On the Radar — It isn’t quite Halloween yet but we can smell roast Christmas dinner heating in the oven – metaphorically – as we look at our new releases this week. The big-hitter authors are out with new books in good time for the festive season and they include Lee Child, Ian Rankin, Kathy Reichs and more. Ideal gifts and great winter reading for all crime fiction lovers. Which will be on your Christmas list and/or TBR pile?

Night School by Lee Child
This prequel takes us back to Jack Reacher‘s days in the military, before 9/11. He’s co-opted into an international mission alongside a CIA man and an FBI one. Three Saudis and an Iranian are using a safe house in Germany to pass on information and, perhaps, plan something big. Intercepted messages seem to indicate that there’s an American connection involving money and possibly arms. Will Reacher be on the trail of a traitor, and what else is on the table – tanks, guns, explosives or something even deadlier? Out 8 November.
Pre-order now on Amazon

Rather Be the Devil by Ian Rankin
Retirement has not dulled the detective spirit of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh ex-cop John Rebus. In Rather Be the Devil, which takes its title from a John Martyn album, Rebus takes up a 40-year-old cold case – the murder of promiscuous socialite Maria Turquand in a luxury hotel. She died the night a famous rock star and his entourage were staying there, but no killer has been found. Big Ger Cafferty is back too, and at street level young gangster Darryl Christie has been viciously assaulted, and maybe the old-time crime boss Cafferty sniffs a chance to recover some of his empire… Out 3 November.
Pre-order now on Amazon

The Hanging Tree by Ben Aaronovitch
We’re never sure whether Ben Aaronovitch’s PC Peter Grant books are strictly speaking crime fiction – there’s plenty of the supernatural in them – but we’ll take a punt and say crime fiction lovers will enjoy this one. Things get under way with a suspicious death at a swanky party, and Grant is drawn into a world alien to him, that of the super-rich. As well as the murder, there seems to be an underground trade going on in arcane objects and that’s where the world of magic and myth find their way into this novel. It’s the sixth novel in the series. Out 3 November.
Pre-order now on Amazon

The Bone Collection by Kathy Reichs
A bone is never just a bone to Dr Temperance Brennan, the forensic anthropologist we all love to read about. To her, bones are a rich source of evidence and this book will be a rich source of background on Reichs’ hugely popular character as it contains four novella-length stories. It includes First Bones, which explains how Tempe became a forensic anthropologist, as well as Bones in Her Pocket, Bones on Ice and Swamp Bones. Florida, the Himalayas, there’s nowhere Tempe won’t go to research bones. Watch for our review. It’s out 3 November.
Pre-order now on Amazon

Crash Land by Doug Johnstone
Doug Johnstone has received praise for novels like The Jump and Hit and Run, and what’s refreshing about him is that rather than stick to a series he produces strong standalones that explore new concepts and weave thrilling crime stories around them. Here, the setting is the island of Orkney, and Finn Sullivan believes life would be better if he could just leave for the mainland. Then he meets Maddie Pierce and you just know this alluring and dangerous woman is going to lead him on a path to guilt, shame, lust, deception and murder. Out 3 November.
Pre-order now on Amazon

The Chrysalis by Catherine Deveney
If none of the above books sounds intriguing and different to you, maybe this will. Five decades ago, a woman named Marianne helped a killer to disappear after he’d stabbed Patrice Moreau to death. How does he disappear? By becoming a ‘she’, that’s how. This is a secret that Marianne has kept all these years and it haunts her until, now in a nursing home, she sees a similar secret apparently eating away at her young carer, Zac. They travel to the French town in the middle of nowhere, where the murder occurred, to exorcise the ghosts and face the truth. Out 1 November.
Pre-order now on Amazon

Have a look at last week’s new books here.