On the Radar — Peter James – the UK’s best crime author according to readers of the WH Smith books blog – leads us off this week with a black widow case for his white knight of Brighton CID, Roy Grace. Or, you could grab the latest by Howard Linskey, Tony Parsons or Angela Marsons, plus we’ve got two reprints for you to savour. Let us know which new book will land on your TBR pile.
There’s a black widow in Brighton! No, not one of those nasty little critters with eight legs and a nasty bite, but a real life two-legged lady with death on her mind. Detective Superintendent Roy Grace finds that she truly is deadlier than the male as he tries to catch her while avoiding her web. The previous Roy Grace novel was You Are Dead last year. Rest assured that the saga of Grace’s missing wife, Sandy, which has run and run, is updated once again in this latest book, available from 19 May.
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Linskey is one of the UK’s brightest new voices in crime fiction and we have followed his progress since 2011, and reviewed books like The Drop, The Damaged and The Dead. Now, Detective Ian Bradshaw and crime writer Tom Carney have to untangle a wicked knot of different cases which seem to be linked. A disfigured corpse, a scrap dealer, a jailed psychopath who might – just might – be innocent, and a crooked councillor all contribute to sleepless nights for the Newcastle copper. This is out on 19 May, and in the meanwhile you can read our review of Linskey’s previous Bradshaw novel No Name Lane.
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DC Max Wolfe has previous form and his two earlier cases were The Murder Bag (2014) and the 2015 follow up The Slaughterman. The dog-loving lone parent now pits his wits against a group of people who, having been disappointed at Britain’s failure to reintroduce the death penalty, decide on a DIY approach. Their first two victims are a member of a Pakistani child-abuse gang, and a city trader who mowed down a boy cyclist with his lethal luxury car. Out on 19 May.
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You can never have too many serial killers in crime fiction, and Angela Marsons obliges with another case for DI Kim Stone. Stone lives and works in England’s Black Country – an industrial area of The Midlands – and she came to our attention in Silent Scream (2015). In her latest case she discovers that there is no better place to ‘lose’ a dead body that in a macabre but necessary research facility which investigates the effect of decomposition on the human corpse. As if a succession of missing women isn’t enough of a challenge, Stone is still battling demons from her own past. Published on 20 May.
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This is a welcome reissue of a 1983 novel by the distinguished British crime writer. The jacket suggests a gentler and more reflective world and this book starts with the well worn trope that goes something like this… A car breaks down, its occupants are forced to the spend night in a lonely inn, they meet mysterious guest, and a dramatic revelation follows. In this case, the revelation is that a fellow guest at the inn has found an undiscovered novel by one of the Brontë sisters. Cue disbelief, followed by drama and then murder. Set in the Yorkshire Dales, the book features Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Perry Trethowan, and you can read how he gets on from 19 May.
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Cooper is best known for her crime series featuring Willow King, a romantic novelist and amateur sleuth, but now she re-introduces a heroine called Trish Maguire, a feisty junior barrister. Maguire’s cousin Antonia Weblock seems to have put her high-powered City career ahead of her parenting duties, but when her four-year-old daughter is snatched from a London playground she is as devastated as any other mother. As the police desperately search for clues, Trish finds that behind the disappearance there is a web of deceit, manipulation and dark motives. The book was first published in 1998, but this new edition is out on 19 May.
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