CrimeReads editors select the best new crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers coming out in October.
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James Han Mattson, Reprieve
(William Morrow and Custom House)
It’s hard to do justice to how awesome this book is without giving much away, so I’ll just tell you the set-up: in the mid-90s, in a small university town in the middle of nowhere, there is a haunted house. Not just any haunted house, but a full-contact mansion of horrors, where the well-heeled cliental can go in smiling and emerge screaming, and a few daring souls each year attempt to win a cash prize by completing an exceptionally disturbing challenge. Reprieve is a self-aware and furious deconstruction of the horror novel, contrasting those who seek out fear with those who face the ever-present dangers of prejudice. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
Val McDermid, 1979
(Atlantic Monthly Press)
1979 marks the first installment of a new series from Val McDermid, so from jump street this is a big event on the crime reader’s calendar. The year, appropriately enough, is 1979, and a Glaswegian journalist looking to get away from the “women’s stories” she keeps getting assigned and joins forces with an investigative reporter on the make, only her new partner soon turns up dead. McDermid brings that turbulent year in Glasgow to vivid life and offers up a heady mix of sleuthing and social strife. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief
Caitlin Starling, The Death of Jane Lawrence
(St Martin’s)
This one reads like a David Cronenberg-directed vision of Victorian London. Magician doctors perform dangerous experiments, rebellious undercurrents threaten an uneasy peace, and the scars of war still cover the land, decades after the country’s fall to invaders. Hard-headed heroine Jane, orphaned and in need of a good marriage, proposes a practical solution to handsome but haunted surgeon Augustine Lawrence: they shall wed, and she will work as his bookkeeper; a business arrangement, eschewing all intimacy, that shall allow Jane to keep her independence and the doctor to keep his secrets. He accepts, on one condition: she can never spend the night in his ancestral home, Lindridge Hall. As love grows between the newly wedded couple, so, too, does curiosity in Jane. –MO
John le Carré, Silverview
(Viking)
Likely to be the final novel from the master spy novelist, Silverview is one of the year’s most hotly anticipated reads. Relatively little is known about the story, except that it follows a Londoner to a coastal English town, where his life soon intersects with a spy chief undertaking an investigation into a leak. The story is the last of the unpublished manuscript length works le Carre left behind, and his literary legacy is being overseen by his children. –DM
Erin Mayer, Fan Club
(MIRA)
If Catie Disabato and Amina Akhtar had written the screenplay for Josie and the Pussycats, it might read something like Fan Club. In former Bustle editor Erin Mayer’s blistering debut, her millennial narrator is bored out of her mind working at a women’s magazine, obsessing over the beauty editor’s many freebies and taking as many coffee breaks as possible. “One day, she finds new purpose in the hidden meanings of a pop star’s new hit, joining a devoted group of superfans whose dedication to their diva knows no bounds. What’s the true meaning behind the singer’s lyrics? And what could be the purpose of the fandom’s dark rituals? –MO
Anthony Horowitz, A Line to Kill
(Harper)
Look, I’d have such a soft spot for Anthony Horowitz even WITHOUT the Daniel Hawthorne books, simply because I grew up reading the Alex Rider series. But the Daniel Hawthorne books, in which “Horowitz himself” tags along as the sidekick and narrator (I’m dead), are so much fun. This new, third, installment takes place at a literary festival on a small island off the south coast of England. Where. There. Is. A. Murder. I need to sit down. –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Assistant Editor
Gus Moreno, This Thing Between Us
(MCD/FSG)
Gus Moreno’s grief-stricken protagonist is experiencing a Very Modern Haunting. Thiago and Vera’s starter home condo was always strange—inexplicable cold spots would appear and disappear, mysterious packages would arrive, and their new smart home speaker, Itza, doesn’t listen to their instructions. When Vera dies, Thiago packs up for a cabin in Colorado, where he must do battle with the supernatural forces possessing his smart speaker as he rages over the death of his beloved. Fascinating, bizarre, and incredibly creative, Gus Moreno’s debut is as hard to pin down as that voice in the speaker, but far more rewarding. –MO
Patricia Raybon, All That Is Secret
(Tynedale)
I’m always a sucker for stories where daughters step in to save their fathers or avenge their deaths (can Liam Neeson please make a movie where his daughter saves him) so this one was right up my alley. In All That Is Secret, a Chicago bible instructor heads back to Colorado to find out who killed her father, and since it’s the 1920s, she soon discovers that her own father wasn’t the only Black man being targeted in town. Was his death related to the rise of the Klan, or is there more to learn about his mysterious last days on a ranch and the secrets he might have uncovered? And will the handsome young preacher making eyes at her help or hinder the investigation? –MO
Michael Connelly, The Dark Hours
(Little Brown)
It’s New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles and Renee Ballard is back on the midnight shift. A new murder scene also draws her back into the orbit of Harry Bosch, and the two of them team up to connect and solve a pair of homicides spanning the years, with a bit of sideline action taking down a serial rapist. Connelly is sharp as ever and his stories always manage to explore another piece of the city’s soul. –DM
Lori Rader-Day, Death at Greenway
(William Morrow and Custom House)
I’ve been a fan of Lori Rader-Day since her first novel, and when I found out her new book was a historical novel featuring Agatha Christie’s holiday estate, I squeed. In Rader-Day’s first fictional foray into the past, a group of children shepherded by ill-trained nurses heads to Greenway to shelter from the Blitz. When a body is discovered nearby, and a murderer is deemed on the loose, the nurses begin to fear that their idyllic new refuge is just as dangerous as their city home. –MO
John Banville, April in Spain
(Hanover Square)
In Banville’s latest piercing noir, the action moves to Spain and the Basque coast, as Dublin pathologist Quirke spots a familiar face among the beachside cafes in San Sebastian. The discovery throws a years-old investigation into gear and gives Banville an opportunity to unspool a compelling mystery against the play of shadow and light in an evocative, underexplored (in crime fiction) locale. –DM
John Copenhaver, The Savage Kind
(Pegasus)
The Savage Kind brings a new meaning to “Be gay. Do crime.” Two lonely teenage girls in 1940s D.C. meet in a lecture class, forge an intense connection over a shared love of detective fiction, and soon turn to committing crimes themselves to get their kicks. When dead bodies start piling up around them, they decide to investigate—and perhaps, take their own revenge. –MO
