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.
S.M. Thayer, I Will Never Leave You (Thomas & Mercer)
Tricia and her husband, James, have been trying to have a baby for years. They’ve exhausted every medical option, and doctors don’t have a good reason for their inability to conceive. Enter Laurel, James’s mistress, who he impregnates, promising he will leave his wife to start a family with Laurel and their baby, Anne Elise. When Laurel finds out James was cheating on her, she’s livid, but after he brings her to the hospital to see the baby Tricia starts plotting how to take the baby since she would be best with her and James. Thayer, a pseudonym for a prize-winning writer, creates memorable characters faced with an impossible dilemma.—Lisa Levy, CrimeReads contributing editor
Kate Atkinson, Transcription (Little, Brown, and Company)
I sped through this droll new espionage novel, chock-full of 5th columnists, surveillance, and strong cups of tea. Atkinson lovingly channels le Carre and Helen MacIness through her descriptions of drab spies, pathetic Nazi sympathizers, and secretaries who know far more than they’re letting on. There’s an ongoing misconception that women don’t write traditional espionage fiction, and Transcription should clear this up once and for all. —Molly Odintz, CrimeReads associate editor
Robert Oren Butler, Paris in the Dark (Mysterious Press)
I like it when newspaper reporters turn into detectives for the purposes of a crime novel. But I really like it when newspaper reporters turn into spies. Fortunately the last few years have been kind to people like me, with the David Downing novels leading the way alongside Robert Olen Butler’s Christopher Marlowe Cobb thrillers. The new installment is set in Paris during WWI, and Butler’s usual clipped but vivid prose is on full display, building up the kind of momentum that makes a book impossible to put down until it’s finished. —Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads senior editor
Ian Smith, The Ancient Nine (St. Martin’s Press)
While I normally stay far away from anything with conspiracies in it, this tale of Harvard secret societies has me riveted to my seat and able to ignore all outside stimuli on the subway, perhaps due to the appealing outsider perspective of its narrator. Author Ian Smith deftly integrates his personal experiences at Harvard with a more action-oriented narrative, lending an edginess and authenticity to his descriptions of back-door dealing in the halls of privilege. Plus, like any other proud graduate of large public institutions, it pleases me to see the Ivy League criticized from within.—MO
Hank Phillippi Ryan, Trust Me (Forge)
In her first standalone Ryan uses her real-life reporting chops (she is an Emmy-winning investigative reporter at a TV station in Boston) to frame a story about a journalist with a tough assignment. Mercer Hennessey is supposed to write about the most sensational crime in Boston: a woman named Ashlyn Bryant is accused of murdering her daughter, Tasha Nicole. Hennessey is still grieving for her husband and daughter, who were killed in a car accident, but she accepts the assignment, thinking she can drown herself in her work. But the trial takes some unexpected twists, and Hennessey’s assignment to write about Bryant becomes extremely personal.—LL
Juan Gabriel Vasquez, Shape of the Ruins (FSG)
I’ve been an avid reader of Juan Gabriel Vasquez since the 2013 US release of his novel, The Sound of Things Falling, which proved to me anyhow that he was one of the great contemporary voices of Latin American literature. Since then, I’ve gone along with him through each of his new releases in English, but for my money, his latest, Shape of the Ruins, is a return to form and a major achievement for la novela negra. An attempted heist of a grisly artifact starts the story, but it quickly spirals out into a wild jumble of paranoia, inchoate crime, crimes remembered, and, above all, conspiracy theories. Gabriel Vasquez has an incredible grasp on tone and manages to keep a certain aloofness to the novel’s voice, while simultaneously plunging us into distorted, traumatized minds. This is the novel I’ll be foisting on people all fall.—DM
Leye Adenle, When Trouble Sleeps (Cassava Republic)
I’m greatly looking forward to reading Leye Adenle’s second mystery, and his second to feature human rights campaigner Amaka Mbadiwe, who serves as our guide to the vibrant world of Lagos, and the many faces of the city. Adenle had me hooked from the first page in his debut Easy Motion Tourist, and I can’t wait to read more of his perfectly choreographed action sequences and loving descriptions of Lagos.—MO
T.M. Logan, Lies (St. Martin’s)
Lies starts out fast and never lets up. Devoted dad Joe Lynch is driving his son, William, home one afternoon when the car-obsessed boy calls out that he sees his mom’s car. Since Joe’s wife, Mel, is nowhere near she’s supposed to be, Joe follows her to a hotel, and sees her in a heated conversation with Ben Delaney, who is married to one of Mel’s closest friends. What’s going on with Mel and Ben? Is she having an affair with him, or just an argument, and why did they have to meet at a hotel? Ben can be both vengeful and vindictive. As Joe tries to decipher Mel’s lies, he has to tell a few of his own, but it’s worth it to get to the truth, right?—LL
Sarah Pinborough, Cross Her Heart (William Morrow and Co)
There are those who believe in the fair play mystery, and feel strongly that a reader should be given all the same clues as the detective and be able to guess the solution to the mystery. Then, there are those who like Sarah Pinborough. The mistress of the twist returns with Cross Her Heart, after last year’s Behind Her Eyes changed all our expectations about what a twist even was, and we can’t wait to see how she upends the world anew in Cross Her Heart. Pinborough’s latest explores the dynamics between a single mother, her daughter, and her best friend, and involves an inevitable reveal of shocking secrets.—MO
