Rennie Airth - DI John Madden news

After a five year gap, the fourth book in Rennie Airth's John Madden series, The Reckoning, is currently scheduled for release in June 2014 by Mantle.

No cover yet but here's the blurb:

The Second World War has ended, leaving a bruised and fragile peace. But this tranquillity is threatened when a shocking murder takes place in the Sussex countryside. Before long, police experts discover a link to another, earlier, killing hundreds of miles away . . . While Scotland Yard detective Billy Styles struggles to find a link between these two murders, a strange twist of fate brings former Detective Inspector John Madden into the investigations. As the victim count rises it becomes clear that to catch this serial killer Madden, Styles and young policewoman Detective-Constable Lily Poole must act quickly. But Madden remains haunted by the mysteries at the heart of the case. Why was his name in a letter the second target had been penning, just before he died? Could the real clue to these perplexing murders lie within the victims' pasts? And within his own? With this stunning, atmospheric crime novel teeming with twists and moving between the 1950s, the First and Second World Wars, Rennie Airth, the author of River of Darkness, The Blood-Dimmed Tide and The Dead of Winter presents his greatest and most compelling novel yet.

I really enjoyed and recommend the first book in the series, The River of Darkness which came out way back in 1999.

New Reviews: Airth, Bolton, Cleeves, Gardner, Martin, Nesser, Ramsay

May's competition is now up and running - win a copy of Suffer the Children by Adam Creed. (There are no geographical restrictions on entrants.) Enter here.

The following reviews have been added to the review archive over on the main Euro Crime website:

New Reviews:

Mike Ripley reviews the eagerly awaited third book in the 'John Madden' series from Rennie Airth, - The Dead of Winter - and answers the question as to whether it can live up the stunning first part, River of Darkness?;

I review the audio book of Sacrifice by S J Bolton, (review posted on this blog);

Maxine Clarke reviews Ann Cleeves' third part of her 'Shetland Quartet' - Red Bones - and calls it "an excellent, absorbing, slow-burn of a book";

Paul Blackburn reviews John Gardner's Moriarty which fills in some of the back-story to Holmes' famous nemesis;

Geoff Jones reviews the latest in the "steam detective" series from Andrew Martin - The Last Train to Scarborough;

Maxine also reviews the paperback edition of The Mind's Eye by Hakan Nesser saying she "cannot recommend this book highly enough"

and Pat Austin reviews Caro Ramsay's follow-up to Absolution - Singing to the Dead.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found here.

New title from Rennie Airth in 2009

It seems Rennie Airth is consistent. The Dead of Winter is to be published five years after the publication of The Blood-Dimmed Tide which itself was five years after River of Darkness. The series stars shell-shocked detective John Madden, first in the 1920s and moves on to the 1930s for the second book. I loved River of Darkness and a third book in the series is an event to look forward to.

Synopsis: He could see in searchlights probing the night sky, illuminating the barrage balloons which floated like giant moths above the darkened city to hinder the approach the V-2s which descended without warning like thunderclaps and which Londoners had come to fear more than any other weapon used against them. During a blackout on the streets of London on a freezing evening in late 1944, a young Polish land girl, Rosa Nowak, is suddenly and brutally killed. For the police, their resources already stretched by the new war regulations and the thriving black market, this is a shocking and seemingly random crime. No one can find any reason why someone would want to murder an innocent refugee.For the former police inspector John Madden, the crime hits close to home. Rosa was working on his farm and he feels personally responsible for not protecting her. His old colleagues Angus Sinclair and Billy Styles are still at the Yard but struggle to make sense of their few clues. Their only lead points towards Europe - but as the war rages across the continent, will they find the killer before he strikes again?

The Dead of Winter is due out in May 2009 (UK).