At the start of every month, the CrimeReads staff members look over all the great true crime, thrillers, mysteries, and crime novels 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 May for more suggestions for feeding your crime habit.
Ruth Ware, The Death of Mrs. Westaway
Ruth Ware continues to revitalize the traditional mystery for millennial audiences in The Death of Mrs Westaway, for another mystery that functions both as tribute to the genre’s tropes and a playful revisioning of the drawing room mystery. A young woman hard on her luck receives notification of an unexpected inheritance. The only problem is, the inheritance appears to be destined for someone else, but Ruth Ware’s plucky protagonist won’t let that stop her from claiming her (wrongful) prize. When she travels to a country estate to collect the money, she discovers she may have more of a connection to the dysfunctional, wealthy clan gathered at the manor than she could ever have imagined.—Molly Odintz, CrimeReads associate editor
Julia Heaberlin, Paper Ghosts
Heaberlin’s works beautifully evoke the texture and landscape of the state of Texas while acknowledging the ambivalence and occasional menace that underlies the sublime beauty of the state, and her latest is no exception. In Paper Ghosts, a woman kidnaps a photographer with dementia whom she suspects of killing her sister, along with a number of other women. Their road trip across Texas results in profound revelations, strange occurrences, and a surprisingly heartwarming ending.—Molly Odintz, CrimeReads associate editor
Fuminori Nakamura, Cult X
Nakamura is known for his sparse, brutal noir, exploring themes of alienation and the sublime in modern Japanese life, and the length of his new work Cult X may come as a surprise. The sprawling novel, told from multiple perspectives and with long forays into the science of the universe, is an epic endeavor that deserves to stand next to the works of Ellroy and Bolaño in the canon of lengthy crime fiction. Cult X begins when a young man goes undercover in a cult to search for his lost girlfriend. He soon discovers an underground war between two cults, one marked by libertine excess, and the other by puritanical restraint.—Molly Odintz, CrimeReads associate editor
Jessica Knoll, The Favorite Sister
This playful and cutting crime novel is everything we could have hoped for in Jessica Knoll’s sophomore mystery. Knoll’s debut, Luckiest Girl Alive, stunned me when it came out, and was my handselling go-to throughout my tenure as a bookseller. The Favorite Sister explores the ultra-competitive environment of reality TV and, like Luckiest Girl Alive, serves as a primer on how society turns women against each other.—Molly Odintz, CrimeReads associate editor
Araminta Hall, Our Kind of Cruelty
Araminta Hall’s Our Kind of Cruelty is the best unreliable narrator book I’ve ever read, and a perfect feminist tale of obsession, delusion, and gaslighting. Mike, the narrator of Our Kind of Cruelty, has recently moved back to England after years in New York in order to win back his ex-girlfriend Verity. We quickly learn that we are not to trust Mike’s perception of his own reality, let alone anyone else’s. He believes his ex-girlfirend is playing an elaborate game with him by getting married to another man, and interprets all of her communications as coded instructions for how to win her back, no matter how much she desperately pleads with him to just move on.—Molly Odintz, CrimeReads associate editor
Jonathan Green, Sex Money Murder
Green’s account of a notorious Bronx gang headquartered in the tough Soundview housing projects is not for the squeamish. The gang takes over the crack trade in the projects and branches out to deal in other East Coast cities, places like Buffalo, New York and Springfield, Massachusetts, where the drug is much more valuable due to its scarcity. They also kill with impunity: to be an enemy of the gang is to basically write your death warrant. Expertly reported and written in a crisp, no nonsense style, Sex Money Murder is a glimpse into a violent criminal lifestyle rarely documented.—Lisa Levy, CrimeReads contributing editor
William Boyle, The Lonely Witness
Elegiac and wistful, Boyle’s second novel tells the story of Amy, a former hipster who has forsaken bands and booze for a simpler life in Gravesend, Brooklyn. She works odd jobs, eats Chinese food at a restaurant where she has a crush on the owner, and gives communion to elderly housebound Italian Catholics. Although Boyle’s novel is noir to its core, the crime Amy witnesses is not really the engine of this novel. The action is subordinate to Amy’s complex emotions, whether she’s comforting the shut-ins while she makes her rounds or trying to forge a faltering new friendship with her ex-girlfriend Alessandra, who brought her to Gravesend in the first place.—Lisa Levy, CrimeReads contributing editor
Aimee Malloy, The Perfect Mother
This debut has all of the makings of a summer blockbuster: empathetic characters, a terrible crime, and an investigation full of unexpected turns. The May Mothers, a group of new moms in a leafy Brooklyn neighborhood, meet regularly in Prospect Park to share the joys and frustrations of caring for an infant. Each is also struggling to keep the rest of her life going despite, or alongside, new motherhood: we watch them try to maintain their careers and marriages as they grapple with the major life change of having a baby. When the group decides they need a night off and go to a local bar for drinks, a baby is kidnapped, which sends the whole group—and especially the single mother whose child is taken, a former actress named Winnie—into a tailspin of speculation and the horrors of a police investigation.—Lisa Levy, CrimeReads contributing editor
Alex Segura, Blackout
I’m a sucker for Florida crime fiction, especially when it’s set in Miami, but Alex Segura’s Pete Fernandez series has been a special standout for me these last few years. Segura’s vision of Miami has a lived-in feeling: this isn’t about the beaches, the tourist haunts or the nightlife strips. This is the Miami of families and takeout dinners and everyday, intimate tragedies. In his latest, Blackout, a cold case connected to an old high school crush brings Fernandez to Florida, where he ends up investigating a cult that holds significant pockets of Miami in its thrall. Expect a smart portrait of modern Miami, with all its foibles and secrets laid bare.—Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads senior editor
Malcolm Mackay, For Those Who Know the Ending
Mackay has established himself as the premiere bard of small-time Scottish gangsters. There’s an incredible momentum to all his work, a strange alchemy of stylish prose and madcap action that brings to mind Elmore Leonard, but on the fringes of Glasgow’s underworld. In Mackay’s latest, a Czech fugitive hiding out in Glasgow takes on a few small-time hustles and ends up crossing the wrong guys. Mackay works particularly well with outsiders, a vantage point that allows him to observe and explore Glasgow: gritty, intense, and strange.—Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads senior editor
Jean-Patrick Manchette, Ivory Pearl
The unfinished novel by the godfather of the néo-polar, one of the great talents of postwar crime fiction. Ivory Pearl is a fever dream of a spy thriller, jumping between Cold War hotspots (East Berlin, Vietnam, Cuba) and shuffling through a cast of characters with shifting allegiances and obscure motivations. Manchette’s stories are often brutal, but infused with a live wit and a forceful style. I’d read anything with his name on it, but this one, raw and inchoate, has a special appeal.—Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads senior editor
