Thriller

DEAD HEAT . . . Between the covers

For Matt Grimshaw, everything has suddenly become rather ‘former’. Thanks to being sacked by his long-term employer, he is now a former journalist, and Takara is now his former lover, he having discovered her cavorting with a colleague in his London flat. Adam and Celia, a well-off media couple, are still his friends, however, and they have given him the key to the cottage next to their villa on the Mani Peninsula, part of the ancient kingdom of Sparta.

Matt spends a few days on his own there before Adam, Celia, their teenage daughter Lydia and her friend Jasmine arrive. Adam is disconcerted that across the bay a former abandoned folly, Arcadia, has been converted into a luxury compound by a tech billionaire called Reynash de Souza. The problem is that Adam and de Souza have, as they say, history. When de Souza throws a party for all the neighbourhood, what Dylan called ‘a simple twist of fate’ intervenes and turns the azure Aegean into something far, far darker.

In the background is a missing person, a man called Marc Ashley, a guest at de Souza’s Arcadia. One morning, he set out for a run and never came back. His sister Sarah is desperately trying to find him by a leafleting campaign and organising volunteer search parties.At the heart of the story is the relationship between Matt and Adam. Matt is a talented writer, but insecure and, perhaps, too sensitive to the needs of others. His emotional antennae are fine-wired, but to his own detrimental. Adam is, to use the old word, a cad. Charming, persuasive, charismatic even, he uses people. One such is a young woman called Amira, a former intern at Adam’s production company. He seduced her and is subsequently horrified when she turns up at de Souza’s mansion. She blackmails him, and Matt, ever loyal, agrees to be part of the deception involving a pay-off that will deceive Celia.

The book begins with one of those enigmatic prologues, date stamped well after the events of the main story. A man sits in a Greek court, watching a prisoner being sentenced. Sabine Durrant drops a fairly hefty hint that the observer is Matt Grimshaw, but who is the convicted man? Sabine Durrant not only deftly recreates the enervating physical climate, but makes us sweat in the oppressive emotional climate created by infidelity, old sins returning to haunt the perpetrator, and dangerous atmosphere caused by money mixed with power. Dead Heat is an immersive mystery beautifully woven with the threads of cruelty, revenge and deceit. It will be published by Century on 12th March.

March 9, 2026 0

IF A FACE COULD KILL . . . Between the covers

Brigid Quinn is a former FBI agent. She and her husband Carlo have retired to the rural community of Catalina in Arizona. At the end of their street is a property used by the authorities to house paroled offenders, one whom is a woman called Nicki, who went down for manslaughter after killing her abusive husband. The book begins with a botched burglary at this group house, which ends when the hapless was shot dead by a SWAT team after they were alerted by a 911 call from Nicki.After she retired from the FBI Brigid volunteered at Desert Doves, a refuge for victims of domestic violence, which is where she met the traumatised Nicki Gleason. There, she taught Nicki the basics of self defence, and it was that knowledge which resulted in jury foreman stating:

“We find Nicole Gleason guilty of one count of involuntary manslaughter, your Honor.”

One of Brigid’s neighbours, an unpleasant busybody called Dorita, is organising a petition to have the occupants housed elsewhere. Dorita is as unpleasant looking as her behaviour is ugly:

“It struck me that her large face wasn’t so much like the Red Queen’s as like a painting of Martin Luther..”

Dorita and Brigid are destined not to get on well together, but the neighbourhood spat ends violently when Dorita is found dead in her garden. It seems as though she has been held down in a barbecue fire pit. Face down. The result is graphically not pretty, but then there are few beautiful people in this novel.
This is Nikki’s probation officer/mentor:

“She was the ugliest butterfly you’d ever seen, startlingly ugly. She didn’t have a moustache, but it wouldn’t have surprised me.A long, gaunt face with uncooked dumplings under her eyes to make up for the lack of flesh elsewhere. Her lipstick appeared to be a gallant attempt at redeeming her face, but even that failed as the shade contrasted severely with the colors in her top. An overbite. That was my three-second observation, but I don’t think I’m missing anything.”

For those who enjoy such things, we witness the exquisitely grisly autopsy on poor Dorita Gordano. She was killed by blunt force trauma to the face, and a gasoline soaked plug of rag was forced into her throat. The facial burning was clearly post mortem, and some kind of statement. But of what, and by whom? Neither does Becky Masterman spare us the details of what a vile specimen Nicki’s husband was. Vincent was obsessed with video games to the extent that one afternoon, anxious to get to his games console, he left daughter Ramona strapped into her car seat one blazing Arizona afternoon. He was also casually brutal about where he stubbed out his cigarettes. There is, obviously, a broader moral argument about whether such men deserve to be killed with a two litre vodka bottle, but this book is crime fiction, not a philosophical treatise, so we can roll with it.

