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Death on Demand by Jim Kelly

Norfolk coppers Peter Shaw and George Valentine return for their latest outing and their beat includes the rough and ready port of King’s Lynn, as well as the gentrified coast further north. Care homes here are as common as candyfloss is in the nearby seaside…
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News

Gunpowder, plots and new crime books

On the Radar — In England, there’s an old children’s chant promising gunpowder, treason and plot for 5 November. Book publishers seem to have taken this to heart and have scheduled a veritable truckload of new crime releases for that date – Guy Fawkes Day. Treason…
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Last Words

On the Radar — Earlier this year, two giants of British crime fiction – PD James and Ruth Rendell – died within months of each other. But both lived to a decent old age, and we can be thankful that Ruth Rendell completed Dark Corners before her…
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News

Crime fiction lovers strike it lucky!

On the Radar — Michael Connolly, Robin Cook, Patricia Cornwell, Robert Galbraith, John Grisham… No, it’s not the top table at a crime writing awards dinner, it’s this week’s collection of forthcoming new releases. Add in the names Abbott, Comley, Renn, and Wynd, and we can safely…
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Book Club

Splinter the Silence

Val McDermid brings British crime fiction’s favourite odd couple, Carol Jordan and Tony Hill, back for their ninth outing, but things are different. Jordan is no longer a DCI and Hill hardly speaks to her while she shuts herself away restoring an old barn. When Jordan becomes…
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Book Club

The Defenceless

Kati Hiekkapelto’s cop Anna Fekete first featured in The Hummingird (2014) and she returns in another crime thriller which exposes the raw underbelly of Finland’s normally calm and thoughtful society. Police officer Fekete and her older colleague Esko have to fight hard to stay on…
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Book Club

The Cartel

Sometimes truth is stranger – or in this case, more ghastly – than fiction, and Don Winslow doesn’t attempt to improve on the unbelievable everyday brutality and mind-numbing violence of Mexico’s drug business. The Cartel is the sequel to The Power of the Dog, and…
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Book Club

A Taste of Ashes

The west coast town of Ayr is the backdrop to A Taste of Ashes, the second of Tony Black’s novels featuring DI Bob Valentine. He is a cop who places himself – literally – at the sharp end, as he is just returning to duty…
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