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.
Donna Leon, Unto Us A Son Is Given (Atlantic Monthly Press)
Early spring brings us a new Donna Leon novel once again, this one the twenty-eighth in the ever popular, ever enjoyable Commissario Guido Brunetti series. This time, the Commissario is being asked to take on an investigation of a more personal nature, when an elderly and aristocratic family friend states his intention to adopt a young man of mysterious origins and to make him his heir. Family and professional duties intersect as a murder investigation also unfolds; and of course Venice is always at its most beguiling and enchanting when seen through the lens of a Leon mystery.—Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads managing editor
Greg Iles, Cemetery Road (William Morrow)
In his first book after the sprawling Natchez Burning trilogy, Iles again sets an action packed thriller in a small town in Mississippi full of secrets. Marshall McEwan left his hometown of Bienville at age 18, determined to make it in Washington DC as a journalist. He’s called home when his father becomes ill and his mother is trying to keep the family business, the local newspaper, alive. Soon after his arrival an archeologist is murdered at a construction site, and Marshall gets drawn into the investigation, which reaches the most powerful families in town who control power, politics, and money through a shadowy organization called the Bienville Poker Club.—Lisa Levy, CrimeReads contributing editor
Niklas Natt och Dag, The Wolf and the Watchman (Atria Books)
This incredibly disturbing trip into the grotesqueries of history is as well-written as it is well-researched, true to not only the detail of the time period but also true to its mores and atmosphere. At the start of Niklas Natt och Dag’s incredibly self-assured debut, a watchman in late 18th century Sweden discovers a mutilated corpse floating in the local cesspool, and things only get darker from there. Written by a member of Sweden’s oldest living aristocratic family, and infused with a tear-it-all-down mentality, this one is not to be missed.—Molly Odintz, CrimeReads associate editor
Annie Ward, Beautiful Bad (Park Row)
Beautiful Bad is an unusually structured and resonant psychological thriller, playing clever games with time, place, and point of view. At the center of the book is Maddie, a sometime expat now living with her husband, Ian, and their son, Charlie, in suburban Kansas. When the story begins, however, Maddie is teaching English in Bulgaria, while her best friend, Jo, is doing relief work in the small country next door, Macedonia. Jo and Maddie meet Ian and his friends at an expat bar while Maddie is visiting Jo, and the book traces the rocky path of Maddie and British mercenary Ian’s romance and marriage. In the present day, Maddie is seeing a therapist to try and work through a trauma by writing about her past—but it’s her past that threatens her family’s present happiness.—LL
Tanguy Viel, Article 353 (Other Press)
French writer Tangy Viel’s latest addition to the growing subgenre of “gentrification noir” is a spare and lyrical tale of revenge and injustice on France’s northern shores. A real estate developer called Lazenec is thrown off a fishing boat and left to drown in the depths of the Atlantic. It’s not a mystery: we—alongside the judge—know precisely who’s to blame. Six years earlier, Kermeur, a divorced, laid-off shipwright with a rebellious teenage son, invests all his severance pay in a seaside residential building. When it’s never built, his life is pushed to the edge, and we whirl through Kermeur’s breathless story in the courtroom.—Camille LeBlanc, CrimeReads editorial fellow
Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes (Pegasus Books)
In this third installment of Mukherjee’s 1920s-set series featuring opium-addicted WWI vet Captain Sam Wyndham and Seargeant Surrender-Not Bannerjee, Wyndham must finally deal with his pesky little opium problem, while of course solving ever-more-complicated crimes. Set in India, and exploring the nexus of imperialism, addiction, trauma, and vast societal changes, Mukherjee’s series preserves the charms of the traditional mystery while using the structure to tackle darker and more mature themes.—MO
Andrea Bartz, The Lost Night (Crown)
In her early 20s, Lindsay was one of the many hipsters who hung out in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. She had a tight group of friends who drank (sometimes excessively) together, some of whom lived in the ultra cool Calhoun loft building. Her days of wine and roses came to an end the night her best friend Edie—the most beautiful and magnetic of the group—committed suicide while her friends partied on. In trying to retrace her movements that night in 2009, Lindsay comes to some unsettling truths. Did Edie really kill herself with the gun found next to her, or did someone she knew pull the trigger?—LL
Samantha Downing, My Lovely Wife (Berkley Books)
There’s been a recent trend of mysteries emphasizing the culpability of the enabler: those who know and do nothing, no matter what sounds they hear in the attic or coming from the basement. And there’s another new trend that looks at those who do more than just enable their partner’s violence: they participate in it, making harming others integral to their relationships. Samantha Downing’s debut is a wicked, delicious tale of secrets, relationships, and the lengths to which some will go to keep the magic alive.—MO
Peter Swanson, Before She Knew Him (William Morrow)
Peter Swanson writes excellent suspense novels with terrible titles. Before She Knew Him centers on artist Hen (short for Henrietta), who has moved to a quiet Boston suburb with her husband, Lloyd. When their neighbors, Matthew and Mira, invite them over Hen fixates on a knick knack she swears is connected to an old murder of a teenage boy who happens to be a student at the prep school where Matthew teaches. Is she right to be suspicious of her neighbor, or is Hen’s bipolar disorder flaring up again and affecting her judgment?—LL
C.J. Box, Wolf Pack (Putnam)
Joe Pickett, our favorite Game Warden, is back to work guarding the sweeping Wyoming wild in the latest installment of C.J. Box’s long-running series. This time, Joe teams up with Katelyn Hamm, a female game warden (inspired by one of the only real-life women wardens in Wyoming) to get to the bottom of a mysterious drone killing wildlife on his parkland. The search involves the FBI, DOJ, the Sinaloa Cartel, and a team of assassins—none of which are a match for Joe’s problem-solving, keen observation, and steadfast principles.—CL
Harlan Coben, Run Away (Grand Central Publishing)
Harlan Coben’s latest thriller proves that Coben is the master of the slow reveal and the sudden reversal. When a financial advisor’s daughter goes missing, and he suspects her junkie boyfriend has something to do with it, he must go down paths that may not be emotionally prepared for in order to track her down. Coben’s thriller might be full of action, but his sensitive protagonist is much more than an action hero grateful for a chance at some uncomplicated parenting (sorry, Liam Neeson).—MO
William Boyle, A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself (Pegasus)
Boyle is one of noir’s most exciting voices, and with his newest book he injects a madcap road trip energy into his finely-tuned criminal world, as an unexpected trio of elderly women flee New York with various mobsters and crime families determined to find them. We’re excited to see a dash of Preston Struges thrown into the New York City Noir Boyle has been mastering these last years.—DM
Christopher Reich, Crown Jewel (Mullholland)
In last year’s The Take, Christopher Reich introduced suave hero and freelance international spy Simon Riske. The setting this time is the perennial espionage favorite, Monte Carlo. Gamblers are ripping off the casinos. A dealer was found beaten to death. An heiress’s son has been kidnapped. It’s up to Fiske to connect the crimes and see if a larger criminal enterprise lurks behind them, and there’s no doubt he’s the man for the job: in his younger years he was a thief in Monte Carlo until he was caught and served his time. Now he’s got to unmask and foil the plot of the villains disturbing the exotic municipality.—LL
Joe R. Lansdale, The Elephant of Surprise (Mulholland)
From the originator of splatter-gore and author of the East Texas-set Hap and Leonard series comes a new adventure for his odd couple of investigators and their no-nonsense boss (who, after many years of a Sam-and-Diane situation, is now married to Hap). Hap and Leonard are trying to get home through one of the worst floods in memory (and floods are no joke in pine country) when the happen upon a fugitive woman with two goons in hot pursuit.—MO
