OVER 40 NEW STORIES FROM BRITAIN’S LEADING CRIME WRITERS Leading editor and reviewer Maxim Jakubowski has compiled another beguiling collection of the year’s best new short crime fiction from the UK. Ian Rankin’s perennially popular Edinburgh cop, Inspector Rebus, makes an unexpected comeback in a short, but intriguing story, ‘The Very Last Drop’, and the collection closes with another Rankin story, ‘Driven’. Making their first appearance in the series are many luminaries such as Kate Atkinson, Louise Welsh, Stephen Booth, Christopher Brookmyre, Colin Bateman, A. L. Kennedy, Sheila Quigley, Lin Anderson, Simon Kernick and David Hewson. Also represented are exciting up-and-coming...

Once she was the face that launched a thousand hits. Now Birdie Walker - rock widow and con-woman - is scratching at the dark heart of the music industry. Twenty years ago Birdie and her rockstar lover, Jack, were the most famous couple alive, but it is a past she can no longer live up to.

Part-time wrestler, nighttime security guard, and all-the-time big, ugly, bad-tempered, and proud of it, Eva Wylie knows how to stand out in a crowd. She should. In the ring, she's the London Lassassin, with a reputation as one of the meanest, toughest villains in the business. She's permanently banned from the ring, broke, and out of shape, but Eva, the London Lassassin, figures it will take a lot worse than that to floor her. That's before she finds a sports bag stuffed with bank notes in one of her serially "borrowed" cars. Soon Eva has big dreams of staging a wrestling comeback. Then her newfound loot brings her a tougher audience than any she's ever faced down. It isn't long before...

This novel shows how Eva cuts a swathe through London low-life. Big, ugly and irresistible, she's a female wrestler with criminal tendencies and large pectorals. When she's not working the sleazy wrestling circuit, she's a security guard living in a breaker's yard.

Eva Wylie, the heavyweight wrestler heroine of "Bucket Nut", returns. She has a big mouth and large biceps, but meets her match in tiny, tenacious Crystal, a street companion from the past. Crystal's prostitute sister has been beaten to death and she's seeking revenge.

Don't judge a book by its cover, or a bag lady by her appearance. 'I didn't always look like this,' she says. 'Being barmy doesn't mean I'm stupid.' Lady Bag does have her problems - her close relationship with cheap red wine, for example. When she gets hammered she talks to her dog. When she's extra-hammered her dog talks to her. Guess who makes better sense. She and her rescue greyhound, Electra, wander through the streets of London, seeing a Dickensian side of the capital city that's visible only to the homeless. Together they accept the kindness and unkindness of strangers with the same wry patience. Until, on one dreadful day, they meet the Devil outside the National Portrait...

От классической новеллы с головоломкой, которую читатель решает вместе с ее героями, до криминального триллера, полного неожиданных поворотов сюжета, — в сборник вошли только лучшие английские детективы. Кто-то из 32 выдающихся авторов Туманного Альбиона, как Агата Кристи или Артур Конан Дойл, в представлении не нуждается, кто-то станет настоящим открытием.