Exit Wounds, page 26
DENNIS LEHANE grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. Since his first novel, A Drink Before the War, won the Shamus Award, he has published twelve more novels, which have been translated into more than thirty languages and become international best-sellers: Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; Mystic River; Shutter Island; The Given Day; Moonlight Mile; Live By Night; and World Gone By. His most recent work is a stand-alone novel, Since We Fell.
Four of his novels – Live By Night; Mystic River; Gone, Baby, Gone and Shutter Island – have been adapted into films. A fifth, The Drop, was adapted by Lehane himself into a film starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and James Gandolfini in his final role. Lehane was a staff writer on the acclaimed HBO series The Wire and also worked as a writer-producer on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and the Netflix series, Bloodline. Lehane currently is a writer and producer on the television adaptation of Stephen King’s Mr Mercedes.
Lehane was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a counsellor with mentally handicapped and abused children, waited tables, parked cars, drove limos, worked in bookstores and loaded tractor-trailers. Lehane and his family live in California.
ALEX GRAY was born and educated in Glasgow. After studying English and Philosophy at the University of Strathclyde, she worked as a visiting officer for the Department of Health and Social Security, a time she looks upon as postgraduate education since it proved a rich source of character studies. She then trained as a secondary school English teacher. Alex began writing professionally in 1992 and had immediate success with short stories, articles and commissions for BBC radio programmes. She has been awarded the Scottish Association of Writers’ Constable and Pitlochry trophies for her crime writing. A regular on the Scottish best-seller lists, her previous novels include Five Ways to Kill a Man, Glasgow Kiss, Pitch Black, The Riverman, Never Somewhere Else, The Swedish Girl and Keep the Midnight Out. She is the co-founder of the international Scottish crime writing festival, Bloody Scotland, which had its inaugural year in 2012.
LEE CHILD was born in 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in the nearby city of Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school that J.R.R. Tolkien had attended. He went to law school in Sheffield, and after part-time work in the theatre he joined Granada Television in Manchester for what turned out to be an eighteen-year career as a presentation director during British television’s golden age. During his tenure his company made Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect and Cracker. But he was fired in 1995 at the age of forty as a result of corporate restructuring. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars’ worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, Killing Floor, the first in the Jack Reacher series. There are now twenty-three Jack Reacher novels, all New York Times best-sellers, with foreign rights sold in 101 territories. Forbes calls it “the strongest brand in publishing”.
His series hero, Jack Reacher, besides being fictional, is a kind-hearted soul who allows Lee lots of spare time for reading, listening to music, the Yankees and Aston Villa. He is married with a grown-up daughter. Visit www.leechild.com for info about the novels, short stories, the “Jack Reacher” movies and more – or find Lee on: Facebook.com/LeeChildOfficial, Twitter.com/LeeChildReacher and YouTube.com/leechildjackreacher
VAL MCDERMID is a number one best-seller whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages and have sold over fifteen million copies. She has won many international awards, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010 and received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award in 2011. In 2016 she received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction award at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2017 she received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime. She writes full time and divides her time between Cheshire and Edinburgh.
STEPH BROADRIBB has an MA in Creative Writing (Crime Fiction) and trained as a bounty hunter in California. Her debut thriller Deep Down Dead (Orenda Books) featuring single mom bounty hunter, Lori Anderson, was shortlisted for the eDunnit eBook of the year award, the International Thriller Writers Best First Novel, and the Dead Good Reader Awards for Fearless Female Character and Most Exceptional Debut. The third book in the series, Deep Dirty Truth, was published in January 2019. Under her pseudonym Stephanie Marland she also writes the Starke/Bell psychological police procedural series (Trapeze – Orion). She blogs about all things crime fiction at www.crimethrillergirl.com and is a writing coach at www.crimefictioncoach.com
CHRISTOPHER FOWLER is the multi-award-winning author of forty-five novels and story collections, and the author of the Bryant & May mysteries. His novels include Roofworld, Spanky, Psychoville, The Sand Men and two volumes of memoirs, the award-winning Paperboy and Film Freak. In 2015 he won the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library for his body of work. His latest novel is Bryant & May: The Lonely Hour.
