In recent years, October has begun to challenge summer as the high season for crime fiction, mysteries, and thrillers. This year may well be a prime example, with a slate of new releases from some of the biggest crime writers around, as well as a host of exciting debuts and rising authors to discover. Here are our choices for the best new novels.
Layne Fargo, They Never Learn
(Gallery/Scout)
Layne Fargo’s sophomore crime novel is a satisfying and gleeful revenge thriller, perfect for the #metoo era. At a liberal college, an English professor has a secret—each year, she picks one Bad Man to eliminate as a threat. Unfortunately, the university’s finally noticing a suspicious uptick in suicides, and it’s up to Fargo’s resourceful professor to make sure she can keep performing her vital contributions to society. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
Brian Selfon, The Nightworkers
(MCD)
This one takes place in my old neighborhood! (Which is less than a mile away from my new neighborhood). In the heart of Bushwick, a money launderer has convinced himself that he does what he does for family. He’s providing for his niece and nephew, and he doesn’t think too hard about where the money comes from. But when a bag of dirty cash (and its unreliable runner) go missing, and unmarked cop cars are spotted on the street outside the family’s apartment, Selfon’s characters find their fragile foundations crumbling. Only one small criticism: now that I live closer to Grover Cleveland Park than to Maria Hernandez Park, I must admit that Grover Cleveland Park would be a way better place to hide a body. –MO
Stephen Spotswood, Fortune Favors The Dead
(Doubleday)
Spotswood’s debut is a relentlessly entertaining romp through 1940’s New York City, and through the annals of mystery fiction, as well, with many sly nods to authors of the past and some invigorating reinventions of classic tropes and gambits. Willowjean “Will” Parker is hired on to assist a private detective, Lillian Pentecost (think Archie Goodwin’s relationship with Nero Wolfe, only Parker is a circus runaway with knife skills), as she takes on the case of a supposed haunting. Spotswood’s style is swift and witty, and the mystery at the novel’s heart is a clever knot. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief
Val McDermid, Still Life
(Atlantic Monthly Press)
Forged paintings, hidden identities and a lobsterman lead the way in the latest DCI Karen Pirie mystery from master craftsman, Val McDermid. The discovery of a body propels Pirie into an underworld of knock-off treasures, an inscrutable world that leaves plenty of room for meditations on the nature of art and the suffering of mankind. McDermid is at the top of her game and readers will be highly rewarded for taking this new journey at her side. –DM
Lee Child and Andrew Child, The Sentinel
(Delacorte)
The Sentinel is the first collaborative effort from Lee Child and his brother Andrew Child, who’s taking over the Reacher series from his big brother. Their new novel is both timeless and timely, a reworking of Red Harvest for the age of Russian interference in US elections, as Reacher stumbles on a town where hackers are holding the town’s infrastructure for ransom. –MO
R.V. Raman, A Will to Kill
(Agora)
In this kickoff to a new series, Raman brilliantly evokes Agatha Christie’s classic country estate mysteries for modern-day India. When a patriarch emerges from a legal battle victorious and with his estate again free to dispense, he summons his family to a mansion in the Nilgiris valley. Knowing he’s at risk of coming to an untimely end at his relatives’ hands, he draws up two wills, in sharp conflict with one another, with one set to prevail depending on the exact manner of his death. It’s an ingenious plot, and Raman takes obvious delight in teasing out the suspense to great effect. –DM
Tana French, The Searcher
(Viking)
French’s The Searcher is a moving new tale of friendship and healing, set in an Irish countryside populated with eccentrics, curmudgeons, and a hilariously weird British woman obsessed with fairies. In The Searcher, a retired cop heads to Ireland to restore an old house and recover from his broken marriage. In between worrying about his daughter and fending off well-meaning set-up attempts from the locals, he forms a delicate bond with a wild teenager who wants the former cop to look for his missing brother. –MO
Scott O’Connor, Zero Zone
(Counterpoint)
An art installation in the New Mexico desert is transformed into a shrine and the homebase of a mysterious cult in O’Connor’s new literary thriller, which chronicles a violent standoff with government agents at the site of the installation, as well as that incident’s long, tumultuous aftermath. Zero Zone is a pounding thriller that also takes on questions about creation, the ownership of art, and the vague lines of responsibility between those whose lives have been bonded in tragedy. –DM
Nick Kolakowski, Rattlesnake Rodeo
(Down & Out Books)
Kolakowski’s latest follows a brother and sister who have escaped from a sadistic club of billionaire’s hellbent on hunting them in the Idaho backwoods, but now the siblings have to cross rough and corrupt terrain as they evade the various lawmen public and private who are in the pockets of their kidnappers. Rattlesnake Rodeo is a heart-pounding cross-country wilderness thriller that also manages to be a critique on modern capitalist society and a touching portrait of family love and survival. –DM
Ian K. Smith, The Unspoken
(Thomas & Mercer)
Even though I’ve never been to Chicago (except for the airport), there are so many wonderful crime novels coming out of the Windy City that it almost feels familiar. Dr. Ian K. Smith first rose to prominence for his medical expertise (and winning smile); of late he has turned his considerable intelligence and charm towards crafting intricate mysteries full of heroes you actually want to root for. In The Unspoken, Smith introduces a former cop turned PI who’s set up private practice after winning a giant settlement from the city. He’s hired to track down the daughter of an icy socialite, but soon finds the missing girl’s case to be far more complicated than just locating a wayward teen. –MO
Lisa Jewell, Invisible Girl
(Atria Books)
Jewell’s latest has all the elements of a suspense thriller: a missing girl, a marriage full of secrets, a predator on the loose, and a neighbor with something to hide. Jewell, however, takes these building blocks and uses them to address complex social ills—characters in the story use or experience the effects of patriarchy and misogyny differently, and together form a multi-layered portrait of a society caught in the grips of loneliness, falsehood, and isolation. Not to say there’s not hope at the end—Jewell’s book was one of the few I read this year that left me feeling a bit better about humanity. Now, more than ever, we need faith that people can change, reform, and apologize; I found that faith here. –MO
Sherry Thomas, Murder on Cold Street
(Berkley Books)
Fans of traditional mysteries and Sherlockian pastiche rejoice at the site of a new Sherry Thomas, as do historical fiction aficionados, but really we all should be enjoying Thomas’ charming and romantic tales of Victorian intrigue. In the latest, a long-awaited romance is finally allowed to be, but new investigations of course threaten to interrupt Lady Charlotte Holmes’ happy love-life once again. Many little cakes are eaten. –MO
Stuart Turton, The Devil and the Dark Water
(Sourcebooks)
The incredibly creative author of The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is back, this time with a dark and brooding mystery set at sea. Sherlock is a prisoner on the boat, and he sends his deputy Watson to investigate on-board shenanigans as his proxy. The Devil and Dark Water is, to put it simply, very cool. Which is why I needed to add it to this list, even though my fellow editor isn’t a fan of the number 13. After all, October is the spoookiest month….–MO
