Stalin’s Russia, 1953. In a time when the only crimes acknowledged are those against the state, one man is determined to uncover the truth behind a series of murders the government denies.

Inspired by real-life serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, Child 44 is a thrillingly dark literary debut by 29 year-old Cambridge graduate Tom Rob Smith.

Drawing from elements of Chikatilo’s life, including his traumatising childhood growing up during the famine caused by Stalin’s agricultural policies, and his luring of victims from train stations into nearby woods before killing and mutilating them, this debut literary thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat while enveloping you in the claustrophobic and paranoid Russia that existed under Stalin’s rule.

When Leo Demidov, one of the country’s most loyal Security Ministry officers starts to question the State cover-up of crimes, his comfortable life takes a dramatic turn. Forced by senior officials to dismiss the horrific murder of a young boy and witnessing the torture of an alleged spy Leo knows is innocent, he chooses to give up his protected life to save his marriage, already on the brink of collapse. His decision leads them to a town deep in the Ural Mountains where he uncovers the murder of another child, a murder which bares a frightening resemblance to a child murder he was forced to deny.

With a killer on the loose, murdering children and dumping their bodies near train tracks all over the country, Leo and his wife set off on a wild hunt across Russia, risking disgrace, torture and death to hunt down the killer.

Capturing to incredible poverty and the terrifying world the Russian people endured under Stalin’s rule, Child 44 is thrilling and horrifying, an intense detective story that will haunt you long after you’ve read the last page.

Product Details
UK TRADE ORIGINALS, March 2008
TRADE PAPER BACK, 400 pages
ISBN-10: 1-847-37127-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-8473-7127-0

Not Dead Enough
James, Peter
ISBN:  9780230014695
Subject: Crime & Mystery
Published: 01-08-2007
Price: A$32.95

Synopsis

The latest spine-tingling murder case for Detective Superintendent Roy Grace – from the bestselling author of Dead Simple and Looking Good Dead.

On the night Brian Bishop murdered his wife, he was 60 miles away, asleep in bed at the time. At least, that’s the way it looks to Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, who is called in to investigate the kinky slaying of beautiful young Brighton socialite, Katie Bishop.

Soon, Grace starts coming to the conclusion that Bishop has performed the apparently impossible feat of being in two places at once. Has someone stolen his identity, or is he simply a very clever liar? As Grace digs deeper behind the façade of the Bishops outwardly respectable lives, it becomes clear that all is not as it first seemed. And then he digs just a little too far, and suddenly the fragile stability of his own troubled, private world is facing destruction…

“Nobody can delve into the dark, twisted mind of a murderer better than a Scandinavian thriller writer” – Vogue

Description of book

In 1944, Daniel, a soldier legendary among the Norwegians fighting the advance of Bolshevism on the Russian front, is killed. Two years later, a wounded soldier wakes in a Vienna hospital. He becomes involved with a young nurse, the consequences of which will ripple forward to the end of the century.

1999: Harry Hole, working alone having caused an embarassment in the line of duty, has been promoted to inspector and is lumbered with surveillance duties. He is assigned the task of monitoring neo-Nazi activities; fairly mundane until a report of a rare and unusual gun being fired sparks his interest. Ellen Gjelten, his partner, from his police officer days makes a startling discovery. Then a former soldier is found with his throat cut. In a quest which takes him to South Africa and Vienna, Harry finds himself perpetually one step behind the killer. He will be both winner and loser by the novel’s nail-biting conclusion.

THE REDBREAST, won the Glass Key for best Nordic crime novel when it was published in Norway, and was subsequently voted Norway’s best crime novel. THE DEVIL’S STAR, Nesbo’s first novel featuring Harry Hole to be translated into English, marked Nesbo as a voice to watch in the ever-more fashionable world of Nordic crime.

Reviews

‘Meaty, engrossing Nordic crime. Driven by a plot with more hooks than a bait and tackle shop it’s essential reading for all crime fans.’ Good Reading Magazine

Stone’s debut novel is elegant, horrifying, and chillingly suspenseful. He has produced a supremely satisfying international spy thriller of the highest order that traverses from Venice to London to Washington, D.C.

An international spy thriller of the highest order that traverses from Venice to London to Washington, D.C. Micah Dalton is not paid to ask questions. He’s the man the CIA sends to clean up the mess when something goes wrong-an agent gets in trouble, or worse. But when his colleague and friend Porter Nauman turns up dead in an idyllic Tuscan hill town, as a result of an apparent and unimaginably gruesome suicide, Dalton can’t help but ask questions. And when Nauman’s family is subsequently slaughtered back home in London, Dalton can sit back no longer. Moving from Venice to London to Washington, D.C., to the unbearably beautiful mountains of the American West, Dalton tracks the specter who, with a penchant for intricate knifework influenced by Native American mysticism, is killing a disparate group of agents, former agents, and contract men-all of whom seem to have a connection to ECHELON, a mysterious company operation. The murders appear to be acts of retribution, but for what? Elegant, horrifying, and chillingly suspenseful, “The Echelon Vendetta” will keep you enthralled, through its final, supremely satisfying twist.

Binding: Hardcover  ISBN: 0399154086    EAN: 9780399154089

Publisher: Putnam Publishing Group

Undertow

Bauer, Sydney

If two people have a conversation heard by only those two, did the conversation actually take place?

