PICK ANY TITLE

Here's something different from the Russell James literary canon - something lighter. Friends tell me I'm a cheerful guy, but they ask, "Why do you write such dark stories?" Well, I don't always.

This tale is something lighter. I won't say there are no dark edges, but PICK ANY TITLE is the kind of book you'll want to pack for your summer holidays.

But hurry! Read it NOW, in the original first edition, before my publisher has to bring out the film tie-in with Gwynneth Paltrow on the cover. (No, the sexy blonde on the current cover is not Gwynneth.) Actually, knowing my luck, the mega-film of the book will star someone else: the Paltrow part will be played by Tom Cruise, while Whoopie Goldberg will play Lord Clive.

Shudder with me now at such at base commercial exploitation.

Which is what the book is about. Here's the scenario: "Lord Clive" purchased his grand-sounding lordship for £3,500 at one of those "Lord of the Manor" sales where titles fetch anything from two thousand to two hundred thousand pounds. It gave him an idea: why not buy a second one cheaply, then sell it high? Where better to sell it than in America? (Clive is not politically correct. In fact, he's about as incorrect as you can get.)

To help him in this scheme he has the beautiful and intelligent Jane Strachey (remember her from "Daylight"?). But she finds helping Clive to be a risky business. He lives by trickery. When he finds himself in a mess, who better to dig him out than the impeccable Jane Strachey? He sends her back from San Francisco to rural England to deal with his irate American victims as they fly across to collect their lordship. Victims include a Californian wine-maker and his gorgeous wife, (go, Clive, go) a shrewd businessman, a hell-fire preacher and a hard-bitten New York gangster.

Strachey needs more than good looks and a silver tongue to save her. Although Clive offers sympathy - from several thousand miles away - it's not a great help when lawyers pounce and guns slide from holsters. Can Strachey deal with the mayhem on her own? Or, as the cover suggests, will Strachey lose her shirt too?

JOIN the aristocracy of crime writing. RESERVE your copy now.