August is looking like a very strong month for fans of crime fiction with new titles from several big names as well as a host of other titles amongst which there's sure to be an undiscovered gem or two. Here are our recommendations for books to look out for.

After the genre-transcending The Constant Gardener, which sold over 150,000 copies even before the film adaptation was released, comes yet another guaranteed success story from John le Carre which The Observer describes as "A tale that few could equal and none will surpass."

Crichton's previous book State of Fear sold over 250,000 copies and this promises to achieve similar success. The world of genetics is already spiraling out of control. In this book Michael Crichton tells us what happens Next. Need a new arm? Fine. How about a pet designed to your specifications? Easy. But when human beings play God there are bound to be consequences as this roller coaster ride of a thriller demonstrates.

Already described as "this year's Panic" - when bestselling thriller writer Andrew Danner wakes up in a hospital bed with amnesia, he is horrified to be told that he is responsible for the murder of his ex-fiancee. In the resulting celebrity trial, Drew is exonerated on the grounds of temporary insanity caused by a recent brain tumour. But he still has no idea if he did kill Genevieve, and is desperate to find out. Can Drew discover what really happened that night and unmask the real killer?

New to the thriller genre, Colin Murray's recently published debut After a Dead Dog was very well received. Here he writes about what drew him to the genre in the first place and what he feels are the most important books in its history.

For me, it all started with the black statuette of a bird. It was only about a foot tall and rather unprepossessing, but it was love at first sight...

I’d had mild infatuations before - Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin, the great Gallic ratiocinator of The Purloined Letter, was more than exotic enough to appeal to a twelve-year-old schoolboy from the East End of London - and, almost inevitably, an adolescent crush on the one-time resident of 221B Baker Street. And, fond though my memories are of these two great detectives (and it’s worth remembering that C. Auguste Dupin solved his first case, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, a few years before the word ‘detective’ appeared in the English language), it was Sam Spade, and The Maltese Falcon, who really won my heart.

There was something liberating and refreshing about the ‘blond Satan’. Somerset Maugham may have described him as ‘an unscrupulous rogue and heartless crook’ but that has always seemed to me to be wide of the mark. Certainly, Sam Spade is not a wholly admirable hero (but then Sherlock Holmes is hardly without flaws) but he is, finally, a good and moral man, and a remarkably resourceful, self-confident and uncompromising one. He isn’t motivated by money and he can’t be sidetracked by sex, the forces of law and order don’t intimidate him and he will do what he thinks is right even if that threatens his life. He is free of the baggage that most of us carry, a practical existentialist who can make a difference and knows how to do it.

And then there’s the intriguing tale and the vividly described characters he encounters as he tracks down the killer of his partner, Archer: the beautiful, protean Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a pathological liar who changes her story more often than she changes her underwear; the narcissistic Joel Cairo; Wilmer, the gun-obsessed kid; and, above all, the aptly named Gutman. All of them contrast with the seemingly incorruptible Spade and highlight some aspect of his personality.

Famously, Dashiell Hammett worked for the Pinkerton Agency for a while and, therefore, knew about private detectives and the way they worked. However, I rather doubt that any of them, including the highly moral and completely uncompromising Hammett, ever behaved like Sam Spade. But, then, Hammett wasn’t entirely reflecting life, he was creating one of the great detectives, an archetype, the full-blown, hard-boiled private eye. And he used the leanest of lean prose to do it.

He also used a plot device that I hadn’t come across before. The Maltese Falcon itself is what Alfred Hitchcock called a ‘McGuffin’, a thing, apparently of value, that everyone wants but is really only there to get all the characters in place and the action started. Subsequently, I realized that Wilkie Collins used the same device long before in The Moonstone but The Maltese Falcon introduced it to me and I loved it.

The Maltese Falcon was, alas, Sam Spade’s only outing and so, as a sixteen-year-old haunting the library in Leyton High Road, desperate for more, with only a stern but helpful librarian to turn to, I was bereft.

Affairs with Simenon, Sayers and even Chandler were good and rewarding but they didn’t quite satisfy a certain yearning. (Chandler and Marlowe came close but, stylish and powerful though the books are, the plots somehow lack the clean lines of Hammett’s.)

Then, eventually, I found the Continental Op and I fell in love all over again. Overweight, squat and bald, the Continental Op has no family, no personal history, no real home, and, apparently, no life other than investigating crime. In fact, Hammett stripped him back so far he doesn’t even have a name. And yet he is the apotheosis of the private eye. Unsentimental, clear-eyed and as sharp and hard-boiled as they come, he first appeared in the stories that Hammett wrote for Black Mask in the 1920s and then, memorably, in the ground-breaking novels, Red Harvest and The Dain Curse.

