Is it spring yet? It’s time to pick up a good crime novel and wait till later in the month to answer that notoriously difficult question. Also, murky morality and unreliable narration just makes sense as we navigate the interstitial spaces of the seasons. Each month, we bring you the best to look forward to in the month ahead, and March brings with it the full breadth of crime and suspense fiction, featuring new books from old favorites plus plenty of new voices making their mark on the genre. Behold, the best crime and mystery fiction of March.
Jane Healey, The Animals at Lockwood Manor (HMH)
In this lush historical novel, a museum curator heads to a country manor with a collection of rare fossils and specimens, ready to do whatever it takes to protect her beloved curiosities from the Blitz. What she doesn’t anticipate is difficulty with the boorish overlord of the manse, who’d like to treat the museum’s collection as it were his own assemblage of hunting trophies, or the possible presence of a ghost, who may or may not have killed the previous lady of the manor. She also doesn’t expect the beautiful daughter of the manor to take such an interest in the fossils—or in their curator.—Molly Odintz, CrimeReads senior editor
Emily Beyda, The Body Double (Doubleday)
Last month we had the good fortune to get Elizabeth Little’s Pretty as a Picture, a keen look at women, power, and Hollywood. Close on its tottering heels is the deceptively conceived, millennial pink The Body Double, a different look at the same themes. A young woman is recruited from a small town to be the real-life body double of megastar Rosanna Feld. She eats Feld’s food, wears her clothes, and adopts her mannerisms. But once she completes her training and has to go into the world as Feld she begins to get frightened—what exactly happened to her, and who was behind it?—Lisa Levy, CrimeReads contributing editor
C.J. Box, Long Range (Putnam)
There’s a new C.J. Box book out this month, and I suspect for many readers I don’t really need to explain too much more than that. In the interest of including the newcomers, I’ll simply say, also, that the Joe Pickett / game warden series is simultaneously one of the most consistently exhilarating mystery series around and also a fine contribution to keeping alive the spirit of the western. In Long Range, Pickett is called away to search for a grizzly’s victim, while also charged with investigating a long-range assassination attempt closer to home. Both puzzles are genuinely compelling and matched by the rugged atmospherics.—Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads managing editor
Richard Santos, Trust Me (Arte Publico Press)
After barely avoiding a jail sentence, a corrupt political fixer heads to New Mexico for one last chance to redeem himself. Unfortunately, the new airport project he’s been hired to work on is even more corrupt than an East Coast campaign, and soon enough, the put-upon protagonist of Trust Me finds himself more enmeshed in double dealings than ever.—MO
Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa (William Morrow)
My Dark Vanessa has extraordinary ambitions. It wants to be Lolita rewritten so the nymphet pulls the strings—or she thinks she does. Vanessa Wye was 15 years old when she had an affair with her 42-year-old English teacher, Jacob Strane, a few years before the events of the novel. She never imagined the affair was anything but consensual, though when it was discovered she was asked to leave her tony boarding school. It is not until she hears that Strane is having an affair with another student that she really examines the way Strane gaslighted, manipulated, and controlled her. Score one for the #MeToo movement; this is among the best crime fiction to emerge steeped those issues, from consent to grooming to what counts as sexual assault.—LL
Sarah Perry, After Me Comes the Flood (Custom House)
This complex and twisting new work of fiction from rising star and fan favorite Sarah Perry follows John Cole, a bookseller who packs up his shop in search for something new. Along a deserted road on his way to London to visit his brother, his car breaks down, and he is greeted by several people who already know everything about him, and who claim that they have been waiting for him to arrive. Terrifying (in a good way).—OR
Harlan Coben, The Boy From the Woods (Grand Central)
Coben’s stories have a knack for getting under our skin. He has a Hitchcock-like skill for identifying those special vulnerabilities that leave a reader (or a viewer, in the case of his many Netflix series) in a true and lasting state of suspense. In The Boy From the Woods, a man who disappeared thirty years ago, as a boy, only to be discovered coming out of the woods with no explanation for his whereabouts, is enlisted in the search for a young woman gone missing; a local celebrity lawyer seems to be the only one who sees the connections. It’s a gripping story, but even more unsettling is the exploration of the community and the outsider, the way we accept some into our ranks and make life a kind of mysterious trial for others.—DM
Stephanie Wrobel, Darling Rose Gold (Berkley)
This is a super twisted delectable read which is likely be among my favorite books of the year, one of those things I recommend with the preface, “What pushes your buttons around mother-daughter relationships?” (Reader, you should ask yourself that question too.) It’s a book you have to have a certain cynicism to enjoy: good-bye Pollyannas and others who believe in the that people are ultimately good. In Rose, there’s no room for such sentiment. No one is telling the truth, both daughter and mother have serious agendas, and you will have a book that wonderst just how far a daughter should go to please her mother–especially when her mother is obviously unhinged.—LL
Andrea Bartz, The Herd (Ballantine)
As recent news confirms, WeWork is a shit show (our office is in the same building as a bunch of WeWork floors and I will never forgive them for making the elevator take fifty times longer than it used to), so reading a crime novel that parodied the co-working lifestyle was extremely satisfying to me. Plus, it’s a great mystery, with a genuinely shocking twist!—MO
Helen Monks Takhar, Precious You (Random House)
Precious You features an epic battle between a seasoned editor and her Bright Young Millennial intern. The intern’s got some great new ideas (and a pipeline to power, given that her aunt is the new head of the company) but her older compatriot isn’t going down without a fight. Their showdown illuminates many of the generational disputes between those who came up in the 90s and those entering the workforce over the past decade, and Takhar uses the competition between these two women to encourage more solidarity between women, but we can embrace this message and also still vicariously enjoy the characters’ increasingly high-stakes maneuvers against one another.—MO
William Boyle, City of Margins (Pegasus)
Boyle has carved out a special place for himself in the current landscape of noir, making the neighborhoods of South Brooklyn his own. In his latest, a dozen lives intersect in 1990s New York City, with a dangerous mixture of family ties, loyalty, disgrace, crime, and more secrets than could possibly be good for your health. It’s a shifting, swirling narrative, one that Boyle pulls off with the usual sharp style. A dark world vision pervades, but there’s always a deeply felt humanity to Boyle’s stories. He remains one of the very brightest spots in contemporary noir.—DM
Donna Leon, Trace Elements (Atlantic)
In Donna Leon’s latest, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague Claudia Griffoni are called to a hospice to witness a patient’s dying words. She’s convinced her late husband’s death was no accident, and only manages to mutter a few phrases indicating a debt to a dangerous lender before expiring. It’s up to the Commissario to investigate, especially as he’s never been able to let an unsolved mystery go.—OR
