History in the Court

It's very nearly time for the extremely well attended History in the Court that is hosted annually by Goldsboro Books.

The event will take place on June 30th from 6-9pm and you can purchase tickets here and they have some serious entertainment in store for you.

Already confirmed as attending on the evening they have an incredible list of authors.

It includes, but is not limited to:

Robyn Young, Antonia Hodgson, Emily Hauser, Hallie Rubenhold, Harry Sidebottom, Simon Tolkien, Barbara Erskine, SJ Parris, Andrew Taylor, Nick Brown, Elizabeth Buchan, S D Sykes, William Ryan, Paul Fraser Collard, Anna Mazzola, Anthony Riches, Michael Arnold, Elizabeth Fremantle, L C Tyler, David Gilman, Linda Porter, Robin Blake, Andrew Swanston, Imogen Robertson, Angus Donald, Sarah Dunant. Paul M.M. Cooper, Natasha Pulley, Giles Kristian, Tom Harper, Elizabeth Chadwick, Kate Riordan, Michael Ridpath.

There are more to be confirmed

Tickets cost £5 but this is redeemable on the night against any purchases of books so really you're just getting yourself some credit. Don't miss out on the opportunity to come and meet these wonderful authors in person and get your books signed.

That's not all...

There will be treats for those who join us in the form of goodie bags and we will also see the announcement of the HWA Goldsboro Debut Crown shortlist. Join us and see who is on the shortlist and meet many of the authors!

For those of you not already aware of these events, they are celebrations of their respective genres and an opportunity for fans to come and meet some of the best names being published today. They always get a wonderful crowd and you can see the brilliant line up of attending authors.

Come, join us, and celebrate historical fiction in one of London's most beautiful streets. It's an evening not to be missed.

Books To Look Forward to From Transworld Publishers

In this second instalment of Persson's trilogy of police procedurals featuring the "small, fat and primitive" Evert Backstrom, the grand master's most appallingly repulsive (and funniest) character is finally given his fifteen minutes of fame by way of his patented combination of laziness, luck, and an unbelievable sense of timing. A seemingly ordinary murder puzzles Backstrom, who is struggling with strict orders from his doctor to lead a healthier life. His gut feeling proves him right: within days, his team has another murder linked to the first on their hands, and reports of alleged ties to a Securicor heist gone out of control, killing two. The nation needs a hero, and the newly appointed head of the Vasterort police force Anna Holt needs somebody to kill the dragon for her. Who better to heed to the task than Evert Backstrom: self-sufficient, ostentatious, devoid of moral, Hawaii shirt-clad, and, latterly, armed?  He Who Kills the Dragon is by Leif G W Persson and is due to be published in October 2013.

 Kings’s Return is by Andrew Swanston and is due to be published in April 2014.  Spring 1661: Thomas Hill travels from his home in Romsey to London to attend the coronation of King Charles II.  His sister Margaret has died and both his nieces are now married.  At a dinner party after the Coronation, Thomas meets the charming Chandle Stoner, and Sir Joseph Williamson, security advisor to His Majesty, and in charge of the newly restored Post Office.  Learning of Thomas’s skill with code, Williamson asks him to take charge of deciphering coded letters intercepted at the Post Office.  Reluctantly Thomas agrees.  A spate of murders take place in London – including two employees of the Post Office.  Thomas finds himself dragged into the search for the murderer – or murderers.  It soon becomes apparent that those responsible are closer to Thomas  - and his loved ones – than he imagined. But can he ensure that they are apprehended for their crimes before it’s too late?

A young woman has been found dead and covered in snow behind a nursery school in a Stockholm suburb.  She is the fourth murder victim in a short time and with the same characteristics: a young mother, stabbed from behind.  The offices of the Evening Standard are awash with rumours of a serial killer, but journalist Annika Bengtzon dismisses it as wild fantasy.  As the murder spree continues in Stockholm, the police too begin to think that they have a serial killer on their hands.  Meanwhile Annika is dragged into a violent hostage situation in Nairobi that involves her husband – a situation that shakes both Europe and East Africa.  The demands of the kidnappers are both impossible and unreasonable.  But when the demands are rejected, the kidnapper begins to execute the hostages, one by one…. Borderline is by Liza Marklund and is due to be published in February 2014.

There are no other women on earth like Angela Lassey. That’s not her real name, of course. In her purse there are six different drivers’ licenses and twelve different passports, each with a different name and photograph. Over the course of twenty years she's pulled robberies on five continents and stolen things more valuable then many people could even imagine. She speaks four languages with the clarity and confidence of a native speaker and racks up stratospheric shopping bills where ever she goes.  She's been a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead. She's been dark-skinned and light, blue-eyed and brown, young and old. She's gained weight and lost it again, she's worn platform shoes and slouched to conceal her height, and she's smoked like a chimney and bleached her teeth. She’s never the same woman from one week to the next.  She doesn’t call any place home.  There's no real term for what Angela Lassey does for a living. She is a bank robber, sure, and a crook and a thief and a heister, but Angela's particular talent has no proper, accepted name. In Sweden someone had called her a skyggemannen. In the Netherlands they'd called her a spook. In South America she was a desaparecido.  In America, she was simply a ghostman.  She is the master of the disappearing act. She can make anything or anyone disappear, for the right price. She has worked with some of the best crooks in the world, the best boxmen and jugmarkers and hacks, but she's never met anyone better at disappearing then she was.  Angela Lassey is like human mist.  So she’s the perfect person to call when you need to hide. Like Sabo Park does after unexpectedly stumbling across treasure during a sapphire heist on the China Sea. What he has is so valuable that those who know of its existence will never stop their search. He has to vanish, like a ghost. Because now he has it, he is the richest criminal in the world.  Vanshing Games is by Roger Hobbs and is due to be published in July 2014.

Morning Frost is the third book in the D I Jack Frost prequel by James Henry and it is due to be published in November 2014.  It's been one of the worst days of Detective Sergeant Jack Frost's life. He has buried his wife Mary, and must now endure the wake, attended by all of Denton's finest. All, that is, apart from DC Sue Clark, who spends the night pursuing a bogus tip-off, before being summoned to the discovery of a human hand. And things get worse. Local entrepreneur Harry Baskin is shot inside his nightclub, fake fivers are being circulated, and a famous painting goes missing. As the week goes on, a cyclist is found dead in suspicious circumstances, and the more body parts appear. Frost is on the case, but another disaster - one he is entirely unprepared for - is about to strike...

