That time of the year is almost upon us, and Casa del Con has been decked with boughs of holly and festooned with garish paper decorations. In the festive spirit of Yuletide consumerism, we have suggestions for stocking fillers by our authors, a few recommendations of our favourite reads of the year (minus whatever masterpieces come out in December - sorry Cormac), and Louisa Scarr talks about the inspiration for the setting of her latest in the brilliant Butler & West series, SEEN TO BE BELIEVED. To cap things off, we have an exclusive giveaway, with Sam Holland offering signed copies of the freshly pressed THE ECHO MAN paperback.
The Places That Inspire Us - The Muse for SEEN TO BE BELIEVED
When you think about an inspirational location for a novel, the places that come to mind are normally old, spooky houses; beautiful, picturesque forests; abandoned, industrial buildings full of rust and history. They aren’t usually a place of employment.
Fifteen years ago, I worked for a software company in the middle of the Hampshire countryside. It was a beautiful place to work. Daffodils lined the driveway in spring; the manor house was tipped with snow in winter. It had a tennis court, a gym and a bar – a real functioning pub. One that opened Friday lunchtimes and where nobody ever questioned the consequences. There was a company-wide Christmas dinner – one that, legend has it, once ended with a food fight. The people that worked there were impossibly smart. Infuriatingly challenging and stubborn at times, but always thought-provoking in a way I appreciated.
I won’t say exactly who they were or what they did, except to add I loved working there. And it became the germ of a wider idea – a company of reclusive engineers run by two people – Andrew Grace and Tiller Hamilton. The arrogant CEO and the technology genius. While not based on real men, they had their foundations in the people I worked with and I longed to find a story for them.
I tried a few times. But somehow it never worked and the company and the characters evolved into something different.
Until it did. I imagined a massive house, in the early evening. A man pushing inside and attacking a woman and her young son. An intruder making no effort to hide his identity and stealing nothing but laptops, leading Robin and Freya to drive up that same daffodil-lined driveway and walk the same dingy corridors that I had years before.
Inspiration can come from the strangest places. You’ve just got to wait until it all fits.
SEEN TO BE BELIEVED is the fourth in Louisa Scarr’s Butler & West detective series, and is out now in eBook and paperback.
Christmas is just round the corner, and the Prose and Con-artists have a bevy of stocking fillers to solve your present-buying dilemmas.
AN ACT OF FOUL PLAY, the ninth in T.E. Kinsey’s remarkable and popular Lady Hardcastle series, finds our eponymous heroine celebrating her birthday by seeing a play at the Duke’s Theatre in Bristol with her maid and confidante, the inimitable Flo. Act One is a triumph. Then Act Two opens with a body on stage―a real one. One of the cast has been brutally murdered during the interval.
When other matters get in the way of Inspector Sunderland overseeing the case himself, he asks the ever-resourceful Lady H to keep a watchful eye on the suspects―and his police colleagues. Rustling up some cunning disguises of their own, she and Flo are soon in deep cover among the cast and crew, pulling back the curtain on some shocking secrets and rivalries…
Real unsolved murders in the sordid streets of London are the basis of Dominic Nolan’s crime epic VINE STREET, a Times Crime Novel of the Month and Times/Sunday Times book of the year 2021. A snarling, skull-cracking misanthrope, Sergeant Leon Geats marshals the grimy rabble of 1930s Soho according to his own elastic moral code. The narrow alleys are brimming with jazz bars, bookies, blackshirts, ponces and tarts, so when a body is found above the Windmill Club, detectives are content to dismiss the case as just another young woman who topped herself early.
But Geats - a good man prepared to be a bad one if it keeps the worst of them at bay - knows the dark seams of the city. Working with his former partner, mercenary Flying Squad sergeant Mark Cassar, Geats obsessively dedicates himself to finding a warped killer - a decision that will reverberate for a lifetime and transform both men in ways they could never expect.
Rachael Blok’s THE FALL is a powerful and twisty thriller about loss, trauma, silence, and how our past shapes who we are. With Easter approaching, the verger of St Albans Cathedral was supposed to be readying the church. Instead he discovers a man lying dead, fallen from the famous 150-foot-high tower. Did he jump, or was he pushed?
