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One moment Kenniston was strolling down the quiet street, lost in pleasant reverie. The next moment the sky split open!

It split wide open, and above them was a burn and a blaze of light – so swift, so violent, that the air itself seemed to have burst into flame. Then there was silence – awful, suffocating silence.

Kenniston felt the chill of premonition – a shapeless terror that grew into a thing too evil to be borne alone.

‘My favourite American crime-writer’ New York Herald Tribune

Sergeant Ivor Maddox of the Wilcox Street precinct has more crime on his hands than even he is accustomed to: murders, con-men, a dismembered corpse, runaway teenagers and a multiple rapist.

To catch the rapist, whose victims are always attractive and respectable women, Maddox persuades his true love, policewoman Sue Carstairs, to bait the trap . . .

Zaleski is a middle-aged philanderer determined to retrieve the Virgin’s Dowry, a jeweled monstrance worth £500,000, which has reappeared for display in an art gallery in Conduit Street in London.

This ageing Polish patriot carries out the crime but in doing so becomes the target for Detective Inspector John Raven of the CID – one of the most ruthless and capable policemen on the force.

‘Perfectly fascinating and perfectly written’ Chicago Sun Times

When car trouble forces private detective John Bryant to spend the night in the small village of Foxall, he is immediately struck by the antagonism and secrecy of the locals. Why was there so much hostility and fear? And why were the streets deserted after dark?

Next morning the murdered body of Andrew Woodside is discovered on a nearby hill, beginning an investigation that takes Bryant to the dingy industrial town of Castington, where an atmosphere of jealousy, suspicion and intrigue prevails . . .

‘No one writes a better crime novel than Charles Willeford’ Elmore Leonard

In this riveting novel of psychological suspense, Charles Willeford charts a duel trajectory of alcoholic desire and destruction that is at once poignant, terrifying and utterly authentic.

Prowling the grimy streets of San Francisco, Helen is a beautiful, sensuous drunk – and a pathetically easy pick-up. Harry just wants to help, but before long they are both adrift in a sea of alcohol – until Harry conceives the ultimate crime.

‘The best American police procedural of the year’ Anthony Boucher

Sergeant Ivor Maddox and the Wilcox Street precinct do not have time to rest on their laurels. Currently there is a curious wave of shoplifting among teenagers, an elderly pensioner has been shot dead from the window of a passing car, a six-month-old baby has disappeared from his pram and a pregnant fifteen-year-old has died of an overdose of an unusual drug – a terrible accident or murder?

Psychiatrist-sleuth Dr Basil Willing is in a tobacconist’s in Manhattan when another customer follows him into the shop, buys cigarettes, and leaves in a hurry. The man hails a taxi to take him to 51st street with the instruction: ‘Come back and call for me; I am Dr Basil Willing.’

Intrigued, the real Basil Willing hails a second taxi and finds himself at a formal dinner party given by a psychiatrist for his patients, who do not really seem at ease there – and later he discovers the horrifying reason why …

In Queens, in the middle of a brightly lit street, a woman is savagely stabbed to death. The victim, Anna Grace, was a nurse devoted to helping others. But no one tries to help her on the last night of her life, even as she screams.

Homicide cop Miranda Torres vows to bring the killer to justice. Then a series of mob hits in the city takes the case in an astonishing new direction. And when Miranda discovers why Anna was murdered, she must catch a killer who will soon hold her life in his hands.

The Gliding Wraith: If he was really asleep in his chair why did he glide across the street?

Twilight Ancestor: Her evil power held the tribe in terror … only the stranger dared to oppose her.

The Man Who Never Smiled: The stranger never parted his lips, as though afraid of what he would reveal.

Fangs in the Night: Something evil and dangerous lurked in the shadows below the window.

An Eye for an Eye: He had forgotten about the hare in the trap … until his own life was in danger.

‘My favourite American crime-writer’ New York Herald Tribune

The Wilcox Street precinct is as busy as ever. Sergeant Maddox and his team face three tricky murder cases, with motives that turn out to be as strange and bizarre as the crimes themselves.

But it is not only murder that is occupying Maddox. When policewoman Carstairs, who has vainly adored him for so long, begins to show interest in newcomer Sergeant O’Neill, Maddox discovers to his astonishment that he is jealous and will have to balance his time between romance and murder.

Perry Mason orders a double serving of trouble the night he and Della Street dine at an intimate restaurant after a hard day at law. In the middle of their steaks a waitress flees the premises in terror, leaving the puzzled proprietor holding her mink coat.

Why a humble working girl abandons such a pricey wrap is only the first question in a cop-killer case that traps Mason’s client with both an impossible story and the murder weapon, makes Perry himself a prime suspect, and blazes a gunpowder trail that leads straight to the heart of the police department itself.

Featuring man’s staggering journey to the stars…

In a Tenn’s-eye view of the world, “staggering” can be interpreted in more ways than one, of course.

Notably –
The warm, human interpretation
The feminist interpretation
The green-transparent-bubble interpretation
The man-in-the-street interpretation

Mr. Tenn has included a charming witch tale, a really delicious vampire item, and a superior machine (intergalactic hit) story. These have nothing to do with man’s staggering journey to the stars. They are simply here to add to the confusion.

Then again, why couldn’t they have something to do with the square root of man?

The night watchman at Hallams, the long-established Bond Street jewellers, is found dead with his head battered in, and a number of display cases have been rifled. Chief Inspector Burr picks up the trail, with the young Inspector Poole as his assistant.

But before long, the crime at Hallams is overshadowed by a mystery which stirs Scotland Yard into a frenzy of activity. Even the great Superintendent Fraser is aroused from his customary Olympian calm; but it is the detailed work of young Poole which eventually solves the double problem, links mystery to mystery and brings the clear light of day . . .