 'Call your mother.' In the Devonshire countryside, a masked stranger is preying on young women - luring them into his car, taking them to a place they can never be found, and then ordering them to call home. At first he doesn't kill. His motive for terrifying the women seems unclear. But every killer has to start somewhere, and soon enough he will get a taste for something even more sinister. Meanwhile 10-year-old Ruby Trick, living with her parents in a damp, crumbling house by the sea, is about to come of age in the most terrifying way possible...  The Facts of Life and Death is by Belinda Bauer and is due to be published in March 2014

'Somebody!' I half-sob and then, more quietly, 'Please.' The words seem  absorbed by the afternoon heat, lost amongst the trees. In their aftermath, the silence descends again. I know then that I'm not going anywhere...Sean is on the run. We don't know why and we don't know from whom, but we do know he's abandoned his battered, blood-stained car in the middle of an isolated, lonely part of rural France at the height of a sweltering summer. Desperate to avoid the police, he takes to the parched fields and country lanes only to be caught in the vicious jaws of a trap. Near unconscious from pain and loss of blood, he is freed and taken in by two women - daughters of the owner of a rundown local farm with its ramshackle barn, blighted vineyard and the brooding lake. And it's then that Sean's problems really start...Stone Bruises is by Simon Beckett and is due to be published in January 2014

 Silencer is the latest book in the Nick Stone series by Andy McNab and is due to be published in October 2013.  1993: Under deep cover, Nick Stone and a specialist surveillance team have spent weeks in the jungles and city streets of Colombia. Their mission: to locate the boss of the world's most murderous drugs cartel - and terminate him with extreme prejudice. Now they can strike. But to get close enough to fire the fatal shot, Nick must reveal his face. It's a risk he's willing to take - since only the man who is about to die will see him. Or so he thinks... 2012: Nick is in Moscow; semi-retired; semi-married to Anna; very much the devoted father of their newborn son. But when the boy falls dangerously ill and the doctor who saves him comes under threat, Nick finds himself back in the firing line. To stop his cover being terminally blown, he must follow a trail that begins in Triad-controlled Hong Kong and propels him back into the even more brutal world he thought he'd left behind. The forces ranged against him have guns, helicopters, private armies and a terrified population in their vice-like grip. Nick Stone has two decades of operational skills that may no longer be deniable - and a fierce desire to protect a woman and a child who now mean more to him than life itself.

Young policewoman Lacey Flint knows that the Thames is a dangerous place – after all, she lives on it and works on it – but she’s always been lucky. Until one day, when she finds a body floating in the water. Who was this woman and why was she wrapped so carefully in white burial cloths before being hidden in the fast flowing depths.  DCI Dana Tulloch hates to admit it, but she’s fond of the mysterious Lacey. Even if she keeps on interfering in her investigations, and is meddling with the latest floater case. But now she's got to break some terrible news to her - news that could destroy Lacey's fragile state of mind.   And Lacey will need to keep her wits about her because there's a killer that's lurking around her boat, leaving her gifts she'd rather not receive . . .  A Dark and Twisted Tide is by Sharon (SJ) Bolton and is due to be published in May 2014.

The Sisters - Easter and her little sister Ruby are waiting it out in a foster home. Their mum died after a drug overdose, and their dad is a loser who walked out on them all. The Dad - Wade has no claim to them - he signed away his rights years ago, and Easter doesn't even want a father who'd give them up that easily. But one night he turns up unannounced and takes them anyway. The Psychopath - Robert Pruitt is just out of prison when he gets the chance to settle an old score with the man who ruined his life. He's got to find him first, but luckily the trail is easy to follow. Because the guy's just kidnapped his two girls...  The Dark Road to Mercy is by Wiley Cash and is due to be published in January 2014.

 When Jenny, an ordinary schoolgirl on the island of Gotland, is discovered by a modelling agency, her life changes overnight.  Soon she is considered one of the hottest stars and is thrown into a world of VIP parties and glamour.  While Jenny is enjoying her new exciting life in Stockholm, Agnes, a few years her junior, has been hospitalised due to a serious eating disorder.  She too dreamt of living in the limelight, but is now fading away.  Watching at Agnes’ beside is her worried father.  Since Agnes’ mother and brother were tragically killed in a car accident a few years previously, his daughter is all he has. But tragedy also lies in wait for successful Jenny.  During a lavish fashion shoot on Gotland’s barren isolated peninsula, Furillen, her new boyfriend, the fashion photographer Markus falls victim to a murder attempt.  He is found in an isolated spot, covered in blood and brutally assaulted – but alive.  Will he be able to tell police inspector Anders Knutas anything that will lead the police to the perpetrator before it’s too late?  For along time Jenny and Agnes remain unaware that their lives are entwined.  But someone is keeping an eye on them.  Someone with plans to intervene in their lives an deliver their own kind of Justice.  The Dangerous Game is by Mari Jungstedt and is due to be published in March 2014.

Don’t Stand So Close is the debut novel by Luana Lewis and is due to be published in February 2014.  What would you do if a young girl knocked on your door and asked for your help? If it was snowing and she was freezing cold, but you were afraid and alone? What would you do if you let her in, but couldn't make her leave? What if she told you terrible lies about someone you love, but the truth was even worse? Stella has been cocooned in her home for three years. Severely agoraphobic, she knows she is safe in the stark, isolated house she shares with her husband, Max. The traumatic memories of her final case as a psychologist are that much easier to keep at a distance, too. But the night that Blue arrives on her doorstep with her frightened eyes and sad stories, Stella's carefully controlled world begins to unravel around her. Don't Stand So Close is a chilling and suspenseful read.

 For thousands of years we guarded it. But now it has been found. This could be the end - for us; for our organisation; for the world. You must destroy it, and those who have taken it. An ancient object is discovered in a Cairo souk. Hours later, the market trader who sold it is tortured to death. As the bodies begin to pile up, a request for help is sent to British Museum historian Angela Lewis. Angela travels to Spain with her ex-husband, undercover police officer Chris Bronson. There they discover the key to the greatest secret in the history of Christianity. Their only problem is deciphering it before they are brutally murdered like those before them... The Lost Testament is by James Becker and is due to be published in November 2013.  The Brotherhood of the Skull also by James Becker will be published in July 2014. At the turn of the 13th century the religious order known as the Knights Templar was ruthlessly chased down, tortured and eliminated. Fast-forward to the present day, where we are thrust into a nail-biting chase for the truth behind the myth of the Templar Treasure.

