Scottish crime fiction is booming, Wales is getting its own national crime fiction festival and this week we’re kicking off our news column with a new novel by one of Ireland’s finest and most respected crime authors, Ken Bruen. So it seems as though crime fiction from the Celtic fringe is in rude health. The Catholic Church is at the centre of things in Bruen’s new book, as well as in the latest Mexican crime novel, The Untameable by Guillermo Arriaga. We’ve also got intelligence agents, 19th Century consulting detectives, a visit to Sunk Island in Yorkshire and stormy weather in Norfolk. Read on and enjoy the selection.
A Galway Epiphany by Ken Bruen
A Galway Epiphany arrives on 1 April, but it’s no joke for hardboiled detective Jack Taylor who gets hit by a truck and ends up in a coma. The curious thing is he doesn’t have a scratch on him. Two weeks later, when he awakes, the two children who tended him are hailed as saints and his survival is regarded as a miracle. The Catholic Church isn’t so sure, so they hire Jack to investigate the circumstances of his incapacitation. But he’s not the only one looking for those children… A Galway Epiphany is the 16th novel in the Jack Taylor series.
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Renegade by Rob Sinclair
James Ryker is back. The veteran intelligence agent is now freelancing – working for the secretive Joint Intelligence Agency on an op-by-op basis. And his latest challenge is destined to test him to his limit. A simple surveillance mission goes awry and the key target is kidnapped in broad daylight in a busy London square. It’s time for Ryker to step up to the plate but to get to the truth he’s probably going to have to bend the rules a little. Rob Sinclair’s Renegade is out now in print and on 30 March for Kindle.
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The Untameable by Guillermo Arriaga
Two seemingly separate stories are spliced together here by the talented screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga to form an epic, 700-page volume of literary crime fiction. On the bleak tundra of the Yukon in Northwest Canada, a young man tracks a wolf. In Mexico City in the 1960s, a young man seeks revenge for the murder of his brother by Catholic fanatics aligned with a corrupt police commander. How are the two linked? Find out when The Untameable is released on 1 April.
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American Sherlocks edited by Nick Rennison
The popularity of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes led to a whole range of competitors created by American authors between 1890 and 1920. This collection curated by Nick Rennison brings together 15 of them for your reading pleasure. It’s like a tome of undiscovered classic crime fiction, with writers like Arthur B Reeve, Carolyn Wells and Jacques Futrelle penning stories and creating wonderful sounding characters such as Professor Augustus St Francis Xavier Van Dusen. You’ll be able to buy this anthology from 25 March.
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Someone Who Isn’t Me by Danuta Kot
It’s out on 1 April, and you’d be a fool to pass over this new release from CWA Dagger Award-winning author Danuta Kot. Someone Who Isn’t Me is set in the bleak East Yorkshire landscape of Sunk Island, where the body of an undercover police officer is left for all to see. Meanwhile Becca has had it tough, but is turning her life around, working in a local pub and enjoying the company of Andy, a regular who likes to keep his private life private. Now Andy is dead and Becca feels betrayed – but who can she turn to?
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Into Deadly Storms by Judi Daykin
Look out Elly Griffiths and Ruth Galloway – there’s another author using North Norfolk as her playground. The second book in Judi Daykin’s series featuring Detective Sara Hirst finds her chasing up lead after lead in the case of a teenager found murdered in the woods. Callum Young was just 15 and already on the road to disaster – in care, peddling drugs and skipping school. But who wanted him dead, and why? Hirst is determined to find out. This neatly plotted police procedural is out now.
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