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Cold Plague
by Daniel Kalla
Published 2008 by Forge
Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780765318336
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Jacket Notes:
In this new thriller from the bestselling author of "Pandemic," Dr. Noah Haldane suspects that factors other than nature have ignited the spread of the deadly prion responsible for Mad Cow Disease. He just has to stay alive long enough to sound the alarm.
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 02/04/2008
In Kalla's meticulously detailed and carefully plotted new thriller, Dr. Claude Fontaine engineers a method to tap a huge, mysterious pool of fresh water two miles under the Antarctic ice without fear of contamination from our 21st-century toxins. His goal is to bottle this purest of waters and sell it for astronomical sums to health-seeking rich people everywhere. Meanwhile, infectious disease specialist Dr. Noah Haldane, hero of Kalla's Pandemic, along with his crusty, wisecracking Scottish sidekick, Duncan McLeod, travels to France to investigate seven cows that have tested positive for bovine spongiform encephalitis (aka mad cow disease). Several humans, the apparent victims of infected beef, have died horrible deaths. By the time the link between the Antarctic lake water and the mad cows becomes clear, many readers will find the journey too long and that in the end they don't really care that disaster has been narrowly averted and all those rich people have been saved. (Apr.)
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Child 44
by Tom Rob Smith
Published 2008 by Grand Central Publishing
Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780446402385
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Jacket Notes:
In Stalin's Soviet Union, it's a crime against the State to suggest that a murderer--much less a serial killer--is in the midst of the populace. Exiled from his home, a war hero must find and stop a criminal that the State won't admit even exists. Grand Central Publishing
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 03/03/2008
Set in the Soviet Union in 1953, this stellar debut from British author Smith offers appealing characters, a strong plot and authentic period detail. When war hero Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a rising star in the MGB, the State Security force, is assigned to look into the death of a child, Leo is annoyed, first because this takes him away from a more important case, but, more importantly, because the parents insist the child was murdered. In Stalinist Russia, there's no such thing as murder; the only criminals are those who are enemies of the state. After attempting to curb the violent excesses of his second-in-command, Leo is forced to investigate his own wife, the beautiful Raisa, who's suspected of being an Anglo-American sympathizer. Demoted and exiled from Moscow, Leo stumbles onto more evidence of the child killer. The evocation of the deadly cloud-cuckoo-land of Russia during Stalin's final days will remind many of Gorky Park and Darkness at Noon, but the novel remains Smith's alone, completely original and absolutely satisfying. Rights sold in more than 20 countries. (May)
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Fidelity
by Thomas Perry
Published 2008 by Harcourt
Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780151012923
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Jacket Notes:
When Phil Kramer is shot dead in the middle of the night, his wife is left with an emptied bank account and a lot of questions. Jerry Hobart has some questions of his own. Now that he's been ordered to take out Kramer's widow, he figures there's a bigger secret at work--and a bigger payoff. Harcourt
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 04/07/2008
Bestseller Perry (Silence) explores the psychology of identity through his characters' hidden lives in this solid crime thriller. After L.A. PI Phil Kramer is shot dead as he's getting into his car one night on a quiet street, his wife, Emily, and his staff set out to find whodunit and why. As they dig, Emily discovers Phil had many secrets. Meanwhile, Jerry Hobart, the hired gun, is ordered to kill Emily. Suspicious of his client's motives, Jerry starts investigating his client, who, the reader learns, is Ted Forrest, a wealthy playboy with a secret life. Perry initially shifts between Emily and Jerry's points-of-view as each probes different aspects of the same crime to zero in on Ted's motives. As Ted starts dominating the narrative, the pacing, usually one of Perry's strongest suits, slows, weighed down with too many characters and subplots. Still, Perry intrigues as always with spare, intelligent prose. (June)
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Last Post: A Novel of Suspense
by Robert Barnard
Published 2008 by Scribner Book Company
Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9781416559405
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Jacket Notes:
Diamond Dagger Award-winner and critically acclaimed contemporary crime-writer Barnard delivers another triumph, with this tale of murder and intrigue.
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 03/17/2008
In this assured suspense yarn from British veteran Barnard (A Fall from Grace), Eve McNabb receives many consolation letters after the death of her mother, May,-the beloved-head of a school in Crossley, Yorkshire. One missive, though, is disturbingly different from the rest. Addressed to May and signed Jean, this letter suggests there was once a physical intimacy between Jean and May and makes a veiled reference to "the business with John," Eve's late father.-Determined to locate the unknown sender, Eve turns to Omkar Rani, an Indian policeman who's also a philatelist, for help in deciphering the envelope's smudged postmark.-Omkar and Eve-manage to track down an actress, Jean Mannering, who denies writing the letter, but drops the bombshell that Eve's father emigrated to Australia for his health and-could-still be alive. Eve travels to Australia, but a message from Okmar that there's been a murder in Crossley brings her home. Unexpected solutions and a clever closing switch make this a satisfying read. (May)
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The Last Nightingale: A Novel of Suspense
by Anthony Flacco
Published 2007 by Ballantine Books
Paperback, English. ISBN: 9780812977578
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Jacket Notes:
This exhilarating historical debut novel in the tradition of Caleb Carrs "The Alienist" is set in the heart of a disaster--the 1906 San Francisco earthquake--that sill reverberates a century later.
