So, you like crime novels? You like to keep up with what’s current? July is going to be a big month for you. Due to a few pandemic-delayed releases plus the usual summer bounty, plus just some phenomenally well-written books, the month ahead has exciting new novels coming out every week and is sure to leave readers with plenty to brood over during those long socially-distanced walks we’re all still taking. We may not be traveling on vacations this July, but all the more reason to buy some new books and get ourselves otherwise transported. Below you’ll find our editors choices for the month’s best new fiction.
Blacktop Wasteland, by S.A. Cosby
S.A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland is the buzz book of the summer, and for good reason—this nailbiter of a thriller has everything, including road chases, fast cars, robberies gone south, carefully calibrated underworld shenanigans, standoff after standoff, and some deep family bonds. Cosby’s novel has already been optioned as a movie, and I cannot wait to see it in theaters (assuming those are ever open again). It’ll also help you quit smoking, as a bonus! –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
Trouble the Saints, by Alaya Dawn Johnson
In Trouble the Saints, Alaya Dawn Johnson comes up with the most original magical system I’ve come across in years, and works in a damn good historical mystery while doing so. Trouble the Saints features an assassin who’s getting tired of her double life, passing for white with her mobster employers who take advantage of her preternatural knife skills, and returning to her Black friends and family when she has a moment of peace. Johnson’s talented characters have been gifted with supernatural skills to fight back against white oppression, but it’s hard to tell who will triumph in a world where, like our own, Black talent is commodified and appropriated by the white-dominated power structure, where within the law or outside of it. Perfect for those who were looking for the murder mystery equivalent to the The Talented Ribkins! –MO
The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones (Gallery / Saga Press)
The Only Good Indians is an utterly, powerfully disturbing novel and also one of the most compelling reads of the year. It charts the lives of four American Indian men who find themselves relentlessly chased down by the culture they thought they left behind. Stephen Graham Jones crafts a vivid and evocative world of meaning and memory, then goes about shattering everything we believe we know about it. This is a book you won’t soon forget. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief
Skin Deep, by Sung J. Woo (Agora)
Here’s more evidence that the private detective is enjoying a very welcomed resurgence in the crime fiction world. Sung J. Woo’s new novel features an inimitable PI, Siobhan O’Brien, a Korean adoptee who has somewhat haphazardly inherited her old boss’s agency and finds herself at a crossroads, unsure if she should continue down the line. The proverbial last job comes through, dragging Siobhan upstate to a seemingly idyllic liberal arts college with a girl gone missing from her dorm. The college is a hotbed of subcultures, and Siobhan has to learn each of their quirks and rivalries to keep the case moving forward. Skin Deep manages to be an entertaining, wickedly clever mystery and also a thoughtful meditation on adoption, culture, and identity. –DM
He Started It, by Samantha Downing (Berkley)
It’s no secret that I was a big fan of Downing’s debut, My Lovely Wife, which delved into the secrets of a seriously twisted marriage. He Started It is about siblings—who happen to be grifters—on a road trip with their grandfather’s ashes in the trunk. They are going to scatter the remains of Grandad, but even in his present form he has a hold on his heirs, a car full of liars and cheats driving cross-country and checking out creepy Americana (a UFO watchtower, a reconstruction of the death of Bonnie and Clyde) along the way. It’s going to be a twisted ride. –Lisa Levy, CrimeReads Contributing Editor
Love and Theft, by Stan Parish (Doubleday)
Parish has crafted one of the strongest contributions in recent memory to a genre much-beloved here at CrimeReads: the heist novel. In Parish’s version of this classic story, a successful thief just off a big Vegas score meets an impressive single mother at a party in Princeton. The two quickly escalate their relationship and end up in Tulum for a weekend, when the thief’s past begins to catch up with him and he realizes he needs to orchestrate the legendary “one last score” in order to get out of the game for good. Parish manages to weave together genuinely compelling arcs of crime and complicated human entanglements. –DM
Shadow Garden, by Alexandra Burt
Alexandra Burt’s Shadow Garden is stunning. It’s a domestic thriller that’s part of the trend of books where women fail to acknowledge their complicity in their loved ones’ actions. In this case, a socialite married to a doctor doesn’t want to acknowledge the actions of her daughter, who it becomes clear over the book has been a barely controlled sociopath from birth. The socialite broke her hip and can’t remember how, and she’s recovering in a semi-gothic retirement community where she isn’t sure if she’s been voluntarily committed or imprisoned. It kept me up till 5am reading and was both horrifying and beautiful in its conclusions. –MO
The Revelators, by Ace Atkins (Putnam)
Ace Atkins Tibbehah County novels are some of the richest, most vibrantly populated crime stories in recent memory, and each new installment is a journey to a familiar, fraught stretch of the south where everything is just a little more charged than normal, and lawman Quinn Colson is always on the case. The Revelators is, in many ways, a culmination, as several long-running plots and rivalries come to a head and Atkins crafts some truly mesmerizing set pieces. Atkins is at the top of his game, and faithful readers will find The Revelators one of his most satisfying yet. –DM
The Order, by Daniel Silva (Harper)
I’m going to speak directly to Daniel Silva fans for a moment, knowing that we are legion and you will understand me…When a Gabriel Allon book starts out with Chiara at home reading a book, you just know it’s going to be a good one, don’t you? There’s something about that particular form of Allon family bliss that just sets the right tone for what’s to come. In Silva’s newest, Allon is headed back to familiar haunts in Italy, where a papal death drives him to the legendary Vatican archives. Honestly that should be all you need to know. There are going to be conspiracies, art, rare books, and more conspiracies. Allon in his old element. –DM
Wonderland, by Zoje Stage (Mulholland)
Zoje Stage, the author of the rich, disturbing Baby Teeth, has a knack for unsettling atmospherics. In her new novel, Wonderland, a city couple moves upstate to the Adirondacks and begins settling into the new rural bliss when things take a dark, strange turn. To explain much more about this one would be unfair, but suffice it to say that anyone dreaming of moving out of the city and getting a little space to themselves is going to read this one and find their deepest fears about that dream exposed. Wonderland is a perfect, chilling parable for summer. –DM
Once You Go This Far, by Kristin Lepionka (Minotaur)
A new Roxane Weary novel is always a treat. In Kristin Lepionka’s latest, the fourth to feature her compelling detective, Weary investigates the mysterious falling death of an experienced hiker, hired by the woman’s daughter, who suspects her ex-cop father of doing the dirty deed. Despite the ex-husband’s connections, Weary’s soon knee-deep in details that prove he’s an ass, but there may be more to the woman’s death than an angry ex, especially when a crooked politician gets tied to the murder. –MO
Florida Man, by Tom Cooper (Random House)
Cooper tells the generations-spanning story of Reed Crowe, a kind of spiritual cousin to Elmore Leonard’s own Florida Crowes, as he chases after the secrets of his little stretch of the Sunshine State’s swampland and fends off a few criminals and rogues who want him gone. Florida Man manages to be at once uproarious and oddly touching, as a man puts himself up against some of the crazier forces a crazy state has to offer and meanwhile explores his own heritage and his connection to the land. –DM
