The art of deception

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Thomas H. Cook

In his latest novel of unrelenting suspense, Edgar Award--winning author Thomas Cook journeys into the darkest corners of the human heart to tell a mesmerizing story of crime and retribution--and the forces that push even good people to the breaking point.THE INTERROGATIONAlbert Jay Smalls sits in an interrogation room accused of an unspeakable crime. The police have no witnesses, no physical evidence, but they are certain he is hiding the truth. With less than twelve hours before he must be released, Smalls will be put through one final interrogation. IIt is a search that leads into the shadowed recesses of one man's shattered mind--and to the devastating secrets buried in a desolate seaside town. It is a quest that takes three desperate cops down a dark, twisting road as they race against the clock to find out what really happened one rainy autumn afternoon in 1952. The answers will be more shocking than anyone can imagine, blurring the boundaries between pursuers and prey, between the innocent and the guilty, between the truth that sets us free and the tragedies that haunt us to the grave.Against a gripping backdrop of murder and redemption, master storyteller Thomas Cook probes the uneasy, shifting bonds of family, love, and unbearable loss, proving once again why he is "perhaps the best American writer of crime fiction currently practicing" (Drood Review).From the Hardcover edition.

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Jonathan Kellerman

Over the course of twenty acclaimed novels of suspense, most recently The Murder Book and A Cold Heart, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman has pitted psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware against adversaries as disturbed and dangerous as Delaware is clever and compassionate. Now in Kellerman's gripping new novel, a different hero will hold the reader spellbound: a dedicated young psychologist, unschooled in the ways of violent crime and incalculable evil--until his life is irreversibly touched by both . . . and he is thrust into a chilling hunt for a twenty-first-century Jack the Ripper.When his brief, passionate romance with nurse Jocelyn Banks is cut short by her kidnapping and brutal murder, Dr. Jeremy Carrier is left emotionally devastated, haunted by his lover's grisly demise and warily eyed by police still seeking a prime suspect in the unsolved slaying. To escape the pain, he buries himself in his work as staff psychologist at City Central Hospital--only to be drawn deeper into a waking nightmare when more women turn up murdered in the same gruesome fashion as Jocelyn Banks . . . and the suspicion surrounding Jeremy intensifies. Now, the only way to prove his innocence and put his torment to rest is to follow the trail of a cunning psychopath.Spurring on Jeremy's investigation is Dr. Arthur Chess, an enigmatic pathologist who specializes in examining the dead, but harbors a keen fascination with the darker deeds committed by the living. Arthurdraws Jeremy into an unexpected friendship, and into the confidence of a cryptic society devoted to matters unknown and unspoken. When he suddenly slips away, Jeremy is left to contend with an onslaught of anonymous clues--and the growing realization that a harrowing game of cat and mouse has been set in motion.But who besides Jeremy is playing--and who is making the rules? Before the killer strikes again, Jeremy races to connect the disturbing puzzle pieces being fed to him. Yet his search for answers only seems to yield more questions. And deepening the mystery is the undeniable presence of someone watching it all--and guiding Jeremy's investigation from behind the scenes. As the game intensifies, Jeremy must decide if a secret ally is setting him on the right path . . . or a sadistic enemy is setting him up for a fate far beyond even the most twisted imagination. From the Hardcover edition.

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David Hewson

The snow is falling on the ancient streets of Rome. And in the heart of the city, under the Pantheon's great dome, a woman's body lies on the marble floor, carefully positioned with a gruesome carving on her back....In David Hewson's ingenious new thriller, this horrific murder hurtles Rome's police force into a collision with U.S. agents--and a secret that has festered for fifteen years, now unraveling in the world's most enigmatic city.When Detective Nic Costa arrives at the scene, he is unprepared for what he finds, or for the ambush that leaves his only witness vanished into the night. The dead woman was American. Within hours, U.S. agents descend with a take-no-prisoners style and a shocking story to tell: the killer has struck before, in monuments all over the world, leaving the same cryptic message carved onto the bodies of the victims. But one agent, beautiful, blond Emily Deacon, has yet another story to tell Nic--about a stunning act of deception that may lead back to the U.S. government, and her own chilling, personal connection to the killer. Now, as the first murder leads to more grisly slayings and a motley crew of veteran Roman cops jousts with the Americans, Nic is pulled into a woman's harrowing search for the truth...a search that will take them both into the mind of a madman, into a shocking conspiracy--and into a dark episode in a nation's long-forgotten past.From its haunting opening to its nerve-shattering climax, The Sacred Cut defies all our expectations, proving once again the unique and compelling genius of David Hewson.From the Hardcover edition.

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Michael Pearce

"What kind of a boat do you think this is?" said the eunuch indignantly when Captain Owen came aboard. Well, what sort of boat was it? After all, a young woman had drowned in the Nile, her body washed up on a sandbar. Apparently she had fallen off this boat. Owen, as Mamur Zapt, or head of British-ruled Cairo's secret police, deems it a potential crime. But when the poor girl's body suddenly vanishes from its resting place, he must investigate a crime that is as substantial as the Sphinx...and every bit as mystifying. Strange, he muses, that the girl would have plummeted off a boat when it was moored for the night in a river that was calm. What is even stranger is that the boat was in the hire of Prince Narouz, son of the Khedive, the nominal ruler of Egypt. Why had the prince commanded the dahabeeyab to cruise to Luxor in the first place? Certainly, he had no interest at all in antiquities. And what was an attractive and unwed young woman doing aboard the vessel after dark? Owen must mount a puzzling search for the truth that will take him from Cairo's sophisticated French-style cafes to the darkest recesses of its dingiest slums. Helped by his frightfully independent Egyptian mistress and a remarkable assortment of informants, he soon finds himself adrift in the seething waters of Edwardian Egyptian politics.