DeKok and the Geese of Death
Page 17
“And then what?”
“I’m curious to see if he’s wearing a necktie.”
“He was wearing a necktie when I arrested him,” said Vledder.
“They boxed it up, along with his shoe laces, his belt, and other possessions when they frisked him. So, why shouldn’t he be wearing a necktie?”
“This is the tie he was wearing when you arrested him.”
Vledder looked at the garment.
“That’s right,” he confirmed, puzzlement in his voice.
Aardenburg left the station house. There was a satisfied grin on his greasy face. With a familiar gesture, he adjusted his necktie as he surveyed the street.
Vledder looked at the tie in DeKok’s hand.
“But he’s wearing a tie again,” he wondered.
A faint smile played around DeKok’s lips.
“Arrest him again,” he said calmly. “Now he’s wearing the tie that was used to strangle Annie. I exchanged them after he was led to the cells. Both his ties. He just never noticed the difference.”
DeKok and Murder By Melody
by Baantjer
“Death is entitled to our respect,” says Inspector DeKok who finds himself once again amidst dark dealings. A triple murder in the Amsterdam Concert Gebouw has him unveiling the truth behind two dead ex-junkies and their housekeeper.
“DeKok’s maverick personality certainly makes him a compassionate judge of other outsiders and an astute analyst of antisocial behavior.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“DeKok is a careful, compassionate policeman in the tradition of Maigret; crime fans will enjoy this …”
—Library Journal
“It’s easy to understand the appeal of Amsterdam police detective DeKok.”
—The Los Angeles Times
0-9725776-9-6
Bullets
by Steve Brewer
When a contract killer bumps off a high roller in a Las Vegas casino, a tangle of romance, gambling, and gunplay follows. The killer, Lily Marsden, is a mysterious and cold woman who is a true professional. But soon, the casino owner, his henchmen, and the victim’s two brothers are on Lily’s trail.
Former Chicago cop Joe Riley is pursuing Lily, too. She cost him his job as a homicide investigator when suspicion of a bookie’s murder fell on him. Joe is certain Lily killed the bookie, and he’s tracked her across the country to Vegas.
Throw in some local cops, a playboy, a new widow, a rug merchant, a harridan, and a couple of idiot gamblers named Delbert and Mookie, and the mixture soon boils with intrigue and murder. Add a dash of romance as a strange magnetism develops between Lily and Joe, dust the whole concoction with Steve Brewer’s trademark humor, and you end up with Bullets—a crime novel you won’t soon forget.
0-9725776-7-X
No Laughing Matter
by Peter Guttridge
Tom Sharpe meets Raymond Chandler in No Laughing Matter a humorous and brilliant debut that will keep readers on a knife’s edge of suspense until the bittersweet end.
When a naked woman flashes past Nick Madrid’s hotel window, it’s quite a surprise. For Nick’s room is on the fourteenth floor, and the hotel doesn’t have an outside elevator. The management is horrified when Cissie Parker lands in the swimming pool—not only is she killed, but she makes a real mess of the shallow end.
In Montreal for the Just For Laughs festival, Nick, a journalist who prefers practicing yoga to interviewing the stars, turns gumshoe to answer the question: did she fall or was she pushed? The trail leads first to the mean streets of Edinburgh and then to Los Angeles, where the truth lurks among the dark secrets of Hollywood.
0-9725776-4-5
A Ghost of a Chance
by Peter Guttridge
Nick Madrid isn’t exactly thrilled when his best friend in journalism—OK, his only friend in journalism—the “Bitch of the Broadsheets”, Bridget Frost, commissions him to spend a night in a haunted place on the Sussex Downs and live to tell the tale. Especially as living to tell the tale isn’t made an urgent priority.
But Nick stumbles on a hotter story when he discovers a dead man hanging upside down from an ancient oak. Why was he killed? Is there a connection to the nearby New Age conference center? Or to The Great Beast, the Hollywood movie about Aleister Crowley, filming down in Brighton?
New Age meets The Old Religion as Nick is bothered, bewildered, but not necessarily bewitched by pagans, satanists and a host of assorted metaphysicians. Séances, sabbats, a horse-ride from hell and a kick-boxing zebra all come Nick’s way as he obstinately tracks a treasure once in the possession of Crowley.
0-9725776-8-8
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