The Sam Jones Mysteries: Volumes 5-7

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“Zips along...bursting with rare energy and fire...Henderson writes with utter conviction, exposing what it's like to be young, wild and hard-hearted in London. Bitchy, bouncy and ba-ad." - Val McDermid

For the 1st time ever Volumes 5-7 of Lauren Henderson’s awesome Sam Jones Mysteries brought together in one volume.

The Strawberry Tattoo: Some detectives work at it, and others just fall into the habit ... Lauren Henderson's Sam Jones goes about her career as a sculptor and wild woman about town with very little intention of getting perpetually into various sorts of trouble, but wherever she is, trouble finds her. Sam Jones can't resist the opportunity to do Manhattan when she's invited to a group show at a New York gallery featuring young British artists. But almost as soon as she arrives one of the gallery employees is murdered, and the body count keep rising. All she wants to do is get her mobiles set up, rebuild her friendship with an old friend who left London to live with her expatriate father years before and keep a drunken snog with one of her fellow exhibitees from getting too embarrassing.

Chained: When sleuthing sculptor Sam Jones wakes up handcuffed in a cellar she naturally assumes she is suffering the aftermath of a great night out. But then she realizes that she's chained to a beam in the ceiling and the cellar door is locked. As her memory returns, she recalls all too vividly being kidnapped from the car park of the film studios where her boyfriend, Hugo, is shooting a TV series. Chained! is another outing for Henderson's incident-prone heroine, one in which she is as far from the conventional woman-in-peril as it is possible to be without being superhuman.It all starts when she gets a job as technical consultant on a television thriller starring her rather camp boyfriend Hugo, and finds herself caught up in the affairs of actress Sarah, for whom she is performing the welding bits of Sarah's role. Sarah has robust views, vigorously expressed, about the wearing of fur, and has become the target of Animal Rights Groups' hate mail and malicious practical jokes on set--it seems obvious to Sam that she has been mistaken for Sarah. Freed, she helps the police, but also puts her own investigation into play.

Pretty Boy: Every murderer's worst nightmare, Sam Jones, is unleashed for her seventh outing. It's New Year's Eve in the quiet village of Lesser Swinfold and Sam Jones - sculptor and involuntary sleuth - has arrived together with her boyfriend, Hugo, to celebrate. Sam's best friend, Tom, has taken a job there as a primary school teacher in the hope of meeting plenty of available and sex-hungry single mothers. Unfortunately, fireworks aren't the only thing exploding over the holidays. Hugo loathes the country. Tom has failed to score but is hopelessly in love, and Sam is flirting with a twenty-two-year-old with the face of a fallen angel. Distracted by the appalling state of her love-live, the discovery of a dead body is an unwelcome complication for Sam, especially when Tom becomes the principle suspect . . .

“This is what heroines are all about - tough as old boots but as glamorous as a pair of Manalos. Not to mention frisky as hell” Mirror

“Nice amoral fun, injecting a tart-noir modernity into traditional sleuthing” Guardian

“An opinionated, sexy, courageous and delightful heroine." The Times