A Pleasure and a Calling is by Phil Hogan and is due to be published in February 2014.  You won't remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, suggested a sustainable financial package, negotiated a price with the owner and called you with the good news. The less good news is that, all these years later, he still has the key. That's absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine? The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all. William Heming's every pleasure is in his leafy community. He loves and knows every inch of it, feels nurtured by it, and would defend it - perhaps not with his life but if it came to it, with yours...

On a cold December morning in 1841, a small boy is enticed away from his mother and his throat savagely cut. But when the people of Dublin learn why John Delahunt committed this vile crime, the outcry leaves no room for compassion. His fate is sealed, but this feckless Trinity College student and secret informer for the authorities in Dublin Castle seems neither to regret what he did nor fear his punishment. Sitting in Kilmainham Gaol in the days leading up to his execution, Delahunt tells his story in a final, deeply unsettling statement...Dublin in the mid-19th century was a city on the edge - a turbulent time of suspicion and mistrust and the scent of rebellion against the Crown in the air. Beautifully written, brilliantly researched and with a seductive sense of period and place, this unnervingly compelling novel boasts a colourful assortment of characters: from carousing Trinity students, unscrupulous lowlifes and blackmailers to dissectionists, phrenologists and sinister agents of Dublin Castle who are operating according to their own twisted rules. And at its heart lie the doomed John Delahunt and Helen, his wife. Unconventional, an aspiring-writer and daughter of an eminent surgeon, she pursued Delahunt, married him and thereby ruined her own life. And as for Delahunt himself, we follow him from elegant ballrooms and tenement houses to taverns, courtrooms and to the impoverished alleyways where John Delahunt readily betrays his friends, his society and ultimately, himself.  The Convictions of John Delahunt is by Andrew Hughes and is due to be published in March 2014.

The Day Before You Came is by Paula Daly and is due to be published in April 2014.  Natty and Sean Wainwright are happily married.  Rock solid in fact.  So when Natty’s oldest school friend, Eve Dalladay appears – just as their daughter’s appendix explodes on a school trip in France – Natty has no qualms about leaving Eve helping Sean out at home.  Two weeks later and Natty finds Eve has slotted into family life too well.  Natty’s husband has fallen in love with Eve.  He’s sorry, he tells her, but their marriage is over.  With no option but to put a brave face on things for the sake of the children, Natty embarks on building a new life for herself.  And then she receives a note.  Eve has done this before, more than one and with fatal consequences …..

I believe, from what I can hear, that either my daughter or my wife has just been attacked. I don't know the outcome. The house is silent. Fourteen years ago two teenage lovers were brutally murdered in a patch of remote woodland. The prime suspect confessed to the crimes and was imprisoned. Now, one family is still trying to put the memory of the killings behind them. But at their isolated hilltop house...the nightmare is about to return.  Wolf is the seventh novel in the Jack Caffery series by Mo Hayder and it is due to be published in February 2014.

 Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart is the latest book in the Bryant & May series by Christopher Fowler and is due to be published in March 2014. It's a fresh start for the Met's oddest investigation team, the Peculiar Crimes Unit. Their first case involves two teenagers who see a dead man rising from his grave in a London park. And if that's not alarming enough, one of them is killed in a hit and run accident. Stranger still, in the moments between when he was last seen alive and found dead on the pavement, someone has changed his shirt...Much to his frustration, Arthur Bryant is not allowed to investigate. Instead, he has been tasked with finding out how someone could have stolen the ravens from the Tower of London. All seven birds have vanished from one of the most secure fortresses in the city. And, as the legend has it, when the ravens leave, the nation falls. Soon it seems death is all around and Bryant and May must confront a group of latter-day bodysnatchers, explore an eerie funeral parlour and unearth the gruesome legend of Bleeding Heart Yard. More graves are desecrated, further deaths occur, and the symbol of the Bleeding Heart seems to turn up everywhere - it's even discovered hidden in the PCU's offices. And when Bryant is blindfolded and taken to the headquarters of a secret society, he realises that this case is more complex than even he had imagined, and that everyone is hiding something. The Grim Reaper walks abroad and seems to be stalking him, playing on his fears of premature burial. Rich in strange characters and steeped in London's true history, this is Bryant & May's most peculiar and disturbing case of all.

 'I don’t like killing, but I’m good at it. Murder isn’t so bad from a distance, just shapes in my scope. Close up work though, the garrotte around the neck, the knife in the heart, it’s not for me. Too much empathy, that’s my problem. Usually. But not today. Today is different…’ The year is 1955 and something is very wrong with the world: Churchill is dead and WW2 didn’t happen. Europe is in thrall to a nuclear-armed Nazi Germany. Only Britain and its Empire holds out, bound by an uneasy truce and all the while German scientists are experimenting with terrifying forces beyond their understanding - forces that are driving them to the brink of insanity and beyond. Berlin is a hotbed of suspicion and betrayal - a lone British assassin is fighting a private war with the Nazis; the Gestapo are on the trail of a beautiful young resistance fighter and the head of the SS plots to dispose of an increasingly decrepit Adolf Hitler and become Fuhrer. While in London, a sinister and treacherous cabal will stop at nothing to conceal the conspiracy of the century.  Four desperate scenarios that are destined to collide with catastrophic effect. And it all hinges on a single kill in the morning . . .  A Kill in the Morning is by Graeme Shimmin and is due to be published in June 2014.

Books to Look Forward to From Transworld Publishers

The  Excalibur Codex is by James Douglas and is due to be published in August 2013. For countless generations the sword had been kept hidden, ready for a time of need. But not hidden well enough, because on one warm July night in1937 it vanished - its disappearance swallowed up in the storm clouds of war that would soon engulf the world.  1941 - twelve SS generals gather at a castle in East Prussia to re-enact an ancient rite and call on the spirits of Europe’s mightiest warriors to aid them in the coming battle in the East. At the heartof the ritual is a pentagram formed by five swords. One of them is Excalibur, the mythical w eapon pulled from a stone by King Arthur.  2010 - Art recovery expert Jamie Saint Clair laughs when he reads the codex to a German war veteran’s will, the strange ritual it describes and the mention of a sword named Excalibur. But collector Adam Steele is convinced - and if Jamie can find the legendary sword, he will pay a small fortune for it. The hunt for Excalibur takes Jamie from Germany to eastern Poland and a deadly encounter in Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair. The castle has been destroyed down to the last stone and the only clue to the sword’s fate is the strange tale of a wartime partisan unit murdered by its own commander. With a team of international assassins on his trail and the distinction between friend and enemy a blur, Jamie finally makes it back to a Britain under siege, where the last piece of the puzzle falls into place and he discovers that the line between obsession and madness is gossamer thin...

