News: Jane Casey Wins the Mary Higgins Clark Award

Hearty congratulations to Jane Casey, who won the Mary Higgins Clark Award last night for THE STRANGER YOU KNOW (Minotaur Books) (the announcement was made during the ongoing Mystery Writers of America / Edgar Awards season). As those in the know will, y’know, know, THE STRANGER YOU KNOW features Jane’s series heroine Maeve Kerrigan, the London-based police detective who is one of the most compellingly drawn protagonists in contemporary crime fiction. Jane has been shortlisted for a number of awards in the past, but to the best of my knowledge this is the first time she has taken home the prize, and it’s fully deserved.
  Meanwhile, Stuart Neville will go head-to-head with some real heavyweights tonight – Karin Slaughter, Stephen King, Ian Rankin – when the Edgar Award for Best Novel is announced. Can he make it an Irish double? Only that most notorious of tittle-tattlers – time – will tell …

Pre-Publication: AFTER THE FIRE by Jane Casey

Currently shortlisted for an Edgar Award for THE STRANGER YOU KNOW, Jane Casey returns to the fray in June with the latest offering in the increasingly impressive series featuring London-based DC Maeve Kerrigan, AFTER THE FIRE (Ebury Press). Quoth the blurb elves:

After a fire devastates the top floor of a tower block on the Maudling Estate, Maeve Kerrigan and her colleagues are called in. Their presence is needed because it’s a sensitive investigation – not because the blaze was caused by arson, or because several residents died, but because a body was found in the car park below the tower. It appears that controversial MP Geoff Armstrong, trapped by the fire, jumped to his death rather than wait for rescue. But what was he doing in the very unglamorous surroundings of the Maudling Estate? And why did he choose to die when rescuers weren’t far away?
  The police can’t assume that Armstrong was the arsonist’s target. As Maeve and Derwent pick through the wreckage, they uncover the secret world of the eleventh floor, where everyone seems to have something to hide. It’s a tough investigation, made harder by Maeve’s private life unravelling. Without her ex-boyfriend Rob’s steady influence, she’s behaving recklessly, in a way that’s likely to harm her – or someone close to her – before long.

  For more, clickety-click here …

Stranger Danger

Jane Casey’s THE STRANGER YOU KNOW (Ebury Books) is published next week, July 4th, the fourth in her London-set police procedural series to feature Maeve Kerrigan. Quoth the blurb elves:

  He meets women.
  He gains their trust.
  He kills them.
  That’s all Maeve Kerrigan knows about the man she is hunting.
  Three women have been strangled in their homes by the same sadistic killer. With no sign of a break-in, every indication shows that they let him in.
  But the evidence is pointing at a shocking suspect: DI Josh Derwent, Maeve’s colleague.
  Maeve refuses to believe he could be involved, but how well does she really know him? Because this isn’t the first time Derwent’s been accused of murder.

  For a review of Jane’s most recent Maeve Kerrigan title, THE LAST GIRL (2012), clickety-click here …