On the Radar — We’ll start this week with a book with lots of weird goings-on as Helen Goltz brings us a case of dead children apparently returning from the grave, along with comic book characters in a veritable costume mystery. Our new releases also include some historical crime fiction, an eco-thriller, a thriller set in the world of high finance, and a debut psychological thriller by Susan Crawford.
The Australian author brings us the second in her series featuring private investigator Jesse Clarke and her faithful pooch Atlas. Clarke is called in to investigate the macabre case of two children being spotted by their parents. No problem there… except that the children are dead and there are certificates to prove it. Things become even more mysterious when a rackful of comic book hero costumes are stolen, and downright impossible when JC receives a visit from none other than Batman himself. Out now for Kindle and on 1 March as a paperback.
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Here’s another 19th century adventure for CS Harris’ aristoctratic investigator, Sebastian St Cyr. When a thoroughly unpleasant slave owner meets his death in an equally unpleasant manner in London, St Cyr and his wife become immersed in a mystery which seems to have links to the Home Secretary, Jane Austin’s brother and King Charles I. The author describes St Cyr as a cross between Mr Darcy and James Bond. The 10th in the series, it’s out on 3 March for Kindle and later in the month in print.
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Kate Pendragon is something of a poacher-turned-gamekeeper, having moved from corporate finance into the British intelligence service. The body of a senior banker is washed up on a beach, and Kate finds that he had links to a shadowy international bank set up by the CIA in order to track, trick and trap terrorist organisations. Doward is right on the proverbial nail here, as the story also involves an Islamist terror cell hell-bent on engineering a nuclear catastrophe in the West. Published on 3 March.
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Susan Crawford’s debut psychological thriller will be reviewed soon here on Crime Fiction Lover. Dana Catrell is bipolar. Things get worse when her neighbour his murdered and Dana thinks she might have done it. She was the last person to see Celia alive – is her manic depression masking in its fog something too horrendous to contemplate? Beset by the strange behaviour of her husband, and the insistent probing of a homicide cop, Dana needs to untangle the truth from the nightmare flashbacks of awful afternoon in Celia’s house. Out on 17 March.
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Tuesday is different. Damaged, you could say. She’s been abused by men all her life. Now, she’s gone underground on a vendetta against those who abuse women. She lives beneath the streets of London in long forgotten tunnels left behind by transport and engineering works. Her world of vengeance collides with the world of a Met detective who has to investigate the murders of some of Tuesday’s victims, but is still raw from the murder of his own young daughter. Can Tuesday’s campaign of violence exorcise his ghosts? Available on 5 March.
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Author Michele Giuttari was a top cop in Florence, and as the adage goes he writes what he knows. First published in Italy in 2013 as Il Cuore Oscuro di Firenze, this translation shines a light into one of the darker corners of Italian society, where powerful men and women live their lives according to their own code. Police chief Ferrara investigates what appears to be little short of a mass murder, brought to light by the slaying of a lawyer and his wife in a picture-postcard Tuscan village. On the shelves and downloadable from 5 March.
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Andrew Gross usually works in collaboration with James Patterson, but here he takes a break to revive Ty Hauck, who first appeared in The Dark Tide back in 2008. Hauck is a weather-beaten investigator with a penchant for environmental issues. Amid an unpleasant dispute between multi-national energy corporations and local landowners and farmers, Hauck and his best friend’s daughter do their stuff in the geological wonderland that is Colorado. Oil is always worth digging for, as are gold, diamonds and precious metals. But there is one treasure which trumps all those assets. Water. And men will kill for it. Published on 12 March.
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Set in North East England in the 1990s, No Name Lane sees young girls abducted and killed. The police have made no progress in identifying and arresting the killer. Tom Carney, a London journalist who was suspended by his tabloid employers has come back home to lick his wounds. He teams up with DC Ian Bradshaw, whose career is on the rocks. When the latest body is unearthed, and tests show that it dates back to a 60-year-old crime, the investigation is turned on its head. Can Carney and Bradshaw solve both mysteries and revive their flagging careers? Out on 12 March.
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