The Kill List: a top-secret catalogue of names held at the highest level of the US

government.  On it, those men and women who would threaten the world's security.  And at the top of it, The Preacher, a radical Islamic cleric whose sermons inspire his followers to kill high profile Western targets in the name of God.  As the bodies begin to pile up in America, Great Britain and across Europe, the message goes out: discover this man's identity, locate him and take him out.  Tasked with what seems like an impossible job is an ex-US marine who has risen through the ranks to become one of America's most effective intelligence chiefs.  Now known only as The Tracker, he must gather what scant evidence there is, collate it and unmask The Preacher if he is to prevent the next spate of violent deaths.  Aided only by a brilliant teenaged hacker, he must throw out the bait and see whether his deadly target can be drawn from his lair.  The Kill List is by Frederick Forsyth and is due to be published in September 2013.

Young policewoman Lacey Flint knows that the Thames is a dangerous place – after all, she lives on it and works on it – but she’s always been lucky.  Until one day, when she finds a body floating in the water.  Who was this woman and why was she wrapped so carefully in white burial cloths before being hidden in the fast-flowing depths?  DCI Dana Tulloch hates to admit it, but she’s fond of the mysterious Lacey.  Even if she keeps on interfering in her investigations, and is meddling with the latest floater case.  But now she's got to break some terrible news to her - news that could destroy Lacey's fragile state of mind.  And Lacey will need to keep her wits about her because there's a killer that's lurking around her boat, leaving her gifts she'd rather not receive.  A Dark and Twisted Tide is by Sharon (SJ) Bolton and is due to be published in May 2014.

A currently yet untitled Liza Marklund novel is due to be published in February 2014.  A young woman has been found dead and covered with snow behind a nursery school in a Stockholm suburb.  She is the fourth murder victim in a short time with the same characteristics: a young mother, stabbed from behind.  The offices of the Evening Post are awash with rumours of a serial killer, but journalist Annika Bengtzon dismisses it as wild fantasy.  As the murder spree continues in Stockholm, the police too begin to think they have a serial killer on their hands.  Meanwhile Annika is dragged into a violent hostage situation in Nairobi that involves her husband – a situation that shakes both Europe and East Africa.  The demands from the kidnappers are impossible and unreasonable.  But when the demands are rejected, the kidnappers begin to execute the hostages, one by one…

High Rollers is by Jack Bowman and is due to be published in August 2013.  When the engine of a 737 tears itself apart at Los Angeles Airport, Tom Patrick is in the wrong place at the wrong time - playing poker at a nearby casino.  He has been losing at cards and probing pipeline leaks ever since his big mouth led to his fall from grace as the National Transportation Safety Board's top air-crash investigator.  Now he cannot wait to come in from the cold.  Sidelined by the official investigation, Tom starts to dig anyway.  Moreover, when another 737 crashes for what looks like similar reasons, it is clear that something could be terribly wrong with the world's most popular passenger jet.  Risking everything, Tom Patrick sets out on a global paper chase, racing against time and ruthless killers - before planes and people start falling out of the sky like bloody confetti.  Brace yourself for high octane, high risk.  High rollers.

1993: Under deep cover, Nick Stone and a specialist surveillance team have spent weeks in

the jungles and city streets of Colombia.  Their mission: to locate the boss of the world's most murderous drugs cartel - and terminate him with extreme prejudice.  Now they can strike.  But to get close enough to fire the fatal shot, Nick must reveal his face.  It is a risk he is willing to take - since only the man who is about to die will see him.  Or so he thinks...2012: Nick is in Moscow; semi-retired; semi-married to Anna; very much the devoted father of their newborn son.  But when the boy falls dangerously ill and the doctor who saves him comes under threat, Nick finds himself back in the firing line.  To stop his cover being terminally blown, he must follow a trail that begins in Triad-controlled Hong Kong and propels him back into the even more brutal world he thought he had left behind.  The forces ranged against him have guns, helicopters, private armies and a terrified population in their vice-like grip.  Nick Stone has two decades of operational skills that may no longer be deniable - and a fierce desire to protect a woman and a child who now mean more to him than life itself.  The Silencer is by Andy McNab and is due to be published in October 2013.

Morning Frost is by James Henry and is due to be published in November 2013.  It has been one of the worst days of Detective Sergeant Jack Frost's life.  He has buried his wife Mary, and must now endure the wake, attended by all of Denton's finest.  All, that is, apart from DC Sue Clark, who spends the night pursuing a bogus tip-off, before being summoned to the discovery of a human hand.  And things get worse.  Local entrepreneur Harry Baskin is shot inside his nightclub, fake fivers are being circulated, and a famous painting goes missing.  As the week goes on, a cyclist is found dead in suspicious circumstances, and the more body parts appear.  Frost is on the case, but another disaster - one he is entirely unprepared for - is about to strike...

It’s a fresh start for the Met's oddest investigation team, the Peculiar Crimes Unit.  Their first case involves two teenagers who see a dead man rising from his grave in a London park.  And if that's not alarming enough, one of them is killed in a hit and run accident.  Stranger still, in the moments between when he was last seen alive and found dead on the pavement, someone has changed his shirt...  Much to his frustration, Arthur Bryant is not allowed to investigate.  Instead, he has been tasked with finding out how someone could have stolen the ravens from the Tower of London.  All seven birds have vanished from one of the most secure fortresses in the city.  And, as the legend has it, when the ravens leave, the nation falls…  Soon it seems death is all around and Bryant and May must confront a group of latter-day body snatchers, explore an eerie funeral parlour and unearth the gruesome legend of Bleeding Heart Yard.  More graves are desecrated, further deaths occur, and the symbol of the Bleeding Heart seems to turn up everywhere - it’s even discovered hidden in the PCU’s offices.  And when Bryant is blindfolded and taken to the headquarters of a secret society, he realises that this case is more complex than even he had imagined, and that everyone is hiding something.  The Grim Reaper walks abroad and seems to be stalking him, playing on his fears of premature burial.  Rich in strange characters and steeped in London’s true history, this is Bryant & May’s most peculiar and disturbing case of all.  Bryant & May and The Bleeding Heart is by Christopher Fowler and is due to be published in March 2013.

