Each month, the CrimeReads editors bring you their picks for the best debut novels in crime fiction, mystery, and thrillers.
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White Ivy, by Susie Yang
As someone who reads A LOT of books, I often worry about forgetting a novel as soon as I put it down, but with Susie Yang’s White Ivy, the opposite is true—the more time passes, the more I think about this peculiar, haunting, and vicious thriller that owes much to Becky Sharp of Vanity Fair. At a young age, Ivy Lin learns to take what she wants, taught by her shoplifting grandmother. A sojourn as a scholarship student at an elite private school teaches her envy for the lives of her privileged classmates, and when she heads to China to stay with a wealthy relative and returns as a sophisticate, she’s ready to finally make her way into the American aristocracy. All she needs to do is seduce one childhood friend—and get rid of another.
–Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
The Russian Pink, by Matthew Hart
(Pegasus)
Matthew Hart is a veteran journalist with a niche, writing about diamonds and precious metals as they work their way from mines and dealers through networks of the global elite. So he’s bringing a career of experience and information to his debut novel, a propulsive and heady thriller about a Treasury Department diamond investigator who spots one of the world’s most expensive gems hanging around the neck of a would-be First Lady. Russian agents get involved and soon Hart’s protagonist, Alex Turner, is on a twisty path of conspiracies, blown operations, and double crosses. Hart writes passionately about diamonds and the people who chase them, but he also has a strong handle on the personal dynamics and obsessions that drive this mysterious world.
–Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief
The Lady Upstairs, by Halley Sutton
(Putnam)
Sutton’s debut is a searing indictment of Hollywood corruption and sexual violence, but also a highly satisfying con artist story with some truly intricate and exhilarating action. Jo is a young Angeleno making a living blackmailing bad men, mostly producers and power players caught with their pants down (or sometimes much worse). But when she stumbles into a murder plot, she finds herself a target, and decides to go on the offensive with a con to end them all. Sutton’s prose is cool and crisp with a dark noir tinge, and she brings those atmospherics to a story that’s both entertaining and also a timely exploration of one of Los Angeles’s seedier underbellies. –DM
Murder in Old Bombay, by Nev March
(Minotaur)
March’s debut is a lively adventure through colonial-era Bombay, in which an injured captain, recently returned from battle and comforted only by his re-reading of beloved Sherlock Holmes stories, decides to take on a mystery of his own. Two women have fallen to their deaths from a university clock tower, and Captain Jim Agnihotri is beseeched by a widower who wants him to investigate and clear suspicions of suicide. March has an uncanny talent for conjuring up the hidden corners and personalities of late 19th century Bombay. Murder in Old Bombay has already been given a first novel award by Minotaur and the Mystery Writers of America, and this one is absolutely worthy of the honor. –DM
Night in Tehran, by Ambassador Philip Kaplan
(Melville House)
A fascinating thriller arrives from Ambassador Philip Kaplan, whose long career in the U.S. Foreign Service included a post as U.S. minister, deputy chief of mission and Charge d’Affaires, to the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines during the final days of the Marcos regime. In Night in Tehran, he explores the efforts of one American diplomat navigating conflicting interests and threats during the onset of the Iranian Revolution, as he tries to help ease the Shah out of office. The novel is a fascinating glimpse into the mindset of a diplomat in crisis mode, and also an atmospheric portrait of a city in social flux. –DM
