The election results won’t be finished coming in for a while now, so while you’re waiting to find out the fate of democracy and civilization as we know it, why now kick back with a new mystery or two? Each month, the CrimeReads editors bring you curated selections of the best crime, mystery, and suspense new releases. November is chock-full of exciting new voices and new works from old favorites, with plenty of subgenres represented: there’s heist fiction, suspense thrillers, dystopian noir, and of course, espionage.
White Ivy, by Susie Yang
As someone who reads A LOT of books, I often worry about forgetting a novel as soon as I put it down, but with Susie Yang’s White Ivy, the opposite is true—the more time passes, the more I think about this peculiar, haunting, and vicious thriller that owes much to Becky Sharp of Vanity Fair. At a young age, Ivy Lin learns to take what she wants, taught by her shoplifting grandmother. A sojourn as a scholarship student at an elite private school teaches her envy for the lives of her privileged classmates, and when she heads to China to stay with a wealthy relative and returns as a sophisticate, she’s ready to finally make her way into the American aristocracy. All she needs to do is seduce one childhood friend—and get rid of another.
–Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
The Russian Pink, by Matthew Hart
(Pegasus)
Matthew Hart is a veteran journalist with a niche, writing about diamonds and precious metals as they work their way from mines and dealers through networks of the global elite. So he’s bringing a career of experience and information to his debut novel, a propulsive and heady thriller about a Treasury Department diamond investigator who spots one of the world’s most expensive gems hanging around the neck of a would-be First Lady. Russian agents get involved and soon Hart’s protagonist, Alex Turner, is on a twisty path of conspiracies, blown operations, and double crosses. Hart writes passionately about diamonds and the people who chase them, but he also has a strong handle on the personal dynamics and obsessions that drive this mysterious world.
–Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief
The Lady Upstairs, by Halley Sutton
(Putnam)
Sutton’s debut is a searing indictment of Hollywood corruption and sexual violence, but also a highly satisfying con artist story with some truly intricate and exhilarating action. Jo is a young Angeleno making a living blackmailing bad men, mostly producers and power players caught with their pants down (or sometimes much worse). But when she stumbles into a murder plot, she finds herself a target, and decides to go on the offensive with a con to end them all. Sutton’s prose is cool and crisp with a dark noir tinge, and she brings those atmospherics to a story that’s both entertaining and also a timely exploration of one of Los Angeles’s seedier underbellies. –DM
The Preserve, by Ariel S. Winter
Maybe it’s because we’re living in the end times already, but I’ve been quite partial this year to scifi murder mysteries, especially Ariel S. Winter’s noir take on robotics. When a murder occurs in one of the few preserves left for Earth’s dwindling human population, a human detective teams up with robot colleagues to find the culprit before the entire preserve’s mission is put in jeopardy. –MO
Comrade Koba, by Robert Littell
(Overlook)
For those who enjoyed the massive new tome The House of the Government, but don’t necessarily want to read all 900+ pages of it, here’s a new work of fiction set in that very same building! A young boy hides in the shadows of an enormous complex filled with the Soviet elite—and emptied of the recently purged. He befriends a grizzled Old Bolshevik who knows far more than he should about Stalin. Is Comrade Koba helping the boy, or putting them both in grave danger? –MO
The Intrusions, by Stav Sherez
(Europa World Noir)
For those new to Sherez’s work, The Intrusions is the third in the Carrigan & Miller series and a highly satisfying read on its own steam. The focus this time is the world of cyberstalking and online harassment campaigns that corrupt every facet of a target’s life. The detectives receive a highly distressed young woman who reports her friend as being kidnapped by a cyberstalker, someone who has told her she’ll be the next victim. Sherez casts a light on a dark world and provides readers with chilling insight into an evolving world of blurred lines and hidden figures. –DM
Little Cruelties, by Liz Nugent
(Gallery/Scout)
Liz Nugent is one of the most effed up writers out there, and I love her for it. Her latest, Little Cruelties, continues the trend, taking place in Nugent’s belovedly dysfunctional 1980s Ireland, where three brothers are raised to hate each other by their furious mother, while their absent father pads in and out. As the brothers grow to adulthood, the petty disputes of their childhood begin to evolve into something far more toxic. –MO
The Law of Innocence, by Michael Connelly
(Little Brown)
A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, the saying goes, but who’s going to call Mickey Haller a fool? Haller is the creation of legendary crime author, Michael Connelly, and has his own wildly popular series under his better known moniker, The Lincoln Lawyer. In the latest installment, Mickey is pulled over with a dead client in his trunk, which lands him a hefty bail number and a stint in Twin Towers Correctional Center. He decides to represent himself and prove he was framed, which means his team on the outside is going to have to do the digging for him. The result is a tightly crafted thriller, with some nice crossover flair to boot (fans of Harry Bosch always enjoy seeing him show up in new places). –DM
Last Dance, by Jeffrey Fleishman
(Blackstone)
The death of a Russian ballerina sets off an international investigation, based out of a moody, atmospheric vision of Los Angeles, in this standout detective novel from Jeffrey Fleishman. Fleishman is a longtime writer for the Los Angeles Times, currently serving as the paper’s Foreign and National editor, and he knows his locations, and tales of global intrigue, intimately. But Last Dance also packs an emotional punch, with Detective Sam Carver exorcising demons and battling for relationships along the way. Last Dance is a highly satisfying mix of classic L.A. noir and international thriller. –DM