  

For thousands of years we guarded it.  But now it has been found.  This could be the end - for

us; for our organisation; for the world.  You must destroy it, and those who have taken it.  An ancient object is discovered in a Cairo souk.  Hours later, the market trader who sold it is tortured to death.  As the bodies begin to pile up, a request for help is sent to British Museum historian Angela Lewis.  Angela travels to Spain with her ex-husband, undercover police officer Chris Bronson.  There they discover the key to the greatest secret in the history of Christianity.  Their only problem is deciphering it before they are brutally murdered like those before them...  The Lost Testament is by James Becker and is due to be published in November 2013.

'Somebody!’  I half-sob and then, more quietly, ‘Please.’  The words seem absorbed by the afternoon heat, lost amongst the trees.  In their aftermath, the silence descends again.  I know then that I am not going anywhere...  Sean is on the run.  We don't know why and we don't know from whom, but we do know he's abandoned his battered, bloodstained car in the middle of a sweltering, isolated, lonely part of rural France.  Desperate to avoid the police, he takes to the hedgerows and country lanes only to be caught in the vicious jaws of a trap.  Near unconscious from pain and loss of blood, he is freed and taken in by two women - the daughters of the owner of a rundown local farm with its ramshackle barn, blighted vineyard and the brooding lake.  And it's then that Sean's problems really start...  Stone Bruises is by Simon Beckett and is due to be published in January 2014.

Spring, 1648. When Thomas Hill, a bookseller living in rural Hampshire, publishes a political pamphlet he has little idea of the trouble that will follow. He is quickly arrested, forced on a boat to Barbados and condemned to life as a slave to two of the island's most notoriously violent brothers. In England war has erupted again, with London under threat of attack. When news of the king's execution reaches the island, political stability is threatened and a fleet commanded by Sir George Ayscue arrives to take control of the island for Cromwell. The threat of violence increases. Thomas finds himself witness to abuse, poison, rape and savage brutality. When a coded message from Ayscue to a sympathiser on the island is intercepted, Thomas is asked to decipher it. A disastrous battle seems inevitable. But nothing turns out as planned. And as the death toll mounts, the escape Thomas has been relying on seems ever more unlikely.  The King’s Exile is the second book in the Thomas Hill series by Andrew Swanston and is due to be published in August 2013.

A violent robbery has killed an entire family on the Costa Del Sol. Annika Bengtzon is

assigned to cover the story for the Evening Post.  However, when she arrives in Spain she discovers there was a third child - a teenage daughter - who is unaccounted for.  Annika makes it her mission to find the missing girl.  But as she delves into the mystery, she becomes embroiled in a far darker side of Spanish life than she had envisioned, as she begins to piece together a terrifying story of violence, abuse and murder.  The Long Shadow is by Liza Marklund and is due to be published in September 2013.

Easter Quillby: Wade disappeared on us when I was six, and I never saw him again until I turned twelve, after Mom was buried.  She always said he was a loser, even if he was our dad, but it turns out, he was much more than that.  He was also a thief.  Like he was on the day, he stole me and my little sister.  Bobby Pruitt: Wade screwed me.  He took everything.  My career.  My health.  My freedom.  He screwed me and then he put me in jail.  But now I’m out and I’ve got a new reason to find him.  Because Wade made a big mistake, and now someone wants him dead.  And that’s where I come in . . .  The Hearts of Small Children is by Wiley Cash and is due to be published in January 2014.  It powerfully explores the nature of love, and evil.

Wolf the seventh Jack Caffery novel by Mo Hayder is due to be published in February 2014

The Dangerous Game is by Mari Jungstedt and is due to be published in March 2014.  When Jenny, an ordinary schoolgirl on the island of Gotland, is discovered by a modelling agency, her life changes overnight.  Soon she is considered one of their hottest stars and is thrown into a world of VIP parties and glamour.  While Jenny is enjoying her new, exciting life in Stockholm, Agnes, a few years her junior, has been hospitalised due to a serious eating disorder.  She too dreamt of living in the limelight, but is now fading away.  Watching at Agnes' bedside is her worried father.  Since Agnes' mother and brother were tragically killed in a car accident a few years previously, his daughter is all he has.  But tragedy also lies in wait for successful Jenny.  During a lavish fashion photo shoot on Gotland's barren, isolated peninsula, Furillen, her new boyfriend, the fashion photographer Markus, falls victim to a murder attempt.  He is found in an isolated spot, covered in blood and brutally assaulted - but alive.  Will he be able to tell police inspector Anders Knutas anything that will lead the police to the perpetrator before it's too late?  For a long time, Jenny and Agnes remain unaware that their lives are entwined.  But someone is keeping an eye on them.  Someone with plans to intervene in their lives and deliver their own kind of justice.

He Who Kills The Dragon is by Leif G W Persson and is due to be published in October 2013.  In this second instalment of Persson's trilogy of police procedurals featuring the "small, fat and primitive" Evert Backstrom, the grand master's most appallingly repulsive (and funniest) character is finally given his fifteen minutes of fame by way of his patented combination of laziness, luck, and an unbelievable sense of timing.  A seemingly ordinary murder puzzles Backstrom, who is struggling with strict orders from his doctor to lead a healthier life.  His gut feeling proves him right: within days, his team has another murder linked to the first on their hands, and reports of alleged ties to a Securicor heist gone out of control, killing two.  The nation needs a hero, and the newly appointed head of the Vasterort police force Anna Holt needs somebody to kill the dragon for her.  Who better to heed to the task than Evert Backstrom: self-sufficient, ostentatious, devoid of moral, Hawaii shirt-clad, and, latterly, armed?

A Beginners Guide to Gunslinging by Belinda Bauer is due to be published in March 2014.

'Call your mother.’  In the Devonshire countryside, a killer is preying on young women - luring them into his car, taking them to a place they can never be  found, and then ordering them to call home.  At first, he doesn't kill.  His motive for terrifying the women seems  unclear.  But every killer has to start somewhere, and soon enough he will get a taste for something even more sinister.  Meanwhile 10-year-old Ruby Trick, living with her parents in a damp, crumbling house by the sea, is about to come of age in the most terrifying way possible .  .

