Recommendations based on "Deathdeal (English Edition)"

On the eve of the first Scottish parliament in three hundred years, Edinburgh is a city rife with political passions and expectations. Queensbury House, the home of Scotland's new rulers, falls in the middle of John Rebus' turf, keeping him busy with ceremonial tasks. That quickly changes, however, when a long-dead body is discovered in a Queensbury House fireplace, a homeless man throws himself off a bridge - leaving behind a suitcase full of cash - and an up-and-coming politician is found murdered. The links between the three deaths lead Rebus to a confrontation with one of Edinburgh's most notorious criminals, a man he thought he'd put in jail for life. Someone's going to make a lot of money out of Scotland's independence - and, as Rebus knows all too well, where there's big money at stake, darkness gathers.

Set in a chillingly realistic far-future world, and featuring a gritty antihero even more frightening than the evil empire he serves as soldier and assassin, Death’s Head is sure to be one of the most talked-about novels of the year. David Gunn is loaded–and he shoots to kill.At the top of the galactic pecking order is the United Free, a civilization of awe-inspiring technological prowess so far in advance of other space-faring powers as to seem untouchable gods. Most of the known universe has fallen under their inscrutable sway. The rest is squabbled over by two empires: one ruled with an iron fist by OctoV, a tyrant who appears to his followers as a teenage boy but is in reality something very different, the other administered by the Uplifted, bizarre machinelike intelligences, and their no-longer-quite-human servants, cyborgs known as the Enlightened.Sven Tveskoeg, an ex-sergeant demoted for insubordination and sentenced to death, is a vicious killer with a stubborn streak of loyalty. Sven possesses a fierce if untutored intelligence and a genetic makeup that is 98.2 percent human and 1.8 percent . . . something else. Perhaps that “something else” explains how quickly he heals from even the worst injuries or how he can communicate telepathically with the ferox, fearsome alien savages whose natural fighting abilities regularly outperform the advanced technology of their human enemies. Perhaps it is these unique abilities that bring Sven to the attention of OctoV.Drafted into the Death’s Head, the elite enforcers of OctoV’s imperial will, Sven is given a new lease on life. Armed with a SIG diabolo–an intelligent gun–and an illegal symbiont called a kyp, Sven is sent to a faraway planet, the latest battleground between the Uplifted and OctoV. There he finds himself in the midst of a military disaster, one that will take all his courage–and all his firepower–to survive.But an even deadlier struggle is taking place, a struggle that will draw the attention of the United Free. Sven knows he is a pawn, and pawns have a bad habit of being sacrificed.But Sven is nobody’s sacrifice. And even a pawn can checkmate a king.

The Number One bestselling detective series. Nothing keeps a crime hidden like fear, and DS Logan McRae hits a dead-end in this 5th crime thriller from the award-winning Stuart MacBride. 'You can't be an eyewitness if I cut out your eyes...' Someone's preying on Aberdeen's growing Polish population. The pattern is always the same: men abandoned on building sites, barely alive, their eyes gouged out and the sockets burned. With the victims too scared to talk, and the only witness a paedophile who's on the run, Grampian Police is getting nowhere fast. The attacks are brutal, they keep on happening, and soon DS Logan McRae will have to decide how far he's prepared to bend the rules to get a result. The Granite City is on the brink of gang warfare; the investigating team are dogged by allegations of corruption; and Logan's about to come to the attention of Aberdeen's most notorious crime lord...

“In this series about gambling, the main character is a big winner.”–Janet Maslin, The New York Times“Bask in Swain’s Las Vegas without having to set foot in the place and risk being skinned alive.”–The Washington Post Book WorldA blind poker player named Skip DeMarco is scamming the world’s largest poker tournament in Las Vegas, and cheating-expert Tony Valentine and his son, Gerry, have been hired to find out how. DeMarco is tied to some dangerously desperate characters who will go to extremes–even cold-blooded murder–to ensure that the obnoxious DeMarco wins big.While Gerry flies to Atlantic City to suss out DeMarco’s secret, Valentine stays in Vegas and teams up with an aging grifter named Rufus Steele, who has his own score to settle with DeMarco. On opposite sides of a deadly game, father and son work their way through a colorful landscape of conmen and hitmen. Together, they will have to prove there’s more to any game of chance than meets the eye.Featuring insider tips for catching poker cheats, as well as a glossary of card hustler terms!

From a formidable new voice in suspense fiction comes an edge-of-the-seat story of a homicide detective on the trail of a killer, who slays with exacting precision, and who harbors a terrifying motiveDetective Sergeant Michael McCabe moved from New York City to Portland, Maine, to escape a dark past: both the ex-wife who’d left him for an investment banker, and the tragic death of his brother, a hero cop gone bad. He sought to raise his young daughter away from the violence of the big city . . . so he’s unprepared for the horrific killer he discovers, whose bloody trail may lead to Portland’s social elite.Early on a September evening, the mutilated body of a pretty teenaged girl, a high school soccer star, is found dumped in a scrap-metal yard. She had been viciously assaulted, but her heart had been cut out of her chest with surgical precision. The very same day a young businesswoman, also a blonde and an athlete, was abducted as she jogged through the streets of the city’s west end. McCabe suspects both crimes are the work of the same man---a killer who’s targeting the young---who is clearly well-versed in complex surgical procedures, and who may have struck before. Just as the investigation is beginning, McCabe’s ex-wife reemerges, suddenly determined to reclaim the daughter she heedlessly abandoned years earlier.With the help of his straight-talking (and, at times, alluring) partner, Maggie Savage, McCabe begins a race against time to rescue the missing woman and unmask a sadistic killer---before more lives are lost.