For DCI Maarten Jansen, it's a simple case of suspected suicide. Until a stranger, Willow, who witnessed the jump, prompts a deeper investigation into a decades-old mystery involving a psychiatric hospital, a pregnant woman, and long-buried family secrets. The bigger the sin, the further the fall…
Everyone in 1920s London knows the Honourable Cressida Fawcett: fiercely independent (though never apart from her little pug Ruby), lover of martinis and interior designer extraordinaire. She’s solved many crimes of fashion… so how about murder? DEATH AMONG THE DIAMONDS is the first in a new series from Fliss Chester.
Cressida is heading to the English countryside for a weekend of cocktails and partying at her friend’s glamorous mansion, the location of a recent diamond heist. But just hours after her arrival, Cressida is woken by an almighty scream. Rushing to the landing, she looks down into the great hall to find a trembling maid standing next to the body of Harry, the friendly young chandelier cleaner. A gripping and utterly charming 1920s murder mystery packed with wit, glamour and intrigue.
In Sam Holland’s THE ECHO MAN, detectives Cara Elliott and Noah Deakin are on the case of a series of seemingly unconnected murders, each different in method, but each shocking and brutal. As the body count increases, they can’t ignore the details that echo famous cases of the past—Manson, Kemper, Dahmer, and more. As Elliott and Deakin get closer to unmasking the killer, the murders are moving closer to home.
Meanwhile, Jessica Ambrose is on the run. She’s been implicated as the arsonist who killed her neglectful husband and injured her young daughter. With the help of disgraced and suspended detective Nate Griffin, Jess discovers a shocking link between her case and that of the ultimate copycat killer working on his horrifying masterpiece.
[you can win a signed copy of THE ECHO MAN in Sam’s exclusive giveaway below]
S.R. Masters’s THE TRIAL seems like the opportunity of a lifetime: an all-inclusive luxury trip abroad, if you agree to participate in a medical trial. All you need to do is take a pill every day and keep a diary. Except you don’t know anything about the drug or what its side effects might be.
The headaches start, a dull ache at first. Every day worse than the last. Then a body is found. Everyone is a suspect. Anyone could be a killer. Even you . . .
Welcome to The Escape, the luxury superyacht at the heart of Cameron Ward’s thrilling A STRANGER ON BOARD. A once-in-a lifetime opportunity to get away, until the first passenger goes missing.
Everyone on board has a part to play: the newcomer with secrets buried in her past; the unexpected guest looking for an escape; the crew out to settle old scores. They all have something to hide, but only one of them is a killer...
A chance to reconnect. A chance to get revenge… In Polly Phillips’s THE REUNION, Emily Toller has tried to forget her time at university and the events that led to her suddenly leaving under a cloud. She has done everything she can to forget the shame and the trauma – and the people involved. She has tried to focus on the life she has built with her children and husband, Nick.
But events like that can’t just be forgotten. Not without someone answering for what they’ve done. When an invitation arrives to a University reunion, everything clicks into place. Emily has a plan. Because if you can’t forget – why not get revenge?
Niki Mackay’s TAKEN whisks you back to the gritty 1960s. When Grace and Lola meet for the first time, it's at a home for young unmarried mothers. Consumed by the dark secrets that brought them there, the two forge an unlikely friendship.
When the time comes, Grace is forced to give her daughter away, while Lola's parents take her son in to raise as their own. Seeking refuge after running away from home, Grace finds safety in Lola's family. To Grace, the Scott-Tylers seem like the perfect family, even if family man Dan is usually on the wrong side of the law. But underneath the happy surface simmers a disturbing reality...
Many of the Prose & Cons authors feature in AFRAID OF THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS, a collection of gripping, sometimes funny, and always festive short stories from a group of bestselling crime writers. From the hilarious to the macabre, there’s something for everyone – whether you’re a Christmas convert or a bit of a Grinch. From a detective tracking down missing Christmas geese, to a cat lady who goes on a date in order to keep Santa Paws well fed, this anthology is the perfect gift to cosy up with this year, and every penny of profit goes to charity!
