OVER 40 NEW STORIES FROM BRITAIN’S LEADING CRIME WRITERS
Leading editor and reviewer Maxim Jakubowski has compiled another beguiling collection of the year’s best new short crime fiction from the UK. Ian Rankin’s perennially popular Edinburgh cop, Inspector Rebus, makes an unexpected comeback in a short, but intriguing story, ‘The Very Last Drop’, and the collection closes with another Rankin story, ‘Driven’.
Making their first appearance in the series are many luminaries such as Kate Atkinson, Louise Welsh, Stephen Booth, Christopher Brookmyre, Colin Bateman, A. L. Kennedy, Sheila Quigley, Lin Anderson, Simon Kernick and David Hewson. Also represented are exciting up-and-coming talents such as Nick Quantrill, Jay Stringer, Paul D. Brazill and Nigel Bird.
'We've got your daughter.'
It's evening, you're back late from work – and the house is in darkness. You step inside, and the phone rings. You answer it – and your world is turned upside down. Your fourteen-year-old daughter has been taken, and her kidnappers want half a million pounds in cash. They give you 48 hours to raise the money. If you call the police, she will die. Trying desperately to remain calm, you realize that your husband – the man you married two years ago – is also missing. But he can't be involved in your daughter's abduction. Or can he? As the nightmare unravels, you can be certain of only two things: that you will do anything to get your daughter back alive – and that time is running out.
Did someone try to kill me or am I going mad? When writer Rob Fallon gets drunk one night and ends up joining his friend's girlfriend, Jenny, back at her apartment in London 's West End, he's feeling guilty before anything's even happened. But guilt quickly turns to shock when two men break into the apartment, abduct Jenny, and try to kill Rob. Somehow he manages to escape, but when he reports the abduction to the police no one believes him.Jenny's father claims she's on holiday abroad, her apartment appears untouched, and the doorman didn't see or hear anything. But Rob knows what he witnessed and he can't let things lie – not with Jenny's life in danger. But when he starts asking questions, he finds himself the target of faceless killers who'll stop at nothing to get him out of the way. But what is it they're so desperate to hide? And what does it have to do with an ordinary girl like Jenny? Either he finds out, or he's dead. It's that simple. And time's already running out…
It's a typical cold November night and Detective Sergeant Dennis Milne, a very atypical policeman, waits in the Traveller's Rest Hotel parking lot for the arrival of three men. Cynical and jaded, Milne earns money on the side by doing what he does best: punishing the bad guys. But this time he's been duped. Instead of blowing away drug dealers, he kills three innocent people, their deaths starting an investigation that sees him and his conscience heading for trouble.
Less than twelve hours later, Milne is out on the streets again. Eighteen-year-old Miriam Fox has been found dead by Regent's Canal--her throat slashed. Desperate to find Miriam's killer, Milne uncovers a web of depravity far more shocking than he could ever have imagined. Can he evade arrest for his own crimes and solve a case so sickening that it may provide the key to his personal redemption?
The clock is ticking and everyone's watching their backs as a war of morality is fought in the mind of one renegade policeman in this gripping first novel by a talented young crime writer.
The new race-against-time bestseller from the British Harlan Coben. When ex-police officer John Cone is found lying wounded in a room full of dead bodies, he has a terrifying story to tell. Three days earlier he was hired by a mysterious client to snatch a suspected serial killer, Andrew Kent (aka the Penthouse Predator) from custody while he's being transferred between prisons. Kent is snatched, but then things immediately go wrong. People start dying, Kent goes missing, and Cone begins to realize that the case against him is not what he was led to believe. Sharing that suspicion is newly promoted DI Tina Boyd, one of the murder squad team who arrested Kent several months earlier. But now Kent's disappeared, and Tina has to find him. And find him fast, because it's clear some very high-powered people want to silence him.
An anthology of stories edited by Maxim Jakubowski
Leading crime critic Maxim Jakubowski presents this year's must-have collection of British crime fiction. This latest volume of the acclaimed annual collection presents over 20 short stories of murder mystery, selected from the very cream of new British crime fiction. Contributors include Lee Child, Colin Dexter, Val McDermid, Mark Billingham, Len Deighton, John Harvey, and many more. This is an ideal present for anyone who has ever enjoyed a good murder-mystery. A page-turning compendium of British talent to capture the imagination of readers around the world.