At the start of every month, CrimeReads staff members look over all the great crime novels, thrillers, 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.
Ani Katz, A Good Man (Penguin)
When a book comes out with a title like this one has, you know it’s going to be about someone truly terrible. I’ve often thought about crime fiction is the art of the excuse—a skilled crime writer knows how to both show a character’s bad behavior and demonstrate the justifications used by that character to justify their behavior. In Katz’s mature and wicked debut, we encounter a man who’s slowly crumpling under the pressure of his mounting debts and need for perfection. He’s done something bad – but how bad is difficult to imagine. So, too, is the dark past that informs the actions of the present. Katz’s debut evokes Highsmith’s Ripley, or Denise Mina’s The Long Drop, and heralds the entry of a fantastic new voice to the genre. (Molly Odintz, CrimeReads associate editor)
Liz Moore, Long Bright River (Riverhead)
In Moore’s hefty novel two sisters who have gone down divergent paths—Mickey is a cop, Kacey a junkie and petty criminal—come to an impasse. After years of trying to save her sister Mickey finally puts some distance between them and she marvels at how different she feels. But her salad days are not long-lived: Kacey disappears, and Mickey’s savior complex kicks in again. Moore does a good job of creating the setting, Philadelphia, and has a kind of empathy for her characters that makes you root for them. (Lisa Levy, CrimeReads contributing editor)
Lisa Gardner, When You See Me (Dutton)
Say what you will about the Lisas of crime fiction (Gardner, Lutz, Scottoline, Unger, Jewell, et al) but their books generally do not disappoint: each one knows how to hook a reader and tell a twisted story. In this outing Gardner brings back three of her most popular investigators—Detective D. D. Warren, Flora Dane, and Kimberly Quincy—and has them team up to investigate the crimes of the serial killer Jacob Ness. They end up in a town so eerie it’s Gothic, where they discover Ness still has secrets they need to know. (LL)
Tiffany Tsao, The Majesties (Atria)
Tiffany Tsao’s visceral debut is filled with rage, and reads a bit like Crazy Rich Asians if the book began with familicide instead of romance (within the first few pages, a woman wakes up in the hospital to discover her entire family has been poisoned by her sister). The Majesties then flashes back to tell the stories of two sisters, the protected daughters of a super-wealthy clan of Indonesian-Chinese tycoons, as they struggle to find happiness, and grow increasingly bitter with their lot in life, and disappointed in those around them. Why not start off the new year with the perfect tear-it-all-down read? (MO)
Kwei Quartey, The Missing American (Soho)
Ghanaian-American writer Kwei Quartey’s taking a break from his critically acclaimed Darko Dawson novels to launch a new series featuring Emma Djan, a private investigator, who’s first big case involves internet scams, magic rituals, and of course, the titular Missing American. Emma is a winning new series lead, backed up by a cast of quirky side characters. While I’ve enjoyed the Darko Dawson novels, I adore the plucky protagonist of The Missing American, and I can’t wait to see what Emma Djan does next! (MO)
Joe Ide, Hi Five (Mulholland)
Ide is, as CrimeReads followers know well, one of the rising stars of crime fiction, and he’s back this month with the fourth installment in his celebrated IQ series, which follows the investigations and adventures of a young, community-spirited, crime-solving man nicknamed IQ, born, raised, and operating out of South Central L.A. In Ide’s latest, IQ gets dragged into a case by a local arms trafficker and heads to new terrain to solve a murder in toney Newport Beach. The twist this time around is the key person-of-interest has multiple personalities, each one with a different story. (Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads managing editor)
Karma Brown, Recipe for a Perfect Wife (Dutton)
I’m fond of the trope in popular culture where people switch identities, or you see an alternate path for a character (a la Sliding Doors) if she had made different choices. Brown’s novel is a riff on this: it centers around Alice Hale who has left her career in publicity to be a writer and live in the suburbs at her husband’s behest. Alice finds a cookbook from an earlier woman of the house and starts using it and getting obsessed with her 1950s predecessor, to the point where her precursor’s secrets could put her in danger. (LL)
Steph Post, Holding Smoke (Polis)
Holding Smoke is the hotly anticipated third and final installment in the Judah Cannon series, a hard-nosed trilogy set in rural Florida that evokes some of the very best works of rural noir in recent memory and brings to life an impressive set of characters. Post’s newest follows the aftermath of a violent shootout and brings Cannon ever closer to avenging his father’s death. This is gritty, epic storytelling at its finest, but also deeply human. Post has achieved something truly noteworthy with the Cannon trilogy. (DM)
Louisa Luna, The Janes (Doubleday)
Luna’s Alice Vega and Max Caplan series has been a welcomed addition to the private investigator genre, bringing a special timeliness to the genre as Vega, a San Diego-based PI, has carved out a niche for herself uncovering human trafficking rings and searching for lost young women. She’s a forceful protagonist and Luna’s prose matches her intensity. The Janes sees the FBI bringing a new case to Vega, seeking her help in identifying two anonymous young women discovered dead outside San Diego. The case has plenty of twists-and-turns, and an ending you won’t soon forget. (DM)
Alex Marwood, The Poison Garden (Penguin)
Psychological suspense favorite Marwood (The Wicked Girls, The Darkest Secret) tries her hand at that perennial crime fiction favorite, the cult novel. Marwood’s cult is called the Ark, and they live in an isolated part of Wales. The novel opens with a mass suicide of a hundred members. Our heroine, Romy, is a young, pregnant woman who has never lived outside the cult and has to fend for herself after the dissolution of the Ark. (LL)
