Feast your eyes on this new book from Macmillan, which hits the shelves on 16 July. In her crime fiction debut, Scotland-based Californian author Laura Lam has come up with a strange and futuristic thriller, which is alluded to in design terms by that brushed metallic finish on the jacket.
These crossed thumbprints form a heart, lifted from the silvery cover in a bold bloody red. But this ain’t no love story. The False Hearts the title refers to beat in the chests of twin women. Tila and Taema were conjoined twins, and they grew up in a cult near San Francisco which denied them modern medicine. They were forced to escape the cult when their shared heart began to fail, and were given artificial hearts to keep them alive.
Now, however, Tila has been arrested for murder. According to the blurb, this is the first one committed by a civilian in decades. While she faces justice, her twin Taema is out to find out what really happened, because it looks like a powerful crime syndicate is somehow involved. The criminals are trafficking a new drug, too – Verve is taken by psychopaths and when they’re on it they can act out their bizarre and murderous fantasies in a hallucinatory dreamscape.
There’s no goldleaf here. We’re talking crimsonleaf instead. Each chapter has a nice touch – a fingerprint like the ones on the cover. The jacket design was done by Neil Lang.
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