When the Continental Op investigates, he is compelled by a moral righteousness and a sense of duty that amounts to an obsession and when he decides to clean up a town, as he does in Red Harvest when his client is murdered, then that town is comprehensively purged. There’s something of the ferocious Old Testament prophets about the Op.

It is now nudging on towards fifty years since Dashiell Hammett died and more than seventy since his last novel (The Thin Man was published in 1934) but he still casts a long shadow. His prose was clean and precise, his characters vivid and memorable, his plots sharp and controlled and he gave the world Sam Spade and the Continental Op.

Dorothy Parker said of him, ‘He is so hard-boiled you could roll him on the White House lawn. And it is also true that he is a good, hell-bent, cold-hearted writer, with a clear eye for the ways of hard women and a fine ear for the words of hard men.’ And Raymond Chandler’s view was that ‘Hammett took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley…[he] gave murder back to the people who commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse…he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all.’

There are a number of great American crime writers, Chandler himself and, more recently, James Lee Burke spring immediately to mind, but Hammett was one of the first and remains the best.

There’s something of that sixteen-year-old Londoner I once was still remaining inside me and he still remembers that first meeting with Sam Spade and the thrill that it sent through him. And even now, many years and many re-readings later, there’s still a shudder of anticipation when I pick up The Maltese Falcon and read that opening description of Sam and realize that I’m about to be entranced again by the best American detective novel ever written.

by Colin Murray, author of After a Dead Dog, ISBN 978 1 84529 548 6

Suzette A. Hill is the author of the deliciously quirky thriller A Load of Old Bones. It is also her debut novel of sorts, having published it herself previously. She has very kindly written this piece just for us, telling the story behind her publication with great advice for budding authors from someone who knows the game inside out.

Having a “debut” novel commercially published at the advanced age of sixty-six is a curiously surreal, albeit exciting, experience. Certainly it is very gratifying, but it is also unexpected because despite having a literary background (i.e. reading English at two universities and spending all my professional life teaching Eng. Lit.) I never had the remotest desire to write any fiction. What few creative urges I possessed were entirely satisfied in the vicarious pleasure of textual criticism and analysis. Novels I read, discussed, and lectured upon; but I harboured no wish - secret or otherwise - to actually produce one myself. It was only when I retired and moved up to Herefordshire that the Thing happened - and even then it was entirely unplanned.

It all started in bed on a sunny summer’s morning. As I lolled warmly in that comfortable semi-dozing state, the image of a cat slumbering on a stone gatepost came into my mind and would not go away. I am not especially drawn to cats - on the whole preferring dogs - so don’t quite know why the image haunted me, but it did, and the creature began to assume a personality: urbane, smug, supercilious. The picture enlarged - for, presumably to annoy and punctuate the cat’s complacency, there bounded into my mind’s eye an anarchic ragamuffin dog. And then, hovering diffidently in the distance there emerged the vague outline of an Anglican vicar. Thus, quite by accident and half sleep, I had manufactured a ‘living tableau’!

Where these three characters came from I have no idea, but insidiously they implanted themselves in my imagination and I have lived with them ever since. For what began as a tentative experiment to incorporate them into a very, very short story - just to see what it felt like to write fiction - turned itself into a whole novel, and is now nearly a full-blown trilogy. And the irony is, that when I first took up my pencil and wrote the opening line of A Load Of Old Bones - “It was Bouncer who found the leg.” - I had no idea whose leg it was or what the repercussions would be. Totally ill-prepared, I had embarked on the new venture literally clueless as to how the narrative was going to proceed, let alone turn out!

In my teaching days I had always impressed upon my students that tackling a project without due thought to planning and procedure was a hazardous undertaking. To begin writing something with little idea of its course and outcome was not the most sensible technique. But here I was flagrantly breaching my own precepts - and more or less have been doing so ever since! In principle I think that advice was right; but I also think that, in my case, it is precisely this rather ad hoc approach, this lack of forward planning which is the impetus that drives the writing. As I sit at the computer (now generally composing straight onto the screen) I am telling myself a story, and, as with any listener, I am never really sure what is going to happen next or what the characters will do: I write to find out.

But just as at the beginning of the tale there was little notion of what events and situations would enmesh those three characters, neither did I have any concept of what lay in store for the project itself. As I began to write, the thing spiralled and I soon realized that there was no neat ending in sight. Evidently the story was destined to become a novella . . . not so. Novella proportions were soon exceeded and the piece completed itself as a full length novel. Nevertheless, at this stage I had no thoughts of trying for publication: it was enough that I had discovered what it felt like to write fiction, and that to my surprise I had produced a narrative of approximately seventy-five thousand words with, despite the haphazard approach, a beginning, middle, and (admittedly ambiguous) end. However, I had enjoyed the process and was amused by my three characters and their cranky associates and wanted to share the joke with others. So my immediate aim was modest: to get the thing photocopied, ring-bound and plastic-covered, and then duplicated and circulated to about ten or fifteen friends . . . .

