On the Radar — Brace yourself, crime-writing and linguistic hurricane James Ellroy is back with a wartime thriller featuring the cop you love to hate, Dudley Smith. But if you don’t fancy LA as your next destination we’ve got plenty more including Amsterdam, and a whole range of holiday resorts in a new summertime crime short story collection. Read on, hepcats, read on…
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This Storm by James Ellroy
The influential American crime author James Ellroy takes us back to 1942 Los Angeles, as we continue the story of a young cop with an Irish brogue called Dudley Smith. You know, the Dudley Smith who appears in LA Confidential, The Black Dahlia et al. In Ellroy’s last book, Perfidia, we began Dudley’s origin story and here we see him move from his usual racism to full-on fascism. With a dead body in Griffith Park to investigate, Smith is working with Navy Intelligence and is paired with Joan Conville, a woman who has an agenda of her own… It’s out on 30 May.
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The Copycat by Jake Woodhouse
The Amsterdam Quartet featuring Inspector Jaap Rykel reaches its conclusion with The Copycat, which is out on 30 May. Rykel is close to breaking point and on the verge of jacking it all in. Then a final visit to the station gives him second thoughts. There’s been a violent murder, the details of which match a case Rykel solved years earlier. The culprit is still in jail, so is there a copycat on the prowl – or, back then, did Rykel make a dreadful error of judgment? Read our review of book one of the series, After the Silence.
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Murder in Midsummer
Not to be mistaken with the Midsomer Murders, Murder in Midsummer brings together short stories written by some of the crime fiction greats of the last century or so – Margery Allingham, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L Sayers, John Dickinson Carr, Ruth Rendell and more. There are 10 mysteries in all, each set in a holiday location, and the cover is an old-fashioned style Southern Railway poster design. This probably isn’t for the Golden Age aficionado, but if your bookshelf is full of contemporary crime and you want to go old school this summer, it’s a book to pick up. Murder in Midsummer is out 30 May.
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City of Broken Lights by KC Sivils
Ready for some hardboiled noir that’s set firmly in the future? You’ve found it – and book six in the Inspector Thomas Sullivan series is out on 30 May. There’s a lucrative job on offer for Sully, but is he prepared to face past demons to pursue the truth and find a kidnap victim? Things are about to come to a head in the hot, gritty streets of a run down industrial district in the city of New Paris and it’s going to get very messy. What is ‘hardboiled’? Read our feature and find out!
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Shadow by James Swallow
We’ve reached book four in the series featuring former MI6 officer Marc Dane, and Shadow finds him on his most dangerous adventure to date. A ruthless far-right terrorist manages to escape from prison, then a mysterious bio-scientist with a terrible secret is abducted. The two events are about to unleash a perfect storm as a lethal contagion threatens millions of lives across Europe and the Middle East. Can our hero come to the rescue once again? You can bet he’s gonna try! Out on 30 May. Book two of the series, Exile, is reviewed here.
Pre-order now on Amazon