventure for Stephanie Plum, the glamorous bounty hunter. Is it really 20 years since her first outing in One For The Money? The lovely Stephanie has one of hardest chases yet as she tries to track down a criminal entrepreneur called Jimmy Poletti. Stephanie is renowned for her romantic entanglements, and here two of her favourite gentlemen come close to a collision course. Beau number one, a cop called Joe Morelli, is trying to track down the same bail jumper as Stephanie. Meanwhile Ranger, beau number two, is threatened by a very efficient and effective hitman. You can hear a short extract from the novel on Soundcloud here . The novel was released earlier this week.
Leeds based writer Mosby is the author of several police procedurals and psychological thrillers. Here he returns with another urban chiller and it uses that ever-popular staple: the violent stalker of young women. This particular antagonist has been nicknamed The Creeper and, as he targets one vulnerable lonely woman after the next, two things are clear to DI Zoe Dolan. The first is that the Creeper’s prey are apparently selected at random, and the second is that each time he attacks the violence gets just a little bit worse. When a suspicious call is made to a confidential women’s helpline, Dolan and her colleagues sense that they are on the cusp of achieving a vital breakthrough. But their troubles are only just beginning. We reviewed Mosby’s previous novel, Dark Room (2012) here. The Nightmare Place is out today.
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Doomed City is the second in Berlin-born Jonas Winner’s planned series of seven novels in the sequence subtitled Berlin Gothic. The series opener was approptiately titled The Beginning (2013) and introduced the Bentheim family and the young orphan Till Anschütz. In Doomed City, the mysterious family patriarch Xavier Bentheim has been dead for 10 years and Anschütz returns for a family wedding. He soon becomes involved in a dark conspiracy which threatens not only his adoptive family, but an entire city. Out now.
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Some crime fiction with an Afro-Caribbean flavour. It’s Bristol in the 1960s and the weather is snowy, bitterly cold and wet underfoot, particularly for a former Barbadian policeman exiled to England. After all, he has holes in his shoes. JT Ellington was an excellent copper and a proud family man, until the wickedness of other men and corruption in the justice system of his homeland forced him out of his post after cruelly taking his wife and daughter away from him. Now, he’s lost his job in a cigarette factory and is trying to make ends meet as an investigator. When a fellow Barbadian who has become a rich entrepreneur and city politician seeks his help, Ellington pockets the offered cash, and tries to find a missing girl. Apparently she was swallowed up in the seedy world of gentlemen’s’ clubs and rough-neck pubs. Available on 1 July.
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Kate White is a former editor of Cosmopolitan so the glitzy society atmosphere of Eyes On You is bound to seem authentic. No-one in the entertainment world is more vulnerable than the TV personality, and when Robin Trainer’s career takes an awkward turn, she has to fight her corner to keep her name in lights. A bigger battle beckons, however, when she discovers that someone is threatening both her professional status and her well-being. Who can she trust? Are those closest to her involved in the conspiracy to discredit her? As the attacks become increasingly personal and vicious, Robin must turn private investigator to unmask her stalker. Available on 24 June.
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Former journalist and editor Brad Spencer quit the media to concentrate on fiction, and this is his debut novel. Sam, Holly and Jimmer grew up in and out of each other’s backyards and as they became teenagers it seemed nothing could ever divide them. But then they were involved in an incident which would scar them forever, and cast a long shadow into their adult lives. Their dark secret is the crux of the story and they grow apart until being brought together again by the unscrupulous attentions of a rich former friend. One who is prepared to play with their lives for his sadistic amusement. The Upshot is out now.
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This is the sixth book in the Rose Gardner series, in which all but one of which have a slightly odd numerical title. Rose Gardner worked in the Department of Motor Vehicles in Fenton County, Arkansas, but now has her own business. Despite her former mundane clerical job, she has a habit of becoming involved in criminal investigations, partly because she seems to receive visions. Some are totally mundane, but others lead her into a darker world altogether. Now, she becomes involved in a bank robbery, and faces romantic complications with present and past boyfriends. Published on 24 June.
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Earlier this year we took a brief look at the extremely popular Broken Dolls, Carol’s novel featuring FBI profiler Jefferson Winter. In that book, he was a ‘former’ profiler. Presumed Guilty is something of a prequel, as it looks back to the time when our hero had yet to enter the FBI Academy at Quantico. In fact, he is at the other end of the agency’s microscope, because he is a suspect in a gruesome serial killer case. He ticks all of the boxes, particularly the one which asks for father’s occupation. Winter can simply write the words ‘serial killer’. Special Agent Yoko Tanaka eventually uses the terrifyingly intelligent 19-year-old Winter to track down a psychopath who steals the hearts of beautiful young women – literally. Out on 3 July
Finally, a book from South African author Amanda Coetzee. Harry ‘Badger’ O’Connor first made an appearance in the 2011 novel Bad Blood. Badger was an abandoned child brought up by Irish traveller families. He is now an undercover cop working for the Major Crimes Unit of the Metropolitan Police. As he tracks an elusive sniper, the action is shared between the ancient town of Bedford and the more rugged terrain of South Africa. Expect the locations to be totally authentic, as the author grew up in Bedford, but is now Deputy Principal of a school in Rustenburg in the North West province of South Africa. One Shot is out now.