Christina Koning

'A sheer delight' Daily Mail April, 1945. Paris has been liberated, but it is not the city blind veteran Frederick Rowlands remembers from the Great War. Summoned by MI5 agent Iris Barnes, Rowlands is drawn into a hunt for traitors and a key witness is a young woman calling herself Clara Metzner, newly released from Ravensbrück concentration camp. Rowlands once met Clara in Berlin twelve years earlier- but the horrors she has endured have changed her beyond recognition, and he must confirm who she really is. But then the investigation is derailed by a shocking death, possibly murder, and Rowlands plunges into the dangerous world of Parisian high society, where secrets linger, loyalties blur and a killer waits in the shadows.

Murder in Paris takes us behind the scenes in Parisian high society populated by suspected collaborators. Paris, 1945. Frederick Rowlands arrives in a city riven by the political turmoil following the Liberation at the behest of MI5 agent, Iris Barnes. A young woman calling herself Clara Metzner has just been released from Ravensbrück concentration camp - and Rowlands, who last met her in Berlin in 1933, has been given the task of confirming whether she is who she says she is. This is far from easy, not only because of Rowlands'' blindness, but because Clara''s experiences have changed her almost out of recognition. But her evidence may be vital in assisting Iris to track down suspected collaborators in the upper echelons of French society. Then Clara - or the girl who is claiming to be her - is found dead, in circumstances that point to murder. Thrown into the unfamiliar world of Parisian high society, Rowlands must track down the killer, and prevent further deaths - including his own. Allison & Busby are proud to publish a brand new instalment in the Blind Detective series, Murder in Paris. Koning''s books have won awards and attracted great critical and commercial success.

Oxford, 1942. Frederick Rowlands receives an urgent summons to the university city from his old friend - also a blinded war veteran - Major Ian Fraser. They are to meet Professor Duncan Challoner, Fellow of Brasenose College, now working with MI5 at nearby Blenheim Palace. Challoner is about to divulge the identity of an enemy agent at Blenheim - but is murdered before he can do so. Also taking an interest in the case is MI5 agent Iris Barnes, who has her own reasons for wanting to track down the traitor.Now the race is on to find the murderer before he - or she - can kill again, and to prevent vital plans for a covert British mission to steal key components of the German radar system from under the enemy''s nose being compromised. For Rowlands, the stakes could not be higher, in this deadly game of cat-and-mouse.