When he was a senior in college, DEAN KOONTZ won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition and has been writing ever since. His books are published in thirty-eight languages and he has sold over 500 million copies to date. Fourteen of his novels have risen to number one on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list (One Door Away From Heaven, From the Corner of His Eye, Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Intensity, Sole Survivor, The Husband, Odd Hours, Relentless, What the Night Knows and 77 Shadow Street), making him one of only a dozen writers ever to have achieved that milestone. Sixteen of his books have risen to the number one position in paperback. His books have also been major best-sellers in countries as diverse as Japan and Sweden.
The New York Times has called his writing “psychologically complex, masterly and satisfying”: The New Orleans Times-Picayune said Koontz is “at times lyrical without ever being naive or romantic. [He creates] a grotesque world, much like that of Flannery O’Conner or Walker Percy … scary, worthwhile reading”; and Rolling Stone has hailed him as “America’s most popular suspense novelist”.
Dean Koontz was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University), and his first job after graduation was with the Appalachian Poverty Program, where he was expected to counsel and tutor underprivileged children on a one-to-one basis. His first day on the job, he discovered that the previous occupier of his position had been beaten up by the very kids he had been trying to help and had landed in the hospital for several weeks. The following year was filled with challenge but also tension, and Koontz was more highly motivated than ever to build a career as a writer. He wrote nights and weekends, which he continued to do after leaving the Poverty Program and going to work as an English teacher in a suburban school district outside Harrisburg. After a year and a half in that position, his wife, Gerda, made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: “I’ll support you for five years,” she said, “and if you can’t make it as a writer in that time, you’ll never make it.” By the end of those five years, Gerda had quit her job to run the business end of her husband’s writing career.
Dean Koontz lives in southern California with Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirit of their goldens, Trixie and Anna.
Formerly a punk-cabaret singer and composer, A.K. BENEDICT is now “one of the new stars of crime with a supernatural twist” (Sunday Express). Her debut novel, The Beauty of Murder, was shortlisted for the eDunnit award and is in development for a major eight-part TV series. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in Best British Short Stories, Magma, Great British Horror, New Fears, Phantoms and Best British Horror Stories; her audio drama includes episodes of Doctor Who and Torchwood. Her second novel, The Evidence of Ghosts, published by Orion, explores her obsession with haunted London. She is Royal Literary Fellow for the University of Kent, Medway and Deputy Programme Director for the Crime Thriller MA at City, University of London. She lives in Rochester with writer Guy Adams and their dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.
JAMES OSWALD is the author of the Sunday Times best-selling Inspector McLean series of crime novels, as well as the first in the new Constance Fairchild series, No Time To Cry. As J. D. Oswald he has written the epic fantasy series The Ballad of Sir Benfro. In his spare time James runs a 350-acre livestock farm in Fife, where he raises pedigree Highland cattle and New Zealand Romney sheep.
JOE R. LANSDALE is the author of forty-five novels and four hundred shorter works, including stories, essays, reviews, film and television scripts, introductions and magazine articles. His work has been made into films – Bubba Hotep, Cold in July– as well as the acclaimed US TV show Hap and Leonard. He has also had works adapted for Masters of Horror, on Showtime, and wrote scripts for Batman: The Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series. He scripted a special Jonah Hex animated short, as well as the animated Batman film, Son of Batman. He has also written scripts for John Irvin, John Wells and Ridley Scott, as well as the Sundance TV show based on his work, Hap and Leonard. His works have been optioned for film multiple times, and many continue to be under option at the moment.