After some humming and hahing, the local police, led by Sheriff Max Coyote, a former friend of Brigid’s (they have fallen out, big time) decide that Nicki is a person of interest in the murder of Dorita Gordano. The pathologist believes that the initial injuries to Dorita’s face were caused by a large concrete block, and in the garden of the group house is a recently built wall. And one of the concrete blocks bears blood traces.

Masterman’s prose is as sharp as tacks. Sometimes, American CriFi can be too slick, too polished, and too predictable. Quinn’s observations are frequently acerbic, and scatter broken glass for us to tread on. Here, she catches the over-effusive Eleanore Turner in an unguarded moment.

“She looked like hell. She tried to sit up straighter and force the corners of her mouth into her standard smile, but the corners twitched with the effort, like those of a politician being asked the one question they could not answer. None of it worked. She was smaller than I’d seen her in our last several encounters, some giant thumb pressing down on her for too long, and she could no longer resist.”

The action accelerates. First, someone firebombs the group home, and one of the residents, a young man called Jackson is killed in the resultant explosion. Then, a local Home Owners Association meeting is called and, despite Max Coyote trying to reassure residents, the mood turns ugly. Brigid’s rather strange niece Gemma Kate is attacked as she sits watching a horror movie in a theatre where she and her attacker are the only customers.

There is a narrative shift late in the book. Hitherto, everything we have read is through the eyes of Brigid. Then, quite abruptly, we have a chapter describing the thoughts of Nicki Gleason, followed by those of Eleanore, abducted and imprisoned in a locked casita. Becky Masterman ends the novel with horror and violence, but also redemption. It is certainly a visceral read. If a Face Could Kill will be published by Severn House on 3rd March.

March 1, 2026 0

THE LOST WOMEN . . . Between the covers

The latest David Raker thriller from Tim Weaver is true to form. Raker, a widowed former journalist, is an expert finder of missing persons, and the author’s speciality is setting up situations where the impossible has occurred – and then, eventually, presenting us with an explanation that fits, rather like in that classic crime fiction staple, the locked room mystery.

Here, the first mystery is what to make of the two apparently unrelated plot strands. First, we are told of the unexplained disappearance, almost two decades earlier, of a trio of women film makers who vanished while working on a story about Porthtreno, an abandoned Cornish village. More immediately, Raker is hired by a wealthy actress, Ellie Snyder to find out how and why her husband has disappeared from an exclusive private clinic where he was undergoing cosmetic surgery.

Both Raker and his assistant, ex Met Copper Colm Healy labour under the shadow of personal grief; Raker for his wife Derryn, taken by cancer, and Healy for his daughter Leanne, slain by a serial killer. Readers familiar with Tim Weaver’s style have come to expect seemingly unconnected and unexplained changes in narrative. Here, on page 125 of 437, after a second-by-second account of Raker and Healy investigating the disappearance of Preston Stewart, we are introduced, seemingly out of nowhere, to Zauna and Marco. Who they? You might well ask, but you will just have to strap in and wait for all to be revealed. This, of, course is the essential segue between the abducted surgeon to the missing women of Cornwall. Is it clunky? Yes. But does it work? Affirmative, likewise. The clincher comes when Raker and Healy are searching Preston Stewart’s house and they find a book, and a link to a YouTube video, both called The Lost Women of Porthtreno.

Central to the plot is a jailed serial killer known as Dr Glass.”It was in that forest, out in east London, that six women had been found in clear plastic coffins filled with liquid formaldehyde. A seventh had been found in a wall cavity nearby, and Glass had kept all of them hidden in a disused sewer network 30 feet under the earth.” Along the way, we also learn that on one drunken occasion, out of nowhere, Preston Stewart had confessed to Ellie that he had been involved in a murder, back in his student days in Bristol. We also know that the mysterious Marco, also a student in Bristol, went missing, never to be found. And one of the Porthtreno film makers was …. wait for it …. His sister Zauna.

A policeman who has been involved in the case sums up everything that is implausible about David Raker, and yet he also puts his finger on why the books are best sellers.

