Bookdagger.com » Three sets of Simon & Schuster crime paperbacks to be won [closed]

Three sets of Simon & Schuster crime paperbacks to be won [closed]

Three lucky winners of this competition will each win a set of ten of Simon & Schuster’s best crime novels. What are you waiting for? Get entering!

The three lucky winners will each receive a set of the following titles:

The Secret Speech and Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith
Captured, by Neil Cross
Red Dahlia, by Lynda la Plante
Just Take My Heart, by Mary Higgins Clark
Twisted Wing, by Ruth Newman
The Devlin Diary, by Christi Phillips
The Crucifix Killer , by Chris Carter
Venom, by Joan Brady
Random, by Craig Robertson (a proof copy as it’s published in April 2010)

How’s that for a prize? Find out some more about these titles below, then enter the competition for your chance to win.

The Secret Speech and Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith

Child 44: In Stalin’s Soviet Union, crime does not exist. But still millions live in fear. The mere suspicion of disloyalty to the State, the wrong word at the wrong time, can send an innocent person to his execution.

Officer Leo Demidov, an idealistic war hero, believes he’s building a perfect society. But after witnessing the interrogation of an innocent man, his loyalty begins to waver, and when ordered to investigate his own wife, Raisa, Leo is forced to choose where his heart truly lies.

Then the impossible happens. A murderer is on the loose, killing at will, and every belief Leo has ever held is shattered. Denounced by his enemies and exiled from home, with only Raisa by his side, he must risk everything to find a criminal that the State won’t admit even exists. On the run, Leo soon discovers the danger isn’t from the killer he is trying to catch, but from the country he is trying to protect.

The Secret Speech: Soviet Union, 1956: Stalin is dead. With his passing, a violent regime is beginning to fracture – leaving behind a society where the police are the criminals, and the criminals are innocent. The catalyst comes when a secret manifesto composed by Stalin’s successor Khrushchev is distributed to the entire nation. Its message: Stalin was a tyrant and a murderer. Its promise: The Soviet Union will transform. But there are forces at work that are unable to forgive or forget Stalin’s tyranny so easily, that demand revenge of the most appalling nature.

Meanwhile, former MGB officer Leo Demidov is facing his own turmoil. The two young girls he and his wife Raisa adopted have yet to forgive him for his involvement in the murder of their parents. They are not alone. Now that the truth is out, Leo, Raisa and their family are in grave danger from someone with a grudge against Leo. Someone transformed beyond recognition into the perfect model of vengeance.

From the streets of Moscow in the throes of political upheaval, to the wintry Siberian gulags and to Budapest, where a revolution will destroy as many innocent lives as the regime it is attempting to end, The Secret Speech is another stunning thriller from the author of the Booker- longlisted Child 44.

Captured, by Neil Cross

Even though he is still young, Kenny has just weeks to live. Before he dies, he wants to find his childhood best friend Callie Barton and thank her for the kindness she showed him when they were at school together.

But when Kenny begins his search, he discovers that Callie Barton has gone missing. Although cleared of any involvement, her husband Jonathan seems to be hiding something.

Kenny has no choice but to take matters into his own hands. And knowing that time is running out on him, he’s prepared to do whatever it takes…

The Red Dahlia, by Lynda La Plante

Detective Anna Travis is working on a horrific, brutal murder case that has created a media frenzy. The victim, Louise Pennel, a 24-year-old, single, ‘fun-loving’ girl, was last seen in a London night club wearing a sequinned mini-dress and a red rose in her hair.

In an eerie mirror image of the famous LA murder case of Elizabeth Short in the l940s known as the Black Dahlia, her body was found dumped by the River Thames… severed in half and brutalised beyond recognition.

Anna Travis must summon all the strength and guile she became so well known for in Above Suspicion to hunt down this sadistic killer.

Just Take My Heart, by Mary Higgins Clark

When Natalie Raines, famous Broadway star, is found in her home in Closter, New Jersey, dying from a gunshot wound, her former husband, Gregg Aldrich, whom she was in the process of divorcing, is the chief suspect. What no one knows is that, only days before she was murdered, Natalie accidentally came face to face with the man who killed her former roommate, Jamie Evans.

Two years later, career criminal Jimmy Easton, comes forward to claim that Aldrich hired him to kill his wife, but he turned the job down. Based on Easton’s testimony, Gregg is charged with the murder of his wife.

Handling the case is Emily Wallace, an attractive thirty-two-year-old widowed assistant prosecutor. As Aldrich’s trial is making headlines, Emily’s boss, Ted Wesley, warns her that this high-profile case will reveal personal matters about her, such as the fact that she had a heart transplant. And, during the trial, Emily experiences sentiments which defy all reason and continue after Gregg Aldrich’s fate is decided by the jury.