"The story I now commence is rich in vicissitudes, grim with warfare, torn by civil strife, a tale of horror even during times of peace".  (Tacitus, "The Histories" AD 68).  The Emperor Nero's erratic and bloody reign is in its death throes when Gaius Valerius Verrens is dispatched to Rome on a mission that will bring it to a close.  With Nero dead, the city holds its breath and awaits the arrival his successor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, governor of Hispania.  The Empire prays for peace, but it prays in vain.  Galba promises stability and prosperity, but his rule begins with a massacre and ends only months later in chaos and carnage.  This will become known as the Year of the Four Emperors, a time of civil war, which will tear Rome apart and test Valerius' skills and loyalties to their very limit.  Fortunate to survive Galba's fall, Valerius is sent on a mission by Rome's new Emperor, Otho, to his old friend Vitellius, commander of the armies of the north.  Vitellius' legions are on the march, and only Valerius can persuade him to halt them before the inevitable confrontation.  In an epic adventure that will take him the length and breadth of a divided land, the one-armed Roman fights to stay alive and stave off a bloodbath as he is stalked by the most implacable enemy he has ever faced.  The Sword of Rome is by Douglas Jackson and is due to be published in August 2013.

The Day before You Came is by Paula Daly and is due to be published in April 2014.

Natty and Sean Wainwright are happily married.  Rock solid in fact.  So when Natty’s oldest friend, Eve Dalladay, appears – just as their daughter’s appendix explodes on a school trip in France –  Natty has no qualms about leaving Eve helping Sean out at home.  Two weeks later and Natty finds Eve has slotted into family life too well.  Natty’s husband has fallen in love with Eve.  He’s sorry, he tells her, but their marriage is over.  With no option but to put a brave face on things for the sake of the children, Natty embarks on building a new life for herself.  And then she receives the note.  Eve has done this before, more than once, and with fatal consequences...

Never Go Back is by Lee Child and is due to be published in August 2013.  After an epic and interrupted journey all the way from the snows of South Dakota, Jack Reacher has finally made it to Virginia.  His destination: a sturdy stone building a short bus ride from Washington D.C., the headquarters of his old unit, the 110th MP.  It was the closest thing to a home he ever had.  Why?  He wants to meet the new commanding officer, Major Susan Turner.  He liked her voice on the phone.  However, the officer sitting behind Reacher's old desk is not a woman.  Why is Susan Turner not there?  What Reacher doesn't expect is what comes next.  He himself is in big trouble, accused of a sixteen-year-old homicide.  And he certainly doesn't expect to hear these words: 'You're back in the army, Major.  And your ass is mine.’  Will he be sorry he went back?  Or - will someone else?

There are no other women on earth like Angela Lassey.  That’s not her real name, of course.  In her purse, there are six different drivers’ licenses and twelve different passports, each with a different name and photograph.  Over the course of twenty years, she's pulled robberies on five continents and stolen things more valuable than many people could even imagine.  She speaks four languages with the clarity and confidence of a native speaker and racks up stratospheric shopping bills wherever she goes.  She's been a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead.  She's been dark-skinned and light, blue-eyed and brown, young and old.  She's gained weight and lost it again, she's worn platform shoes and slouched to conceal her height, and she's smoked like a chimney and bleached her teeth.  She’s never the same woman from one week to the next.  She doesn’t call any place home.  There's no real term for what Angela Lassey does for a living.  She is a bank robber, sure, and a crook and a thief and a heister, but Angela's particular talent has no proper, accepted name.  In Sweden, someone had called her a skyggemannen.  In the Netherlands, they'd called her a spook.  In South America, she was a desaparecido.  In America, she was simply a ghostman.  She is the master of the disappearing act.  She can make anything or anyone disappear, for the right price.  She has worked with some of the best crooks in the world, the best box men and jug markers and hacks, but she's never met anyone better at disappearing then she was.  Angela Lassey is like human mist.  So she’s the perfect person to call when you need to hide.  Like Sabo Park does after unexpectedly stumbling across treasure during a sapphire heist on the China Sea.  What he has is so valuable that those who know of its existence will never stop their search.  He has to vanish, like a ghost.  Because now he has it, he is the richest criminal in the world.  Vanishing Games is by Roger Hobbs and is due to be published in May 2014.

Books to Look Forward to From Transworld Publishers

Convicted of a series of horrific crimes against young women in the up-market California town of Santa Barbara, wealthy playboy Charlie Mendez has fled across the US border into Mexico.  As one bounty hunter after another meets a grisly end at the hands of the murderous drug cartel his family have hired to keep him safe, it seems that Mendez is one fugitive destined to remain beyond the reach of the law.  Or at least that's how it looks until one determined victim persuades high-end security specialist Ryan Lock and his partner, retired Marine Ty Johnson, to take on the case.  Plunged into a nightmare world where no one can be trusted, least of all the authorities, the two men discover a city more deadly than any war zone.  Worse still, when an attractive young American tourist is snatched from the streets, it appears that Mendez has returned to his old ways.  But in order to stop him before he claims another victim, will Lock and Ty have to pay the Devil's Bounty?  The Devil’s Bounty is by Sean Black and is due to be published in August 2012.

Fatal Frost is by James Henry and was published in May 2012.  May 1982.  Britain celebrates the sinking of the Belgrano, Jimmy Saville has the run of the airwaves and Denton Police Division welcomes its first black policeman, DS Waters - recently relocated from East London.  While the force is busy dealing with a spate of local burglaries, the body of fifteen-year-old Samantha Ellis is discovered in woodland next to the nearby railway track.  Then a fifteen-year-old boy is found dead on Denton's golf course, his organs removed.  Detective Sergeant Jack Frost is sent to investigate - a welcome distraction from troubles at home.  When the murdered boy's sister goes missing, Frost and Waters must work together to find her ...before it's too late.

The Labyrinth of Osiris is by the late Paul Sussman and is due to be published in July 2012.  Since they last met, life has moved on for Yusuf Khalifa of the Luxor Police and Jerusalem detective Arieh Ben-Roe.  About to become a father for the first time, Ben-Roi finds himself investigating a gruesome murder in Jerusalem's Armenian Cathedral.  The victim, a journalist named Rivka Kleinberg, had been researching an article into the Israeli sex-trafficking industry.  When a link emerges between Kleinberg and an English engineer who disappeared from Luxor in 1931, Ben-Roi turns for help to his old friend and sparring partner Khalifa.  Khalifa's life too has changed, although in his case not for the better.  Preoccupied with personal tragedy and immersed in an investigation of his own - a series of mysterious well-poisonings in Egypt's Eastern desert - he agrees for old time's sake to do some digging for his Israeli colleague.  In the process, Ben-Roi might just be giving Khalifa his lust for life back.  Inexorably the two investigations entwine, drawing Ben-Roi and Khalifa into a sinister web of violence, abuse, corporate malpractice and anti-capitalist terrorism.  And at the heart of the web, lies the Labyrinth - a three-thousand year-old ancient Egyptian mystery that has already taken Rivka Kleinberg's life - and hers will not be the last...

