Crime Thriller Book Log: Kerley, Abbott, Walsh & Weeks
Back in 1988 Jill Paton Walsh took on the task of completing the novel Dorothy L. Sayers abandoned. She completed the Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane book Thrones, Dominations. It all worked out rather well.
After that success Paton Walsh followed it with A Presumption Of Death based on more Sayers writings - and set during World War II - and then wrote a prequel about Wimsey’s first case called The Attenbury Emeralds.
Set in the 1950s, her latest Wimsey and Vane novel The Late Scholar is out tomorrow. Take a punt on the blurb:
Peter Wimsey is pleased to discover that along with a Dukedom he has inherited the duties of ‘visitor’ at an Oxford college. When the fellows appeal to him to resolve a dispute, he and Harriet set off happily to spend some time in Oxford.
But the dispute turns out to be embittered. The voting is evenly balanced between two passionate parties - evenly balanced, that is, until several of the fellows unexpectedly die.The Warden has a casting vote, but the Warden has disappeared.
And the causes of death of the deceased fellows bear an uncanny resemblance to the murder methods in Peter’s past cases - methods that Harriet has used in her published novels.
The Late Scholar is available in hardback and kindle slash e-reader.
J.A. Kerley is usually up writing before the crack of dawn – I am informed that it is still dark at this time of the day - which is perhaps why he’s written no less than nine Carson Ryder novels, about a detective who investigates particularly nasty bits of business. Get this, Kerley’s wife ordered him to give up advertising to write his first novel. That’s the kind of wife you want. Anyway, here’s the blurb for his latest novel The Death Box.
Carson Ryder thought he’d seen everything …
A specialist in twisted crimes, Detective Carson Ryder thought he’d seen the lowest depths of human depravity. But he’s barely started his new job in Miami when called to a horrific scene: a concrete pillar built of human remains, their agony forever frozen in stone.
Finding the secret of the pillar drags him into the sordid world of human trafficking, where one terrified girl holds the key to unraveling a web of pain, prostitution and murder. There’s just one problem: Ryder’s not the only one chasing the girl.
And the others will kill to keep the secret safe.
The Death Box is in paperback and on the kindle type thing on Thursday.
After leaving the CIA, Jeff Abbott’s protagonist Sam Capra vowed to protect the innocent and helpless by opening up a series of bars around the world. The bar-owning thing must be working out for him because he’s now appearing in his third book called Downfall.
Capra may want to fix himself a stiff drink, because in Downfall he’s taking on the most powerful person in the world. Blurb, gentlemen, please:
‘Help me.’
When a young woman rushes into Sam Capra’s San Francisco bar and whispers these desperate words, Sam feels compelled to help. A moment later she is attacked by two killers. With Sam’s aid, she manages to overpower the men, saving his life in the process before vanishing into the night.
On discovering that one of the attackers is no mere thug, but, shockingly, one of the most powerful investors in America, Sam searches for the beguiling young woman who asked for help and unearths a deadly network run by some of the most powerful and influential people in the world…
Downfall is now available in paperback, as well as hardcover and on kindle.
Lee Weeks is someone else who gets up nice and early to write. Previously, Weeks wrote the Johnny Mann novels, about a Hong Kong detective, but her new series has relocated along the less-glamorous route of the 134 bus in North London.
Cold As Ice – anyone else got that Foreigner song looping endlessly in their head now? – is the second novel about DI Dan Carter and DC Ebony Willis, a follow up to Dead Of Winter.
You may have been waiting anxiously for the blurb, in which case you may now relax:
There’s a time to love, a time to hate, a time to heal ...and a time to kill. On a freezing cold winter’s day, the body of a young woman is pulled from an icy canal in London. To D.I. Dan Carter it looks like a tragic accident rather than the work of a murderer. But D.C. Ebony Willis is not so sure. Why has the woman’s face been painted with garish make-up and wrapped in a plastic bag?
Meanwhile cosmetics saleswoman Tracy Collins receives a phonecall. It’s been twenty years since she gave up her daughter for adoption, so when Danielle gets in touch, she hesitantly begins to kindle a relationship with her and her grandson Jackson. But when Danielle suddenly disappears, Tracy is plunged into the middle of a living nightmare. With the discovery of another body, it becomes clear that Danielle is in grave danger.
There is no time to lose and Ebony Willis must take on the most challenging assignment of her career - to play the role of the killer’s next victim. From the author of the bestselling Dead of Winter comes a page-turning new thriller that will have you hooked from start to finish.
Cold As Ice is out tomorrow – just like all the rest – in paperback.
