Sunday, October 24, 2pm – Crime Fiction
Soho Press Presents
James Benn, Henry Chang, & Stuart Neville
James Benn author of Rag and Bone ($15.00 Soho Press)
James R. Benn is the author of Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery, Blood Alone, and The First Wave, selected by Book Sense as one of the top five mysteries of 2006 and nominated for a Dilys Award. He is a librarian and lives in Hadlyme, Connecticut.
Billy is sent to London in the midst of a Luftwaffe bombing offensive to investigate the murder of a Soviet official. There’s reason to believe that the crime could be connected to the recent discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest, where thousands of Polish officers were executed. Is a killer out there, targeting Soviet officials in revenge for the Katyn Massacre? If so, the diplomatic stakes couldn’t be higher as the uneasy relationship between the Soviets and the other allied powers hangs in the balance. Further complicating matters, Scotland Yard names Billy’s friend Kaz, now working for the Polish government in exile, as the prime suspect. Billy must track the killer through London’s criminal underworld and save his friend.
“Spirited wartime storytelling.”—The New York Times Book Review
Henry Chang author of Red Jade: A Detective Jack Yu Investigation ($25.00 Soho Press)
Two bodies are discovered at an address on the Bloody Angle, Chinatown’s historic Tong battleground. NYPD Detective Jack Yu’s investigation takes him across the country to another Chinatown, this one in Seattle, in pursuit of a cold-blooded Chinese American gangster and a mysterious Hong Kong femme fatale. Henry Chang was born and raised in New York’s Chinatown, where he still lives. He is a graduate of Pratt Institute and CCNY. He is the author of Chinatown Beat and Year of the Dog, also in the Detective Jack Yu series.
“[Chang] paints, in miniature, a harsh world of neon and shadows but doesn’t slight the Big Questions. . . . [He takes] genre fiction to a deeper level, focusing on the mysteries of the human mind that a murder brings to light in those with some connection to the deceased. Mysteries, quirks, that might otherwise lie buried, but that subtly define who we are.”—Ron Rosenbaum, Slate
Stuart Neville author of Collusion ($25.00 Soho Press)
When Detective Inspector Jack Lennon tries to track down his former lover Marie McKenna and their daughter, his superiors tell him to back off. But now an assassin stalks Belfast, tying up loose ends for a vengeance-driven old man. As Lennon unravels a conspiracy that links his daughter to a killer named Fegan, the line between friend and enemy blurs.
Stuart Neville is a partner in a multimedia design business based in Armagh, Northern Ireland. COLLUSION is the follow-up to THE GHOSTS OF BELFAST, the first in the Detective Jack Lennon series.
“Neville’s novel is a coldly lucid assessment of the fragility of the Irish peace . . . a rare example of legitimate noir fiction.”—The New York Times Book Review