On the Radar — Contemporary art will cost you an arm and a leg these days… well, an arm at least. This is one of the more gory details that pops up among the clues in this week’s new crime releases and it’s to be found in our lead book, Deadland by William Shaw. He locates the limb neatly on a sculpture in the Turner gallery in Margate… a neat touch.
British crime novel stalwarts Oliver Harris and Mark Billingham are back, and we’ve got intrigue in North Africa and a couple who spice up their marriage with a bit of murder in our other picks. Which novel will make your reading list this Easter?
Deadland by William Shaw
English author and journalist William Shaw returns to Kent for a second spin-off from The Birdwatcher (the first was Salt Lane) and again DS Alexandra Cupidi takes centre stage. Two bored 17-year-old boys on a moped steal a mobile phone and speed off. A mistake, and one they’re about to regret, big time. Meanwhile, at Margate’s swanky Turner Contemporary gallery a piece of sculpture has a strange addition… a severed limb. The two cases seem worlds apart, but as Cupidi battles both police politics and personal issues, those two worlds are about to collide. Out 2 May.
Pre-order now on Amazon
A Shadow Intelligence by Oliver Harris
The health and wellbeing of staff is something employers claim to be focusing on more and more these days, and it’s a concept Oliver Harris toys with in an interesting way in A Shadow Intelligence. Here the employer is MI6, which invests heavily in the training of new agents but, apparently, the resources aren’t there when operatives come out the other end. So, they keep on doing what they do for new employers because they’ve never really decompressed. One of them is Elliot Kane, involved in MI6 black ops in China, Russia and Kazakhstan, now he’s gone from spying to instigating. He has good reason, though. The woman he loves has gone missing. Out 2 May
Pre-order now on Amazon
A Single Source by Peter Hanington
Former broadcast journalist Hanington puts his 25 years in the job to good use in a novel which has a veteran BBC reporter as its protagonist, out 2 May. William Carver is in Cairo covering the Arab Spring but his mind strays to other things when he uncovers another story. The two strands intertwine over a few tumultuous months in a novel that crosses North Africa before arriving in Egypt, where things are about to come to a head in the most bloody and dramatic fashion.
Pre-order now on Amazon
My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing
What do you do when your marriage has gone a little stale? Maybe not what the pair in this book come up with… it involves murder. It all begins so normally. Couple meet, fall in love, marry, have kids and move to the suburbs. To all intents and purposes, things are going well. But our perfect couple is hiding some dark secrets in a debut novel that has more twists and turns than a fairground rollercoaster. Scream if you want to read faster? Out 2 May.
Pre-order now on Amazon
Their Little Secret by Mark Billingham
The Met detectives Tom Thorne and Nicola Tanner return with a case that initially looks like the suicide of a woman. Soon, however, it seems as though someone drove the victim to her death – a man who ruthlessly preys on vulnerable women and exploits them for everything they’re worth. Meanwhile, there is single mother Sarah, a woman looking for a way to bring excitement back to her life. Then there’s the case of a man bludgeoned to death, whose body is found in a seaside town. Another hard hitter from Mark Billingham, landing on 2 May.
Pre-order now on Amazon
We All Fall Down by Daniel Kalla
Just when you think things can’t get any worse in the world, along comes the plague to stick another spanner in the works! In a remote Italian town, a patient lies dying – a matter that’s soon brought to the attention of NATO infectious diseases expert Alana Vaughn. She flies to the bedside and confirms everyone’s worst fears – the patient is suffering from the Black Death, which eight centuries ago killed more than a quarter of the world’s population. The race is on to find the source of the most devastating disease known to man… Out now for Kindle, and on 2 May as a paperback.
Pre-order now on Amazon