“From what I know about you, from what I’ve seen myself, you’re smart, intuitive, and I genuinely believe you’re a good man. But you’re out of touch. It’s been a long time since you worked within any kind of structure, and when the only person you have ever had to be accountable to is yourself, you forget what it’s like in the real world.”

Yes, Raker’s adventures can sometimes verge on comic strip implausibility, but, in the end, this is why we love crime fiction.Tim Weaver goes to the cupboard where crime fiction tropes are stored, and he leaves very few hanging on their pegs. We have corrupt cops, a serial killer with an astonishing ability to create murderous conspiracies from within his jail cell, drugged coffee, devastating explosions triggered by mobile ‘phones, private investigators hired by clients who are actually the principal villains and, last but not least, a central character physically immune to knives, choke holds and high explosives. The Lost Women is, however, a superb thriller, full of twists, turns, red herrings, and great dialogue. It will be published by Michael Joseph on 26th February.

February 24, 2026 0

PIGEON-BLOOD RED . . . Between the covers

Frank Litvak is a Chicago loan shark. Rico and Jerry are his enforcers. Jerry is relatively mild mannered, but Rico is the alpha male. Killing and wounding those who are fellow bottom-feeders doesn’t stop him sleeping easy at nights. When Litvak gives them an expensive necklace to look after, it seems all in a day’s work, but accidents happen. While Rico is messing around with his girlfriend Jean on the back seat of Jerry’s car, the pouch containing the jewellery falls out of his pocket, and is later retrieved by the fourth passenger in the car, a deeply-in-debt businessman called Robert McDuffie.

McDuffie flees to Honolulu with his wife Evelyn, pursued by Rico. Also in the resort is Paul Elliott, a Chicago lawyer, taking an enforced break and still grieving for his wife, killed by a drunken driver months earlier. The best thrillers always have an instance of separate worlds colliding, and boy oh boy, how they collide here.

Arriving in Hawaii, Rico wastes no time in sourcing weapons, and follows Robert and Evelyn to a nearby Luau (a traditional Hawaiian feast, but now tailored to tourists). He is bemused that the McDuffies are now part of a foursome, but puts it out of his mind. As readers, we know that Paul Elliott is part of the group, and that he knew Evelyn from student days. The fourth person is Rachel Givens, a professional colleague of Evelyn’s, with whom Mrs McDuffie had intended visiting Hawaii. Robert has produced the necklace – made of priceless ‘pigeon-blood red’ rubies, and presented it to his wife in an effort to repair their marriage.

Hidden in the trees outside the Luau, Rico shoots Robert, and then Evelyn. Moving in between the panicking party-goers, he reaches down to retrieve the necklace from Evelyn’s neck, but it is not there. Making his escape, Rico later learns that the woman he shot was not Evelyn, but Rachel, and Evelyn still has the necklace.

Rico, Evelyn and Paul return to Chicago leaving the funeral directors to repatriate the remains of Robert and Rachel. Litvak, of course remains seriously unhappy, as he still wants the necklace back. His mistake is to present a binary choice to Rico: either Rico kills Paul and Evelyn and retrieves the necklace, or Jean will suffer the consequences. There is a messy finale involving the brother of a man Rico killed just before leaving for Hawaii is seeking revenge, but Rico’s rather unusual moral compass remains stable.

The ‘killer with a conscience’ trope is certainly nothing new in crime fiction. If there is any remote moral argument for killing, I suppose it is best encapsulated in the still flourishing admiration for long-dead British gangsters, the Kray Twins. The logic runs something along these lines: yes, they were brutal, but never harmed ordinary people; their victims were always fellow criminals, or rivals; and, of course, they loved their dear old mum. Amazon has this to say about the author:

“Ed Duncan is a graduate of Oberlin College and Northwestern University Law School. He was a partner at a national law firm in Cleveland, Ohio for many years. Ed currently lives outside of Cleveland, OH and recently completed the third installment of the Pigeon-Blood Red trilogy, Rico Stays.

Pigeon-Blood Red is a fast-paced and convincing noirish thriller, with a complex central character. It is published by Next Chapter, and is available now.

