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( We don’t know her, man,” Bearded Man said. He and his companion turned their backs on him. Ike took a deep breath so violently his nose burned. Ike felt like he was rooted to the floor. His skin was tingling all over like he had stepped on a live wire. The real estate between him and the two men seemed to fill with dangerously charged energy. They had turned their backs on him. Inside that was a sign of disrespect so egregious it might get you sent to the farm just on general principles. Ike’s right hand was a fist before he realized he had curled his fingers. He stared down at it, and through a sheer force of will he made himself unfurl his fist. He had to be smart. He didn’t need the cops throwing him in a deep dark hole. At least not until he finished this. “Thanks.” Ike choked the word out and walked away. )

( Naomi looked back at the phone in her right hand. She didn’t know exactly what the Defense Threat Reduction Agency did, but it was a safe bet that a Rat King and a deer that knows how to work an elevator were probably right up their alley. She turned her phone around and showed him the website. “We need to call this place.” )

( Three days, I thought: in, out. How was that going? I stood at my window and watched the snow, the business district flashing, the river beyond it. The art of espionage involved remembering where you were. This wasn’t London, Washington or even Moscow. Mankind, as a whole, had never sunk any flag very deep in Kazakh soil. Frederick Burnaby, passing through one hundred and fifty years ago, heard talk of a Russian expedition against the Khans that set out in midwinter. A thousand men, nine thousand camels, three thousand horses, never seen again. Not even the bones. )

( They drove out of the city in silence, skirting the suburbs and endless housing estates, making fast progress on the parkway that snaked through the blocky landscape of warehousing and big-box megastores, heading into the bustle of the sprawling Eastern Industrial Estate, with its scent of green waste and rubble dust and epoxy. Then the city fell away with an abruptness that always struck Zigic as slightly unreal and ahead the fenland unfolded, wild and flat, and near lawless, all the way to the Wash. The sky was vast and cloudless, heat shimmering up off the road, haze in the distance, the light wind stirring up the threat of dirt storms as the fields lay parched from the rainless weeks. Crops were wilting, standing unharvested, vegetation yellowing, fruit dying on the stem. The shortage of seasonal labour was beginning to tell now. Hardly any sign of activity in the fields they passed. People who went home for Easter had decided against returning, heading for more welcoming options instead. )

Update at 12 pm - And it did indeed make the Steel Daggers longlist.

( There were lush evergreen bushes studded with berries of all types, overgrown tangled creepers, and a few flowers struggling to survive beneath the onslaught. I recognized a few—hellebores and snowberries springing up from between dark-leaved laurels, and what I thought might be a laburnum up ahead. As we turned a corner, we passed underneath an ancient-looking yew so old it formed a tunnel over the path, its strange, tubular berries crunching underfoot. Its leaves had poisoned the ground, and nothing grew underneath its spread. There were more greenhouses in here, I saw, though they were smaller, still with enough glass in their broken frames to have built up an impressive amount of condensation. The inside of the glass was blotched with green lichen and mold, so thickly that I could barely see the remains of the plants inside, though some struggled up through the broken panes of the roof. Four brick paths quartered the garden, meeting in a small circle in the centre, where the statue stood. It was so covered in ivy and other creepers that it was hard to make out, but as I drew nearer, brushing aside some of the foliage, I saw that it was a woman, thin and emaciated and broken down, her clothes ragged, her face skull-like, her blank stone eyes fixing mine with an accusing stare. Her cheeks were scored with what looked like scratches, and when I peered closer I saw that the nails on her skeletal hands were long and pointed. )

( He reached inside and felt around. The recess in the ceiling was of the same dimensions as the opening except on one side, where it extended at least a foot farther onto a small shelf above the ceiling. He groped back, reaching as far as he could until he felt the edge of a small envelope. “Got something.” He grabbed it and slid it free. Then he stepped down from the chair. The envelope was tiny, only two by three and a half inches, with a clasp closure. On the outside, in cursive lettering in black ink, was the word Sisterhood. )

( It’s not often you see a man with a diamond in his beard. But when a prince runs out of space on his ears, fingers and clothes, I suppose the whiskers on his chin are as good a place as any. )

