Five Leaves Publications- Crime Express
" And now for something(s) completely different: Claws, Stephen Booth; The Mentalist, Rod Duncan; Trouble in Mind, John Harvey (all by Crime Express, an imprint of Five Leaves Press, $10.00 each). Someone probably should have thought of this before—a series of flapped- paperback novellas roughly the size of postcards and not much heavier. At less than 100 pages per book, each is thin enough to slip into your pocket or purse.
The marketing geniuses at Crime Express deserve kudos for beginning this smart series with Stephen Book’s extraordinary Claws, set on the Yorkshire moors. Someone has been collecting the nests and eggs of endangered raptors and selling them on a growing black market. As Derbyshire police detective DC Ben Cooper searches for the nest thief, he compares goshawks to humans: the goshawks come out on top. An evocative meditation on a vanishing world, Claws will send Booth fans rushing to reread his full- length novels.
Also worth checking out are Rod Duncan’s The Mentalist, starring a psychic who may or may not be a fraud, and who gets tangled up in crime when he predicts a death; and John Harvey’s Trouble in Mind, in which a professional soccer player-turned PI tracks down a soldier gone AWOL upon his return from Iraq.
These three little books, all set in various areas of England, are the answer to a traveler’s dream. Portable, yet sturdy enough to survive a world of crowded airports. Crime Express plans to publish three of these mysteries per year, and eventually a non-fiction series which will include a study of films based on the novels of Raymond Chandler." - Mystery Scene (USA)
Series editor:
This series of small format, flapped paperbacks is numbered - to encourage you to collect the set!
will join the list in 2008 with "The Quarry", further details soon.
Latest Publications:
The Okinawa Dragonby ISBN: 978-1905512393, 96 pages
£4.99
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Jack deals in cardboard, selling expensive and rare gaming cards to rich collectors. He makes plenty of money, travelling the world. He meets millionaire Henri, the man who has everything. Well, almost everything. Henri wants the elusive Okinawa Dragon, a one-off card given to a Japanese businessman who refuses to sell. A plan is hatched, and Jack is soon on his way to Osaka to complete Henri’s collection. There is only one way to get hold of something somebody doesn’t want to give.
Praise for Nicola Monaghan’s The Killing Jar:
"An exuberant debut that reaches the parts of Britain mainstream fiction usually leaves alone." - The Independent
"Direct and deceptively simple. In spite of the suffering there are surprising touches of humour and tenderness that bloom like flowers on asphalt." - The Times
"...often violent, it isn't gratuitous, and Kerrie-Ann's strident voice sounds authentic; her plight compelling and affecting."
- Independent on Sunday
"Utterly compelling reading about a 'dead stormy'" - coming of age Booklist (starred review)
"startling and potent debut novel. Powerful and complex."
- The Independent
The Quarryby ISBN: 978-1905512423, 96 pages
£4.99
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A frightened phone call from her young daughter sends Jenny Carter into the darkness of Quarry Woods, seventeen years after she swore she’d never return. What she finds there triggers a journey back to a horrific event in her own childhood – an event which now threatens the present.
is the author of two previous crime novels. She is the crime reviewer of the Yorkshire Post.
Titles:
Clawsby ISBN: 978-1905512249, 70 pages
£4.99
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The discovery of an illegal haul from the bedroom of a terraced house is a clue to what might be at stake - perhaps the entire future of one of the most prized landscapes in the Peak District National Park.
For young Derbyshire police detective DC Ben Cooper, an assignment to the Rural Crime Team means stepping into the middle of the conflict, without being quite sure whose side he's on. The predators come in all shapes and sizes. And in this battle, not all the victims will be human...
"Booth is a modern master of rural noir" - the Guardian
"Booth delivers some of the best crime fiction in the UK" - Manchester Evening News
"One of the elite British mystery writers" - Washington Times
"There are few, if any, contemporary writers who do this as well as Stephen Booth" - Arena Magazine
Stephen Booth is the creator of young Derbyshire police detectives DC Ben Cooper and DS Diane Fry, who have appeared in eight novels, the latest being Dying to Sin. Booth’s books have won awards on both sides of the Atlantic and have been translated into fifteen languages. Stephen was recently described by the Sunday Telegraph as "one of our best story-tellers."
The Mentalistby ISBN: 978-1905512263, 70 pages
£4.99
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Enthusiasts call Harry Gysel a psychic. To others he is a fraud, a meddler in the occult. When he appears to predict the death of a woman in the audience of one of his shows and that woman is subsequently found murdered, Harry becomes an instant celebrity. But Chief Inspector Morgan isn’t so easily convinced.
"You’ve come here to find the truth", says Harry Gysel to the audience, but the truth is not so easy to find…
Rod Duncan is the author of a trilogy of novels based around a fictional riot in contemporary inner-city Leicester. Backlash, Breakbeat and Burnout.
Backlash was shortlisted for the John Creasey award for the best debut crime novel of the year.
Praise for Rod Duncan's previous trilogy:
"Sheer page-turning compulsion" - Martyn Waites
"(this) pacy tale of life in the inner city shows that modern British crime fiction is alive and kicking over the traces" - Birmingham Post
"A thriller which has the reader gripped from the opening" - Leicester Mercury
"Separate but interlinked stories are played out where good and bad are never clearly defined and each chapter ends on a cliffhanger urging you to read on." - Big Issue
Trouble In Mindby ISBN: 978-1905512256, 70 pages
£4.99
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Jack Kiley, a professional footballer turned private investigator, is hired to track down a solider who has gone missing while on leave from Iraq. The soldier's mind is disturbed by what he has seen and done in the war, and he is armed. There are fears both for the man himself and for the safety of his estranged wife and two young children.
Kiley's search leads him to Nottingham, where he teams up with D. I. Charlie Resnick. Together they search the house where the soldier's wife and children have been living and find them gone, almost certainly taken against their will ... the only question now is, will they find them before it is too late?
Trouble in Mind brings together two of John Harvey’s major characters.
"No one in Britain is writing better crime fiction" - The Times
"One of the masters of British crime fiction" - Sunday Telegraph
"One of the leading writers of crime fiction alive today" - Le Monde
"A little gem of a book: it's a bit longer than a short story, and a bit shorter than a novella. Harvey is a wonderful writer. It's about a detective and a cop trying to find a soldier absent without leave from Iraq. It made me green with envy: it made me wonder if I over-write everything." - Mark Billingham, Sky Books Programme
John Harvey is the author of ten Charlie Resnick novels, the first of which, Lonely Hearts, was named by The Times (London) as one of the 100 Best Crime Novels of the Century.
In 2007 he was awarded the British Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Sustained Excellence in Crime Writing for his title Flesh and Blood.