Each month the CrimeReads editors make their selections for the best upcoming fiction in crime, mystery, and thrillers.
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Alma Katsu, The Fervor
(Putnam)
Alma Katsu’s latest historical horror thriller takes us into the internment camps of WWII, where Meiko Briggs and her daughter Aiko wait for news of her husband at war, and find themselves at the center of a strange new pestilence, and in confrontation with folkloric monsters. No one does historical gothic horror better than Katsu, and I can’t wait to immerse myself in this very creepy tale. –MO
Gary Phillips, One Shot Harry
(Soho)
Phillips’ vision of Los Angeles in 1963 comes to vivid life in the form of Harry Ingram, a news photographer and part-time process server who’s putting himself in the firing line all day long as the city’s racial and social divides pull further and further apart. When an old Army friend of his is killed in a car accident, Ingram takes his crime scene photos and his wits on a journey through a deeply corrupt city, looking for the final answers for one man’s death. –DM
Janelle Brown, I’ll Be You
(Random House)
I adored Janelle Brown’s last novel Pretty Things, and her latest should be just as compelling. A pair of twins, once inseparable during their childhood as b-movie actors, have grown apart as adults. Elli leads a sober life in the suburbs, and Sam is as far from stable as can be. When Elli disappears, leaving her confused husband and small child behind, it’s up to Sam to step up in the search for answers. Brown uses the concept of interchangeable personhood to great effect in this haunting psychological thriller. –MO
Don Winslow, City on Fire
(William Morrow)
In Don Winslow’s magisterial ode to the Iliad and the Aeneid, two crime families battle for New England after the appearance of their own Helen of Troy is a catalyst for full-scale conflict. Winslow’s work is at the pinnacle of modern crime writing, and City on Fire promises to continue his run of powerhouse emotional noir. –MO
Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief
(Tiny Reparations)
There’s a ton of good art thrillers coming out this year, but Portrait of a Thief is that rare, perfectly executed heist that reminds us why we love to pair art and crime. When thieves take 23 priceless works of Chinese art from Harvard’s (now-renamed) Sackler Gallery, a nearby Chinese-American student witnesses the crime, and finds himself invited to join a gang dedicated to returning art to its nations of origin or otherwise liberating the stolen artifacts of colonialism. Which means this book will be very, very, good. –MO
Mary Helen Stefaniak, The World of Pondside
(Blackstone)
Pondside Manor is a nursing home like any other, with one exception: its residents can play a new video game, The World of Pondside, that can allow them to relive new old memories, or create meaningful new ones. But when its creator is found dead and the video game stops working, the residents grow desperate to get it back. Solving the murder is only the first step, but it’s a necessary one towards getting their imaginary lives back. –OR
David Gordon, The Wild Life
(Mysterious Press)
In the fourth installment to his “Joe the Bouncer” series, Gordon spins out a new layer of mythology for his wildly, fascinatingly imagined vision of modern New York, a city run on codes and understandings, with a criminal class that looks to one Queens resident, a Harvard and Special Ops washout, to act as its unofficial mediator. In this case, Joe is on the trail of a serial kidnapper targeting the city’s most illustrious sex workers. The series has an alternate world appeal not unlike John Wick, but run through with a deep appreciation for classic literature—and classic crime fiction in the Donald Westlake and Lawrence Block mold. It’s not to be missed. –DM
Adam Oyebanji, Braking Day
(Daw)
This one’s for the scifi fans! (Those who also want some mystery, that is.) Braking Day takes place on a vast generation ship in which colonists agree to live their whole lives, knowing that only their offspring will live to see their new planet. A young engineer is torn between his duty to family and his need to solve a mystery: a helmetless girl, floating in space, who only he can see, and who appears to be alive.
Guillermo Martinez, The Oxford Brotherhood
(Pegasus)
Martinez’s Oxford-set academic noir is a heady swirl of mysteries punctuated by compelling character work and rich atmospherics. The story follows a mathematics student and a Lewis Carroll researcher who find themselves entangled in a lost chapter of literary history – torn pages from Carroll’s diary, and the secret of Carroll’s true relationship with “Alice.” A conspiracy soon begins to unfold, as the two race toward a rather shocking conclusion. Martinez brings an air of erudition and inquiry to a captivating literary puzzle. –DM
Soon Wiley, When We Fell Apart
(Dutton)
In this moody noir set in Seoul, a Korean-American expat goes searching for answers when the university student he’s been hooking up with dies by suicide. Intercut are passages that tell the story from the dead woman’s point of view, whose inner life is far more rich and complex than those around her could acknowledge, even as they each tried to project on her an image based from their own wants and needs. –MO