  

Last To Die is by Tess Gerritsen and is due to be published in August 2012.  Three children, strangers to each other, are brought together by seemingly motiveless and extreme acts of violence.  Orphaned and alone, they are taken in as students at Evensong, a boarding school for emotionally traumatized children in the remote Maine wilderness.  A Place of Safety?  Forensic pathologist Maura Isles already has a connection with the school - Julian 'Rat' Perkins, the 16-year-old boy she met during a previous case, is now living there.  However, she suspects that the Evensong founders may be using the school for their own agenda.  Moreover, her concerns grow when Detective Jane Rizzoli is asked to investigate yet another attempt on the life of one of the orphans at the school...Or A Place of Danger?  What both Jane and Maura soon discover is that even a school protected by locked gates and acres of forest cannot shut out a gathering threat.  When three blood-spattered twig dolls are found hanging from a tree, they wonder if the threat comes from outside the school ...or from within.

They are known as the Legion of the Damned ...Throughout the Roman Army, the Twelfth Legion is notorious for its ill fortune.  It faces the harshest of postings, the toughest of campaigns, and the most vicious of opponents.  For one young man, Demalion of Macedon, joining it will be a baptism of fire.  Yet, amid all of the violence and savagery of his life as a legionary, he realizes he has discovered a vocation - as a soldier and a leader of men.  He has come to love the Twelfth and all the bloody - minded, dark - hearted soldiers he calls his brothers.  However, just when he has found a place in the world, all that he cares about is ripped from him.  During the brutal Judean campaign, the Hebrew army inflict defeat upon the legion - not only decimating their ranks, but also taking away their soul, the eagle.  There is one final chance to save the legion's honour - to steal back the eagle.  To do that, Demalion and his legionaries must go undercover into Jerusalem, into the very heart of their enemy - where discovery will mean the worst of deaths - if they are to recover their pride.  Moreover, that, in itself, is a task worthy only of heroes.  The Eagle of the Twelfth is by MC Scott and was published in May 2012.

 The King’s Spy is the debut novel by Andrew Swanston and is due to be published in August 2012.  Summer, 1643 England is at war with itself.  King Charles I has fled London, his negotiations with Parliament in tatters.  The country is consumed by bloodshed.  For Thomas Hill, a man of letters quietly running a bookshop in the rural town of Romsey, knowledge of the war is limited to the rumours that reach the local inn.  When a stranger knocks on his door one night and informs him that the king's cryptographer has died, everything changes.  Aware of Thomas's background as a mathematician and his expertise incodes and ciphers, the king has summoned him to his court in Oxford.  On arrival, Thomas soon discovers that nothing at court is straightforward.  There is evidence of a traitor in their midst.  Brutal murder follows brutal murder.  And when a vital message encrypted with a notoriously unbreakable code is intercepted, he must decipher it to reveal the king's betrayer and prevent the violent death that failure will surely bring.

  
The Summer of Dead Toys is a skilfully plotted story of misdeeds and murder in Barcelona high society: When the death of a vulnerable young witness in a case of human trafficking and voodoo causes the normally calm Inspector Salgado to beat someone up, he is moved off the project and sent instead to investigate a teenager's fall to his death in one of Barcelona's uptown areas.  As Salgado begins to uncover the inconvenient truths behind the city's most powerful families, two seemingly unsolvable cases are set to implode under the hot Barcelona sun.  The Summer of Dead Toys was published in May 2012 and is by Antonio Hill.

A frosty December night in Stockholm.  Inside the City Hall, over a thousand guests attend the prestigious Nobel Prize-winner’s dinner.  With a lavish meal laid on to the backdrop of a full orchestra, this is one of the city's most glamorous events of the year.  However, things are different tonight.  Two shots are fired on the dance floor.  Crime reporter Annika Bengtzon is there, covering the event for the Evening Post.  As the police realize she caught a glimpse of the suspect, she is far more interested in getting back to the newsroom.  However, as murders that are more brutal follow, Annika finds herself in the middle of something far larger than she had anticipated.  No longer just a reporter but also a vulnerable key witness, she begins to close up the gaps linking these crimes, just as the suspect starts closing the net on Annika herself...  Last Will is by Liza Marklund and is due to be published in September 2012.

"The Vanishing Triangle": A woman's body is found in Ireland's most notorious body dump zone, an area in the Dublin mountains where a number of women disappeared in the past.  "Nun's Cross": The victim is from an exclusive gated development in the suburbs - where the prime suspect in the vanishing triangle cases, Derek Carpenter, now lives.  It looks like the past is coming back to haunt the present.  However, DI Jo Birmingham doesn't believe the case is open and shut.  Her husband Dan was part of the original investigation team; is she trying to protect her own fragile domestic peace?  The one person who could help her crack the case, Derek's wife Liz, is so desperate to protect her family that she is going out of her way to thwart all efforts to establish the truth.  Can both women emerge unscathed?  Too Close for Comfort is by Niamh O’Connor and is due to be published in June 2012.

Red Notice is by Andy McNab and is due to be published in October 2012.  Deep beneath the English Channel, a small army of vicious terrorists has seized control of the Eurostar to Paris, taken 400 hostages at gunpoint - and declared war on a government that has more than its own fair share of secrets to keep.  One man stands   in their way.  An off-duty SAS soldier is hiding somewhere inside the train.  Alone and injured, he is the only chance the passengers and crew have of getting out alive.  Meet Andy McNab's explosive new creation, Sergeant Tom Buckingham, as he unleashes a whirlwind of intrigue and retribution in his attempt to stop the terrorists and save everyone on board - including Delphine, the beautiful woman he loves.  Hurtling us at breakneck speed between the Regiment's crack assault teams, Whitehall's corridors of power and the heart of the Eurotunnel action.  RED NOTICE: You have been warned.

