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.
Philip Kerr, Metropolis (Putnam)
It’s a bittersweet pleasure to dive into the last Bernie Gunther mystery. After Kerr’s untimely death last year, it was announced that one more book would be released in the series: Metropolis, which takes us back to Bernie Gunther’s early days on the job, and concludes a 14-book-dive into the worst parts of 20th century history. I’m planning to savor this 1928-set investigation, which promises to be a fitting conclusion to an epic series. (Molly Odintz, CrimeReads associate editor)
Alice Feeney, I Know Who You Are (Flatiron)
Aimee Sinclair is a not quite A-list actress—her face is more familiar than her name. Yet there is one person from Aimee’s strange and upsetting past who keeps interfering in her present-day business. First, her husband goes missing after a particularly nasty fight. Then her bank tells her nearly all of her money has been withdrawn–and it wasn’t her husband who closed the account, it was Aimee. I Know Who You Are is a tense, almost nasty thriller, in which the past recurs in the most dramatic way. (Lisa Levy, CrimeReads contributing editor)
Young-ha Kim, Diary of a Murderer (HMH)
Unreliable memories are a trope in contemporary crime fiction, but Young-ha Kim’s title story from his new collection takes a novel twist when it comes to memory, as a serial killer with Alzheimer’s begins to forget the details of his own crimes while attempting to protect his adopted daughter, whom he suspects to be a target of a different killer in the same town. With Diary of a Murderer, Young-ha Kim joins a new wave of Korean crime writers making their mark on the psychological thriller. (MO)
Rachel Howzell Hall, They All Fall Down (Forge)
If there’s one thing I love in mystery, it’s when a bunch of strangers get summoned to an island. Rachel Howzell Hall’s latest thriller takes that classic scenario straight out of the Agatha Christie playbook and gives it a modern, subversive twist, as seven strangers answer an invitation to a few nights at a private estate on a lush, remote spit of land off the coast of Mexico. The clash of personalities and secrets is immediate, as the guests discover that their weekend getaway isn’t quite so tranquil as they’d hoped. Howzell Hall has spent the last few years establishing herself as one of the most promising voices in detective fiction with her Elouise Norton series. Here she proves that she knows her way around a traditional mystery scenario, with a few thriller twists for good measure. (Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads managing editor)
Angie Kim, Miracle Creek (FSG)
In a rural Virginia town called Miracle Creek, Korean immigrants Young and Pak Yoo run an experimental medical treatment chamber believed to cure a broad range of issues, mental and physical. The treatment—pure, pressurized oxygen—fills the struggling residents of Miracle Creek with hope, and in turn, the Yoos, who followed hope to America. But when the tank explodes one night and two people are killed, a murder trial grips the town; Kim’s taut emotional thriller unfolds in the courtroom, where the events of that fatal night begin to illuminate the deep secrets and desperation of families fighting to survive. (Camille LeBlanc, CrimeReads editorial fellow)
Miriam Toews, Women Talking (Bloomsbury)
Miriam Toews comes from a Mennonite background herself. As this moving New Yorker profile recounts, she felt a need to reckon with her own past and the patriarchal institutions of Mennonite society after learning of the terrible happenings in a Mennonite village in Bolivia; over a 100 women and girls were raped over a substantial period of time by a group of men using livestock tranquilizers to knock out their nightly targets. In her new book Women Talking, based on this real life story, Toews puts us in the center of a meeting of Mennonite women. They have two days before the men in the village return from bailing out their arrested attackers, and they must decide whether they will fight, flee, or do nothing. (MO)
Alafair Burke, The Better Sister (Harper)
This enthralling domestic thriller finds Burke at her best, diving deep into character and probing the nature of sisterhood—the envy, the competition, the lifelong bond. Chloe Taylor is the editor-in-chief of a magazine and an icon in the #MeToo movement. Her husband, Adam, is a successful corporate lawyer, and Ethan—her teenage stepson—is the biological son of her less-successful, emotionally unstable sister—Adam’s ex. When Adam is murdered, the two long-estranged sisters find themselves in a strained alliance as they fight to exonerate the primary suspect: Ethan. The twists stun as the sisters are forced to confront their history of sacrifice and betrayal. (CL)
Erin Kelly, Stone Mothers (Minotaur)
Marianne Thackeray grew up in Nussted, a town noted for its looming asylum, the Nazareth Mental Hospital. She had planned on never living there again. But time changes things: the asylum has been converted to shiny renovated flats, and Marianne’s husband bought them one. She can’t explain to him that the asylum has negative associations for her which harken back to an incident involving herself, an ex, and a dangerous enemy. The truth will come out, somehow, and Marianne has to prepare for it. (LL)
Leye Adenle, When Trouble Sleeps (Cassava Republic)
Amaka returns! Leye Adenle burst onto the international crime scene with his debut Easy Motion Tourist, an intricate, fast-paced thriller that takes us through the underworld of Lagos as a British tourist teams up with a human rights attorney named Amaka to get the bottom of a wave of violence targeting sex workers in the Nigerian capital. In the second installment of the series, When Trouble Sleeps, Adenle picks up just where he left off, as Amaka continues to investigate and bring down those who would threaten Lagos’ most vulnerable population; this time, however, Adenle ups the stakes with a complex political subplot that dovetails perfectly with the main mystery for a stunning conclusion. (MO)
Ilaria Tuti, Flowers Over the Inferno (Soho)
This Italian debut introduces us to a formidable heroine, seasoned detective and criminal profiler Teresa Battaglia, when she is called to the small alpine village of Traveni to investigate a murder. The body was found naked with its eyes gouged out, and Teresa senses a killer who likes to play sick games and who will strike again if she can’t figure out his riddles. Of course she is paired with a hot-tempered young detective, and they keep investigating violent attacks. But the locals don’t believe this killer can be among them, and Teresa is sure he is. (LL)
