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Simon & Schuster has paid a six figure sum in a pre-empt deal for UK and Commonwealth rights to a forensic thriller from a husband and wife writing team.
Fiction editorial director Maxine Hitchcock bought the rights from Sheila Crowley at Curtis Brown to Taboo by Casey Hill, the pseudonym of Melissa and Kevin Hill. The book will be published in spring 2011 in Ireland, with a "major" paperback launch in the United Kingdom that summer.
The novel is about American forensic investigator Riley Steel, who arrives in Ireland to start a fresh life away from San Francisco. The publisher added: "But a brutal serial killer, one who seeks to upset society’s norms in the most sickening way imaginable, soon puts paid to that."
Hitchcock said: "It’s the most nerve-jangling novel I have read in ages and I am certain that, in years to come, Riley Steel will become a character people mention in the same breath as Kay Scarpetta and Tempe Brennan."
The novel will be published in Germany by Rowohlt and Holland by House of Books after publishers in those territories signed pre-empt deals.