Every month, like customs agents with a penchant for literature, we’re scouring the latest imports to these shores looking for the best crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Whether you’re a devotee of Nordic Noir, French crime, or South Korean thrillers, chances are there’s a good book headed your way. Up this month: pitch-black noir from Hungary, political satire out of Mumbai, intrigue in Istanbul, and more.
Manu Joseph, Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous (Myriad Editions)
Manu Joseph has crafted a twisty political thriller that explores the darker implications of rising nationalism (both in India and globally) in this exciting new work, his first to be published in the US. In this dark comedy of errors, a building collapses in Mumbai on the same day as a controversial Hindu nationalist government comes to power. When a rescuer and notorious prankster reaches the sole survivor in the rubble, she finds him warning against a coming terrorist attack, but who will believe her?—Molly Odintz, CrimeReads associate editor
Ken Bruen, Galway Girl (Mysterious Press)
From veteran crime author Ken Bruen comes the newest installment in the Jack Taylor series. The story begins with Jack, the grizzled private investigator, in Galway, still haunted by a recent tragedy—trying to drown his sorrows in whiskey and forget everything. But soon, police officers are murdered, one-by-one, and his colleagues in the Garda beg him to take the case and find the murderers. The officers are being targeted by a crime ring of young killers, led by a psychopathic young woman named Jericho. But answers that seem simple actually turn out to be far more knotty, and Jericho won’t stop leading the murder spree until it leads her straight to Jack.—Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads
Benedek Totth, Dead Heat (Biblioasis)
Noir narratives filled with blistering swears and breakneck pacing can be rather difficult to translate, so every time something graces our shores that gets the language of low-lifes right, it’s a reason to celebrate. Totth’s Dead Heat, brilliantly rendered into English by Ildikó Noémi Nagy, reads kind of like a way more noir and very Hungarian version of I Know What You Did Last Summer. After a group of teens is involved in a auto accident, deadly consequences ensue for a story that starts bad and quickly gets worse (which means it’s the very definition of noir). Also, Benedek Totth is Stephen King’s translator in Hungary which is super cool!—MO
Burhan Sönmez, Labyrinth (Other Press)
Sonmez’s latest novel is many-layered mystery with few answers but all the most interesting, searching questions about identity, memory, and intersecting lives. In Istanbul, a blues singer tries to kill himself jumping from a bridge, but wakes up, alive, to find he can’t remember what has happened, who he is, as well as pivotal pieces of the course of recent history and civilization. Traveling the city streets, he begins to piece himself back together, though the fragments come from other stories, other observations and mysteries as well. Labyrinth has been earning comparisons to Borges, and they’re well-deserved, as a sense of intrigue and philosophy pervades this excellent, meditative novel. —Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads managing editor
Piero Chiara, The Bishop’s Bedroom (New Vessel Press)
This historical thriller is just as sultry and transgressive as the title suggests. Set in 1946, The Bishop’s Bedroom follows two men who unite for erotic adventures, only to have their partnership interrupted by unexpected tragedy. This moody psychological work, half mystery and half meditation, should please fans of Patricia Highsmith.
