Simon. Something frightful has happened to Jamie. Please come . . .When James Asher is found unconscious in the cemetery of the Church of St. Clare Pieds-Nus with multiple puncture-wounds in his throat and arms, his wife, Lydia, knows of only one person to call: the vampire Don Simon Ysidro. Old friend and old adversary, he is the only one who can help Lydia protect her unconscious, fevered husband from the vampires of Paris.Why James has been attacked – and why he was called to Paris in the first place – Lydia has no idea. But she knows that she must find out, and quickly. For with James wavering between life and death, and war descending on the world, their slim chance of saving themselves from the vampires grows slimmer with each passing day . . . Views: 19
Kaz, troubled by his father's absence and a learning disability, discovers the real consequences of crime when he steals a watch from an elderly woman. Views: 19
The Devil is certainly at work in the dark streets of the slums of Victorian London—and Charlotte and Thomas Pitt must stop a killer before he strikes againA serial killer is loose in the slums of Devil's Acre. The murders are brutal, but it is the killer's grizzly signature that shocks even Inspector Thomas Pitt, no stranger to death and violent crime. The victims are stabbed and sexually mutilated. When Pitt recognizes one of the victims as a blackmailing footman from a case on Callander Square, his investigation takes him from the brothels to the high reaches of Victorian society and into a world where upper-class women descend to depravity to relieve their boredom. Despite Pitt's warnings, his wife, Charlotte, pursues her own investigation. With the help of her sister Emily, Lady Ashworth, Charlotte reenters the elegant drawing rooms of Callander Square to find out more about the former footman who, Pitt discovers, owned an exclusive high-class whorehouse... Views: 19
Bombay, 1921. Intrepid and intelligent, young Perveen Mistry joins her father's prestigious law firm to become one of India's first female lawyers. Her tumultuous past also makes her especially devoted to championing and protecting women's rights. When Mistry Law is appointed to execute the will of Omar Farid, a wealthy mill owner, Perveen's suspicions are aroused by a curious provision which could disinherit Farid's three widows and leave them vulnerable. Are the Farid widows—who live in strict seclusion, never leaving the women's quarters or speaking to men—being duped by an unscrupulous guardian? Perveen decides to investigate, but when tensions escalate to murder, it becomes clear that her own life is in mortal peril and she will need to use everything in her power to outwit a dangerous criminal. Views: 19
Imperium . . . Conspirata . . . and now Dictator--the long-awaited final volume of Robert Harris's magnificent Ancient Rome Trilogy At the age of forty-eight, Cicero--the greatest orator of his time--is in exile, separated from his wife and children, tormented by his sense of failure, his great power sacrificed on the altar of his principles. And yet, in the words of one of his most famous aphorisms, "While there is life, there is hope."By promising to support Caesar--his political enemy--he is granted return to Rome. There, he fights his way back to prominence: first in the law courts, then in the Senate, and finally by the power of his pen, until at last, for one brief and glorious period, he is again the preeminent statesman in the city. Even so, no public figure, however brilliant and cunning, is completely safeguarded against the unscrupulous ambition and corruption of others. Riveting and tumultuous, Dictator... Views: 19
A yuletide tale set in exotic India. This time the mistress of mystery tells the story of a terrible crime that sets the stage for another: accusing an innocent man of murder. The year is 1857, soon after the violent Siege of Cawnpore, with India in the midst of rebellion. In the British garrison, a guard is killed and an Indian prisoner escapes, which leads to yet more British deaths. Cries for revenge are overwhelming. Despite no witnesses and no evidence against him, a luckless British medical orderly named John Tallis is arrested as an accomplice simply because he was the only soldier unaccounted for when these baffling crimes were committed. Though chosen to defend Tallis, young Lieutenant Victor Narraway is not encouraged to try very hard. Narraway’s superiors merely want a show trial. But inspired by a soldier’s widow and her children, and by his own stubborn faith in justice, Narraway searches for the truth. In an alien world haunted by memories of massacre, he is the accused man’s only hope. The trial of John Tallis equals the white-knuckle best of Anne Perry’s breathtaking courtroom dramas. And thanks to a simple Christmas garland and some brilliant detective work, Narraway perseveres against appalling odds, learning how to find hope within himself—and turn the darkest hour into one full of joy and light. Views: 19
