NOVEMBER 2017 - ADDITIONS TO THE LIBRARY - 6 OF THE BEST!

Another month with more new books in than were read and cleared out.
Six of them were.....

Courtesy of Endeavour Press the publisher. I think the title alone would make you want to read it!

Lieutenant Josef Slonský has been a policeman in Prague for nearly forty years. In that time – which includes the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia – he has worked his way up from the lowest of the low to a position of almost no influence whatsoever. 

But he has learned the difference between the law and justice. His remaining ambition in the police force is to make it to retirement age without any young yob bashing his skull in with a lump of wood. Oh, and needling his superiors just enough to satisfy his sense of insubordination without leaving him vulnerable to reprisals.

But when the sardonic Slonský is called in to investigate the death of a young woman found with a wad of bank notes rammed - somewhere! - he finds himself embroiled in a series of scandals that reach to the highest levels in Government. In his personal search of the truth – and his next coffee, beer, sausage – Slonský trawls through the mean streets of Prague keeping alive the fine tradition of the maverick detective. 

Dave Warner's latest - he won the Ned Kelly last year! Courtesy of Text Publishing.

In 1999, a number of young women go missing in the Perth suburb of Claremont. One body is discovered. Others are never seen again. Snowy Lane (City of Light) is hired as a private investigator but neither he nor the cops can find the serial killer. Sixteen years later, another case brings Snowy to Broome, where he teams up with Dan Clement (Before It Breaks) and an incidental crime puts them back on the Claremont case. Clear to the Horizon is a nail-biting Aussie-style thriller, based on one of the great unsolved crimes in Western Australia's recent history. Its twists and turns will keep you guessing to the end.Dave Warner's Before It Breaks (Fremantle Press) won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction in 2016.This novel brilliantly combines the sleuthing skills of two of Warner's best-known characters and looks at how unsolved crimes can continue to haunt communities long after the fact.The book references the Claremont serial killings, Western Australia's most notorious cold-case. It's a case that real-life investigators recently made a giant leap forward on: arresting a man for the murders of two women.Warner's work has strong support from newspapers like the Herald Sun, Sydney Morning Herald and Weekend Australian and reviews of his last book were syndicated to newspapers across the nation.Warner is a known musician with an existing fan base and is likely to feature on local NSW and WA radio.

Amazon purchase

A man is the sole witness to a fatal accident. Thugs warn him against testifying; but nobody warned the thugs...

Jack Crane retired after a hectic career in the British Army. This resourceful, unassuming mid-forties bachelor had limited romantic experiences – his only love lay in the past. He was enjoying the peace and quiet of country life, until one fateful day he was the sole witness to a tragic accident. He ignores the threats of some bad faces, and picks out the young man responsible. 

The man’s father orders the thugs to carry out their threats. However, an innocent man is killed in the process.

The police cannot act without hard evidence, but Crane will get it come what may. Whilst striving to obtain that evidence, he re-discovers his lost love, but is she to be trusted? Crane becomes involved with a number of bad faces that try to put him out of action. Eventually, a professional hit-man is put on Crane’s tail, but the perpetrator finds that Crane’s resolve has no bounds, that lead them both to the USA.

From Edelweiss early reviewer site

Ben Shippers doesn't have much use for school, friends, or pretty much anyone except his smartass siser, but he does harbor a secret passion: Trash Mountain, the central feature of the noxious landfill next to his house, the fumes from which have made his sister ill. After a botched attempt to destroy Trash Mountain with a homemade firebomb, Ben begins a years-long infiltration operation that leads him to drop out of school to work alongside homeless trash-pickers, and then, eventually, intern at the very place he meant to destroy. Ben's boss there, a charismatic would-be titan of sanitation, shows Ben the intricate moralities of the trash industry, forcing him to choose between monetary stability and his environmental principles. With dark humor, Trash Mountain reflects on life in small southern cities in decline and an adolescent's search for fundamental values without responsible adults to lead the way.

A bit of True Crime courtesy of Net Galley

Bobby BlueJacket illuminates a neglected history of American crime, identity, and politics in the 20th century. This is the extraordinary true story of a man who went from career thief and convicted killer to celebrated prison journalist—ultimately becoming a respected Eastern Shawnee activist and orator. Bobby BlueJacket draws upon 5 years of interviews with the subject, long-buried law enforcement and trial records, prison archives, news accounts, and interviews with others such as filmmaker and photographer Larry Clark.

Born in 1930, BlueJacket came of age as a Native American in white Oklahoma—passing through Indian Schools, teenage rumbles, and Midwest safecracker crews. While incarcerated, he remade himself as a prison journalist. By the 1970s, he would act as a political impresario, used tire salesman, and prison rodeo emcee, and later as a venerable tribal elder. At each turn, BlueJacket sought out success and self-definition by any means necessary. More than just an underworld tale—Bobby BlueJacket is an in-depth exploration of one man’s experience in a brutal post-war world.

Bobby BlueJacket is illustrated with almost 90 photographs from never-before-seen personal archives, as well as images from prison publications and newspaper clippings.

Edelweiss again thanks to ECW Press

Three crooked cops going straight after a murderer

Woody was working on getting high when the phone rang. Dennis was on a date — it was a date he paid for, but a date all the same. Os had blood on his hands from a little extracurricular law enforcement. All three men picked up their phones because they were cops, and cops are never really off-duty — not even when they’re crooked.

Detective Julie Owen was savagely killed in her own bed, and the unborn child she was carrying is nowhere to be found. The grisly crime has the brass breathing down the necks of the three detectives tasked with finding Julie’s killer. Woody, Dennis, and Os each shared a bond with Julie that went deeper than the blue of their uniforms and have their own reasons to want to find the person responsible for her murder. Secrets drive the investigation — secrets that need to stay buried long enough to solve the case.