Free For Two

These two very fine books are free on Kindle over 4th and 5th Feb.

The Unburied Dead: Amazon UK|Amazon US
Yellow Medicine: Amazon UK|Amazon US

A stark and edgy new police thriller from the creator of the Barney Thomson series.
A psychopath walks the streets of Glasgow, selecting his first victim. He sees his ex-girlfriend everywhere, and he will have her back.

When a woman is savagely murdered, her body stabbed over a hundred times, the police know from the nature of the crime that the killer will strike again. DCI Bloonsbury, the once-feted detective, is put in charge of the investigation, but as the killer begins to hit much closer to home and an old police conspiracy starts to unravel, Bloonsbury slides further into morose alcoholic depression.

In the middle of it all is Detective Sergeant Thomas Hutton, juggling divorce, deception, alcohol, murdered colleagues, and Dylan. He could use a break but the dead will not rest and the past will not be buried until he can catch the latest serial killer to haunt the streets of his city.

Praise for Douglas Lindsay:

"The plot, Russian literature fans, is a modern spin on Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The bloody ending, movie buffs, is pure Reservoir Dogs."
– The Mirror

"This is pitch-black comedy spun from the finest writing. Fantastic plot, unforgettable scenes and plenty of twisted belly laughs."
– New Woman

"This chilling black comedy unfolds at dizzying speed... an impressive debut novel."
– Sunday Mirror

"A flawless follow-up to an impressive debut, this is extremely well-written, highly amusing and completely unpredictable in its outrageous plot twists and turns."
– The List

"Lindsay’s burlesque thrills offer no sex, no drugs, no desperation to be cool. Just straightforward adult story; fantastic plot, classic timing and gleeful delight in the grotesque. With more talent than Irvine Welsh could dream of, Lindsay has crafted a macabre masterpiece where content lives up to style."
– What’s On

About the author:

Douglas Lindsay is the author of the Barney Thomson crime series, which begins with THE LONG MIDNIGHT OF BARNEY THOMSON, and is currently seven novels and a novella (THE END OF DAYS) strong. He is also the author of LOST IN JAUREZ. THE UNBURIED DEAD is his most recent novel. Douglas lives in Somerset.

Deputy Billy Lafitte is not unfamiliar with the law—he just prefers to enforce it, rather than abide by it. But his rule-bending and bribe-taking have gotten him kicked off the force in Gulfport, Mississippi, and he’s been given a second chance—in the desolate, Siberian wastelands of rural Minnesota. Now Billy’s only got the local girls and local booze to keep him company.

Until one of the local girls—cute little Drew, bassist for a psychobilly band—asks Billy for help with her boyfriend. Something about the drugs Ian’s been selling, some product he may have lost, and the men who are threatening him because of it. Billy agrees to look into it, and before long he’s speeding down a snowy road, tracking a cell of terrorists, with a severed head in his truck’s cab. And that’s only the start.

Ten Short Bits Of News And Info

1: If you're in Glasgow and free on Mon 30th January, I'll be giving a talk at the University of Strathclyde. This is open to the public, entry is free, and kicks off at 5pm. More details can be found here.

2: Blasted Heath has launched a new daily book recommendation with the bewitching acronym of #broth (Book Recommendation On The Heath). You can join in too. Check it out here.

3: You may have noticed that Criminal-E has been on something of an interview hiatus. Well, that's about to end very soon. I have some fine ebook crime writers lined up who will be revealing all. Well, maybe not all. Although that's an idea...

4: A while back I created a highly indulgent list of my top 200 noir fiction titles. It stops in 1997. My new Italian publisher, Revolver, has asked if I'll update it with a list of the best noir since then. Looking forward to this.

5: More Blasted Heath news. Next month sees the launch of The Unburied Dead by Douglas Lindsay and Wolf Tickets by Ray Banks, stonking books both.

6: And more events: Stuart MacBride is at Blackwell's in Edinburgh on Thu Feb 2nd (free, 6.30pm) and Len Wanner will be grilling Tony Black at Mayfield Library in Dalkeith on Sat 4th Feb (free, 6pm).

7: Will the big publishers drop DRM? Nice to see it being advocated at least. Bookseller Backed By Big Publishers Advocates Abandoning Digital Rights Management.

8: There's some pretty interesting information to be gleaned from Verso's 2011 Survey of Book-Buying Behaviour.

9: I'm very happy to say that the excellent Connie Haag is translating Bye Bye Baby for the German digital market.

10: And finally, I'm currently revising Kiss Her Goodbye, which will be the next of my novels out on Kindle. Here's a first look at the cover.

Big Day For Hilda And A Savage Night Out

Hilda's Big Day Out was commissioned by the Sunday Mail as its seasonal short story and published in the newspaper on Jan 1st. I've made it available on Kindle FOR FREE from now thru Jan 10th. You can get it by clicking on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

It's a tale of violence, abduction, and pilchards, told from the perspective of a Dandie Dinmont terrier called Hilda, who's whisked away from a deserted Edinburgh beach by a skinny stranger on New Year's Day. (You may recognise Hilda as Pearce's dog from Hard Man and Kill Clock).

Also included are three bonus stories: Your Mother Should Know (from the Pulp Ink anthology); Bye Bye Baby (from Shattered: Every Crime Has A Victim) and Call Me, I'm Dying from A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir.

Nigel Bird (the man behind the excellent collection Dirty Old Town)  has some very kind words to say about Hilda over at his Sea Minor blog, as does McDroll (the talent behind Kick It and co-editor of The Lost Children charity anthology) at her I Meant To Read That blog (some other great freebies mentioned there too from Anthony Neil Smith & Victor Gischler, Heath Lowrance and Fingers Murphy).

Also just published on Kindle for the first time is a revised version of Savage Night, my Tarantino-inspired tragi-comic crime thriller about a blood feud. This was the prequel to the novella, Killing Mum. 

You can download Savage Night from Amazon.co.uk here, (not available in North America where my erstwhile publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, controls the ebook rights, sorry). It's currently 99p.

How much blood would you spill to avenge those you love?

Andy Park passes out at the sight of blood, but he thinks he’s discovered a way to make his family’s enemies pay. He isn’t prepared for the fallout, though. Before long, his teenage son is in mortal danger and his daughter and her fiancé are forced to carry out his dirty work.

Meanwhile, a masked man known only as Mr. Smith is blackmailing Tommy Savage—for what, he has no idea. And after an attempt to gain the upper hand has near-fatal results, Tommy and his brother, Phil, find themselves heading to a graveyard with only a couple of swords and a bag of cash for company.

Will they survive the night? Will anyone?

With equal parts blood phobia and blood lust, Savage Night is a cinematic tragi-comedy of love and violence that unfolds over six short blood-blind hours in Scotland’s capital city.

According to the Observer, Savage Night is "a black comedy akin to the work of Christopher Brookmyre and Douglas Lindsay..." and "if you have a robust sense of humour, you'll love this." I hope so!