Ambitions rarely remain so contained; and emboldened by favourable comments from those friends (well, they would, wouldn’t they!) I started to think seriously of publication. And thus began the old familiar story: eagerly and naïvely I started to approach the publishing firms, and inevitably the rejection slips came flitting back thick and fast. I had read about rejection slips - but as with any affliction, assumed they would never happen to me. They most certainly did! I then discovered that what was needed was an AGENT. Oh that’s all right, I thought, getting one of those should not be too difficult . . . Idiot child! Agents, I discovered, are even more retiring than publishers, and thus the rejection slips continued to mount.

Obviously I was disappointed, but less on account of not being published per se as that the lives of my nonsensical characters, animal and human, should not be given fuller exposure. They had begun to be alive for me and I wanted them to be so for others. Somehow without that objective recognition they would forever remain mere figments of a pensioner’s quirky imagination. The novel had ended on a cliff-hanger, and to satisfy my curiosity I had already embarked on a sequel in which the original characters were developing and fresh ones emerging. Thus it seemed increasingly imperative to find them a wider and more public outlet. There was only one thing to be done: self-publish. Second best, but better than nothing . . . and for one who lacks all business sense and entrepreneurial skills, quite apart from being idle by nature, the prospect was terrifying!

But that is what happened. I found a small printing firm that specializes in dealing with new authors (Able Publishing), and reassured by their friendly encouragement and shrewd advice, ordered a print run of five hundred paperback copies. I had already been recommended a young illustrator, John Sadler, and the comically graphic cartoon that he designed for the cover gave me enormous pleasure and confidence. Thus I was certainly pleased with the product . . . But how to sell it?

The answer, of course, is with difficulty! It is said that desperation drives; but in my case I think it was also a sort of mulish cussedness. Anyway, things started well enough with a nice launch by my local bookshop and a couple of items in the Hereford press, plus a radio interview; but after that it was a question of touting the thing around to independent booksellers, libraries, church gift stalls, fêtes, or indeed anywhere that might be remotely ready to give shelf space to an absurd crime story involving an addled clergyman, his cat and dog, his pompous bishop, a shady spiv and an assortment of refined oddballs.

Grovelling letters were sent, along with innumerable emails and phone calls; inspection copies were dispatched (most disappearing into the ether), and friends enlisted to ‘spread the word’. I became listed on Amazon, managed to set up an account with Waterstones, found one or two branches of the then Ottakars well disposed, mingled with the hordes at the London Book Fair, gave one or two talks to societies (with the novels piled well to the fore!), and managed to get registered with some of the main wholesale distributors. Some of the effort was fruitless, especially where getting review notices was concerned. But nevertheless sales were being made and people seemed to enjoy what they read; the stocks taking up space in my hallway were becoming less mountainous, and I was receiving an intermittent flow of requests for copies from Bertrams, Gardners, et al. Receiving their little brown envelopes always gave me a buzz and I would trudge to the post office with lightened heart!

Somehow I insinuated myself into the Society of Authors. I say ‘insinuated’ because I rather had the impression that it was rare for them to be approached by a self-published author, let alone one with no more than a solitary unknown novel to her name! However, they kindly offered me Associate Membership for which I was grateful; but later on, looking at the smaller print of the regulations, it struck me that I might be eligible for full membership. Thus I made diffident enquiry and was duly accepted. Joining the Society boosted my confidence considerably as I began to feel less isolated and more legitimate, and I have found it an extremely helpful and convivial organization.

And then, miraculously, I was approached out of the blue by a newly launched audio book firm, Joyful Productions, to whom my novel had been recommended by one of the branch managers of Ottakars. This was very exciting, and even more so when the producer was able to interest the distinguished comedy actor Leslie Phillips in performing the part of the cat - which he does suavely and superbly!

Things were certainly looking up. But the real breakthrough came with Constable & Robinson. Still with no agent, I had sent them a copy of the luridly covered paperback and had included for good measure the first fifty pages of its unpublished sequel Bones In The Belfry. . . . Another wistful arrow shot into the air, but this time it fell to fertile ground! I was told that they considered both pieces “completely off the wall” but were prepared to take a gamble and publish the two. Apart from the obvious delight, I was also mightily relieved, for by now the sequel was finished and the prospect of having to start the whole self-publishing lark all over again made me want to go and lie down. As said, idle by nature, I do not think I could have coped with another circuit!

So thank you C & R for having faith - and let’s hope that gamble pays off!