On the Radar — Today we start with two books written by top crime writing duos. First up Preston and Child are back with their 14th Pendergast FBI story, and then it’s Evanovich and Goldberg whose heroine Kate O’Hare also happens to be an agent. After that we line up six more books and even a computer game for crime fiction lovers to check out…
Not the least of Duncan Preston and Lincoln Child’s achievements is the creation of the most intriguingly named character in modern crime fiction. Aloysius Xingu L Pendergast is a top FBI agent and in his latest adventure he receives a double-edged gift. An enemy he has been trying to eliminate for many years suddenly turns up on his doorstep. Dead. This proverbial gift horse brings problems, however. A gem found in the dead man’s gut is a bizarre clue, but it is one destined to lure Pendergast into an investigation of his own family and personal history which asks more questions than it answers. Out on 11 November.
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This is another adventure for the FBI’s most implausible partnership – that between the suave trickster Nicholas Fox and the Bureau’s blue-eyed girl Special Agent Kate O’Hare. Their task? Only to bring down the sadistic and resourceful boss of one of the world’s most successful drug gangs. The action is certainly international, covering Istanbul, Nashville, Lisbon and London. Expect a full cast list of exotic characters including a psycho whose best friend lives in a pickle jar and a Somali cut-throat whose weapon of choice is a razor sharp machete. O’Hare always has to be aware of her partner’s criminal tendencies, but this time she’s his alibi when valuable art goes missing and she realises someone is trying hard to frame him. Out on 18 November.
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Former criminal Peter Boutrup is going straight and eking out a living as a carpenter at a convent in Denmark’s Djursland peninsula. He goes to visit the grave of one of his best friends, but is startled when the woman’s mother appears at the graveside and begs him to help in the search for her son Magnus, who is missing. Reluctantly, he agrees, but his life becomes even more complex when the body of a nun is found in the moat of the convent where he works. He is drawn into the inquiry into her death, and thus he crosses the path of police detective Mark Bille Hansen. Does a box of human bones found on the seabed link the cases? Hansen and Boutrup strike up an uneasy alliance as their search for answers. Out today.
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Former teacher Mitchell says that she learned to love books during long hours spent in Whitechapel Library, in the East End of London. In her ninth book, a man wakes up desperately hung-over in a hotel room. So far, so ordinary, but when he notices that he’s covered in blood and that his girlfriend is in the bathroom dead, everything changes. The unfortunate hotel guest is called Mac, and as he struggles to make sense of what has happened he becomes a person of interest to a certain Detective Inspector Rio Wray, who is not sure which side of the good-bad line Mac inhabits. Out today.
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Kanon takes us into the endlessly intriguing and politically ambiguous world of post-WWII Berlin, a setting which has been exploited to such great effect by authors like Graham Greene, Philip Kerr and John Lawson. The Nazi purges forced Alex Meier to flee Berlin and seek refuge in America, but as the dust settles his pre-war political activities bring him to the attention of the anti-communist campaign waged by Senator McCarthy and his supporters. Meier’s only option to establish his bona fides is to sign up for a covert mission in his home city on behalf of the CIA. Meier deals with rapidly shifting political allegiances in a shattered city where trust and honour are the rarest commodities. Out today.
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Two decades back Ray Campbell was an idealistic aid worker trying to make life better for the impoverished people of fictional African nation Lubanda. Driven out by a series of personal tragedies and the corruption of the country’s new rulers, Campbell now leads a more sheltered life as a risk management consultant, but is haunted by his relationship with a Lubandan woman of European heritage. Martine Aubert was fiercely protective of her farm and stood her ground in the face of the despots who, in her eyes, were ruining the country. Now, a mutual African friend from those days has turned up dead in a New York back alley. Campbell returns to Lubanda to seek the truth about Seso’s death, and also to exorcise the demons of his relationship with Martine. Published on 18 November.
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DS Mark Heckenberg returns for his fourth adventure. Ten years earlier, a psychotic killer nicknamed The Stranger terrorised the inhabitants of the isolated settlements of Dartmoor. Now it seems he has returned, and is focusing on another forbidding and isolated landscape – The Lake District. Heckenberg must outwit the killer before he repeats the blood-letting. Finch has written horror fiction, and has worked on storylines for Dr Who so, notwithstanding the icy setting of The Lake District in the fierce grip of winter, expect a police procedural with strong, spine-chilling and macabre sensations. Available for Kindle or in paperback on 20 November.
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This is the latest book featuring the extraordinary adventures of ex-KGB man Konstantin Boryakov and it comes courtesy of the indie publisher and New Talent November sponsor Caffeine Nights. We looked at an earlier outing for Boryakov here, when he was still plying his trade in the English seaside town of Margate. Russian Roulette is a collection of the previous novellas, and takes us from Boryakov’s early experiences in one of England’s least salubrious locations up to the present day, when he has the full measure of his English opponents on both sides of the law. On the shelves from 10 November, watch for our review soon.
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We do try to cover ways of enjoying crime fiction that don’t fall into the book category, and we ignore the world of gaming at our peril. Rival Games is based in Finland, and its latest creation is set in a crime-ridden American city, where a disillusioned cop and a former informant have their own unorthodox ways of dealing with the bad guys. The story is delivered via comic book style animated panels, and you experience the mystery via various clues, crime scenes, making choices and solving puzzles. The first episode is called Where the Dead Lie, and is currently available for PC, Mac, and Linux.
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