Each month the CrimeReads editors make their selections for the best upcoming fiction in crime, mystery, and thrillers. December brings vengeful food writers, torn diplomats, supernatural gentrifiers, subterranean detective agencies, and much more. Stay tuned throughout the month as we round up the best of the year in crime, mystery, and thrillers.
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Chelsea G. Summers, A Certain Hunger (Unnamed Press)
Summers’ debut qualifies as one of the year’s best and most innovative crime novels, full-stop. It’s the life story of a food critic, Dorothy, who recounts the variously idyllic, sordid, and chilling episodes that brought her to her current status as an overqualified food writer moonlighting in murder. Summers’ prose is incisive and uproarious, and the dark satirical currents pushing the story forward are as sharp and surprising as any you’ll find in contemporary crime fiction. A Certain Hunger brings to mind Highsmith’s short stories, with a keen eye for observation and a biting, outrageous wit readers won’t soon forget. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief
Jasmine Aimaq, The Opium Prince (Soho)
Jasmine Aimaq’s The Opium Prince takes place in 1970s Afghanistan during a pivotal time in the nation’s tumultuous history, as an American diplomat working for an aid organization finds himself drawn into the web of a drug trafficker after a moment’s tragedy makes him vulnerable to outside pressures. Aimaq fills in the details of a little-known (at least in American pop culture) era in Afghani history, where the loose threads of the past tangle with the many paths of the future. Magisterial, elegiac, and quite the page-turner. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
Todd Downing, Vultures in the Sky
(American Mystery Classics)
With any luck, this latest reissue of Todd Downing’s lost classic, Vultures in the Sky, will bring the author back into the renown he deserves. Downing’s career leading up to WWII was brief, but he produced some of the era’s best mysteries, hewing to the rules of the traditional mystery but bringing to the form a preoccupation with the more ethereal harbingers of death that pepper the landscapes of Mexico. In Vultures in the Sky, the action takes place on a train moving through a sombre desert landscape, with the possibility of attack and murder looming over the passengers. The writing is taut and modern, the plotting expert, and the story still resonates powerfully all these decades later. –DM
Kia Abdullah, Take It Back (St. Martin’s)
Kia Abdullah’s Take It Back is both a nailbiter of a legal thriller and a thoughtful exploration of identity and prejudice. In this harrowing tale of she said/they said/the press said/the public said, a disabled white teenage girl seeks help from a women’s legal aid center in reporting and prosecuting a sexual assault case against four of her classmates, all young Muslim men with promising futures. Take It Back focuses on the perspective of the young woman’s lawyer, a Muslim woman who finds herself bandied about as a symbol by both sides of the case, yet understood by neither, as she tries to find the twisted, messy heart of the truth amidst a sea of angry whispers. When at last it comes, the resolution is as nuanced, difficult, and shocking as the rest of this timely read. –MO
S.J. Parris, The Dead of Winter (Pegasus)
Parris’s latest excursion into historical mystery is a set of three novellas all following the trials, tribulations, and investigations of a young priest in sixteenth century Italy. Giordano Bruno is a newly minted member of the Dominican Order with a curiosity that puts him in conflict with some of the brotherhood’s more staid clergymen. When he aids in a secret autopsy, he comes to believe a young woman’s death may be linked to figures in the Order. Clashes of faith and justice ensue, and Parris unfolds the action with a skillful blend of rich historical detail and tight plotting. –DM
Sam J. Miller, The Blade Between (Ecco)
A man heads from New York City back to his upstate hometown, Hudson, and that’s pretty much when all hell breaks loose in Sam J. Miller’s latest supernatural thriller. The man, a gay photographer named Ronan Szepessy hatches a plot with a pair of old friends that intends to reveal the hypocrisy and corruption of the town’s recent gentrifying and real-estate developing classes, but the plot accidentally combines with some subterranean spiritual forces also determined to lay waste to Hudson. That’s when Ronan’s plan turns and he resolves to save the city. It’s a wild, chilling read with a subtle emotional core. –DM
T.S. Wilberg, Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder (Harlequin)
From Terry Pratchett’s history monks to Lev Grossman’s librarians, there’s a long tradition of secret societies in speculative fiction whose purpose is to prevent the world from falling apart, while in no way letting on to the fact that they or their secretive companions have anything to do other than lurk in the shadows. The unsung heroes of Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder are, of course, detectives; in their subterranean offices, they crack the cold cases even Scotland Yard won’t touch, but are their truths the same as those of the world above? –MO
Aya de Leon, A Spy in the Struggle (Dafina)
When Yolanda blows the whistle on her corrupt bosses, she doesn’t expect to get blacklisted by an entire industry. After all, she was only covering her own ass when she sent those files to the FBI. And when a legal career is no longer an option, she decides to sign on with the Bureau as an analyst, ready to use her corporate lawyer skills for good. To her dismay, Yolanda is instead assigned to infiltrate an environmental group that’s been labeled as a terrorist organization, and finds herself quickly at odds with her new career. With romance, community gardens, and a strong sense of morality, this one also might be the most cheerful pick of December. –MO
Lars Kepler, Lazarus (Knopf)
The latest from the bestselling Lars Kepler duo (Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril) finds a string of underworld killings across Europe with a common thread that points back to Detective Joona Linna. The killer, it would seem, is sending a message back home. The plot unfolds at an exhilarating pace as the Kepler duo keeps a tight grip on the cat-and-mouse action, a dynamic that reveals itself to be all the more disturbing as the novel progresses. For fans of Scandinavian Noir, Kepler’s Lazarus is a very welcome addition to the bookshelves. –DM
Ryan Gattis, The System (MCD)
Ryan Gattis has written another spectacular, multi-POV stunner, this time interweaving the stories of two young men, one innocent, one guilty, and the cop who sent them both to prison. Gattis is one of the 21st century’s greatest disciples of classic noir, and The System promises to be as world-weary and lyrical as any crime fiction lover could ask for. –MO