From BooklistPro football player turned lawyer Jake Lassiter is savoring a drink at a South Beach bar when a beautiful young woman shoots the man on the next bar stool and faints in Lassiter's arms. It's one way to get clients, he figures. The woman, Chrissy Bernhardt, is charged with the first-degree murder of her father, whom Chrissy believes abused her as a child. Lassiter takes the case, which is complicated by the fact that Chrissy's repressed memories of her father's abuse have been "unlocked" with the help of a therapist who turns out to be her late mother's former lover. The seventh Lassiter novel continues the series' steady improvement. Lassiter is smart, tough, funny, and very human. He's coming on fast as one of the most entertaining series characters in contemporary crime fiction. Wes LukowskyFrom Kirkus ReviewsNot even a lawyer as light on his feet as Jake Lassiter can find much wiggle room when he himself was one of the dozens of witnesses who watched his client, model Chrissy Bernhardt, walk up to her father in a crowded bar and shoot him three times, sending him spiraling into a fatal heart attack. And things just get worse when Chrissy's psychiatrist, obliging Dr. Lawrence Schein, hands Jake solid-gold evidence of Chrissy's childhood abuse by Harry Bernhardt--something Schein claims is a perfect defense, though it's nothing more or less, to Jake's disillusioned eyes, than the perfect motive for premeditated murder. With no hope of winning acquittal for a client who tells him she wanted to hurt the old man as badly as he'd hurt her and who cheerfully disclaims the slightest sign of remorse, Jake's only prayer is to go for manslaughter. But armed with all those tapes of Dr. Schein's (including the prizewinner, in which Chrissy tells him she's just bought the gun she's going to shoot her father with), who could doubt the premeditation the prosecution alleges--unless of course it's Jake himself, who's broken his usual rule against sleeping with his clients in favor of the deeper rule that draws him to every guilty-looking dame in Miami? Jake just never learns about women--luckily for his fans, who'll find this impossible case, his seventh (Fool Me Twice, 1995, etc.), more tightly wound than any since his debut in To Speak for the Dead (1990). -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Views: 19
In fourteenth century London, Crispin Guest is a disgraced knight convicted of treason and stripped of his land, title and his honor. He has become known as the “Tracker”—a man who can find anything, can solve any puzzle and, with the help of his apprentice, Jack Tucker, an orphaned street urchin with a thief ’s touch—will do so for a price. But this time, even Crispin is wary of taking on his most recent client. Jacob of Provencal is a Jewish physician at the King’s court, even though all Jews were expelled from England nearly a century before. Jacob wants Crispin to find stolen parchments that might be behind the recent, ongoing, gruesome murders of young boys, parchments that someone might have used to bring forth a demon which now stalks the streets and alleys of London.
From Publishers Weekly Westerson's third 14th-century historical featuring disgraced knight Crispin Guest (after 2009's Serpent in the Thorns) is the best yet in the series, though the plotting and characterization remain a cut below that of, say, a master of the medieval subgenre like Susanna Gregory. Guest, who's developed a reputation as "the Tracker," pursues two cases: a Jewish doctor, Jacob of Provençal, retains him to recover some lost Hebrew manuscripts, and the sheriff of London asks for his help to trace a serial killer who's strangled and eviscerated four young boys. In the course of his inquiries, Guest encounters a hulking figure who may be the legendary golem, a creature molded from clay to protect the Jewish community. Those who may regard the serial killer story line as anachronistic will find a real-life model, Gilles de Rais, cited in the author's afterword. Views: 19
Per the Kelleher Typology nine point categorization of serial killers, Sexual Predators are those who systematically kill in clear acts of sexual homicide. Sociopaths who torture and kill in order to fuel an ongoing prurient fantasy. For female serial killers, however, this classification is so rare that there has only been one documented case in the U.S. Rowan Gant is about to meet number two. Views: 19
