Politics Can Be Dirty . . .
Drugging, Kidnapping, a slashed throat, crushed and broken bodies in a hired car, all link with the mystery of a missing ten-year-old boy.
With Vital Cold War talks at risk, Roger West must out-guess the FBI for a fighting chance to save a child’s life . . .
From the Design Book of Marcelline Noirot:
The allure of the perfect gown should be twofold:
ladies would die to wear it . . .
and gentlemen would kill to remove it!
Brilliant and ambitious dressmaker Marcelline Noirot is London's rising star. And who better to benefit from her talent than the worst-dressed lady in the ton, the Duke of Clevedon's intended bride? Winning the future duchess's patronage means prestige and fortune for Marcelline and her sisters. To get to the lady, though, Marcelline must win over Clevedon, whose standards are as high as his morals are . . . not.
The prize seems well worth the risk—but this time Marcelline's met her match. Clevedon can design a seduction as irresistible as her dresses; and what begins as a flicker of desire between two of the most passionately stubborn charmers in London soon ignites into a delicious inferno . . . and a blazing scandal.
And now both their futures hang by an exquisite thread of silk . . .
After a heroic attempt to be an English major forever, Loretta Chase stoically accepted her degree but kept on reading and writing. As well as working in academe, she had an enlightening, if brief, life in retail and a Dickensian six-month experience as a meter maid. In the course of moonlighting as a corporate video scriptwriter, she succumbed to the charm of a producer, who lured her into writing novels . . . and marrying him. The union has resulted in what seems like an awful lot of books and quite a few awards, including the Romance Writers of America's RITA®.
Chris Burnett, successful, wealthy and married to the daughter of a multi-millionaire, receives severe brain injuries in a car accident. While convalescing, Burnett disappears for 24 hours, during which time a prostitute is brutally murdered and mutilated.
Cheuse's busy follow-up to To Catch the Lightning reaches frantically in multiple directions but lacks a center of narrative gravity, resulting in a florid and off-kilter tale of slavery and forbidden love. Nathaniel Pereira, son of a New York Jewish merchant, gets dispatched to revive an uncle's South Carolina plantation, but his story is derailed by the interspersed accounts of several generations of women driven from slavery in Timbuktu to bondage in the United States. On a slave voyage, the brutality is as vivid as the prose is lurid ("What happened next, we can never truly know, unless we find ourselves forced into the immediate degradation sometimes suffered by the victim, usually female, when man turns beast and instinct—raw, foul, animal, devilish, destructive instinct—overpowers her"), and once the plantation slave Liza becomes an object of purplish desire for Nathaniel (a "tincture of desire now flavoring the spittle that we mingled in our mouths"), readers will realize that things cannot end well. After the convoluted story finds its way to a fiery conclusion, Cheuse tacks on a rushed and tidy resolution that undermines the novel's strongest feature: its depiction of the horrors of slavery. (Mar.)
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Cheuse, author of To Catch the Lightning (2008), tackles another complex subject in his latest historical novel. Sent by his father to observe and evaluate his uncle's South Carolina rice plantation as a possible business investment, New York Jew and fledgling entrepreneur Nathaniel Pereira is horrified by his first brush with the brutal realities of slavery. Especially struck by the irony of how a people who themselves lived in bondage for so long could now own slaves, he is torn between his conscience and his duty. His moral dilemma becomes even more complex after he becomes captivated by Liza, a beautiful slave who harbors a shattering secret. A parallel story, passed through the generations from mother to daughter, chronicles the odyssey of one slave family from sixteenth-century Timbuktu to the antebellum South. As the two narratives unfold, eventually becoming one, the tangled history of slavery and the enduring stain it left upon a nation founded on the principles of freedom and equality is evocatively illuminated. --Margaret Flanagan
When a small-time clerk insures his life for $50,000 and then suddenly dies ten days later, it doesn't take a genius to work out something suspicious is going on. So when Maddox, the top man in the insurance business, finds out, he is determined to get to the bottom of it. And this means trouble for someone. In fact it means trouble for the beautiful, auburn-haired Meg Barlowe, a woman with a serious past.
