Russell James: 29 books

From one of Britain’s masters of crime writing, here are two stories to whet your appetite, presented in bargain-price format. The title story, Lost, introduces the only detective to be given a lead role in a Russell James story (a beguiling character, he is the ex-priest turned detective Joe Venables,...

A violent and sexy thriller – but then, it is about the internet porn industry. Russell James is ‘not only a connoisseur of fear and menace,’ said the Erotic Review, ‘he would have us look at this unconsoled and unconsoling world and see its twisted charms.’The book raises an interesting...

In this new thriller from Russell James a 21st century quest for sunken treasure is interlaced with love and tragedy from the time of the Spanish Armada. King Philip’s quest to defeat and subdue upstart Britain under Queen Elizabeth 1st is in stark contrast to the very different quest of a film...

What secrets lurk in her battered trunk of theatrical souvenirs? Find out in this illustrated confessional from stage star Maggie King (assisted by Russell james). On the eve of the Second World War Maggie King is preparing a celebrity memoir. From her theatrical trunk she pulls sketches from her...

There are two main threads to the book: a modern crime story and the recollections of an 85-year-old woman with dark secrets in her past. Set during the British General Election of 1997 when Tony Blair swept to power, the story bounces back to the 1930s when another charismatic leader rose in Europe....

‘Lord Clive’ bought his lordship at a ‘Lord of the Manor’ sale where titles fetch anything from two thousand to two hundred thousand pounds. Why not buy another cheap and sell it high? Why stop at only one customer? When some of his American buyers, each of whom imagines himself an English...

South-east London gangland meets the alternative lifestyle of a travelling fair. Jet Heywood is a fairground boxer past his prime who, after a street brawl, finds himself nursing a head wound. His brother Scott has long wanted out of his dead-end life as a security van driver. When his van disappears...

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’.)...

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...

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...