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WINNER OF THE HRF KEATING AWARD FOR BEST NON-FICTION CRIME BOOK 2018 An entertaining history of British thrillers from Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed, in which award-winning crime writer Mike Ripley reveals that, though Britain may have lost an empire, her thrillers helped save the world. With a foreword by Lee Child.When Ian Fleming dismissed his books in a 1956 letter to Raymond Chandler as ‘straight pillow fantasies of the bang-bang, kiss-kiss variety’ he was being typically immodest. In three short years, his James Bond novels were already spearheading a boom in thriller fiction that would dominate the bestseller lists, not just in Britain, but internationally.The decade following World War II had seen Britain lose an Empire, demoted in terms of global power and status and economically crippled by debt; yet its fictional spies, secret agents, soldiers, sailors and even (occasionally) journalists were now saving the world on a regular basis.From Ian Fleming and Alistair MacLean in the 1950s through Desmond Bagley, Dick Francis, Len Deighton and John Le Carré in the 1960s, to Frederick Forsyth and Jack Higgins in the 1970s.Many have been labelled ‘boys’ books’ written by men who probably never grew up but, as award-winning writer and critic Mike Ripley recounts, the thrillers of this period provided the reader with thrills, adventure and escapism, usually in exotic settings, or as today’s leading thriller writer Lee Child puts it in his Foreword: ‘the thrill of immersion in a fast and gaudy world.’In Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Ripley examines the rise of the thriller from the austere 1950s through the boom time of the Swinging Sixties and early 1970s, examining some 150 British authors (plus a few notable South Africans). Drawing upon conversations with many of the authors mentioned in the book, he shows how British writers, working very much in the shadow of World War II, came to dominate the field of adventure thrillers and the two types of spy story – spy fantasy (as epitomised by Ian Fleming’s James Bond) and the more realistic spy fiction created by Deighton, Le Carré and Ted Allbeury, plus the many variations (and imitators) in between.

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The truth is stranger than fiction for Albert Campion in this gripping mystery where murder, detective novels and the supernatural collide. 1946, London . The eagerly anticipated new detective novel from Albert Campion's godsibling, bestselling author Evadne Childe, is proving to be another runaway success. Unfortunately, it has also caught the attention of Superintendent Stanislaus Oates for reasons that go beyond its superior plotting. The crime at the heart of The Bottle Party Murder bears a number of striking similarities to a very real, recent and unsolved murder at the Grafton Club in Soho. Evadne wrote the book before the murder occurred, yet predicts it remarkably accurately – is it just a weird coincidence, is Evadne getting her information from 'the other side', or is something more sinister afoot? The repercussions of this extraordinary and complex case will reach out over the next fifteen years, drawing in three of Mr Campion's favourite policemen – Oates, Yeo and Luke – before finally coming to its violent conclusion in 1962.

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'England's funniest crime writer' The Times
'Charming and full of surprises' Booklist
Strange things happen in the picture-postcard English village of Lindsay Carfax. When a young man falls into a quarry, it takes nine days to find the body. When rowdy hippies descend on the village, they’re given nine days to leave. When an outspoken schoolmaster is kidnapped for nine days, he stays eerily quiet after his release.
Now Albert Campion has come to town – meaning to investigate all this strangeness. But whoever is behind the unusual goings-on quickly makes it very clear that his nosing around is not welcome. Undeterred by threats, Campion is determined to expose the criminal masterminds hiding in this sleepy village.

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