In the meantime, she does not realize that her own life is now at risk.

Twisted Wing, by Ruth Newman

The claustrophobic environment of Ariel College, Cambridge, has become the hunting ground of a serial killer. For the students, a siege mentality has developed following weeks of media interest in the ‘Cambridge Butcher’. College life has become not about surviving their exams, but surviving full stop.

Forensic psychiatrist Matthew Denison is sure that his traumatised patient, student Olivia Coscadden, has the killer’s identity locked up in her memory. That within the little clique she belonged to lurks someone with a grudge. Someone who thought ‘what’s a little decapitation between friends?’ And that someone is just getting started.

But in order to get to the truth, Denison must delve into the secrets hidden within Olivia’s subconscious. Secrets that are about to take him to some very dark places indeed.

Read the first chapter here on Bookdagger

The Devlin Diary, by Christi Phillips

London, 1672: A vicious killer stalks the court of Charles II, inscribing his victims’ bodies with mysterious markings. Are these the random murders of a madman? The deadly consequence of a personal vendetta? Or the grisly result of a hidden conspiracy?
Cambridge, 2008: A Trinity College history professor is found dead, the torn page of a seventeenth-century diary in his hand. His death appears to be an accident, but the college’s newest Fellow Claire Donovan and historian Andrew Kent suspect otherwise. The professor’s last research subject was Hannah Devlin, a physician to the king’s mistress and the keeper of a diary that holds the key to a series of unsolved murders in 1670s London. Through the arcane collections of Trinity’s Wren Library, the British Library, and the Royal Society, Claire and Andrew follow the clues Hannah left behind, unearthing secrets of the past and present as both stories unfold to their shocking conclusions.

Read the first chapter of The Devlin Diary

The Crucifix Killer, by Chris Carter

When the body of a young woman is discovered in a derelict cottage in the middle of Los Angeles National Forest, Homicide Detective Robert Hunter finds himself entering a horrific and recurring nightmare. Naked, strung from two wooden posts, the victim was sadistically tortured before meeting an excruciatingly painful death. All the skin has been ripped from her face – while she was still alive. On the nape of her neck has been carved a strange double-cross: the signature of a psychopath known as the Crucifix Killer.

But that’s impossible. Because two years ago, the Crucifix Killer was caught and executed. Could this therefore be a copycat killer? Or could the unthinkable be true? Is the real killer still out there, ready to embark once again on a vicious and violent killing spree, selecting his victims seemingly at random, taunting Robert Hunter with his inability to catch him?
Hunter and his rookie partner are about to enter a nightmare beyond imagining.

Read the first chapter of The Crucifix Killer

Venom, by Joan Brady

Recently released from prison, David Marion doesn’t expect to find a hitman at his door. Their meeting is lethal – for the hitman. Warned that a powerful secret organisation is after him, David disappears until the moment comes for him to strike back.
Physicist Helen Freyl owns a colony of bees with unique venom. When her lover dies, she accepts a job offer from a giant pharmaceutical company who are close to finding a cure for radiation poisoning. But when the mysteriously sudden death of a colleague is followed by another, Helen begins to doubt her employers’ motives and realises that her own life is in danger, too.
Venom brings David and Helen together as they fight for their lives against a backdrop of industrial espionage, corporate greed and human tragedy.

Read the first chaper of Venom

Random, by Craig Robertson

Glasgow is being terrorised by a serial killer the media have nicknamed The Cutter. The murders have left the police baffled. There seems to be neither rhyme nor reason behind the killings; no kind of pattern or motive; an entirely different method of murder each time, and nothing that connects the victims except for the fact that the little fingers of their right hands have been severed.

If DS Rachel Narey could only work out the key to the seemingly random murders, how and why the killer selects his victims, she would be well on her way to catching him. But as the police, the press and a threatening figure from Glasgow’s underworld begin to close in on The Cutter, his carefully-laid plans threaten to unravel – with horrifying consequences.

The questions

To be in with a chance to win, answer the following questions correctly:

Question 1: The Devlin Diary takes place in the 21st century and which other century?
Question 2: In which city is Random set?
Question 3: Red Dahlia is based on which infamous 1940’s Hollywood murder?

No more submissions accepted at this time.

Terms and conditions

Closing date for entries: 12th March 2010.
Open to residents of the United Kingdom only.
Entry to the competition is by completion of the above form only. Anyone submitting multiple entries will be disqualified.
The winners will be selected at random from those correct entries received before the closing date.
Only the winning entrants will be contacted by Bookdagger. Our decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
The winner’s name(s) may be published on the Bookdagger website after the closing date of the competition.
The competition is not open to Bookdagger employees and their families, or to employees of Bookdagger publishers and their families.

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