Now in Paperback from Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes & Noble... You Name It

As the Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy, Sebastian Becker delivers justice to those dangerous madmen whose fortunes might otherwise place them above the law.

But in William James he faces a different challenge; to prove a man sane, so that he may hang. Did the reluctant showman really burn down a crowded pavilion with the audience inside? And if not, why is this British sideshow cowboy so determined to shoulder the blame?

The Authentic William James is the third novel to feature ex-police detective and former Pinkerton Man Sebastian Becker, joining The Kingdom of Bones and The Bedlam Detective.

Praising "this superbly crafted thriller", Kirkus Reviews named The Bedlam Detective one of their 100 Best of the Year and called it "that rare beast, a literary page turner".

MysteryTribune.Com described it as "a rare literary masterpiece for lovers of historical crime fiction."

Of The Authentic William James, author and screenwriter Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch, Afterlife, The Parts We Play) says:

"It's a blinding novel... the acerbic wit, the brilliant dialogue - the sheer spot-on elegance of the writing: the plot turns, the pin sharp beats. Always authoritative and convincing, never showy. Magnificently realised characters in a living breathing world... Absolutely stunning."
 
In their starred review of The Authentic William James, Publishers Weekly wrote:
"Gallagher gives Sebastian Becker another puzzle worthy of his quirky sleuth’s acumen in this outstanding third pre-WW1 mystery."
 

"Only bad thing about his books is that they eventually end. Brilliant.”

—Jonny Lee Miller

Five Questions

Towering insights. Answers to the great questions of life. My short interview with Lucy Hay on her Criminally Good blog.

Read it here

Winter Draws On

The Goodreads people have drawn five names from their virtual hat and it's congratulations to Stephanie, Betty, Antoinette, Beryl, and Courtney.

Signed copies of The Authentic William James are on their way.

More Brooligan Press titles and promotions coming soon.

The Northern Crime Quartet

A retrospective ‘umbrella title’ that’s become attached to four consecutive novels written during my publishing run with Hodder & Stoughton, just before the balance of my career tipped more toward screenwriting.

Four linked stories in a shared Northern landscape, playing variations on a theme of flawed good versus complex evil. Though it was never my intention, some were inclined to read it as a deliberate move to leave my horror/fantasy roots behind and claim a piece of the mainstream. It wasn't, but no matter. I was just looking to create different monsters.

Down River is the story of Nick Frazier and Johnny Mays, two childhood friends reunited as plainclothes police officers, one of them tragically unbalanced and ultimately dangerous. It features the promotion of Jennifer McGann from uniformed duties to CID trainee, and includes witness evidence from a teenaged hitchhiker named Lucy Ashdown.

In Nightmare, with Angel, a convicted criminal (Ryan O’Donnell) earns redemption through a self-sacrificing act that reconciles a lost child (Marianne Cadogan) with her equally lost father. Jennifer McGann is the investigating officer on her first big solo case.

Rain follows Down River’s hitchhiking teenager Lucy Ashdown to London in her murdered sister’s footsteps. She’s pursued by suspended DC Joe Lucas as a favour to her dad. She outwits Joe at every turn, but fails to see that the closer she gets to an answer, the closer she is to sharing her sister’s fate.

The Painted Bride features Sandra Novak, lead detective in the case of Frank Tanner, a car dealer whose wife has gone missing; no one believes he’s killed her apart from Molly Gideon, his sister-in-law. She’s a recovering heroin addict with no credibility, but she sacrifices everything to protect the children and bring him to justice.

They’re tales of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances. The settings are Northern cities, moorland, marshes and coastline, plus the ‘80s London of Rain and Nightmare’s European angle with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In each of the stories, the violent are broken and the victims are strong. They prevail.

Next Offer

As the $1.99 Bedlam Detective ebook promotion from Crown continues until the end of the week, here's another story download offer for the coming weekend.

Crown's promotion is restricted to its own territories but the Kindle story offer will be worldwide.

This one includes two short stories. Out of Bedlam is a Becker story originally written for Random House's Dead Good Books online magazine. The Plot is a standalone which, taken together with the novella In Gethsemane, represents one of my earliest ventures into historical fiction.

Click here for the 2 stories

Click here for The Bedlam Detective promotion

This Weekend's Offer

The Random House $1.99 price-cut promotion on The Bedlam Detective ebook applies across all platforms but not, as far as I can see, in all territories... if you're in the UK, for example, the links will take you to the Ebury Press ebook at a (still very modest) £3.99.

So over the weekend, by way of compensation, you can get this Becker short story for nothing in an Amazon free ebook promotion.

Of course, some of you can get the cut-price book and the free story... in which case, yay, Go You.

There's another free Becker story scheduled for the following weekend. More on that soon. In the meantime click here or on the cover in the right-hand column for the story link.

The Authentic William James: the paperback

For a limited period from October 22nd, and backed by an ad campaign on Bookbub, Random House will be cutting the price of The Bedlam Detective ebook edition to $1.99.

No a bad curtain-raiser for this:

Publication of The Authentic William James trade paperback edition is set for December in all territories. Copies for review were dispatched last month, but I can tell you that some of the books are escaping out into the wild ahead of the date.

At the end of October Goodreads will be running a giveaway promotion, with five signed copies in a free-to-enter draw.

Here's a taster:

The ebook's been on sale in the US from Subterranean since last September, but the exclusivity period is now over. Which means that The Authentic William James will be available digitally in all territories and on all platforms as of November 2nd.

Richard Dalby 1949-2017

A supreme scholar, a gentle soul, and a great loss to the field and all who knew him.

We met in the '90s when Richard invited me over to Scarborough to talk about my Stoker-inspired project (then called Victorian Gothic, it would later become The Kingdom of Bones and the first of the Sebastian Becker books).

Richard had produced the definitive Stoker bibliography and also had a wonderful selection of early editions and other material. These included a Dracula first, found in a West Country book shop for £8, and Stoker's personal annotated copy of The Man. Richard had discovered that one in the back of a dusty bookstore and when he took it to the desk to pay, the shop's owner thumbed through it and then knocked a couple of quid off the price "because it's been written in".

Richard had two houses, one to live in and one for his books; the book house was entirely that, as far as I saw, shelved like a library in every room. He kindly photocopied Stoker's then-unobtainable Snowbound story collection for me, and later as editor picked up some of my own stuff for his anthologies.

I don't claim we were close, and in later years we pretty much fell out of touch, but I count our meeting as one of the significant waypoints in my life.