James Russell: 29 books

If you thought the bloodthirsty Jacobean tragedy, The Changeling, could not be made any more shocking, you haven’t read this version, written by the man Ian Rankin called ‘The Godfather of British Noir’. James cuts to the quick – and in doing so cuts some of the more old-fashioned coincidences,...

This collection of six stories has been brought together for the first time within one book. Five are set in London, though the first brings some of his London characters out for a day’s shooting in the Cotswolds. (This is the story singled out in the Times as ‘a splendid country house shocker’.)...

Marche James is a drunk. A drunk that killed his dear wife in a horrific car accident. The doctors released him from the hospital when they decided he had recovered but they overlooked his mental injuries. Three years later, Marche remains a cruel and lonely man. Estranged from his daughter and living...

After ten years away, ex-boxer Floyd Carter comes back for his brother’s funeral, and to decide what’s to be done with his other brother, the lumbering Ludo whose mental age is barely twelve. But if Ludo knows anything it is that Albie’s death was not an accident. And if Floyd knows anything...

The Gurl Who Swam Around The World: When 16-year-old Sara Wilson rescues a mysterious swimmer from the ocean, she doesn't realize that not only is Gurl a mermaid, but also her new friend just witnessed a murder and now the killer wants Gurl dead. The Siege of 810 Davenport Road: Besieged night...

Reissue of the first book from the British crime writer whom Ian Rankin would later call 'The Godfather of British Noir'. The hero of this tense thriller has been lying low in the urban decay of south-east London, waiting to be called on for his 'job'. Now his enemies have smoked him out and it is...

John Leighton, owner of a fine estate in the Cotswolds, lives well – when we meet him he is ‘warmly encased in leather-lined Le Chameau boots, neat Habicht binoculars slung loose around his neck, and he carries a boxlock Holland and Holland Cavalier shotgun in one hand.’ Weekend shooting parties...

From one of Britain’s masters of crime writing, here are two stories to whet your appetite, presented here in bargain-price format. The first, A Piece of Cake, has been anthologised several times already, and tells of the night Terri waited at home for her current lover, the no-good Jeg, to return...

A black comedy set in the Swinging Sixties (1963-4) and revealed through the diaries of a doctor – 35 years old and still a virgin – whose curious obsessions drive him to start murdering his patients. Doctor Kristal is picky, pedantic and super-sure he’s right – though he doesn’t see himself...

In a quiet London street, a gunman holds his little child as hostage until, after a dramatic police siege, the smoke clears to reveal a sickening outcome. Firearms Officer Abi Wilde is suspended. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her CO19 work partner Tom Fortune learns that, across town the very same...

“When beauty’s the prizeWhat mortal fears dying?”Tim Hawk plans his assassinations well, rehearsing them with cool detachment, and his professionalism makes him a rising star in Kazan’s gang. Hawk’s only other interest, an unexpected love for baroque opera, is kept concealed. When Kazan...

Paul and Fay have little in common. He is well-paid and comfortable while Fay, after breaking up with Roper, her violent boyfriend, has nothing left but her young daughter. On the night Paul rescues her their two worlds briefly touch, like a kiss on a pool table after which the flight of the balls...

The entire story is narrated into an iPhone. Why? Crosby Ravensworth is so busy he can’t make time to scatter his father’s ashes, nor to sort out the dysfunctional family he hoped he’d left behind, nor to decide which of the four women in his life he should connect to. His father has committed...

Victorian England. In the small country town of Croome where the local lead mine is losing money, the year begins with a tragic drowning. Recently arrived in Croome the new vicar, Matthew Rolfe, has escaped the tragedy of his past and hopes to lose himself in the pleasant if almost unending task of...