September Crime round-up
New novels from Lynda La Plante and John Rector, plus some Inspector Aurelio Zen classics that will soon be given a new life by the BBC, just some of this month’s titles in the crime round-up.
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Vendetta, by Michael Dibdin
Inspector Zen has a problem: an impossible murder, recorded on the closed-circuit video of Oscar Burolo’s top-security Sardinian fortress. As Zen gets to work, he is once again plunged into a menacing and violent world where his own life is soon at risk.
‘This is to the ordinary crime pot-boiler as a Ferrari to a Mini. He writes and plots like a dream.’ The Scotsman
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Ratking, by Michael Dibdin
Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen had crossed swords with the establishment before – and lost. But from the depths of a mundane desk job in Rome he is unexpectedly transferred to Perugia to take over an explosive kidnapping case involving one of Italy’s most powerful families.
‘Tremendously exciting. This novel is both subtle and horrific.’ Ruth Rendell
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Cabal, by Michael Dibdin
When, one dark night in November, Prince Ludovico Ruspanti fell a hundred and fifty feet to his death in the chapel at St. Peter’s, Rome, there were a number of questions to be answered. Inspector Aurelio Zen finds that getting the answers isn’t easy, as witness after witness is mysteriously silenced – by violent death. To crack the secret of the Vatican, Zen must penetrate the most secret place of all: the Cabal.
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Blind Fury, by Lynda La Plante
A motorway service station on the M1: dimly lit, run down, poorly supervised, flickering lights, dark corners; a favourite stopover for long-distance lorry drivers on their way up north from London. Behind it, a body is found in a ditch, that of a girl barely out of her teens. She appears to have no family, no friends, no connections anywhere. Other girls have gone missing in the vicinity and no one has stepped forward to claim them. Anna Travis is assigned to the case. Her blood runs cold when she receives a letter from a lifer — someone she was responsible for arresting in the past — who writes to her from prison, asking her to visit him urgently. For he claims he knows who the killer is…
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The Reluctant Hero, by Michael Dobbs
When Harry Jones discovers that former friend Zac Kravitz’s life is in danger, a debt of honour sends him on a perilous rescue mission to Kargistan, a mountainous and landlocked former Soviet republic bordering Russia, China and Afghanistan. Muscling his way onto a delegation of MPs who happen to be paying the state a visit, Harry finds an unlikely ally in the stubbornly independent Martha and together they devise a plan to break Zac out of the grim prison Bodima. But when the attempt backfires and he finds himself stuck in prison in Zac’s place, little by little Harry realises that all is not as it seemed and that he has been lured into a web of international conspiracy.
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Cold Shoulder, by Lynda La Plante
Lieutenant Lorraine Page had everything — a devoted husband, two beautiful daughters and an impressive career with the Homicide Squad. It’s impossible to believe that she could be thrown out of the police force and end up on Skid Row. Lorraine’s ex-colleagues soon forget her, as the hunt for a nightmare serial killer spirals into an all-out search for a missing witness: a victim who escaped. Lorraine Page is that witness. Against her will she is drawn into the investigation, and forced to face her past and her overwhelming guilt…
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Cold Kiss, by John Rector
Nate and Sara are broke — and on the run from the past. When a shady hitchhiker offers them cold hard cash for a lift, they can’t afford to say no. But very soon they’ll be wishing they had. Because picking him up is about to become the biggest mistake they ever made — and the price they’ll have to pay will be greater than they could ever have imagined…
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Rough Country, by John Sandford
Virgil Flowers heads north to solve a puzzling murder — and finds that the country is very rough indeed. While competing in a fishing tournament in a remote area of northern Minnesota, Flowers gets a call asking him to investigate a murder at a nearby resort, where a woman has been shot while kayaking. The resort is for women only: a place to relax, get fit, recover from plastic surgery and commune with nature. And the more Flowers digs, the more he discovers it to be a hotbed of jealousy, blackmail, greed, anger and fear. Then he discovers that this is not the first murder, that there was a second, seemingly unrelated killing the year before. And that there’s about to be a third, definitely related one, any time now. And as for the fourth …well, Virgil had better hope he can catch the killer before that happens. Because it could be his own.
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A Plague of Heretics, by Bernard Knight
With the city of Exeter ravaged by an outbreak of the ‘yellow plague’, Sir John de Wolfe, the county coroner, must divide his time between visiting his sick brother, William, who has been struck down by the disease, and dealing with a series of brutal murders which appears to be linked to a revival of heresy in the city. When some of the cathedral canons begin a crusade against this danger to the Church, Sir John finds himself accused of being too sympathetic to the heretics, bringing him into conflict with the ecclesiastic authorities. As the situation worsens, the coroner must seek sanctuary in order to save his skin. Can he survive long enough to unmask the real killer?




















