At the start of every month, CrimeReads staff members look over all the great crime novels and mysteries coming out in the weeks ahead and make recommendations based on what they’re reading and what they can’t wait to read. Check back over the course of the month for more suggestions for feeding your crime habit.
Un-Su Kim, The Plotters (Doubleday)
This stylish thriller follows a professional assassin who works for a host of shadowy underworld kingpins known as “plotters” as he begins to question the morality of his profession. With such literary touches as a library headquarters for assassins, this one may pander a bit to bookish audiences – and we’re all in favor of that. Also there are two cats named Desk and Lampshade and they are very good cats. Those two alone make for a great read (plus, you know, all the assassins and stuff).—Molly Odintz, CrimeReads associate editor
Fiona Barton, The Suspect (Berkley)
Barton’s ace reporter Kate Waters, who also appeared in Barton’s worthwhile previous books, The Widow and The Child, is back on the story in The Suspect. Two young women on a gap year take off for Thailand and disappear into the world of backpackers and drug tourists. Her police contact, Bob Sparkes (also a recurring character), asks Waters to get the story from the frantic parents. But before long Waters becomes personally involved in the investigation, as her son, Jake, who has been drifting around southeast Asia after leaving college, was one of the last people to have contact with the missing girls.—Lisa Levy, CrimeReads contributing editor
James Lee Burke, The New Iberia Blues (Simon and Schuster)
Burke remains an icon of the crime fiction world and one of its truly great practitioners, packing more soul and more poetry into a paragraph than some authors can manage in a book. With his newest, the sixteenth in the series, Dave Robicheaux is still working bayou terrain when a dead body turns up near the house of one of New Orleans’s favorite sons, a local boy turned Hollywood director. Dave is on the case untangling the mystery of a dark string of killings that nobody wants to talk about.—Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads managing editor
Lyndsay Faye, The Paragon Hotel (Putnam)
Lyndsay Faye continues to be the queen of smart, feminist historical crime writing with her Oregon-set The Paragon Hotel, in which a refugee from the Mafia washes up on the Pacific Coast in 1921 only to find herself engaged in battle with the powerful local branch of the KKK. We can’t wait to follow Faye’s colorful characters in their battle against American-brand evil.—MO
Amy Gentry, Last Woman Standing (HMH)
Amy Gentry’s cutting new thriller feels a bit like They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, but for the Austin comedy scene, as Gentry’s protagonist struggles to break out as a comedy star. There’s also a well-thought-out nod to Strangers on a Train, and I won’t say anything more, lest I spoil the fun. Also, much of the action takes place in my old stomping grounds of North Central Austin, and there’s even a shout-out to one of my favorite bars (I miss you, Lala’s, and all your beautiful year-round Christmas lights)! You know your hometown has made it when the dive bars start showing up in fiction. Now, who’s going to write the great American crime novel, Tiniest Bar in Texas edition?—MO
Stephen Mack Jones, Lives Laid Away (Soho)
Stephen Mack Jones’s August Snow is still making waves as one of the most innovative and exciting new PI novels to come around in some time, a bold new take on the classic form and a much-deserved spotlight on Detroit. In this new installment, August Snow is the only man who knows Mexicantown well enough to investigate a human trafficking ring taking advantage of ICE raids. This is noir as it was meant to be: incisive, socially conscious, distinctly situated, and told with real style. —DM
JoAnn Chaney, As Long as We Both Shall Live (Flatiron)
Chaney’s first book, What You Don’t Know, didn’t really grab me, but As Long is a much more sophisticated psychological thriller. Take the opening line: “If you try to kill your wife without a plan, you will fail.” The book is centered on a married couple, Matt and Marie; in the beginning of the book while they are out for a hike Marie falls off a mountain and drowns. But did she really fall? And how does Marie’s fate jibe with Matt’s first wife’s, who also died suddenly?—LL
Alan Glynn, Receptor (Picador)
A mashup of Mad Men and the Manchurian Candidate, Glynn’s novel is set in New York City in 1953. The protagonist, ad exec Ned Sweeney, is invited by a charismatic stranger for a cocktail. What’s the harm? Well, the man has actually just recruited him for a top-secret government program called MK-Ultra (which was a real thing), a mind control experiment run by the CIA. But that’s just the beginning: more than sixty years later, Sweeney’s grandson Ray is introduced to a retired CIA man who knows the secrets of both MK-Ultra and a new mind control drug called MDT-48. Glynn, the author of Limitless, strikes the right balance between full-on paranoia and being a little concerned that you are in too deep.—LL
Steph Post, Miraculum (Polis)
Post’s Miraculum is a studied, nuanced, psychologically complex journey into the world of a 1920s carnival working the Texas-Louisiana borderlands, and the charged relationship between a snake charmer and a geek. Mysteries abound, but this novel is more about power and duplicity than solving puzzles. Post is one of the most talented, exciting writers working in the space today.—DM
Sydney Noir, edited by John Dale (Akashic)
Akashic delivers another impeccable anthology with Sydney Noir, a deep dive into the mean streets, artistic outlets, and sultry demimonde of Australia’s largest (and liveliest) city. I started reading this one in public, fanned myself briefly, and decided to continue reading in the privacy of my own home. You can read an excerpt from Sydney Noir here.—MO
