Bestselling crime and thriller novelist 
Peter James's, new Roy Grace novel, Dead Like You has gone straight to No. 1 in the UK Sunday Times bestseller list on its first week of publication. In a double celebration this week, Peter James's The Perfect Murder, the winner of last week's Quick Reads Award, is this week at No. 2 in the iBooks chart.
Geoff Duffield, Group Sales & Marketing Director, Pan Macmillan, said: "In Roy Grace, Peter has created one the great characters of crime fiction. Peter is probably the most connected author I've ever worked with, and there'll be many people in the media, retail and across the industry that will be totally thrilled for him."
Dead Like You is the sixth in the Roy Grace series, which follows the investigations of Detective Superintendent Grace. The books are all set in the buzzing city of Brighton, with Dead Like You set in The Metropole Hotel. After a heady New Year's Eve ball, a woman is brutally raped as she returns to her room. A week later, another woman is attacked. Both victims' shoes are taken by the offender and Detective Superintendent Grace soon realises that these new cases bear remarkable similarities to an unsolved series of crimes in the city back in 1997. The perpetrator had been dubbed 'Shoe Man' and was believed to have raped five women before murdering his sixth victim and vanishing. Could this be a copycat, or has Shoe Man resurfaced?
Peter James based Dead Like You on a real-life case that became known as 'The Rotherham Shoe Man'. Between 1983-1986 over twenty women reported that they had been violently raped and their shoes taken. It turned out that the rapist was a 49 year old man, a pillar of the community, happily married with a good job and two children. When investigated, police found 100 pairs of women's high quality shoes in his basement. He is now serving a life sentence.
You can read more about the novel and Peter's other books on his website.