The twenty-seventh title in the popular Harpur and Iles series.

A street shooting leaves a mother and child dead on the school run. But was this a random attack? Unlikely, when it transpires that the victims were the wife and son of well-known drug baron Mansel Shale.

Having committed this atrocity, the gunman flees to a nearby shop where a hostage situation quickly develops. Detective Chief Inspector Harpur and Assistant Chief Constable Iles are brought in to oversee the siege – which ends in sudden tragedy.

But as subsequent events unfold, it appears that the gunman wasn’t tracking Shale after all, but his wife . . .

For years Panicking Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale have run profitable drugs empires in peaceful cooperation with each other – and Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles turns a blind-eye to their trade as long as it keeps violence off the streets. But this happy arrangement is threatened by foreign dealers moving in and offering punters not just drugs, but exploited girls from Eastern Europe.

These invaders have no respect for the old way of managing things and soon bloody gang warfare breaks out in a deadly scramble for territory.

‘Another dodgy gavotte by the master of the revels . . . brilliant’ Literary Review

With the rumoured transfer of Chief of Police Mark Lane, London’s competitive drug lords are on edge. In the past, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles has managed to maintain the peace on the streets in an old-fashioned system of give a little, take a little. But suddenly Iles is in danger of losing his power when the new chief constable comes to town, and the drug gangs begin a struggle for dominance.

With a dangerous mix of greed and fear, the looming threat of a stricter police force, and three sudden deaths, all sides are preparing themselves for a full-scale battle of the ugliest kind.

‘Essential reading’ Independent

With a brief note to her employer, Dorrie Mayo left her job – and another note taped to a neighbour’s door claimed she was taking her baby to live with her in-laws on the other side of the U.S. A natural enough thing for a young widow with a fifteen-month-old daughter to do.

Only why didn’t Dorrie tell any of her friends where she was going? And why were her notes typewritten when Dorrie didn’t own a typewriter? For Maddox and his colleagues of the Wilcox Street precinct, this is a conundrum that will take all their skill and resources to solve.

Relating Sherlock Holmes’s part in real-life crimes of the day, Donald Thomas brings the Great Detective to life once again in six narratives that display Holmes at his most determined, inventive and downright devious.

What were Holmes’s views on Dr Crippen? And what happened when Oscar Wilde visited Baker Street to seek advice? How did Holmes uncover a loving husband as one of the most dangerous psychopaths of modern times? And just what horrors await Holmes in the darkened slums of Waterloo Road?

‘Thomas’s imitation is wryly and subtly done’ Guardian

Trapped behind walls of towering ice, First City was a prison from which no one ever escaped. The Trysts ruled with an iron fist: violent death was a common sight on the streets.

Morag MacKenzie was a mind-prostitute who gave erotic thought stimulation, without giving her body. Those who yearned for other escapes visited the Timesmiths, within those hands time could be moulded like clay as they spun dream-visions. But morag has her own dreams, of a world outside the ice walls, a world of space and freedom, and she is determined to find it.

“ZNIDD SUDDABIT!”So the Ulleran challenge begins, with the rantings of a prophet and a seemingly incidental street riot. Only when a dose of poison lands in the governor-general’s whiskey does it become clear that the “geeks” have had it up to their double-lidded eyeballs with the imperialist Terran Federation’s Chartered Uller Company. Then, overnight, war is everywhere.
How it will end is in the (merely) two Terran hands of the new governor-general, a man shrewd enough to know that “it is easier to banish a habit of thought than a piece of knowledge.” The problem is, the particular piece of knowledge he needs hasn’t been used in 450 years. . . .

Doubleluck…Home…with its streets of flowing gold, waterfalls of diamonds, lakes of perfume – and its deadly curse! Jade is the one human with the will to challenge all odds and find the key to save her species. Fellow creatures fear her ability to dream. The powerful Rulon will exterminate all galactic life unless he can possess both Jade and the riches of Doubleluck. The brutal Dreens seek to mate with her to improve their inferior stock. Escape from each of them brings her one step closer to the perfect monument that is Doubleluck – a monument that covers a lonely grave.

On a winter night in a Bronx neighbourhood, a blow from a shovel fells a man in the street. From the scene flee six children, any of whom might have loosed the fatal strike. Weeks later, one of their fathers is executed for the crime.

Four decades on, the Ryer Avenue gang gathers again: Megan Magee, Charley and Eugene O’Brien, Ben Herskel and Dante D’Angelo; the group is missing only Willie Paycek, the little hanger-on who never fitted in. But now that fatal blow is about to come crashing down upon them – and this time, Willie is calling the shots.

Their job is to bring back the goods bought but not paid for by San Francisco’s deadbeats. But the repo men of Daniel Kearny Associates have their own problems. Boss man Dan Kearny has been bounced by his wife. Bart Heslip is wearing leather in the Tenderloin, and Ballard has finally met a woman who’s his match.

Just when things couldn’t get tougher, four DKA cases come together – with a bang. Shotguns, politics and a multimillion-dollar brawl between two high-tech wizards open up bad blood on the streets, exposing a plot to punch DKA’s ticket for good.

A nice young man is helping little old ladies with their groceries . . . then stealing their Social Security; an enormous ‘ape man’ with a face like King Kong is robbing liquor stores; ‘Jack the Stripper’ is leaving gas-station registers empty . . . and the attendants naked; a pretty Hispanic woman is killed and ethnic tensions are ready to explode; a little girl is mutilated; a cop is fatally shot.

Between the weather and the crime wave, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza – the family-man cop – finds shelter at home, knowing that even violence on the streets of Los Angeles eases up . . . eventually.

‘A Luis Mendoza mystery means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Timesc