Contre Temps

in Crime Scenes...coming 5th August 

A sparkling collection of short stories written by modern masters and mistresses of the crime fiction genre. Within these pages you will find tales of murder, mystery and mayhem in a great variety of styles and tones from the time-honoured whodunnit to the psychological chiller to the history mystery to the crime procedural to the noir thriller to the gangster epic and the darkly humorous narrative. This volume demonstrates clearly how the crime story has developed and matured over the last two hundred years or so into the exciting, thought-provoking and thoroughly entertaining form of fiction it is today. The impressive cast of contributors includes well-respected and well-established names such as Peter Lovesey, Edward Marston, Natasha Cooper, Judith Cutler and Russell James as well as those currently making their reputation as fine exponents of their craft and a few young lions whose work is bristling with promise. Crime Scenes is a treasure chest of delights for the fans of crime fiction. 

Contre Temps is a taught crime thriller: The Day of the Jackal meets The Living Daylights in Quebec City.

The Long Man

in Sherlock Holmes: The Game's Afoot

Wordsworth Editions, February 2008

Once more, the game's afoot as Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street returns in twenty new adventures specially commissioned for Wordsworth's Mystery & Supernatural series.  The celebrated detective, along with his friend and biographer, Dr Watson, investigate a variety of baffling mysteries that will delight fans of the famous sleuth.  Striding through the foggy gas lit streets of London, Holmes tackles such cases as the puzzle of the Green Skull, the secret of the Brown Box, the conundrum of the Dragon of Lea Lane, as well as coming face to face once again with the Sussex Vampire.  We also learn what really happened at the Reichenbach Falls when Holmes had his fateful encounter with Professor Moriarty.  David Stuart Davies, Denis O. Smith, Mark Valentine, Matthew Booth, M.J. Elliott and the other talented writers who have contributed to this collection have followed closely in the footsteps of Arthur Conan Doyle in creating a wonderful feast of Sherlockian entertainment.

The Long Man is a reminiscence of Roderick Langham, late of the Indian Army and the Metropolitan Police Force.