February 1, 2026 0

A STUDY IN SECRETS . . . Between the covers

Jeffrey Siger temporarily abandons his Greek crime thrillers to bring us to New York, where an elderly former intelligence agent lives a solitary life, cared for by his housekeeper, a Mrs Baker. The man, known to us only as Michael, lives in a grand townhouse numbered 221. So, we can see the drift. While this isn’t remotely a Sherlockian pastiche, the shadow of the great man hovers in the background. Michael is formidably rich, but rarely ventures beyond his front door step, preferring to observe the passers by in the park beneath his window. One of the park’s regular visitors is a young woman. When it transpires that she was forced by circumstances to part of a complex ring involving precious antiques, their sellers – and their clandestine buyers – Michael decides to come out of retirement. He ponders his decision:

“For so long, I’d taken such great care to maintain a detached existence for myself, a life safely confined to conjecture, reflection, and surmise, far removed from taking part in those human dramas that inexorably draw so many to misfortune, pain, and loss. I’d found my Walden Pond in the park, or so I’d thought.”

Michael rescues the young woman – Angel – and resolves to put an end to the racket which has put her life in danger. Angel was basically homeless, because she discovered the body of her former boss, a man called Carlucci, at the sleazy apartment where she and other girls employed in his racket, lived.

At the centre of the plot are a brother and sister, Dr Marilena Sinclair and Dr Brackett Fielding (one a psychiatrist and the other a psychologist) who have ‘acquired’ a priceless artifact from a deceased woman patient. The woman was the estranged wife of a notorious called Victor Persky mobster and she took the antique to spite him. Now, Persky wants his treasure back, and cares not one jot if Sinclair and Fielding have to die in the process.

The plot has another complication. A young woman called Maria, another courier in Carlucci’s crooked auction business, was allowed to die of a drug overdose in the squalid tenement where the girls lived. Her body was later found in a dumpster. Her brother, Daniel Rudolph, is ex military, and Michael eventually discovers that he was Carlucci’s killer. There is an engaging cast of supporting actors. Housekeeper Mrs Baker is certainly more forthright than the good lady who ran 221B Baker Street, and Michael’s old friend who runs a popular local diner, is a shrewd and resourceful ally, as Michael constructs an elaborate plane to defeat Persky.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable tale, quirky and sharp, although Michael’s ability to disarm and disable gang-bangers and mobster heavies with – literally – a twirl of his cane stretches one’s credulity somewhat. This novel, which looks to be the first of a series called Redacted Man Mysteries, will be published by Severn House on 3rd February.

January 27, 2026 0

ONE LONDON DAY . . . Between the covers

This is a very clever thriller that blends espionage, murder, personal tragedy and human greed into a potent mix. At the heart, there is a group of rogue British intelligence agents who call themselves The Shadows. While ostensibly going about HM government business, they are running all manner of scams using their diplomatic access, and are earning millions, mostly through drugs. Knowing they need to run a professional business, they have avoided electronic accounting and, instead, employed a North London businessman, Joseph Severin to ‘do the books’. And they are, quite literally, books. Old fashioned accounting ledgers, hand-written and, therefore, utterly untraceable online.

The book begins with Severin being shot dead by a former soldier – ‘Mr Phipps’ – hired by The Shadows, so how does the book develop? Phipps,as well as getting rid of Severin is supposed to retrieve the ledgers, but plans go awry, and this brings in a group of other characters, including Lottie, a professional pianist, and Sonya, a Russian prostitute. As the leader of The Shadows, Sebastien Grant, struggles to tidy up the mess, a resourceful MI5 officer called Ellerby is closing in on the group.

At the heart of the story is a desperately sad tale. Sonya, one of whose regulars is one of The Shadows, has painful personal problems. Both she and her husband Georgiy were Russian military. She has moved to London to exploit her beauty, while he is back in Russia, looking after their daughter Marusya. But the little girl has a tumour on her spine, that needs specialist surgery in USA for it’s removal. Sonya knows that Georgiy has a drug habit. Her dilemma is not knowing how much of the money she wires home is being spent on Marusya’s care, and how much is being swallowed up by street drug dealers.

The book has a split time frame. It starts on 30th July, when the key event of the novel happens, but then we jump to five days earlier, and follow the build-up to the event. The last part of the book then takes us to the days after 30th July, and the dramatic fallout that ensues. I am not a fan of these constructions, for several reasons, one being that words are said, phone calls are made and things occur in the first section of the book which don’t appear particularly significant as one reads them in real time, but then in the middle section these little occurrences come back to bite us, and pages have to be flicked back to make sense of things. A standout case of this is revealed in the bonus trailer for One Berlin Day, the follow up to this novel. It links crucially to something that happens to Mr Phipps on 30th July, but seemed relatively unimportant given what happened next.

