The Black Library Warhammer Crime imprint was first announced in 2020, and since then, it’s been taking names like a prolific assassin. And now we’ve had a tip-off from a trustworthy informant – new titles are just around the corner.
Last year, both The Wraithbone Phoenix and The Vorbis Conspiracy led readers down the dark and winding alleys of the great hive city of Varangantua, and this year’s selection remains knee-deep in the crime and corruption at the heart of this teeming metropolis.
The first new story is The King of the Spoil by Jonathan D Beer. A gangster king who ran the lawless sprawl known as the Spoil, has been murdered in horrendous fashion.
It’s up to Melita Voronova, a skilled information broker employed by the Valtteri cartel, to find out who killed Andreti Sorokin before his vast empire of narco-pushers and violent gangers falls into disarray and swallows the Spoil whole. But, like many of the shadiest crimes on Varangantua, the roots of this gruesome act may run deeper into conspiracy than it first seems.
Not every crime on Varangantua threatens to shake the city to its foundations, but each one touches dozens of lives. The anthology Once a Killer collects tales from Black Library writers Mitchel Scanlon, Jonathan D. Beer, Mike Brooks, Nick Kyme, Denny Flowers, and Jude Reid.
These diverse stories of deplorable acts include both parts of Mitchel Scanlon’s titular Once a Killer, in which a sanctioner hunts down a pit fighter turned serial killer he knows more about than he may care to admit. In Slate Run by Mike Brooks, a high-society function brings chaos and bloodshed for a lowly bodyguard, and Chains by Jonathan D. Beer acts as a prelude to The King of the Spoil, as Andreti Sorokin and the Valtteri cartel enter a tense negotiation over a valuable prisoner.
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