Crime ain’t what it used to be. Time was, there were certain traditions, certain codes of conduct. But like everything else in Britain, drug-dealing and loan-sharking have been taken over by immigrants who don’t respect the old ways, and Charlie Hook, the last of the English Mobsters, has had enough. He’s also got a book deal, and he’s ready to spill some juicy stories, with the help of the right ghost-writer.

As Charlie sees it, the ideal ghost is veteran crime reporter Laurie Lane. Laurie’s got his doubts — he very much enjoys breathing — but before they can be resolved, Old Man Hook is found dead in his London townhouse. Is Laurie off the hook? Not so fast. The younger generation — as vicious as Daddy, but with better suits — is about to make him an offer he can’t refuse.

“A hilarious romp…a joy to read” — Evening Standard (UK)

“A real treat” — Daily Telegraph (UK)

Art historian Nicholas Ochterlonie is the very model of a modern English gentleman, with a perfectly ordered life in which everything – or so he thinks – is exactly as it seems. But when his wife inexplicably demands a divorce, he finds himself diving into uncertainty like a junkie with a new drug. Soon he is risking his professional reputation, breaking the law, and embarking on a delirious affair with the mysterious Julian, beautiful and badly damaged by her past with a Russian gangster.

Protecting Julian from the Mafya and challenging his colleagues’ pet convictions give Nicholas an intoxicating new sense of himself: the dashing hero, unafraid to grapple with difficult truths. Of course, all addicts believe they’re in control … until they aren’t any more.

“The plotting is deft, the characters interesting, and the passages about authenticating paintings are as exciting as the book itself” – Sunday Times of London

“Both a splendid mystery and a first-class novel” – Jerusalem Post

This magical book – and a passionate desire to bring it to U.S. readers – was the reason behind Partners & Crime’s decision, in the early 1990s, to begin importing books from the UK. Felony & Mayhem is delighted to give it the second life it so richly deserves.

“Intricate and crafty…a true pleasure” — Los Angeles Times

“Maitland writes astonishingly well, with a wonderful ear for dialogue and a finely attuned sense of both character and place…extremely impressive” — Sydney Herald (Australia)

The author’s depth of knowledge about the trade in stolen paintings–and about the techniques used to fake them–makes The Triumph of Bacchus irresistible to both lovers of art and lovers of art-mysteries.

“A fresh and pleasing work all around”

– Los Angeles Times

“Art-crimes specialist Skeggs is at his best in describing how to forge an old Master” — Kirkus

Swaddled in snow, the town of Breckham Market looks like a tourist’s dream of the Little English Village–the sort of place where the worst that can happen is a spot of teenage vandalism at the church hall, and where old-fashioned values are upheld (and enforced, if necessary) by those pillars of British virtue, the police chief and the local vicar.

Ah, the vicar. He, too, might have come from Central Casting, with his saintly blue eyes and his cozily pudgy, bun-baking wife. But when the snow starts to melt, so too does the vicar’s facade. And what comes to the surface has Breckham Market looking less like a tourist’s haven and more like fodder for the tabloids.

“May ruin forever your ideas of what a small English market town should be like, but you’re certain to keep reading”

– Chicago Tribune

“Radley writes with style and depth about very human characters” — Jerusalem Post

They make an oddly effective team – Inspector Douglas Quantrill, the old-fashioned country copper; and his deputy, Martin Tait, stuffed with the latest in policing theories and techniques, and with a sharp eye for both the ladies and the main chance. That eye gets wider when Quantrill’s young daughter comes home to recover from a bad break-up, but Tait’s attention soon shifts to Jasmine Woods, a seductive romance-writer. Alison Quantrill may be pretty, but she’s no match for Jasmine’s urbane sophistication.

In a fit of masochism – and hoping, perhaps, that some glamour will rub off – Alison takes a job as Jasmine’s secretary, and thus is the one to find her employer brutally murdered. For the moment, at least, shock shuts Alison’s mouth, but Tait and Quantrill find no shortage of potentially motivated suspects. Jealousy, resentment, white-hot rage … Jasmine Woods, it seems, inspired a lot more than lust among her nearest and dearest.

“Unusually thoughtful and entertaining”

- The New Yorker

“Radley’s characters come fully alive with all their frustrations, fears, and secret longings”

- Publishers Weekly

It’s a glorious spring morning in the village of Ashthorpe. Birds are singing, and sunlight is dancing on the river, where Mary Gedge’s dress drifts lazily in the shallows and flowers mingle in her hair. The scene is so altogether lovely that some locals think dreamily of Ophelia, drowned for love of noble Hamlet. Chief Inspector Quantrill, though, has little patience for that kind of self-indulgence; he’s got a murder to solve. And with a passionless marriage, a job that centers mostly on recovering stolen pigs, and the certain knowledge that he’s missed his best chance for romance, he’s something of a prisoner of pragmatism. Mary Gedge may indeed have died for love of the wrong man, but in this muddy English market town, that man is unlikely to be a prince of Denmark.

“Almost too good to be true” – Washington Post

Ideal for fans of Caroline Graham, Peter Robinson, and Deborah Crombie

For years the trim, methodical Francesca Wilson has served as her family’s organizing principle, ruthlessly marshaling her artistic, charmingly irresponsible brothers into something resembling regulated lives. As a civil servant, she does the same thing for the country–marching into England’s haphazardly run companies and bringing order to decades of financial chaos.

But lately, Francesca seems almost to be attracting catastrophe, rather than damping it down. An executive at one of her client-companies has been brutally murdered, just steps from Francesca’s tidy London flat. One brother has become an overnight pop-star, with the attendant media circus, disastrous women, and newly acquired bad habits. And even Scotland Yard’s assistance is not without a price-tag.

“Outstandingly good”

– Times Literary Supplement (UK)

Winner of Britain’s CWA Creasey award for Best Debut Crime Novel of the Year