Heck returns this autumn in all new novel

I’m absolutely delighted to announce that the Mark Heckenburg crime series will recommence in the autumn of this year, with a scheduled publication date of mid-October.

There. I’ve said it, I’m committed to it and nothing will change it. 

I know that for fans of the Heck novels there have been false daws previously, which has been agonising for me as well, I assure you. But all the days of uncertainty at last are over, and I’ll be bringing the next novel out - it’s called ROGUE, and will be the eighth in the Heck series - in time for the Christmas market. It’s been a long and difficult road, this, and I’ll explain a little bit about the problems that have arisen.

First though, as a quick interlude, just a quick reminder that there will be no Terror Tales volume this year, as my bandwidth is simply too full, but that we’ll be making up for it next year with a bumper edition, TERROR TALES OF CHAOS, as provided by a host of top horror names. 

And now, back to the main news item of the day ...

Heck returns

The Heck series was a great success for me. The first batch of Heck novels ran from 2012 until 2018. There were seven in total, but also a number of short stories and novellas. 

They follow the investigations of a young detective sergeant attached to the Serial Crimes Unit, a subsection of the National Grime Group (a kind of British version of the FBI, and before anyone says anything, the first of these books was published before the National Crime Agency was born, so as I always say, Scotland Yard got the idea from me).

As a cop whose brief is to follow the very worst of the worst - serial killers and rapists, hitmen, torturers and other violent psychopaths who are all deemed likely to continue their reigns of terror until brought to book - Heck has got himself into some unenviable scrapes over the years, and thanks to his unit’s remit to cover the whole of England and Wales, has pursued ultra-dangerous offenders in locations as far apart as the Thames estuary, Sunderland, the Lake District, Manchester and even on occasion, in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands. 

At the core of the overarching story sits Heck’s difficult relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Gemma Piper, who by this time, as the detective superintendent in charge of the Serial Crimes Unit (or SCU), had become his senior supervisor.

Heck and Gemma had originally split up for spurious reasons (mainly Heck’s) and by the time the books start, have a purely professional relationship, though of course things can never be that simple.

Throughout the books and stories, they unsuccessfully try to keep each other at arm’s length. In fact, they hold each other in such unspoken affection that simply concealing it is difficult, though increasingly not so much for Gemma, who as the straightest bat in the police service is endlessly frustrated by Heck’s more chaotic approach to the job.

Basically, Heck will stop at nothing to shut down the careers of those he considers to be enemies of society. And this isn’t just restricted to playing every trick in the book. If necessary, he can and will strongarm his targets. Of course, that’s a dangerous game in the modern police era. You can end up in prison yourself, which for Heck would be a death sentence. So, he continually walks a perilous tightrope through the world of law enforcement, as often at odds with his own side as with the opposition.

What happened?

The reason the Heck series came to its temporary halt in 2018, with KISS OF DEATH the most recent caper in chronological terms, is purely technical. 

In short, I changed publishers. 

Avon Books were part of HarperCollins, who enabled me to create the Heck series, and I had many happy years rolling out the novels for them. When I moved to Orion in 2020, they were willing to continue the series under their banner - which was amazingly generous of them, given that Heck had never been their original character - but in the end, it was my own decision to write stand-alones for Orion. Two of these books were produced: ONE EYE OPEN and NEVER SEEN AGAIN. Again, they were no holds barred crime thrillers, set in the same universe as Heck (the National Crime Group and the Serial Crimes Unit were all referenced, though Heck himself didn’t appear).

After writing a couple of historical novels for Canelo - USURPER and BATTLE LORD - something I was simply desperate to do, I’ve now returned to the crime fiction scene with Thomas & Mercer, who have commissioned two more stand-alone novels, DEATH LIST and THE MURDER TOUR. Again, these are not Heck novels, but seeing that they are only slated for publication in 2025, T&M have very graciously allowed me to bring the next Heck novel out this year.

Anyway, that’s the background stuff. Now ...

Where do we pick up?

The Heck series resumes a very short time after KISS OF DEATH.

For those new to the series, KISS OF DEATH saw Gemma Piper’s Serial Crimes Unit, under dire threat of being axed in order to save costs, and thus put under joint-command with the Cold Cases Team (helmed by Detective Chief Superintendent Gwen Straker) with the codename Operation Sledgehammer, and assigned to bring in the 20 most dangerous wanted fugitives from UK justice who are still believed to be in mainland Britain.

The whereabouts of these various killers are unknown, but all of them are classified as Category A, aka they are wanted in connection with the most heinous crimes imaginable and are capable of homicidal violence at the drop of a hat.

For example, Leonard Spate is chief suspect in the murder of a his ex-girlfriend and then the burning down of the Carlisle house in which her two children were sleeping, while Patrick Hallahan is believed to have committed a restaurant robbery in Slough, where two members of staff and a customer were shot dead, and Malcolm Kaye is the suspected deviant who’s been raping and strangling sex workers in Liverpool.

Heck, now working with his new SCU partner, the spiky but spirited Detective Constable Gail Honeyford (whom we first met in HUNTED), is sent in pursuit of Eddie Creeley, a career bank robber, whose last job saw him abduct a bank manager and his wife, and murder the latter by injecting her with battery acid.   

Immediately, though he’s focussed on capturing Creeley, Heck is mystified that so many of these ultra-violent offenders have gone missing. Have they themselves become a target for someone?

What follows is a investigation fraught with danger, as Heck and Honeyford follow Creeley’s twisting trail from Humberside back to London and finally to Cornwall, in the process entering the world of high-level organised crime, where vengeance can be enacted on recalcitrant elements by forcing them to fight each other to the death in hideous gladiatorial combats.

In case there are any folks reading this who haven’t yet read KISS OF DEATH, I won’t say any more about how the book pans out, but I do need to mention that once all the dust has apparently settled, it culminates in a truly horrific event, which nobody involved saw coming, and which sets the scene for ROGUE, a Heck thriller which ultimately is as much about revenge as law enforcement.

My recommendation would be that, if you haven’t already read KISS OF DEATH, do so before you pick up ROGUE. But if you’d rather not, you can rest assured that ROGUE stands on its own merits; I’ve endeavoured from the start to make it crystal clear what is happening and why, and to ensure that not having read the previous volume will NOT spoil your enjoyment of it.

Dear All ... ROGUE is a book I’ve been dying to launch into the public domain. The final processes are now underway, and, as I say, it will be published this autumn, most likely in October. But keep watching this space for lots of updates re. artwork, blurbs, book trailers, pre-order details and so forth.