Book 10

The Wicked Go to Hell

by Frederic Dard

Published 4 August 2016
We'll lock you both up in the same jail cell... a tough one... the sort of place that gives kindly old ladies the shivers.

At one of France's toughest prisons, an undercover cop is attempting to trap an enemy spy by posing as a fellow inmate. So Frank and Hal find themselves holed up together in a grimy, rat-infested cell, each warily eyeing the other. As they plan a daring escape, an unexpected friendship ensues - but which is the cop and which is the spy?

Book 11

Crush

by Frederic Dard

Published 6 October 2016
Bored with her mundane factory job, her nagging mother and her alcoholic father-in-law, Louise is captivated by a glamorous American couple who move to her industrial hometown in Northern France. The Roolands' home is an island of colour, good humour and easy living in drab 1950s Léopoldville, and soon Louise is working there as a maid. But once she is under her new employers' roof their model life starts to fall apart - painful secrets from their past emerge, cracks in their relationship appear and a dark obsession begins to grow, which will end in murder...

Book 13

The King of Fools

by Frederic Dard

Published 4 May 2017

An ingenious thriller, set in Edinburgh, from the master of French noir

From the moment he first gazes at Marjory across the roulette table in the Côte d'Azur Jean-Marie is entranced, and when their feverish holiday romance comes to an end he decides to take the biggest gamble of his life - to follow the beautiful Englishwoman back to rainy Edinburgh.

But Jean-Marie's luck runs out as soon as he arrives. His infatuation with Marjory draws him into an impenetrable mystery and soon he finds himself with blood on his hands, trapped in the grey-granite labyrinth of the city streets, and running out of time to save his sanity and his life. The King of Fools is a fiendish tale of passion, betrayal and murder.

Frédéric Dard (1921-2000) was one of the best known and loved French crime writers of the twentieth century. Enormously prolific, he wrote hundreds of thrillers, suspense stories, plays and screenplays throughout his long and illustrious career. Dard's Bird in a Cage, The Wicked Go to Hell, Crush, The Executioner Weeps and The Gravediggers' Bread are also available or forthcoming from Pushkin Vertigo.


Book 14

The Gravediggers' Bread

by Frederic Dard

Published 28 June 2018
Putting dead bodies in the ground for a living could give anyone ideas...

Blaise is out of work and down on his luck when a chance encounter with a beautiful blonde has him hooked. He'll do anything to stay by her side, even if it means working for her husband, a funeral director. But as everyone knows, three's a crowd.

Bird in a Cage

by Frederic Dard

Published 2 June 2016
It felt like the slipknot on a rope round my chest was being tightened without pity

Trouble is the last thing Albert needs. Travelling back to his childhood home on Christmas Eve to mourn his mother's death, he finds the loneliness and nostalgia of his Parisian quartier unbearable... Until, that evening, he encounters a beautiful, seemingly innocent woman at a brasserie, and his spirits are lifted.

Still, something about the woman disturbs him. Where is the father of her child? And what are those two red stains on her sleeve? When she invites him back to her apartment, Albert thinks he's in luck. But a monstrous scene awaits them, and he finds himself lured into the darkness against his better judgment.

Unravelling like a paranoid nightmare, Bird in a Cage melds existentialist drama with thrilling noir to tell the story of a man trapped in a prison of his own making.