PROSE & CONS FAVOURITE READS OF 2022
Occasionally, when we’re not procrastinating or (God forbid) writing, we dip our noses into a book. These are some of our favourite reads published here in the last year.
Marie Rutkoski’s stunning queer crime novel, REAL EASY, follows the disappearance of a woman from a strip club, through the eyes of her friends, other dancers, patrons, and the police investigating. Authentic in tone, fearless in execution, it is an instant classic. From further south, Eli Cranor’s debut, DON’T KNOW TOUGH, is an electric Arkansas noir about the battle for the soul of a high school football star from a broken home.
Out west, Jarett Kobek winds us back to 1969 and digs into the death of the Age of Aquarius at the hands of Zodiac, in his gonzo true crime MOTOR SPIRIT (check out Kobek’s companion book, HOW TO FIND ZODIAC, for his circumstantial but very persuasive case for unmasking the killer). In his remarkable follow up to SHE RIDES SHOTGUN, Jordan Harper takes us to the heart of a clash between meth gangs and white supremacists in the California desert in THE LAST KING OF CALIFORNIA, against the backdrop of a burning planet. And this year’s annual classic from Jerome Charyn, BIG RED, fictionalises the chaotic relationship between two Hollywood legends - Orson Welles and Rita Heyworth.
Heading down under, a powerful one-two of crime thrillers from two Australian stars. Garry Disher has been delivering the goods for over three decades, and his standalone THE WAY IT IS NOW deftly unravels a decades-old mystery whilst cutting open male attitudes, domestically and socially, to women and violence. DEAD MAN’S CREEK, the follow up to OPAL COUNTRY, is Chris Hammer’s best work yet, a weighty yet pacey mystery spanning decades in a small-town community.
Four novels from brilliantly distinct female voices: Sara Gran steps away from the Claire DeWitt series with THE BOOK OF THE MOST PRECIOUS SUBSTANCE to deliver a drippingly sensual thriller about the search for an occult 17th century rumoured to possess incredible power; Eloghosa Osunde lets the spirits guide us through the nooks and crannies of Lagos in her mystical thriller debut VAGABONDS!; Kathryn Scanlan’s remarkable ventriloquistic KICKING THE LATCH, recapitulates the transcriptions of interviews to paint one woman’s fine, hard life at the racetrack in a series of vignettes; Bonnie Garmus’s triumphant big-hearted feminist page-turner, LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY, introduces the world to Elizabeth Zott - scientist, cook, iconoclast, mother.
Lucy Worsley’s propulsive and insightful biography of Agatha Christie, A VERY ELUSIVE WOMAN, explores the duality of the Queen of Crime’s Edwardian image and her very modern nature. MISS ALDRIDGE REGRETS is the first in a new series from Louise Hare, a sublime transatlantic 1930s mystery exploring class, race, and interwar politics. THE BULLET THAT MISSED is the third, and possibly best, in Richard Osman’s unstoppable Thursday Murder Club series.
Over twenty years after we first met Rilke, dissolute auctioneer and dilettante detective, in the crime classic THE CUTTING ROOM, Louise Welsh beckons us back to the dark side of contemporary Glasgow in the atmospherically gothic THE SECOND CUT.
Wythenshawe, South Manchester. 1985. The Dodds family once ruled Manchester's underworld; now the men are dead, leaving three generations of women trapped in a house haunted by violence, harbouring an unregistered baby. Tom Benn’s stunning OXBLOOD is a beautiful galvanization of a time and place, brutal yet compassionate.
GIVEAWAY! SIGNED PAPERBACKS OF THE ECHO MAN!
Across England, a string of murders is taking place.
Each different in method, but each horrifying and brutal. But the killer is just getting started…
In honour of the paperback release of THE ECHO MAN by Sam Holland, we’re giving away two signed paperback copies.
What you need to do:
make sure you’re subscribed to this newsletter [handy button below!]
email the answer to the below question to proseandconsnewsletter@gmail.com
Q: Who is one of the real life serial killers copied by The Echo Man?
The answer can be found somewhere in this newsletter.
Open to UK residents only. The winners will be picked at random and contacted via the email address they subscribed with. Closing date is midnight (GMT) Sunday 11th December .