He has received numerous recognitions for his work. Among them the Edgar, for his crime novel The Bottoms, the Spur, for his historical western Paradise Sky, as well as ten Bram Stokers for his horror works. He has also received the Grandmaster Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association. He has been recognised for his contributions to comics with the Inkpot Life Achievement Award, and he has also received the British Fantasy Award and has had two New York Times Notable Books. He has been honoured with the Italian Grinzane Cavour Prize, the Sugar Pulp Prize for Fiction and the Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award. The Edge of Dark Water was listed by Booklist as an Editor’s Choice, and the American Library Association chose The Thicket for Adult Books for Young Adults. Library Journal voted The Thicket as one of the Best Historical Novels of the Year.
He has also received an American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award, and the Shot in the Dark International Crime Writer’s Award. He was recognised for his contributions to the legacy of Edgar Rice Burroughs with the Golden Lion Award. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Literature and has been inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame and is Writer in Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University.
His work has also been nominated multiple times for the World Fantasy Award and numerous times for Bram Stoker Awards, the Macavity Award, as well as the Dashiell Hammett Award, and others. He has been inducted into the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame, as well as the United States Martial Arts Hall of Fame, and is the founder of the Shen Chuan martial arts system.
His books and stories have been translated into a number of languages. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife Karen, a pit bull and a cranky cat.
PAUL FINCH is a former cop and journalist now turned best-selling crime and thriller writer, and is the author of the very popular DS Mark “Heck” Heckenburg and DC Lucy Clayburn novels. Paul first cut his literary teeth penning episodes of the British TV crime drama The Bill, and has written extensively in horror, fantasy and science fiction, including for Doctor Who. However, he is probably best known for his crime/thriller novels, specifically the Heckenburg police-actioners, of which there are seven to date, and the Clayburn procedurals, of which there are two. The first three books in the Heck line achieved official best-seller status, the second being the fastest pre-ordered title in HarperCollins history, while the first Lucy Clayburn novel made the Sunday Times Top 10 list. The Heck series alone has accrued over 2,000 five-star reviews on Amazon.
Paul is a native of Wigan, Lancashire, where he still lives with his wife and business partner, Cathy.
LOUISE JENSEN is the author of international number one best-sellers The Sister, The Gift, The Surrogate and The Date. Her novels have sold in excess of a million English language copies and been published in twenty languages, while The Gift has been optioned for a film. Louise was nominated for the Goodreads Debut Author Award in 2016 and is a best-selling author of USA Today and the Wall Street Journal.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
PAUL B. KANE is an award-winning author and editor who has worked in the fields of science fiction and dark fantasy (most notably the best-selling Arrowhead trilogy, a post-apocalyptic reworking of Robin Hood – as Paul Kane – gathered together in the sell-out Hooded Man omnibus) and the young adult market (The Rainbow Man, as P.B. Kane). He penned the well-received Sherlock Holmes stories “The Greatest Mystery” and “The Case of the Lost Soul”, and the critically acclaimed full-length mass-market novel, Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell (which appeared on several “Best of 2016” listings and won a Skadi Award). Paul is also the author of the serial killer chiller, The Gemini Factor, the number one Amazon best-seller Pain Cages, The PI’s Tale and he has a collection of crime/ psychological stories out now called Nailbiters.
His other co-edited anthologies include Beyond Rue Morgue – all new stories revolving around Poe’s detective C. Auguste Dupin – Hellbound Hearts and A Carnivàle of Horror, while others in the past have featured the likes of Michael Marshall (Intruders), Richard Matheson (Duel) and Robert Bloch (Psycho). He has been a guest at many events and conventions, and his work has been optioned for film and television (including Lions Gate/NBC, who adapted one of his stories for US primetime network TV). Several of his stories have been turned into short films, he is currently adapting his novel Lunar into a movie for a UK production company, and Loose Canon Films are turning his story “Men of the Cloth” into a feature. His website www.shadow-writer.co.uk has featured guest writers such as Thomas Harris, Mo Hayder, Stuart MacBride, Ian Rankin, Kathy Reichs and Stephen King.
