New Reviews: Bates, Bauer, Magson, Marrinan, Nesbo, Newman

Two competitions for January, both close 31st January:
1.Win Assassins of Athens by Jeffrey Siger UK only
2.Win A Noble Killing by Barbara Nadel (International)

Here are this week's reviews:

Maxine Clarke reviews what sounds like a cracking debut: Frozen Out by Quentin Bates (US: Frozen Assets) which introduces Icelandic detective: Gunna the Cop;

Paul Blackburn reviews CWA prize-winner Belinda Bauer's second book, Darkside set five years on from Blacklands;

Terry Halligan reviews the first in a new series from Adrian Magson: Death on the Marais introducing a Parisian cop who has been sent to a Picardie village;

Laura Root reviews Patrick Marrinan's impressive debut, Scapegoat, which draws on the author's legal experience;

I review Jo Nesbo's The Leopard, tr. Don Bartlett an exciting police-procedural/thriller with my favourite detective, Harry Hole

and Lizzie Hayes reviews Ruth Newman's second book, The Company of Shadows which has a Coben-esque sounding premise.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found by author or date, here.

A new Cambridge University set crime novel

Here's one currently missing from my forthcoming books list: Ruth Newman's Twisted Wing, winner of the Long Barn Books first novel prize, which will be out later this month from Long Barn Books. A paperback from Simon & Schuster will follow at some point.

Synopsis: The claustrophobic environment of Ariel College, Cambridge, has become the hunting ground for a serial killer. For the students, a siege mentality has developed following weeks of media interest in the 'Cambridge Butcher'. College life has become not about surviving exams, but surviving full stop. Forensic psychiatrist Matthew Denison is sure that his traumatised patient, student Olivia Coscadden, has the killer's identity locked up in her memory. That within the little clique she belonged to lurks someone with a grudge. Someone who thought 'what's a little decapitation between friends?'. And that someone is just getting started.