What's In A Name (5 page)
Authors: Thomas H. Cook
In an effort to understand Julian’s death, Anders travels to Paris, revisiting the places that Julian used as the research and settings for his books. But even as he embarks on this personal quest, Anders is plagued by the memory of a woman the two men once knew. And he comes to wonder if her disappearance, long ago, may be the crime that drove his friend to take his own life…
The Crime of Julian Wells
is available
here
.
Sigmund Freud deals with an unwelcome visitor; Columbo confronts a murderous bookseller; a Mexican cartel kingpin with a fatal weakness for rare books; deadly secrets deep in the London Library: who knew literature could be so lethal? Here are 15 short stories to die for from the world’s best crime writers.
With an introduction from Ian Rankin,
Death Sentences
includes original, specially commissioned stories about deadly books from Jeffrey Deaver, Andrew Taylor, Laura Lippman, C.J. Box, Anne Perry, Ken Bruen, Thomas H. Cook, Micky Spillaine & Max Adam Collins, Nelson DeMille and John Connolly.
Pronghorns of the Third Reich
In frigid Wyoming lies a mystery that stretches back to Nazi Germany.
Lyle and Juan wait outside the lawyer’s house in ski masks, pistols hidden behind their backs. Shortly after dawn, Paul Parker, an aged lawyer, and his old dog step into the cold. The thugs kill the dog, and take the lawyer hostage. Parker’s day has started badly and is going to get much worse.
Once a fine lawyer, Parker’s enthusiasm has slipped with age, and criminals like Lyle are part of the reason for his disillusionment. Years after they last saw each other in court, Lyle is convinced that Parker owes him something. At gunpoint, Lyle and Juan make Parker lead them to the old ranch, to open up a hidden library whose volumes hold the secret to forgotten riches, and the strangest war profiteering scheme to ever come out of the Great Plains.
Pronghorns of the Third Reich
is available
here
.
An Acceptable Sacrifice
A pair of federal agents from either side of the US–Mexico border target a cartel kingpin.
They call him ‘Cuchillo’ – the Knife. Not because he kills with a blade – he has plenty of men to do that kind of work for him – but because his mind is so sharp. As Mexico’s government wages war on the drug cartels, it takes brains to survive, and Cuchillo has not just survived – he has prospered. But when Cuchillo begins to cut too deeply, the federal police of both the United States and Mexico step in to dull his blade.
P. Z. Evans and Alejo Díaz know the Hermosillo cartel is planning an attack on a tourist bus in Sonora, and they know they will have to capture or kill Cuchillo to stop it. The cartel leader has just one weakness: rare and ancient books. To destroy the intellectual’s evil empire, this unlikely pair of policemen will have to appeal to his inner bibliophile.
An Acceptable Sacrifice
is available
here
.
The Book Thing
A bibliophile PI sets out to save a bookshop from a serial thief.
Tess Monaghan wants to like the Children’s Bookstore. It’s new, bright, friendly and packed with the kinds of books that she is dying for her daughter to fall in love with. But the owner’s attitude stops her in her tracks. What kind of children’s bookseller hates children?
But Octavia, the owner, has a lot on her mind. Each Saturday, someone steals a stack of her most beautiful, most expensive children’s books, and the expense threatens to force her fledgling store out of business. Luckily, Tess is not only a book lover—she’s also a private investigator who doesn’t mind working pro bono to help an independent bookshop. Her investigation will make Octavia smile for the first time in months—and uncover a crime more suitable for the mystery aisle than the children’s section.
The Book Thing
is available
here
.
The Scroll
An ancient scroll draws a bookseller into a chilling mystery.
Monty Danforth finds the tin buried beneath a shipment of leather-bound classics. Inside is a millennia-old vellum manuscript written in an unfamiliar but unmistakably ancient language. Danforth tries to photocopy and photograph it, but he ends up with blank images, as though the ink were made of something impervious to modern technology. As the scroll’s mystery enchants him, this hapless bookseller falls into a cutthroat conspiracy that he may never escape.
Soon a dead-eyed old man and his granddaughter come calling for the scroll. Danforth refuses to sell them the manuscript, but they will not be the last to demand it. Powerful forces crave the secrets locked within this ancient document, and Danforth will survive only if he can master its power.
The Scroll
is available
here
.
The Long Sonata of the Dead
In pursuit of the find of a lifetime, an academic confronts an old rival.
Once visited by the likes of Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and George Eliot, the London Library is a maze of books—a jumble of first editions and forgotten texts. For Tony, it is a refuge from the failure his life has become—and it is about to be invaded by a destructive old friend.
Adam is a world-renowned novelist who spends so much time writing articles and appearing in documentaries that it seems impossible he actually has time to write books. He visits the library to research a nearly-forgotten English poet, Francis Youlgreave, who just happens to be Tony’s obsession. Tony has staked his career on the long-dead clergyman, and will do whatever it takes to keep Adam from stealing his research. In this ghostly library, scholarly conflict is anything but academic.
The Long Sonata of the Dead
is available
here
.
The Final Testament
As World War II draws near, a dying genius fights against hate to preserve his legacy
Cancer has ravaged Sigmund Freud. It is 1938, and the great doctor has fled Vienna for London, where he races to finish his final, most dangerous work: a radical reimagining of the origins of Judaism, which posits that Moses was murdered by his followers. Though his colleagues say that such a controversial text could only give grist to those who would do the Jews harm, Freud is adamant about releasing the book—until a Nazi named Sauerwald comes to visit.
He has written a manuscript in Freud’s name, a hateful screed that claims to prove that all of Jewish history is based on falsehood, and asks that Freud help him have it published—lest something unpleasant happen to the doctor’s family in Austria. Horrified by this foul threat, Freud responds with the only weapon he has left. He picks up pen and paper, and suggests that Sauerwald sit down on his couch.
The Final Testament
is available
here
.
The Book of Virtue
With his hated father dead, a man
’
s life takes a dangerous turn
He doesn’t cry when his father, Frank, dies. The old man was an abusive, self-absorbed drunk, and when cancer takes him to his deathbed, his son is there to watch. At Frank’s final moment he leans over and whispers in his ear, letting the dying man know that he’s glad to see him go.