Mysteries Recent Picks
June 2009
The underlined titles will take you directly to our catalogue.
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The headhunters, Peter Lovesey. (2008)
Jo and Gemma are friends who meet for coffee every Saturday to gossip and discuss the state of the world. At one such meeting, Gemma mentions killing her boss and Jo goes along with the joke. But Jo is not amused when she finds a real body on the beach at Selsey soon afterwards, an unidentified nearly-naked woman, who has been drowned. It takes DCI Hen Mallin and her team some time to discover who the woman is, and as they are investigating, Jo and Gemma keep coming across other dead bodies. (Amazon)
Woman with birthmark : an Inspector van Veeteren mystery, Hakan Nesser ; translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson. (2009)
Why would anybody march up to somebody's door, ring the bell and shoot whoever opened it? A middle-aged man is killed at his home, shot twice in the chest and twice below the belt. He had recently received a series of bizarre phone calls where an old song is played down the line, evoking an eerie sense of both familiarity and unease. Before the police can find the culprit, a second man is killed in the same way. Chief Inspector Van Veeteren and his team must dig far back into each man's past, but with few clues at each crime scene, can they find the killer before anyone else dies? (Amazon)
Shadow and light, by Jonathan Rabb. (2009)
Set in Berlin, between the two world wars. When an executive at the renowned Ufa film studios is found dead floating in his office bathtub, it falls to Nikolai Hoffner, a chief inspector in the Kriminalpolizei, to investigate. With the help of Fritz Lang (the German director) and Alby Pimm (leader of the most powerful crime syndicate in Berlin), Hoffner finds his case taking him beyond the world of film and into the far more treacherous landscape of Berlin's sex and drug trade, the rise of Hitler's Brownshirts (the SA), and the even more astonishing attempts by onetime monarchists to rearm a post-Versailles Germany. (Amazon)
Chinatown angel, A.E. Roman. (2009)
Chico Santana is broke and broken-hearted after his wife, Ramona, leaves him. On New Year's Eve, he runs into an old childhood friend. Albert Garcia is now a waiter and a wannabe filmmaker, tangled up with rising film star Kirk Atlas and his wealthy, eccentric family. On learning Chico's a PI, Atlas hires him to track down his cousin Tiffany, a beautiful Chinese-Cuban-American girl who has packed up and left her family, sending letters saying she doesn't want to be found. It seems like easy money, which Chico could use. But on the night he gets the job, Atlas's Brazilian maid falls from the rooftop of her apartment in Queens. Albert and everyone else insist it was a suicide, but Chico has a bad feeling. His search for Tiffany is soon thwarted by other family members, and more disturbing and sinister details come to light. Although Chico's being paid good money to look the other way, he's driven to uncover the truth. (Amazon)
The edge, Chris Simms. (2009)
It's the phone call DI Jon Spicer has long feared, his wild younger brother has been found dead. He has been murdered and horribly mutilated. Aware Dave was involved in drugs, Jon had hoped to steer him away from his doomed and self-destructive fate. Full of anger, he heads to the town where Dave's body was discovered, bent on finding the killer. Meanwhile, Dave's young girlfriend, Zoe, is trapped in an inner-city hell. Vulnerable, destitute and now alone, she is being hunted by the vicious criminal Dave owed money to. Arriving in the Peak District, Jon finds a community with plenty to hide. With time running out and his distraught family cracking under the strain, Jon realises the truth of his brother's death lies in two places: with a frightened girl trapped somewhere among Manchester's tower-blocks and out on the bleak heights overlooking the secretive rural town. (Amazon)
Sacrifice, by Sharon J. Bolton. (2008)
Moving to remote Shetland has been unsettling enough for consultant surgeon Tora Hamilton; even before the gruesome discovery she makes one rain-drenched Sunday afternoon. Deep in the peat soil of her field she is shocked to find the perfectly preserved body of a young woman, a gaping hole in her chest where her heart has been brutally removed. Three rune marks etched into the woman's skin bear an eerie resemblance to carvings Tora has seen all over the islands: in homes she has visited, even around a fireplace in her own cellar. As she uncovers disturbing links to an ancient Shetland legend, the unfriendly detective, her smooth-talking boss and even her own husband are at pains to persuade her to leave well alone. (Amazon)
The sweet smell of decay : beign the first chronicle of Harry Lytle, by Paul Lawrence. (2009)
This is the first book in a new series of historical novels set in 17th century Restoration London, featuring the loveable rogue Harry Lytle. He discovers a mutilated body in a church and is then told the corpse was a relative of his. His escapades and scrapes on his journey to find the truth make for a rollicking and glorious read. (Amazon)
Blind eye, Stuart MacBride. (2009)
It is summer in the city of Aberdeen, but even the sunshine can't improve the mood at Grampian Police Headquarters. Aberdeen's growing Polish community is under attack from a serial offender who leaves mutilated victims to be discovered on building sites, eyes gouged out and the sockets burned. Detective Sergeant Logan McRae is assigned to the investigation, codenamed Operation Oedipus, but with the victims too scared to talk, it's going nowhere fast. When the next victim turns out to be not a newly arrived eastern European, but Simon McLeod, owner of the Turf n' Track bookies, Logan suddenly finds himself caught up in a world of drug wars, prostitution rings and gun-running courtesy of Aberdeen's oldest and most vicious crime lord. (Amazon)
Where petals fall, by Shirley Wells. (2009)
When two young boys find a woman's body in a quarry, Jill Kennedy and DCI Max Trentham experience a definite feeling of déjà vu. Five years earlier, four women were found murdered in exactly the same way. Weirdly, the bodies had each been discovered wrapped in a shroud, so the killer was soon dubbed âThe Undertaker'. Following Jill's profiling the police tried to arrest a loner called Edward Marshall, but the man had fled and, after a high-speed car chase, lost control and went over a cliff. His car was found but his body never was. Now there are three possibilities: Marshall somehow survived that plunge into the sea; Marshall was innocent and the real killer is back, or a copycat is at work. (Amazon)
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