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.
Joe Ide, Wrecked (Mulholland)
It’s no secret that I am a big fan of Joe Ide and Wrecked, the latest novel in his Isaiah Quintabe (IQ for short) series finds our hero under threat from all sides. Because he solved some high-profile cases with law enforcement he cannot walk around his neighborhood in East Long Beach without being hassled. But there is some good news too: IQ’s business is thriving, so much so that his sometime sidekick Dodson is now IQ’s partner and he’s putting up a Facebook page for the detective. More troublesome to IQ is a case he took to find an artist’s missing mother, who is linked to a paramilitary operation. And then there’s the matter of Seb, the African gangster who killed IQ’s beloved brother, Marcus, and who’s now hellbent on taking IQ down.
Sara Paretsky, Shell Game (William Morrow)
There’s no lack of great female PI series out there, from Laura Lippman’s Tess Monaghan to the late Sue Grafton’s alphabet series. Paretsky, the creator of the ornery and tenacious V.I. Warshawski, has a knack for writing action scenes and coming up with plots that jibe with the news. In Shell Game, VI’s twentieth outing, she is drawn into two investigations. One involves her longtime friend Lotty’s nephew, Felix, whose name and number were jotted down on a piece of paper and found on the body of a corpse and probable murder victim who was also a Syrian immigrant. The other case is the disappearance of the niece of her ex-husband, who worked at a cleaning service that employs a lot of Syrian immigrants. The plots weave around each other expertly while introducing a new and dangerous enemy: ICE agents.
Sharon Bolton, The Craftsman (Minotaur)
Bolton’s standalones are dark and creepy in the best possible way. Last year’s Dead Woman Walking starts with a hot air balloon accident—or was it sabotage? Craftsman is less flashy, perhaps: it revolves around Assistant Commissioner Florence Lovelace of a small village in Lancashire, who solved a series of child murders 30 years ago. The perpetrator of those crimes, Larry Grassbrook, was a coffin maker who buried his victims alive in fresh graves. In the present, Grassblook has died in prison but teenagers are starting to disappear again. Did Florence get the right man? The urgency of this question is increased astronomically when Lovelace’s son goes missing.
Tana French, The Witch Elm (Viking)
Tana French’s new book is her first departure from her beloved Dublin Murder Squad series, and we were, needless to say, quite nervous and excited to read it. Luckily (and we know, everyone says this with every new Tana French) but this may be her best yet! The Witch Elm is vintage French, with her signature touch of unreliable narration, where the truth is masked in a cloud of confusion and the reader must decipher the interior chaos of the narrator as well as the larger murder plot in order to find the answers.
Sherry Thomas, The Hollow of Fear (Berkley)
The Hollow of Fear is Sherry Thomas’ third work to feature Charlotte Holmes, the well-dressed gourmand detective who goes by the name of “Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective” to hide her gender. Most enjoyable on our end is the Thomas’s willingness to chip away at Sherlock’s puritanical fanaticism in favor of a woman who is not afraid to take pleasure in decadent things. In this latest in the series, Charlotte must solve the murder of a friend’s estranged wife and clear her friend’s name of suspicion (while taking on a few side cases to pay the bills).
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse, Mycroft and Sherlock (Titan Books)
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has oft-credited his athletic prowess to his Sherlockian inspirations, and made waves with his mystery debut a few years ago in which he reimagined Mycroft Holmes as a swashbuckling figure ready to fight for justice and solve mysteries the world over. Abdul-Jabbar’s vision of Mycroft returns in a new adventure, this time with his famous brother in tow, and we can’t wait to read it!
Mary Roberts Rhinehart, The Red Lamp (Penzler Publishers)
With an introduction from Otto Penzler, and published as part of Penzler’s new series of reissues, American Mystery Classics, this reissue of The Red Lamp is a labor of love, and a fine tribute to one of the pioneers of American mystery fiction. The American Mystery Classics series will also include reissues of classic works by Ellery Queen, Clayton Rawson, Dorothy B. Hughes, Craig Rice, and many more.
Ed Lin, 99 Ways to Die (Soho Crime)
Ed Lin’s culture-rich mysteries set in Taiwan’s night market are brimming with food, music, and a Taipei’s thriving counterculture scene. His third in the series, 99 Ways to Die, takes his amateur sleuth protagonist into the Taipei halls of privilege when his long-time frenemy gets in some trouble in the capital’s cut-throat business world. We can’t wait to put on some Joy Division and pig out on street food while devouring the whole book in one sitting.
Lou Berney, November Road (William Morrow)
Berney’s November Road has a solid claim on being the most anticipated novel of Fall 2018, at least (anecdotally) amongst other crime writers. And with good reason, too. Berney’s story starts with the JFK assassination and morphs into a relentlessly moving (and relentlessly engaging) fugitive story, as two figures on the run find their lives intersected and set toward a common fate. Berney’s voice is strong and human and his characters have rich emotional lives of their own. There’s an incredible momentum to the story, a true thriller punctuated with moments of brilliant humanity.