Those reservations aside, this is a spectacularly original thriller which I read in just two sessions. I was genuinely entranced by Lottie, Sonya, Ellerby and even felt some empathy with four of The Shadows. Not Sebastien, of course, as he was beneath contempt. Not sure about Mr Phipps, though. Yes, he has served his country well and, like many rough men who do violent things to keep us safe in our beds, has been shabbily treated by the authorities. That said, what he did on July 30th was truly awful and I couldn’t suppress the wish that I hope he rots in hell for it. One London Day will be published on 22nd January by Allison & Busby.

January 19, 2026 0

NASH FALLS . . . Between the covers

Wily veteran of scores of thrillers, Baldacci certainly builds down his central character in the first few pages. Walter Nash is a lanky, scrawny, rather uptight family man who only ever really loved his deceased pet dog. He is, however, thanks to his number crunching skills with a multinational company, prodigiously rich. And, after his fashion, he tries to be a good husband and father.

His own father, recently deceased, was a brawling and profane Harley-riding Vietnam vet who, to all intents and purposed, despised Walt for his prissy ways and lack of physical presence. One night, Walt has an unwelcome visitor in the shape of an FBI agent, and he has grim news to impart. Walt’s firm, coyly named Sybaritic, has been infiltrated (via one of its senior employees) by a criminal corporation connected to Chinese drug producers. The FBI people explain to Walt that the Chinese, unable to match the USA either militarily or economically, have chosen to inflict a slow death on America through the over-production and distribution of drugs like Fentanyl.

We learn that the ‘inside man’ on this operation is none other than Rhett Temple, the son of the firm’s founder. Then with customary narrative verve, Baldacci describes how Walt Nash’s near-perfect life is reduced to rubble by the perfect storm of an international criminal regime, corrupt cops and bent businessmen desperate to hang on to their wealth. Faced with false – but appalling – accusations, Nash is forced to go on the run, helped by one of his father’s old army buddies, a fearsome black man known as Shock.

What follows is, perhaps, the most implausible part of the story. It is a version of the old riff of a physically inept man who, by training and will power, is transformed into a formidable opponent. Under Shock’s watchful eye Nash is transformed from the puny guy who once had sand kicked in his face by beach bullies, to a remorseless killer. If you don’t get the sand reference, Google ‘Charles Atlas’. The internet will do the rest.

The portrayal of Nash, from his buttoned-down corporate executive days, via family tragedy through to his emergence from that chrysalis as someone quite different, is impressive. My last thoughts, are, I am afraid, something of a spoiler, but I always try to be honest. Walt Nash certainly undergoes a dramatic transformation and, motivated by a sense of vengeance, he rejoins the world from which he had been exiled, his true identity hidden from former acquaintances. However, those wishing for a conclusive resolution to the story must await the sequel, which is trailered at the end of this novel. Nash Falls is published by Macmillan and is out now.

November 6, 2025 0

MARSHAL OF SNOWDONIA . . . Between the covers

Frank Marshal is a seventy year-old former senior detective. He lives in a former farmhouse in Snowdonia, and volunteers as a national park ranger. He has, as they say, baggage. His wife Rachel has dementia. His son committed suicide in that self same house. His daughter Caitlin lives in England with her waster of a boyfriend and their son Sam. A not-so-near neighbour, as the area is sparsely populated, is another retired from the justice system, but Annie Taylor was a High Court Judge. Now, her sister Megan has gone missing from her rented caravan in a hilltop trailer park.

The book has a prologue which describes a woman – time-frame presumably the present – being held against her will in a remote location. When Marshal discovers bloodstains beneath the decking of Megan’s caravan, a full police investigation kicks in. Megan’s errant son, Callum, had lived with her in the caravan. Annie and Marshal track him down to his (absent) father’s house. The youth tries to escape on his moped. Marshal pursues him, but only succeeds in running him off the road into a river. Marshal rescues him, but now Callum is in hospital, suffering from amnesia. Big question. Is the memory loss genuine or a pretence?

Marshal may be a gentle father, grandfather and former policeman, but he would never survive the current scrutiny that subtly shapes modern officers to the mould set by the metropolitan liberals who run the UK legal system. Only the knowledge of the disastrous consequences of him shooting a predatory salmon poacher prevents him from pulling the trigger while, when Caitlin’s lowlife partner – TJ – arrives in Wales demanding access to his son, Marshal has no compunction in planting several bags of marching powder (recently discovered hidden in Megan’s caravan) in TJ’s car. And if the local police should find the drugs, then who is he to correct their sums when they make two plus two equal five?P.

