On the Radar – Our radar this week has us on the trail of two serial killers stateside, dealing with a tricky investigation into the discovery of a mass grave in a Stockholm suburb, seeing what could possibly go wrong if you take something out of the office that you’re not supposed to, and catching up with the latest mystery for Fenland journalist Philip Dryden.
Ready To Die by Linda Jackson
One serial killer, five targets – that’s Ready to Die. Our criminal is stalking them one by one. Sheriff Dan Grayson is close to death, leaving his department in Grizzly Falls, Montana, in a state of shock. Then a prominent judge is found dead. Detectives Regan Pescoli and Selena Alverez are assigned the investigation, but are they too on the killer’s shopping list? Ready To Die is out now.
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The Outsider by Chris Culver
Last year Chris Culver went from being a self-published sensation to having a book deal with Sphere thanks to his debut novel, The Abbey. Now he’s back with The Outsider, which sees detective Ash Rashid of the Minneapolis police approached by some top mafia figures and asked to solve the case of a hit and run. The only Muslim detective in the area finds himself surrounded by all the fanfare of an election year, and in the middle of a police corruption case too. It’s now for Kindle, out on 15 August as a paperback.
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The Paradise Trees by Linda Huber
Alicia Bryson’s return to the Yorkshire village where she grew up is far from a happy homecoming. She’s struggling to cope not just with her father’s illness but also her memories of a violent, miserable childhood, and she’s also worried that her young daughter, Jenny will suffer a similar unhappiness. However, all of these concerns are the least of her worries. Her arrival hasn’t gone unnoticed and although she may not realise it, someone is watching her every move and planning something that could put Alicia and Jenny’s lives in danger. The Paradise Trees is out on 1 September.
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The Murder House by Simon Beaufort
PC Helen Anderson makes a potentially fatal mistake when she takes her case files home to study over the weekend. It’s bad enough that she’s taken them out of the building without permission but things get a whole lot worse when the files are stolen and she starts to try and cover up her error with a white lie or two. The situation spirals out of control and reaches its climax in an ordinary suburban house on an ordinary street in Bristol. It just happens to have been the scene of a gruesome and extraordinary murder. The Murder House is out in hardback on 30 September.
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The Disappeared by Kristina Ohlsson
The discovery of a young woman’s body carved up and buried in a forest glade in a Stockholm suburb leads to a far bigger investigation for Fredrika Bergman and her colleagues. As the site is excavated, the body count begins to mount and it soon becomes clear that they have a mass grave on their hands, and the same name keeps cropping up – that of a children’s fiction author. What connection does this writer and her circle, known as The Guardian Angels, have to these deaths? The woman herself is mute and incapable of helping Fredrika, and the complexity of the case is causing rifts within Alex Recht’s team, which is now under investigation by Internal Affairs. Will the case ever be solved? The Disappeared is out today as a hardback.
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The Funeral Owl by Jim Kelly
A new investigation is in the offing for journalist Philip Dryden when a reader contacts the local newspaper, The Crow, to report that a rare Funeral Owl has just been sighted. Philip doesn’t have a good feeling about this. The newspaper has already reported on the discovery of a Chinese man found hanging from a cross in the churchyard in Brimstone Hill in the West Fens, of two tramps were recently found in a flooded ditch, and a series of metal thefts has continued with a certain degree of regularity. Meanwhile, PC Stokley has just been handed a 10-year old case to look into – art thefts linked to a horrific murder. He approaches Philip to assist, but the deeper he digs he begins to uncover one or two curious links between all of these seemingly unrelated cases. Could the Funeral Owl be living up to its prophetic reputation? It is out on 29 August.
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The Frozen Dead by Bernard Minier
They’re saying that French crime fiction is going to be the thing that thaws us out of this fascination with the Scandinavian stuff, and while this title sounds like it comes from the latter strain of the genre, it’s actually translated from the French. It kicks off with a dead horse found hanging from a frozen cliff. Strangely, the DNA of a criminally insane man is found on the horse and Toulouse cop Commandant Servaz just can’t understand it. Then the murders begin. If you liked Alex, or the TV series Spiral, this could be your glass of wine, it says here… Out today.
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Brother Kemal by Jakob Arjouni
Here’s an update for fans of the late Jakob Arjouni awaiting his final novel, Brother Kemal. We’ve just had news in that it’s been delayed until late September. The author’s untimely death from cancer earlier this year has slowed up the translation process from German to English. In the book, the popular private investigator Kemal Kayankaya takes on two cases – one to find a missing heiress, the other to play bodyguard for an author who’s become the target of Islamist fanatics at the Frankfurt book fair. The intertwining tale leads to murder, rape, abduction and more. Watch for it 26 September, and watch for our review too.
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