The Thursday Murder Club

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Selma Eichler

Desiree Shapiro's niece, Ellen, will soon be saying, "I do." So Manhattan's pudgiest P.I. teams up with Ellen's future mother-in-lain to give the bride-to-be a truly memorable shower. And memorable, it is. After all, when a guest takes a few bites of her salad, then promptly keels over, no one present is likely to forget the occasion. Naturally, being a dedicated foodie, Desiree knows plenty of "to die for" dishes, but a green salad isn't one of them. Once she begins to look into the victim's death--and life--Desiree is convinced that she's dealing with a homicide ... and that a number of backbiting society ladies had every reason to want scheming, man-hungry Bobbie Jean dead. Meanwhile, Desiree has a new love interest. But romance will have to wait because the police are perilously close to arresting an innocent woman for the crime.

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M.J. Carter

"Blake and Avery return in the stunning sequel to M. J. Carter's lauded fiction debut, The Strangler Vine. London, 1841. Returned from their adventures in India, Jeremiah Blake and William Avery have both had their difficulties adapting to life in Victorian England. Moreover, time and distance have weakened the close bond between them, forged in the jungles of India. Then a shocking series of murders in the world of London's gutter press forces them back together. The police seem mysteriously unwilling to investigate, then connections emerge between the murdered men and the growing and unpredictable movement demanding the right to vote for all. In the back streets of Drury Lane, among criminals, whores, pornographers, and missionaries, Blake and Avery must race against time to find the culprit before he kills again. But what if the murderer is being protected by some of the highest powers in the land?"--

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Translated from the French by Daphne Woodward

A killer stalking the streets of Montmartre has murdered five women and Maigret is making no head-way in the case. After consulting the distinguished psychiatrist, Professor Tissot, he decides to use psycho-logical means to trap the killer. Firstly, he fakes an arrest, hoping that the murderer, in a fit of jealousy at someone stealing his thunder, will strike again. And he provides him with scores of suit-able potential victims in the shape of policewomen, proficient in the art of judo. The trap has been set.

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Arne Dahl

When a Swedish literary critic is found tortured to death in a closet at Newark International Airport, the police realize that the murderer made off with the victim's ticket and boarded a flight to Stockholm. With no clear motive in sight, Detectives Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm of Intercrime's A-Unit learn that the method of torture used was not only a highly specialized means of extracting information secretly developed during the Vietnam War-- allowing the victim to whisper, but not to scream-- but also that it was the modus operandi of an allegedly deceased homicidal maniac known only as the Kentucky Killer.