When the body of Annie’s sister is found dead on the beach at Barmouth, strangled with thin wire, Marshal has a grim thought running through his thoughts. The wire garotte was the favoured method of a notorious serial killer, Keith Tatchell years earlier. Now Tatchell is serving life imprisonment. Two equally horrific options spring to Marshal’s mind: was Tatchell wrongly convicted and is the real killer still out there?; is Meghan’s killer someone connected to Tatchell and seeking revenge?

McCleave gives us a brilliant plot twist to reveal the true villain, but ends the novel with a suggestion that Frank Marshal may have more trouble on his hands in the next installment of what promises to be an addictive series.

I could no more be a professional writer than I could open the batting for England. The pressure to write something that sells and produces good reviews – and pays the bills – would, for me, be intolerable. Writers (unless they are TV celebrities) must constantly search for some draw, some hook, that will attract readers – and sales. I read hundreds of crime novels and, amid the gimmicks, the split time frames and the hysteria of desperate publicists, it is a relief to read a novel that is just impeccably written, with a solid narrative, and peopled by plausible characters. Marshal of Snowdonia is one such, and I can heartily recommend it. It was published by Stamford Publishing earlier this year.

October 26, 2025 0

GONE BEFORE GOODBYE . . . Between the covers

Maggie McCabe is – or was – an internationally renowned reconstructive surgeon, who used her skills as a volunteer in some of the worst hell holes on earth, like Libya during its extended civil war. Then, everything went pear-shaped. Traumatised by stress and grief, she took to stabilising herself with pills. Then, one day, she took too many of the wrong kind, botched a surgical procedure, and found herself at the wrong end of a malpractice claim. Now, stony broke and shunned by former colleagues she is offered a job to operate on a reclusive Russian oligarch. All her debts will be cancelled. The malpractice suit will mysteriously disappear.

All too good to be true? Of course it is, but then this is mainstream American crime fiction, where almost anything can happen – and usually does. The novel is the kind of celebrity partnership which makes publicists become dewy-eyed, and makes hard working ‘proper’ novelists apoplectic with a blend of rage and envy. I don’t ‘do’ much mainstream film or TV, so while the name Reese Witherspoon was vaguely on the edge of my consciousness, I had little idea who she was or what she has done. In contrast, I have read many Harlan Coven novels and, with the proviso that they have all had that typical transatlantic slickness, I have found them readable and entertaining. As with most writing collaborations, who wrote what is not immediately obvious, but is the book any good?

Short answer is yes, it is improbably entertaining. You will need, if course, to leave any residual sense of disbelief with the cloak room attendant before you enter this particular literary room. We have ‘griefbots’, totally life-like AI reconstructions of a deceased loved one that can be installed on your ‘phone, and with whom you can chat any time you want; we have a Russian monster do powerful that he can recreate Maggie McCabe’s own operating theatre in an annexe of his winter palace, complete with instrument trays in precisely the same position as she is used to; we have the self same gentleman who has multiple ‘genuine’ copies of the Mona Lisa, one of which was actually painted by LdV himself. Oh I almost forgot. The Russian big shot hosts a gala ball, with a stage set up for a world megastar to perform. The star? None other than Watford’s finest, Sir Reginald Kenneth Dwight (if you know, you know)

Maggie turns in before EJ can sing Rocket Man. She has two surgical procedures to complete the next day – a facelift on the oligarch, a breast augmentation on his girlfriend – and she needs sleep. The surgery goes as planned, but then things begin to unravel. Maggie survives being disposed of (by being tipped out of a helicopter into the bottomless chasm of a disused mine) and ends up (don’t ask) being taken to Dubai by of former physician-turned-CIA-agent.

Meanwhile, back in New York, Maggie’s biker father in law, known as Porkchop, is on the case, and he is a man to be reckoned with. Dubai is, naturally, a whirlwind of opulence, subtly concealed violence – and a mixture of revelation and mystery for Maggie. She has a brief and scary reunion with her Russian oligarch – Oleg Ragorsvich – and learns that his recently enhanced girlfriend – Nadia – is not who she appears to be. Then, via London, Paris and Bordeaux’s Gare Saint Jean (and an escort of French bikers) she and Porkchop are on their way to a former vineyard where all is about to be revealed.

What we have is fantasy, total escapism, utter implausibility – and first rate entertainment. Gone Before Goodbye will be published by Century on 25th October. You can read my reviews of other Harlan Coben novels by clicking the author image (above{