When part-time legal investigator and full-time artist Danny Cray gets a chance to pick up some extra cash trying to trace the source of a smear campaign against a mysterious European tycoon, he jumps at it eagerly. But all is not as it seems in this taut, intricately plotted thriller--except Danny, of course, who turns out to possess unexpected resources of grit and brains. The action moves from Washington to Geneva to that volatile area of Turkey where tribal politics, religion, and corruption collide with explosive results. John Case mixes strong descriptive prose, interesting characters, a powerful narrative, and a dramatic denouement to come up with a sure winner in his fourth novel, one fans of Ludlum and le Carré are sure to enjoy. --Jane Adams
When starving but hopeful 26-year-old artist Danny Cray upgrades his part-time work as a private investigator to full-time, his blind acceptance of misinformation coupled with a readiness to plunge headfirst into situations unknown transform a charming na‹vet‚ and spirit of spontaneity into fatal shortcomings that threaten to curtail a burgeoning career and endanger his life. In Case's new thriller (after The Syndrome), Cray embarks on escapades that are zesty and riveting, moving from the streets of Washington, D.C., to the Vatican Library to an entire city buried deep under eastern Turkey where a treasured religious object lies hidden. Ostensibly hired to protect the image of a famous businessman by discovering who is behind the smear campaign targeting his client, Cray quickly discovers that he has become involved in an imbroglio far more sinister than anything he expected; instead of the quick and simple high-profit, low-risk deal he envisioned, Danny is confronted with suspicious and terrifying deaths, dangerous technology and evil incarnate. Fast-paced and crammed with descriptions of experimental devices and potentially devastating scientific advances, the novel is unfortunately also saddled with repetitive language, some unrealistic stretches and improbable responses upon which the story line depends for further action. Still, the pieces fit nicely together and Case's fourth thriller is a satisfying and gripping read.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The letter was simply addressed to “The Toff, London W1.” Inside it was a photograph of a lovely woman. The lady herself had arrived at a society ball the previous night, looking deadly pale in black satin and mink. She said she had lost her memory and nobody knew who she was. Within days, murder and intrigue had followed her.
When an outbreak of small-shop robberies culminates in vicious murder, Superintendent West becomes convinced that an organised gang is at work—one whose leaders will stop at nothing in order to safeguard themselves.
Can he convince his superiors, and intervene effectively before more lives are lost?
Can he restrain a man intent on revenge, whose wife and unborn child have perished at the hands of the killers?
More violence is to follow, and West himself is to run grave risk before the amazing truth is revealed
In this gripping tale of suspense the Toff must find his way through a maze of deception, subterfuge and foolhardy obstinacy. It is a race against time to uncover the secret in a man’s past that is threatening to destroy not only him but all those around him as well.
The award-winning John Creasey is the stupor mundi of the mystery- writing field. Incredibly prolific and always astonishingly good, he is the creator of Gideon, Inspector West and many another internationally-famous fictional sleuth. But curiously, one of Mr. Creasey’s own favorite creations is all but unknown on this side of the Atlantic. This is the Honorable Richard Rollison. “the Toff.”
The Toff belongs to that great race of gifted amateurs who once dominated detective fiction—Sherlock Holmes, Lord Peter Wimsey and the Saint are three disparate examples— but who, in recent years, have been largely eclipsed by professional policemen. secret agents and private eyes. How much was lost when the “great detectives” gave place to lesser breeds is delightfully demonstrated in the Toff series and perhaps nowhere better than in The Toff on the Farm.
Here we have a fine display of the ingredients which give the Toff stories so much of their charm: the highborn Toff, omnicompetent and equally at home in every social stratum; Jolly, his impeccable “gentleman’s gentleman” ; a variety of highly unpleasant villains; a swift succession of incidents ranging from the violent to the absurd; and even, for good measure, a wonderfully unlikely American named “Tex.” Light, deft and suspenseful. The Toff on the Farm provides a full measure of highly satisfactory entertainment.
West wanted Raeburn— and he wanted him badly
For two years Chief Inspector West had been watching Paul Raeburn — millionaire and racketeer, a man with a great capacity for evil . . .
Now, after the killing of a small-time crook, West began a one man crusade to put Raeburn where he belonged — behind bars.
Two killers wanted her — one for protection and one for prey. One of them had slain a helpless man to hide the secret of his identity. And he was quite prepared to kill the girl if she tried to double-cross him. But he’d reckoned without that terrible accident — and he was totally unprepared for the insane murderer who made death a ritual with a silver-handled knife.
In this third installment of Chase's lively, sexy, paranormal trilogy, we meet witch Morgaine, who is deathly afraid of the dark, and her vigilante vampire neighbor Sly, who has his reasons for hating sunlight. Sly needs Morgaine's magic to help heal a broken fang, but with further help, and sometimes hindrance, from the wacky apartment dwellers around them, they may become each other's last hope for a normal life...
Praise for Strange Neighbors:
"Plenty of laughs along with steamy sex scenes... the good-natured fun never stops."
-Publishers Weekly
Multi-published author Ashlyn Chase specializes in characters who reinvent themselves, having reinvented herself numerous times. She has worked as a psychiatric nurse, for the Red Cross, and has a degree in behavioral sciences. Her romance Strange Neighbors gets rave reviews. She lives with her true-life hero husband in beautiful New Hampshire.