  

Two small children are playing a game called 'Witch-Hunter'.  They place a curse on a young woman taking lunch in a church courtyard and wait for her to die.  An hour later, the woman is indeed found dead inside St Bride's Church - a building that no one else has entered.  Unfortunately, Bryant & May are refused the case.  Instead, there are hired by their greatest enemy to find out why his wife has suddenly started behaving strangely.  She's become an embarrassment to him at government dinners, and he is convinced that someone is trying to drive her insane.  She has even taken to covering the mirrors in her apartment, and believes herself to be the victim of witchcraft.  Then a society photographer is stabbed to death in a nearby park and suddenly a link emerges between the two cases.  And so begins an investigation that will test the members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit to their limits, setting Arthur Bryant off on a trail that leads to Bedlam and Bletchley Park, and into the world of madness, codes and the secret of London's strangest relic.  As the members of the Peculiar Crimes Unit dig behind the city's facades to expose a world of private clubs, hidden passages and covert loyalties, they realise that the case might not just end in disaster - it might also get everyone killed.  Bryant & May and the Invisible Code is by Christopher Fowler and is due to be published in August 2012.

AD 68.  The tyrant emperor Nero has no son and no heir.  Suddenly there's the very real possibility that Rome might become a republic once more.  However, the ambitions of a few are about to bring corruption, chaos and untold bloodshed to the many.  Among them is a hero of the campaign against Boudicca, Aulus Caecina Severus.  Caught up in a conspiracy to overthrow Caesar's dynasty, he commits treason, raises a rebellion, faces torture and intrigue - all supposedly for the good of Rome.  The boundary between the good of Rome and self-preservation is far from clear, and keeping to the dangerous path he's chosen requires all Severus' skills as a cunning soldier and increasingly deft politician.  And so Severus looks back on the dark and dangerous time history knows as the Year of the Four Emperors, and the part he played - for good or ill - in plunging the mighty Roman empire into anarchy and civil war...  The Last Caesar is the debut novel by Henry Venmore-Rowland and is due to be published in June 2012.

Rome, summer 66AD and Nero's agents mercilessly hunt down the last survivors of the Piso Conspiracy.  Yet, despite purging this viper's nest with fire and iron, the increasingly unstable young Emperor feels his grip on power weakening.  In Judaea, rebels have bested his army and taken an eagle, in Germania, the Rhenus legions agitate for better conditions.  In Hispana, his governor plots.  But the most dangerous threat is in the east where Rome's greatest general, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, presides over an Empire within an Empire.  Is Corbulo preparing to march against Rome and take the purple?  Gaius Valerius Verrens, Hero of Rome, is ordered to Antioch with the power of life and death over the soldier he worships.  There he finds every man's hand against him and Corbulo's eyes not on Rome, but on a new threat from the Parthian King of Kings, Vologases.  Outnumbered, Corbulo marches with Valerius at his side into the barren wastes beyond the Tigris, to meet Vologases in a mighty confrontation that will decide the future of the Empire.  In Avenger of Rome, Valerius will face his greatest enemy and his greatest challenge, but neither will be what he believes.  Avenger of Rome is by Douglas Jackson and is due to be published in August 2012.

A Letter from Lee Child..."Like any reader, I love old favourites ...but I love new voices too, and I especially love it when a new voice starts to become an old favourite.  It doesn't happen often, but right now, it's happening with Marcus Sakey.  He's got it all.  he writes like a dream, he creates characters exactly like people you know, he scares you, and above all keeps you turning the pages.  But most of all he does the 'what if' thing better than anyone in the business.  'What if' questions power a lot of plots, but Sakey is special.  He doesn't just check a box or construct a neat twist for the sake of it.  Reading him between the lines, I guarantee he lives this stuff ...he thinks it through and sweats it out, probably for weeks at a time.  I can see him, looking around at all the things he loves, looking at his house, turning and looking at his wife, asking himself, 'What if?  What if I had to put all this at risk?  Would I?  Could I?  How would it feel?  What would be the effect on me?’  It's that kind of depth, intelligence, passion, and emotion that sets Sakey apart.  These are not just clever plots.  These are real people with night sweats and wide eyes and everything to lose.  The "Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes" takes 'what if' in a new direction and to new heights.  Every writer muses, 'What if the reader isn't sure whether the husband killed his wife, or not?’  That's a basic whodunit.  But Sakey asks, 'What if the husband isn't sure whether he killed his wife, or not?’  That's a terrific premise, and it boosts an already-terrific thriller plot into the stratosphere.  The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes is by Marcus Sakey and is due to be published in July 2012.

AD 64 Roman Centurion Marcus Domitus leads an expedition to find the mythical treasure hidden deep inside Queen Dido’s temple.  AD 1945 In the confusion and burning Berlin, two high powered Nazis disappear, and so does a precious object.  Art recovery specialist Jamie Saintclair receives a call from a Boston detective, asking for his help to investigate a brutal murder.  He believes that Saintclair might hold the key to solving the crime through his detailed knowledge of specialist Nazi units.  But as they delve deeper into the sinister world of the occult, they uncover a dark secret that men must have lusted over for more than two millennia.  Long ago, in the ancient temple of Isis, something was stolen, and the repercussions have resonated through the centuries.  Saintclair must discover the truth before the curse claims more victims, and finally catches up with him.  The Isis Covenant is by James Douglas and is due to be published in August 2012.

A Wanted Man is by Lee Child and is due to be published in September 2012.  When you're as big and rough as Jack Reacher - and you have a badly-set, freshly-busted nose, patched with silver duct tape - it isn't easy to hitch a ride. But Reacher has some unfinished business in Virginia, so he doesn't quit. And at last, he's picked up by three strangers - two men and a woman. But within minutes it becomes clear they're all lying about everything - and then they run into a police roadblock on the highway. There has been an incident, and the cops are looking for the bad guys...Will they get through because the three are innocent? Or because the three are now four? Is Reacher just a decoy?

He Who Kills The Dragon is the second instalment of Leif G W Persson's trilogy of police procedurals featuring the "small, fat and primitive" Evert Backstrom, the grand master's most appallingly repulsive (and funniest) character is finally given his fifteen minutes of fame by way of his patented combination of laziness, luck, and an unbelievable sense of timing.  A seemingly ordinary murder puzzles Backstrom, who is struggling with strict orders from his doctor to lead a healthier life.  His gut feeling proves him right: within days, his team has another murder linked to the first on their hands, and reports of alleged ties to a Securicor heist gone out of control, killing two.  The nation needs a hero, and the newly appointed head of the Vasterort police force Anna Holt needs somebody to kill the dragon for her.  Who better to heed to the task than Evert Backstrom: self-sufficient, ostentatious, devoid of moral, Hawaii shirt-clad, and, latterly, armed?  He Who Kills The Dragon is due to be published in October 2012.