May crime round-up
A selection of the best in new crime fiction and non-fiction from the Bookdagger publishers for the month of May…
The Genesis Plague, by Michael Byrnes
At the dawn of civilization… An exotic stranger appears in a Mesopotamian village and is venerated as a goddess… until she unleashes a horror beyond anything humankind has ever known.
At the sunset of civilization… A mercenary unit in northern Iraq, led by Sergeant Jason Yaeger, has trapped radical Islam’s most wanted target in a mysterious cave that sits at the heart of the Genesis story. When a Marine platoon seeks to control the extraction mission, a threat far more ominous is found lurking beneath the mountains.
Meanwhile in Boston, Massachusetts, Agent Thomas Flaherty helps archaeologist Brooke Thompson escape assassination by a Las Vegas televangelist intent on using the cave’s deepest secret to bring the Middle East to its knees.
King Arthur’s Bones, by The Medieval Murderers
1191. During excavation work at Glastonbury Abbey, an ancient leaden cross is discovered buried several feet below ground. Inscribed on the cross are the words: Hic iacet sepultus inclitus rex arturius … Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur. Beneath the cross are skeletal remains. Could these really be the remains of the legendary King Arthur and his queen, Guinevere?
As the monks debate the implications of this extraordinary discovery, the bones disappear – spirited away by the mysterious Guardians, determined to keep the king’s remains safe until the ancient legend is fulfilled and Arthur returns to protect his country in the hour of its greatest need.
A missing right hand. A gang of ruthless bodysnatchers. Brother accused of killing brother. As the secret of the bones’ hiding place is passed from generation to generation, those entrusted to safeguard Arthur’s remains must withstand treachery, theft, blackmail and murder in order to keep the legend intact.
Hailey’s War, by Jodi Compton
Twenty-four-year-old Hailey Cain has dropped out of the US Military Academy for reasons she won’t reveal. She has had to leave Los Angeles and it would be too big a risk for her to return. Now working as a bike messenger in San Francisco, Hailey keeps a low profile, until her high school best friend Serena Delgadillo makes a call that will turn her whole life upside-down.
Serena is the head of an all-female gang on the rough streets of LA. She wants Hailey to escort the cousin of a recently murdered gang member across the border to Mexico. It’s a mission that will nearly cost Hailey her life, causing her to choose more than once between loyalty and lawlessness, and forcing her to confront two very big secrets in her past…
Willing Flesh, by Adam Creed
Christmas is coming and D. I. Staffe is trying to make a go of it with his on-off girlfriend, Sylvie, when a murdered woman is discovered in a swanky City hotel room – she is Elena Danya, a blonde and beguiling high-end prostitute.
As Staffe becomes obsessed with Danya, a friend of hers, an altogether more down-at-heel working girl, is found dead and their mutual aristocratic friend and bad-girl, Arabella, goes missing.
The evidence begins to point to a voyeuristic predator, Graham Blears, but Staffe is not convinced and is increasingly drawn away from the city and towards the roots of a tangled ménage involving a City banker, a Russian oligarch and a Turkish playboy, forcing himself down into the higher echelons of the British establishment, whose barricades begin to stonewall the investigation.
When his Chief, Pennington, cuts him loose, Staffe becomes the hunted instead of the hunter, with grave consequences for the women who are close to him.
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The Black Monastery, by Stav Sherez
People used to come to the small Greek island of Palassos for the historic ruins. Now they come to take drugs and party all night. But the horrific ritual murder of a boy in the grounds of an old monastery brings back memories of two similar deaths in the mid-1970s, and of a mysterious cult who once dwelt in the island’s interior, memories the island has tried hard to forget.
As Nikos, the police chief who has been persuaded back to his home island for the final years of his career, begins his investigation, two Brits arrive on the island: the bestselling crime writer Kitty Carson, on a break from the pressures of work and her strained marriage, and Jason an aspiring writer with a secret of his own. When a second body is discovered – further endangering the island’s lucrative tourist trade – these three characters are thrown together, as the gruesome secrets of the past begin to emerge.
Brilliantly paced, and featuring a memorable cast of characters, The Black Monastery is a blistering portrait of paradise gone wrong.
No Angel, by Jay Dobyns
In 2001 Jay Dobyns infiltrated a Hells Angels chapter operating in Arizona, in a highly secretive ATF investigation code named Operation Black Biscuit. The aim was simple: to examine the criminal underbelly of the world’s most famous biker group, and bring a major case against them. The reality, however, was much more complicated. In the twenty-one months that he spent inside the club, Dobyns became seduced by the outlaw lifestyle: seduced by the physical menace that comes with wearing the patch; seduced by riding his Harley down the highway at 100 miles an hour, eight bikes to a column, one bike’s wheels 18 inches from the next; and seduced by the intense bonds he forms within the club, where friends lay down their lives for each other. No Angel is a thrilling, adrenaline-fuelled ride of a book, which lifts the lid on the world’s most infamous underworlds.
Siberian Education, by Nicolai Lilin
Set in a small and tight-knit community of ‘honest criminals’ in a remote part of Russia, this is a tale of an extreme boyhood – exotic, violent and completely unique. Told from the perspective of a boy gaining his ‘education’ as a member of the Mafia-like Urkas in Transnistria, we get a glimpse inside the strict codes of honour and the rituals of this bizarre community. Besides having a deep distrust of outsiders – especially the police – the community is split into ‘honest’ and ‘dishonest’ criminals and crime is all-pervasive. Even their youngest children are taught to understand violence and when it is appropriate to use it. By the age of six, Nicolai Lilin is given his first ‘pike knife’ by an uncle and by the age of twelve he has been convicted of attempted murder. A huge bestseller in Lilin’s current home country, Italy, Siberian Education is an extraordinary snapshot of a violent world.
A Matter of Life and Death, by Sue Armstrong
A Matter of Life and Death profiles some of the world’s most eminent and pioneering pathologists. This is a hidden world, yet one we will all inevitably encounter at some time in our lives, for pathology lies at the cornerstone of modern medicine. It is pathologists who are responsible for recognising new diseases such as AIDS, SARS or Bird Flu, and for diagnosing which cancer a patient is suffering from. And it is pathologists who must explain the cause of death at the autopsy table. A Matter of Life and Death tells fascinating stories of mysterious illnesses and miraculous scientific breakthroughs. But it is also crammed full of extraordinary characters – from the forensic anthropologist with his own Body Farm in Tennessee to the doctor who had a lung and heart transplant and ended up using her own lungs for research.
