June crime round-up
A selection of the best in new crime fiction and non-fiction from the Bookdagger publishers for the month of June featuring five reissues from the P. D. James backlist, two new Lynda La Plante thrillers, the realities of the cocaine trade, and the codes behind Russia’s equivalent to the Mafia…
Snowblind, by Robert Sabbag
When it was first published in the mid-seventies, Snowblind established itself as an essential piece of true crime writing. The story of the legendary Zachary Swan, a mover in the cocaine trade in the sixties who set the standard for all who followed, Sabbag’s riveting account is a compulsive insight into an underworld populated by crazy characters and riven by paranoia. The result is an illuminating and wild book that influenced a generation of writers and smugglers.
A flat-out ballbuster. It moves like a threshing machine with a fuel tank of ether.
Hunter S. Thompson
One of the first books about the cocaine trade and it is still among the best.
Norman Mailer
Silent Scream, by Lynda La Plante
Hot young British film star Amanda Delany had the world at her feet. Never one for the quiet life, she’d had a string of affairs with famous actors, making perfect fodder for the tabloids… Then came a commission to write a tell-all memoir.
When Amanda is found brutally murdered, the suspects are lining up – from jealous ex-flatmates to famous lovers to a corrupt agent. As DCI James Langton leads his team in an extensive enquiry, they discover the sad truth behind Amanda’s successful façade. An autopsy reveals that she was addicted to drugs and starvation diets. Amanda’s parents are a cold, unemotional couple who hushed up the fact that their daughter once almost died from a botched abortion. And it is revealed that her massive earnings were being swallowed up in a City fraud.
Meanwhile, DI Anna Travis is up for promotion, but her boss DCI James Langton is blocking her, with an accusation of professional misconduct. This latest case, her toughest challenge so far, could make or break Anna’s career.
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.
Blind Fury, by Lynda La Plante
Close to a motorway service station, the body of a young woman is discovered. She appears to have no family, no friends, no one to identify her. DI Anna Travis is brought onto the team of investigators by DCS James Langton, who already suspects that this recent case could be linked to two unsolved murders. As more evidence is discovered the team realise that they are contending with a triple murder investigation — and no suspect.
Anna’s blood runs cold when she receives a letter from a murderer she helped to arrest. He makes contact from prison insisting that he can track down their killer, but will only talk to Anna herself. Does he really have an insight into another killer’s mind, or is he merely intent on getting into hers?
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.
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…
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, by P.D. James
Meet Cordelia Gray: twenty-two, tough, intelligent and now sole inheritor of the Pryde Detective Agency. Her first assignment finds her hired by Sir Ronald Callender to investigate the death of his son Mark, a young Cambridge student found hanged in mysterious circumstances. Required to delve into the hidden secrets of the Callender family, Cordelia soon realizes it is not a case of suicide, and that the truth is entirely more sinister.
Do not on any account miss this if you want both a good read and some absolutely superb writing.
John Braine
The Skull Beneath the Skin, by P.D. James
Hired to protect a beautiful but neurotic actress, Cordelia Gray soon becomes embroiled in a case as dangerous to her own life as it is mysterious.
Clarissa Lisle hopes to make a spectacular comeback in a production of ‘The Duchess of Malfi’, to be played in Ambrose Gorringe’s sinister castle at Courcy Island. Cordelia is there to ensure her safety following the appearance of a number of poison-pen letters. But it soon becomes clear that all are in danger. Trapped within the walls of the Gothic Castle, the treacherous past of the island re-emerges, and everyone seems to have a motive for sending Clarissa ‘down, down to hell’.
Marking the return of Cordelia Gray, The Skull Beneath the Skin is a complex mystery which more than lives up to its predecessor, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman.
A Taste for Death, by P.D. James
Two men lie in a welter of blood in the vestry of St Matthew’s Church, Paddington, their throats brutally slashed. One is Sir Paul Berowne, a baronet and recently resigned Minister of the Crown, the other an alcoholic vagrant. Dalgliesh and his team, set up to investigate crimes of particular sensitivity, are faced with a case of extraordinary complexity as they discover the Berowne family’s veneer of prosperous gentility conceals ugly and dangerous secrets.
Death of an Expert Witness, by P.D. James
When a young girl is found murdered in a field, the scientific examination of the exhibits is just a routine job for the staff of Hoggatt’s forensic science laboratory. But nothing could have prepared them for the brutal death of one of their own. When the senior biologist is found dead in his laboratory Commander Dalgliesh is called to the bleak fens of East Anglia, where the murderer is lying in wait to strike again.
Innocent Blood, by P.D. James
At eighteen, Philippa Palfrey, the confident adopted daughter of a celebrated academic, exercises her right to find the names of her real parents. What she uncovers is a terrible secret that will for ever change her life.