( Vine slipped through the thin doorway. The acoustics of Westminster Hall were different from elsewhere in the Palace. There was no hope of muffling footsteps here, every movement reverberating with a watery echo. He could see the two flights of steps at the far end of the hall. Further up to the right was his escape – the door leading towards St Stephen’s Entrance. He pelted forwards now across the deserted space, pushing his body as hard as it would go. He needed ten seconds more grace and he could do it. Once he was out on to the street, he could lose himself in the mix of cars and foot traffic up towards Millbank. All he needed was one second of hesitation on the part of the DPG guards patrolling the space from Central Lobby. )

( Devlin followed Dumont on to Lower Regent Street. Halfway up the street, Dumont suddenly turned and scanned the crowds as if checking for anyone following. Devlin was safely concealed in the shadow of a shop awning. After a moment, Dumont resumed his walk then 20 yards from Piccadilly Circus, jumped into a taxi that raced off around the boarded-up Eros and into Shaftesbury Avenue. )

( Bridge swore under her breath, coughed as she inhaled the very end of her cigarette, and lit another. It sounded crazy, so low-tech and old-school it couldn’t possibly be true. But then, this whole affair was at odds with itself. Passing coded messages online by pairing them with clues inside newspaper crosswords, transferring data by physically meeting a contact, and now stealing bleeding-edge computer code by snapping pictures of a screen. )

A New Year, and a new opportunity to revive my efforts to review the CWA Dagger nominees. This time I’m going to be sampling titles submitted by publishers for the awards, ahead of the longlist announcements in May. My new job with its hour or so of commuting has given me more reading time (and the more sociable shift patterns have also helped.) There will be (I hope) occasional diversions back to previous winners and other acquisitions from Alton’s excellent second-hand bookshop.

( ‘Terrible news, isn’t it? They’ve fenced off half the bank, Mick White says, though you can’t see it from here. Police teams, sniffer dogs, them white tent things … though what good they think that’ll do now, I don’t know. Whatever’s buried there, it’s been out there in the wind and rain long enough, from what Judy Wallace’s old man said. Her it was that found it, and to hear Mick’s account, their dog snapped it right in half at the elbow, brittle as a stick. Between that and the salt, I don’t suppose there’s much left of it now.’ )

( The door swung open and we went inside the Rangers club. It was cold, stark, dimly lit and there was a sawdusty vinegary smell. The club was utilitarian on the inside too, with a long crude bar that served only Harp and Bass on tap. The chairs were stacked on tables, giving the place an even more desolate appearance. The voice from within belonged to a skinny but tough-looking thirty-year-old bloke with beady brown eyes and a shaved head which made him resemble one of the Talosians from the original series of Star Trek. He was wearing a Rangers away shirt and dungarees, which was an odd an unattractive combination. )

( Westwood clicked off his database and opened up a web browser. Then he glanced at the door and said, “So I guess we’re really doing this.” “No one will know, “ Reacher said. “Until the movie comes out.” )

( You could feasibly throw a tennis ball and cover the distance between Slough House and St Giles Cripplegate, but if you wanted your ball back, it might take a while. For there was no straight route through the Barbican, which resembled an Escher drawing assembled in brick by a spook architect, its primary purpose being not so much to keep you from getting where you were going, but to leave you unsure about where you’d been. Every path led to a junction resembling the one you’d just left, offering routes to nowhere you wanted to go. And set down in the middle of all this, like a paddle steamer in an airport, was the fourteenth century church of St Giles, within whose walls John Milton prayed and Shakespeare daydreamed; which had survived fire, war and restoration, and which now reposed serenely on a brick-tiled square, offering quiet for those needing respite from the city’s buzz, and a resting place for poor sods who’d got lost, and given up hope of rescue. )

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gervase_fen

January 2025

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Page Summary

Disordered Daggers : Razorblade Tears by S A Cosby (2021)
Disordered Daggers : Cold Storage by David Koepp (2019)
Disordered Daggers : A Shadow Intelligence by Oliver Harris (2019)
Disordered Daggers : Between Two Evils by Eva Dolan (2020)
Disordered Daggers : The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware (2019)
Disordered Daggers : Safe Houses by Dan Fesperman (2018)
Disordered Daggers : A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee (2017)
Disordered Daggers : My Name is Nobody by Matthew Richardson (2017)
Disordered Daggers : Merlin at War by Mark Ellis (2017)
Disordered Daggers : The Exphoria Code by Antony Johnston (2017)
Disordered Daggers : The Lying Game by Ruth Ware (2017)
Disordered Daggers : Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly by Adrian McKinty (2017)
Disordered Daggers : Make Me by Lee Child (2015)
Disordered Daggers : Real Tigers by Mick Herron (2016)

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Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

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