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 04/09/2007
Screenwriter Flacco nicely evokes the aftermath of San Francisco's 1906 earthquake in his fiction debut, a novel of suspense. On the eve of the disaster, Sgt. Randall Blackburn, perhaps the one honest cop on the San Francisco force, patrols the grim Barbary Coast neighborhood, which has been plagued by a serial killer, whom the press has dubbed "the Surgeon," who castrates his victims. After the quake, Blackburn joins the frantic rescue efforts, in the course of which he meets 12-year-old Shane Nightingale, whose adoptive mother has been murdered by the Surgeon. In the rubble, Shane and Blackburn pursue the Surgeon, whose identity becomes known early on. Through the fiend's demented perspective we learn of a plague he plans to loose on the devastated city, but this plot line gets lost in the shuffle. The action devolves into a routine cat-and-mouse chase, building to an ending some readers will find maudlin.(June)
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The Killing Room
by Peter May
Published 2008 by St. Martin's Minotaur
Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780312364656
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Jacket Notes:
After the mutilated bodies of 18 women are discovered in a mass grave in Shanghai, detective Li Yan and American pathologist Margaret Campbell arrive and are met by Mei-Ling, deputy head of the citys serious crime squad. The closer they get to the killer, the closer they come to realizing their own personal nightmares.
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 12/10/2007
In May's rewarding third mystery to feature American pathologist Margaret Campbell and Chinese deputy section chief Li Yan (after 2007's The Fourth Sacrifice), 18 women's bodies-or at least pieces of them-turn up buried at a Shanghai building site. A creepy medical student working as a night watchman on the site is a logical suspect, but he appears innocent-at least of these crimes. Campbell coaxes the identities of four of the women from their body fragments, and each is a poignant yet apparently unrelated story. Campbell also discovers a grisly fact: all the victims had some or all of their internal organs removed-while they were still alive. May offers a little politics, a little romance and a lot of autopsy details, perhaps too much for some, though they are clearly conveyed and pertinent to the case. The plot skips here and there, with some surprising revelations leading to a slightly predictable but gratifying finale. (Feb.)
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Friend of the Devil
by Peter Robinson
Published 2008 by William Morrow & Company
Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780060544379
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Jacket Notes:
From the "New York Times"-bestselling author comes his latest novel of suspense revolving around two towns, two murders, and two detectives searching for one indisputable truth. William Morrow & Company
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 10/08/2007
In Robinson's stunning 17th suspense novel to feature DCI Alan Banks (after 2006's Piece of My Heart), Banks and his on-again-off-again partner and lover, Det. Insp. Annie Cabbot, race to piece together a string of brutal murders. While on loan to a sister precinct, Cabbot investigates the gruesome death of a paraplegic woman found on a desolate cliff with her throat slit. Back in Eastvale, North Yorkshire, Banks and his team discover the body of a young woman who has been raped and strangled in a shady area of town known as the Maze. At first, there are no obvious connections between the two attacks, but when Cabbot uncovers the chilling identity of the woman on the cliff, she and Banks must once again confront sadistic serial killers Terry and Lucy Payne, last seen in Aftermath (2001). Banks and Cabbot are flawed but empathetic heroes, and readers will be on the edge of their seats as the two explore not only the depths of human depravity but also their own murky relationship. 7-city author tour.(Jan.)
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The Sinner
by Petra Hammesfahr
Published 2008 by Bitter Lemon Press
Paperback, English. ISBN: 9781904738251
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Jacket Notes:
"In this intelligent novel Hammesfahr has etched with precision the thoughts of a woman on the edge of madness."-Der Spiegel Cora Bender killed a man. But why? What could have caused this quiet, lovable young mother to stab a stranger in the throat, again and again, until she was pulled off his body? For the local police it was an open-and-shut case. Cora confessed; there was no shortage of proof or witnesses. But Police Commissioner Rudolf Grovian refused to close the file and began his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unraveling of Cora's past, a harrowing descent into a woman's private hell. Hailed as Germany's Patricia Highsmith, Petra Hammesfahr has written a dark, spellbinding novel. At the top of the bestseller list, The Sinner has been reprinted sixteen times and sold over 760,000 copies at home. Translated into eleven languages, this is the first Hammesfahr title published in English. Petra Hammesfahr, born in 1951, left school at thirteen, became pregnant by an alcoholic at seventeen, and began writing novels at the age of forty. Her first thriller was turned down 159 times, but eventually success arrived. Hammesfahr has written over twenty crime and suspense novels. She also writes scripts for television and film. She is married with three children and lives near Cologne.
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 12/24/2007
Hammesfahr's darkly depressing-yet engrossing crime novel, a bestseller in Germany, examines the price of survival for two young girls growing up in a small German community. Police commissioner Rudolf Grovian-is-assigned the-case of Cora Bender, a young woman who murders an apparent stranger in a crowded park.-The local constabulary deems it an open and shut case, but Grovian, intrigued by Cora's strange behavior, pursues his own investigation. Cora reveals the bizarre circumstances of her claustrophobic family life, from her mother's relentless blaming-of Cora for-stealing her life to Cora's own complicated relationship with her disabled younger-sister. The mixture of both first- and third-person perspectives and the explicit discussions of religious and sexual obsessions set this work apart from standard psychological fare.-Dubbed Germany's answer to Patricia Highsmith, Hammesfahr should win new American fans with this English translation. (Feb.)
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