MARIE O’REGAN is a three-time British Fantasy Award-nominated author and editor. Based in Derbyshire, she is the author of three collections of short stories – Mirror Mere, In Times of Want and The Last Ghost and Other Stories– as well as the novellas Bury Them Deep and Resurrection Blues. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of genre magazines and anthologies in the UK, US, Canada, Italy and Germany, including Best British Horror 2014, Great British Horror: Dark Satanic Mills (2017) and The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories (2018). She was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Short Story in 2006, and Best Anthology in 2010 (Hellbound Hearts) and 2012 (Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women). Her genre journalism has appeared in magazines such as The Dark Side, Rue Morgue and Fortean Times, and her interview book with prominent figures from the horror genre, Voices in the Dark, was released in 2011. An essay, “The Changeling”, was published in PS Publishing’s Cinema Macabre, edited by Mark Morris and introduced by Jonathan Ross. She is co-editor of the best-selling Hellbound Hearts, Mammoth Book of Body Horror and A Carnivàle of Horror – Dark Tales from the Fairground, plus editor of the best-selling The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women and Phantoms.
Marie is co-chair of the UK chapter of the Horror Writers Association, and is currently organising StokerCon UK, which will take place in Scarborough in April 2020. She is represented by Jamie Cowen of the Ampersand Agency. www.marieoregan.net
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Time for some thank-yous. To begin with our heartfelt thanks to all the authors who kindly contributed to this anthology – and especially John Connolly for all his help throughout. Our thanks also to Miranda Jewess for taking on this project, Joanna Harwood for all her hard work on it, and the whole team at Titan Books. Thanks to Jamie Cowen and, as always, our family for all their help and support in bringing Exit Wounds into being.
COPYRIGHT AND FIRST PUBLICATION INFORMATION
INTRODUCTION copyright © Paul B. Kane & Marie O’Regan 2019.
THE BULLY copyright © Jeffery Deaver 2019. DEAD WEIGHT copyright © Fiona Cummins 2019.
LIKE A GLASS JAW copyright © Mark Billingham Ltd 2015. This story was originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015 as part of the series Blood, Sweat and Tears.
ON THE ANATOMIZATION OF AN UNKNOWN MAN (1637) BY FRANS MIER copyright © John Connolly 2016. Originally published in Night Music: Nocturnes 2. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE PITCHER copyright © Sarah Hilary 2019.
DISCIPLINED copyright © Martyn Waites 2019.
THE CONSUMERS copyright © Dennis Lehane 2012. Originally published in Mystery Writers of America present Vengeance. Reprinted by permission of the author.
VOICES THROUGH THE WALL copyright © Alex Gray 2009. Originally published in Shattered: Every Crime has a Victim. Reprinted by permission of the author.
WET WITH RAIN copyright © Lee Child 2014. Originally published in Belfast Noir. Reprinted by permission of the author.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS copyright © Val McDermid 2008. Originally published in the Daily Mail. Reprinted by permission of the author.
FOOL YOU TWICE copyright © Marland Broadribb Ltd 2019.
LEBENSRAUM copyright © Christopher Fowler 2019.
DANCING TOWARDS THE BLADE copyright © Mark Billingham Ltd. A version of this story was first published in Men From Boys, edited by John Harvey. Published by William Heinemann Ltd, 2003. Reprinted by permission of the author.
KITTENS copyright © Dean Koontz 1966. Originally published in The Reflector, Shippensburg University, Shippensburg, Pennsylvania; revised edition © Dean R. Koontz 1995. Reprinted by permission of the author.
TAKE MY HAND copyright © A.K. Benedict 2019.
DRESSED TO KILL copyright © James Oswald 2019.
BOOTY AND THE BEAST copyright © Joe R. Lansdale 1995. Originally published in Archon Gaming. Reprinted by permission of the author.
