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The Interpretation of Murder
by Jed Rubenfeld
Headline Review. Pages 407. £6.00

Manhattan 1909. A city of breathtaking modernity, heartstopping skyscrapers and glittering high society, whose opulence conceals a darker face: corruption, vice and murder. On the morning after Sigmund Freud arrives in New York on the steamship ‘George Washington,’a stunning debutante is found bound and strangled in her penthouse apartment, high above Broadway. The following night another beautiful young heiress, Nora Acton, is discovered tied to a chandelier in her parents’ home, viciously wounded and unable to speak or to recall her attack. Asked to help her, Dr Stratham Younger, Freud’s most committed American disciple, enlists his idol, the Master himself, to guide him through the challenges of analysing this defiant young woman whose family past has been as complicated as his own.

The Interpretation of Murder takes us into the salons of Gramercy Park, the opium dens of Chinatown, and even far beneath the currents of the East River, where the Manhattan Bridge is under construction. As Freud battles to fend off a conspiracy meant to destroy him, so Younger realises that the woman he has come to love must surely be the sadistic killer’s next victim.

A thrilling tour through the intricacies, masks and subterfuges of the human mind, the book marks the debut of a brilliant, spectacularly entertaining new storyteller.

Sex, Lies and Online Dating
by Rachel Gibson.
Headline. Pages 276. £2.50

HE’s the undercover cop on the hunt for a female serial killer... who’s not expecting to lose his heart. She’s the thriller writer researching her next book, who doesn’t realise she’s under surveillance... by Mr Right.

When Quinn Mclntyre has to pose as an internet dater to woo the chief suspect in a murder case, the last thing on his mind is falling in love. But Lucy Rothschild just doesn’t seem like the killing kind. Does she? Before too long, and against all his better instincts, Quinn finds he could be getting in too deep.

An addictive novel about how the last person you should get involved with... could be the first person you fall for.

The Queen of the Night
by Paul Doherty
Headline
Pages 301. £6.00

Trouble is brewing in Syria, on the eastern frontiner of the Roman Empire. The troops are in a deplorable state, while their senior officers are running numerous rackets—behaviour that threatens to undermine the army’s control of the region. It’s decided to dispatch two centurions, Macro and Cato, to Syria to restore the competence of the men defending a vital frontier fort.

On arrival, Macro and Cato are caught up in suspicious incidents which make them unsure if they will survive to carry out their mission. And they learn that there is a new problem to deal with. Bannus, a local tribesman, is brewing up trouble amongst the followers of Jehoshua, who was crucified in Jerusalem 17 years earlier. Bannus is pushing the faction towards violent opposition to Rome.

Across the border, Rome’s long-standing enemy Parthia is poised to invade. Macro and Cato must stamp out corruption in the cohort and restore it to fighting fitness to quash Bannus—before the eastern provinces are lost to the Empire...

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