Following an alleged conversation between respected attorney Rayna Martin and teenager Christina Haynes during a boating trip at Cape Ann, Massachusetts, one of them is dead, the other arrested for murder.

Boston lawyer David Cavanaugh faces his toughest case to date as what appears to be a tragic but blameless accident turns into something else entirely.

With the victim’s father one of the most powerful politicians in the US Senate and the Assistant District Attorney prepared to put his personal ambition ahead of legal justice, David finds that his most dangerous battle is taking place outside the courtroom.

Lies, deception, blackmail, threats… and finally the precision of an assassin’s bullet combine to create a shocking finale in this exciting debut from Australian author Sydney Bauer.

Sydney Bauer has worked as a journalist and TV executive. As Director of Programming for a major Australian network, Sydney was able to indulge a personal passion for US dramas such as CSI, Law and Order and The Practice and meet with revered TV writers such as Steven Bochco. Sydney Bauer resides in Sydney and has just finished writing her second novel, Gospel.

The Fall

(This is a great read: Andrew@beaumaris books)

Author: Simon Mawer

First Published Feb 2003

As lonely adolescent boys in the Welsh hills, Rob Dewar and Jamie Matthewson were as close as friends can be. Both exiled from home and both fatherless, they shared a passion for the mountains and for climbing. So when, forty years on, Jamie is found dead at the foot of the Great Wall, a vertical, holdless slab of Welsh granite, Rob feels compelled to return to the place where they had grown up together, to confront the past.

Theirs is a story that begins before they were born, with their parents’ own intense relationship: an unlikely three-way friendship of the glamorous predator Caroline; the vulnerable, courageous Diana; and the enigmatic Guy Matthewson, a great climber and a conscientious objector. The secrets these three share, born in the heat of war and common tragedy, are buried so deep it seems they may never be uncovered.

Simon Mawer’s The Fall is an irresistible narrative of courage and endeavour, a story that captures nature at its most beautif

Lost

 Author: Michael Robotham

Eighty-five steps and then darkness . . . She’s gone. Vanished. Not from my memory, but within these walls where water sings in metal pipes and soot-stained bricks crumble at the edges. How can a child disappear in a building with only five floors and eleven flats?

Everyone knows that Mickey Carlyle is dead. A man is in prison for her murder. Everyone, that is, except Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz who cannot stop searching and hoping. He is found one night, clinging to a buoy in the River Thames, with a bullet in his leg and a photograph of Mickey in his pocket. Nearby is a boat that looks like a floating abattoir.

Ruiz’s service pistol is missing and so is his memory. Under investigation by his own colleagues and accused of faking amnesia, his only hope of unravelling the puzzle is to retrace his steps and relive that night with the help of psychologist Joseph O’Loughlin. Facts, not memories, solve cases. Facts, not memories, will tell him what happened to Mickey Carlyle.

BETTER THAN

THE DA VINCI CODE?

Will this be ‘THE’ book of 2005?

I Confess: I loved this book! (Andrew @ Beaumaris Books)

Reviewed by David Montgomery

Gabriel Allon is a troubled man, tortured by the terrible things he has done and the even worse things he has seen. He wants nothing more in life than to spend time exercising his gift for art restoration, bringing back the magic and beauty to the works of Bellini, Michaelangelo, and other past masters of painting. Allon has another gift, though, one that is darker and deadlier: he is an assassin beyond compare. Trained by the Mossad and perfected by years of action against Black September, the PLO and a host of other terrorist organizations, Gabriel is an able tool for Israel’s righteous revenge.

In The Confessor, Allon is forced to leave behind his paints and brushes when Benjamin Stern, an old friend and one-time colleague, is murdered in Munich. Stern was working on a book about Pope Pius XII and the collaboration between the Catholic Church and the Nazis during World War II. An inflammatory topic, to be sure, but nobody in the Vatican would actually have a man killed, would they? That is what Gabriel must find out.

As his investigation digs deep into the mysteries of the past, Allon discovers dark secrets that the Church does not wish ever to be revealed. More alarmingly, he finds that the sins of the past live on in the events of the present. Soon the hunter finds himself the target of a deadly campaign to keep this Pandora’s Box of deception firmly closed.

First introduced in The Kill Artist (2000), Allon also appeared in last year’s excellent The English Assassin. He is a superior protagonist for a series like this, superbly skilled and cold-blooded, yet still possessing a heart that bleeds for the horrors of the world. He makes a refreshing change from the one-dimensional killers who populate so many suspense novels, possessing as he does the soul of an artist and the mind of a poet.

Silva’s story, and the characters that populate it, will no doubt offend and even outrage some readers, particularly those of the Catholic faith. His skills as a reporter and researcher, though, enable him to craft a fictional plot around a hard kernel of truth. Even if there is no one like Silva’s villains in the church today – and nobody is saying there is – there is still a great deal in the Vatican’s past, particularly during the war years, that has yet to be fully explained.

With the death of Robert Ludlum in 2001, the thriller field has been thrown wide open for the next generation of writers to come along and attempt to match the prowess of the late master. Daniel Silva is, so far, the ablest successor to emerge. Although he will never replace Ludlum, it looks like he is going to assume a very comfortable place to his side.