Sandman Slim investigates Death’s death in this hip, propulsive urban fantasy through a phantasmagoric LA rife with murder, mayhem, and magic. James Stark has met his share of demons and angels, on earth and beyond. Now, he’s come face to face with the one entity few care to meet: Death. Someone has tried to kill Death—ripping the heart right out of him—or rather the body he’s inhabiting. Death needs Sandman Slim’s help: he believes anyone who can beat Lucifer and the old gods at their own game is the only one who can solve his murder. Stark follows a sordid trail deep into LA’s subterranean world, from vampire-infested nightclubs to talent agencies specializing in mad ghosts, from Weimar Republic mystical societies to sleazy supernatural underground fight and sex clubs. Along the way he meets a mysterious girl—distinguished by a pair of graveyard eyes—as badass as Slim: she happens to be the only person who ever outwitted Death. But escaping her demise has had dire consequences for the rest of the world . . . and a few others. For years, Slim has been fighting cosmic forces bent on destroying Heaven, Hell, and Earth. This time, the battle is right here on the gritty streets of the City of Angels, where a very clever, very ballsy killer lies in wait.

In the third novel of Scott Thornley’s much-praised MacNeice mystery series, Detective Superintendent MacNeice’s life—and heart—are in serious danger.   On a morning with just a hint of spring in the air, the body of a young woman is found trapped in the ice of Cootes Paradise on Dundurn Bay. She has no piercings or tattoos or nail polish, and is as pristine as if she’d stepped out of a more innocent time.   The next day at dawn, in Gage Park in the heart of the city, a homeless man is woken by the sound of squeaking wagon wheels and spots someone abandoning what looks like a bundle of silvery garbage in the middle of a grassy lawn. Then he realizes that the bundle is actually a man, gagged and duct-taped to the wagon but still alive. It turns out that the man is booby-trapped, rigged to blow as soon as the emergency personnel attempt to cut him loose. And MacNeice is faced with the gruesome murder of another apparently innocent victim, a blameless and bland high-school teacher and devoted single father whom it seems, nobody could summon the energy to hate.   The investigations lead MacNeice and his team into the bars and rooming houses of Dundurn, where Irish immigrants intersect with mercenaries and criminal gambling racketeers. Soon MacNeice himself is a target, along with the first woman he has allowed himself to touch since his wife died. And then he discovers that the worst crime of all is one hidden in the secret life of that oh-so-normal high school teacher.

Oklahoma attorney Ben Kincaid put his reputation on the line when he represented Ray Goldman. The seemingly mild-mannered man was charged with massacring an entire suburban Tulsa family. When the prosecution’s star witness—Erin Faulkner, the lone survivor of the slaughter—took the stand, Goldman’s fate was sealed. But just as his date with the death chamber is imminent, Erin abruptly recants her testimony; after seven years of silence, she is desperate to keep an innocent man from dying. Yet the next day, Erin is discovered dead, an apparent suicide. And Ben Kincaid is the only witness to her stunning confession. Now Ben must hunt down the killer who is determined to cover his tracks . . . with blood.

Undercover cop Dan "Spider" Shepherd knows there are no easy solutions in the war against terrorism. When a killer starts to target pardoned IRA terrorists, Shepherd must put his life on the line to protect his former enemies. While he is undercover in Belfast, a grief-stricken Saudi whose two sons died under torture in the name of the War on Terror is planning to avenge their deaths by striking out at two people close to Shepherd. As the assassin closes in on his prey, Shepherd realizes that the only way to save lives is to become a killer himself.

Fast, furious and fatal . . . a pair of killers seek brutal revenge. When a homeless veteran is found dead in a squalid Sacramento alley, FBI special agent Megan Elliott vows to find the murdered hero’s killer. Her investigation gets complicated fast, for the victim, a former Delta Force soldier, is just one link in a nationwide spree of torture and murder. Straight off a job rescuing medical missionaries, soldier-for-hire Jack Kincaid returns to his home base in the Texas border town of Hidalgo only to receive the news that one of his closest colleagues–also ex-military–has been brutally murdered. Faced with an inept local police force, Jack takes matters into his own hands. Now, as part of a national task force to stop the sadistic killings, by-the-book Megan and burn-the-book Jack form a tense alliance, sparked with conflict and temptation. But they struggle against more than passion, for a vicious pair of killers has only just begun a rampage of evil . . . and the primary target is much closer than Megan suspects.