The CrimeReads editors make their selections for the month’s best new novels in crime, mystery, and thrillers.
Eli Cranor, Ozark Dogs
(Soho)
Eli Cranor is back in 2023 with the follow-up to his widely acclaimed debut, Don’t Know Tough. The new novel, which traces a volatile history of violence between two families, is a powerful portrait of love, revenge, and trauma. Cranor paints a vivid Ozark landscape and populates it with characters who jump off the page and demand your attention. Ozark Dogs establishes Cranor as a premier crime writer and on the rise. –DM
V. Castro, The Haunting of Alejandra
(Del Rey)
V. Castro’s heroine is haunted by the spirit of La Llorena—or, at least, an ancient evil that has found a way to embody a folk legend. She must go to a curandera and process her personal and generational trauma before she can even hope to be free of the demon possessing her, in what also functions as a perfect metaphor for clearing the fog of depression and seeing the societal structures and history that contribute to our present-day malaise. –MO
Dennis Lehane, Small Mercies
(Harper)
Lehane is back with his first book since 2017’s Since We Fell, and this time he’s headed to Southie in 1974, in the middle of a heat wave as the city sorts through its controversial plan to de-segregate local schools. A woman whose daughter goes missing sets off on a journey through the city’s underworld, asking some uncomfortable questions of the Irish mobsters who rule her neighborhood, while also pulling on surprising threads that point to a possible link with the death of a young African-American man. –DM
Sarah Penner, The London Seance Society
(Park Row)
bestselling author Sarah Penner’s book is a canny romp through the Victorian zeitgeist that cemented Conan Doyle’s interests in spiritualism, a world in which science and rationalism clashed with spectacle and illusion and all of those things clashed with a preoccupation with ghosts and the occult. Anyway, it’s about a famed spiritualist and a non-believer who wind up joining forces to solve a murder… and then find themselves embroiled in a crime. Tell me you yourself wouldn’t run through quicksand to acquire this book, and I won’t believe you. –OR
Don Winslow, City of Dreams
(William Morrow)
In this follow-up to City on Fire, the action moves from the Rhode Island coast to Hollywood, but the story remains firmly rooted in Greek epic poetry. Danny Ryan is trying to lay low and start over in California, but a new movie based on his life, and a run-in with a movie star, set him back on the road toward violence. –DM
Alice Slater, Death of a Bookseller
(Scarlet)
I truly feel like this book was written for me, but also for all of you, dear readers, for it is creepy AF in the best way. Two booksellers, one obsessed with true crime and the other deeply uncomfortable with the medium, get ready for a deadly showdown when one discovers the other has a more personal connection to the genre than most realize. Also there are snails. –MO
Megan Miranda, The Only Survivors
(Scribner)
In Miranda’s newest, old classmates get together ten years after a tragedy, but when one of them disappears, it calls into question everything the group thought it had already reckoned with. Miranda always delivers a gripping thriller. –DM
Brendan Slocumb, Symphony of Secrets
(Anchor)
Brendan Slocumb burst onto the scene with the brilliant literary mystery The Violin Conspiracy, and his follow-up is just as good. Split between the present day and 1918, the story slowly reveals how a renowned composer may have stolen all that made his music great from the autistic Black woman who was once his best friend. Like Slocumb’s debut, Symphony of Secrets uses the framework of classic detective fiction to tell a larger story of cultural appropriation and how our unequal society determines who gets to reap the benefits of talent and produce art. –MO
Monica Brashears, House of Cotton
(Flatiron)
In this photography horror novel, Monica Brashears’ 19-year-old narrator is broke, working a dead-end job, and newly suffering the loss of her grandmother, the most important adult figure in her life, when she gets a strange offer from the owner of a funeral home: come model for him as he creates experiences for those who are having a hard time saying goodbye to the dead. What follows is a haunting and sly Southern Gothic with plenty of things to say about race, gender, and appropriation. –MO
James A. McLaughlin, Panther Gap
(Flatiron)
McLaughlin’s 2018 debut, Bearskin, was one of the most assured, exciting nature thrillers to come out in quite some time, and with Panther Gap he’s set to cement his place in the crime world. Two siblings, raised in highly unorthodox fashion on an isolated Colorado ranch, are reunited by the prospect – and the danger – of a new inheritance, one that will set them on a journey through the underbelly of the American West. McLaughlin’s writing is absolutely electric. –DM
Samantha Jayne Allen, Hard Rain
(Minotaur)
Samantha Jayne Allen is one of the new troubadours of a broken and booming West. In her second novel, a follow-up to last year’s well-received Pay Dirt Road, Allen’s private investigator is back, this time trying to track down a hero who saved a woman from a flash flood. As the PI’s investigation gets going, she soon realizes: her good samaritan may be an even better killer. –MO
Adam Sternbergh, The Eden Test
(Flatiron)
Sternbergh’s newest is thriller set at a couple’s retreat, and each day the lucky pair, whose relationship is very much on the rocks, is asked a provocative new question that throws them deeper and deeper into crisis. That’s a perfect recipe for some emotionally heavy suspense. –DM
