Search results for ""author mike ripley""

Albert Campion must dig deep into his memory to solve this latest mystery involving king of construction, Sir Lachlan McIntyre.London, 1972. Albert Campion''s nephew Christopher, an aspiring public relations guru, needs his uncle''s help with a client. Construction magnate Sir Lachlan McIntyre enjoyed a meteoric rise after the Second World War and is in line for a life peerage, but his reputation is in jeopardy as he becomes the prime suspect for a murder.Journalist David Duffy was curiously more interested in McIntyre''s youthful years before the war than his rags-to-riches story. Not long after the pair exchanged verbal blows, Duffy was shot dead in his car close to the M1 motorway and McIntyre''s home. Why was Campion''s name included on a list discovered in Duffy''s notebook under the heading 1932? What happened forty years ago, and could it be linked to Duffy''s death? Campion must dig deep into his memory to get to the bottom of the

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WINNER OF THE HRF KEATING AWARD FOR BEST NON-FICTION CRIME BOOK 2018An entertaining history of British thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed, in which award-winning crime writer Mike Ripley reveals that, though Britain may have lost an empire, her thrillers helped save the world. With a foreword by Lee Child. When Ian Fleming dismissed his books in a 1956 letter to Raymond Chandler as ‘straight pillow fantasies of the bang-bang, kiss-kiss variety’ he was being typically immodest. In three short years, his James Bond novels were already spearheading a boom in thriller fiction that would dominate the bestseller lists, not just in Britain, but internationally. The decade following World War II had seen Britain lose an Empire, demoted in terms of global power and status and economically crippled by debt; yet its fictional spies, secret agents, soldiers, sailors and even (occasionally) journalists were now saving the world on a regular basis. From Ian Fleming and Alistair MacLean in the 1950s through Desmond Bagley, Dick Francis, Len Deighton and John Le Carré in the 1960s, to Frederick Forsyth and Jack Higgins in the 1970s. Many have been labelled ‘boys’ books’ written by men who probably never grew up but, as award-winning writer and critic Mike Ripley recounts, the thrillers of this period provided the reader with thrills, adventure and escapism, usually in exotic settings, or as today’s leading thriller writer Lee Child puts it in his Foreword: ‘the thrill of immersion in a fast and gaudy world.’ In Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Ripley examines the rise of the thriller from the austere 1950s through the boom time of the Swinging Sixties and early 1970s, examining some 150 British authors (plus a few notable South Africans). Drawing upon conversations with many of the authors mentioned in the book, he shows how British writers, working very much in the shadow of World War II, came to dominate the field of adventure thrillers and the two types of spy story – spy fantasy (as epitomised by Ian Fleming’s James Bond) and the more realistic spy fiction created by Deighton, Le Carré and Ted Allbeury, plus the many variations (and imitators) in between.

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'England's funniest crime writer' The Times'Charming and full of surprises' BooklistStrange things happen in the picture-postcard English village of Lindsay Carfax. When a young man falls into a quarry, it takes nine days to find the body. When rowdy hippies descend on the village, they're given nine days to leave. When an outspoken schoolmaster is kidnapped for nine days, he stays eerily quiet after his release.Now Albert Campion has come to town - meaning to investigate all this strangeness. But whoever is behind the unusual goings-on quickly makes it very clear that his nosing around is not welcome. Undeterred by threats, Campion is determined to expose the criminal masterminds hiding in this sleepy village.

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Nick Miller is Central Division’s maverick Detective Sergeant. Disliked and distrusted by friends and foes, he works alone. He crosses the line. And he gets results. The Graveyard Shift… Nick Miller is new to the graveyard shift – the midnight hours when the driven and the desperate come out to play. Tonight Ben Garvald is out of prison. After nine years inside, he’s back in the old neighbourhood. Back to his remarried ex-wife. Back for revenge. Brought in Dead… Then after a fatal night out, a girl’s body is pulled from an isolated stretch of river. The last person to see her alive had enemies on both sides of the fence. Miller wants justice. But so does her father – with or without the law on his side. Hell Is Always Today… And the Rainlover. Whose victims are always women. Always at night when the streets are wet. He could be any one of a thousand men. Hounded by the public and the press, Miller needs to find him before he strikes again. It’s time to throw out the rule book in the line of duty. GRAVEYARD TO HELL Jack Higgins’ gritty police saga set in the 1960s, first released as three short volumes and long out of print, is now reimagined as one gripping novel, packing a punch as only ‘The Legend’ of thriller fiction knows how.

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