I swear to you, we really try. Every month we give you crime reads, but there are just so many good books out there it’s inevitable that a few good ones slip by us. So now as we are preparing to say goodbye to 2017, here are eight more crime reads we wanted to let you know about, including true crime, procedurals, and psychological suspense. Think of it as your year-end bonus in book form.
Crime Song by David Swinson (Mulholland Books)
Crime Song is the second installment in Swinson’s Frank Marr series (which is supposed to be a trilogy), and it’s a rollicking ride down the streets and alleys of Washington, D.C. Despite the setting, Marr is no lobbyist or politician. He’s a full-fledged addict, constantly gobbling pills, snorting coke, smoking cigarettes, and washing it all down with plenty of alcohol. He’s also a retired police detective who is now doing P.I. work, using his old connections on the force when necessary. In this book, Marr gets involved in a personal case when his cousin Jeffrey is murdered and found on Marr’s kitchen floor. His investigation takes him into the bowels of D.C.’s drug trade, as he discovers that Jeffrey was a low-level dealer. Jeffrey’s murder turns out to be part of a complex conspiracy, which Marr is compelled to unravel in order to placate his own conscience, that pesky voice in his head which urges him to do the right thing even as he’s feeding his habit with stolen drugs.
Best Day Ever by Kaira Rouda (Graydon House)
The narrator of Best Day Ever, Paul Strom, is one of the creepiest protagonists I encountered this year. The novel covers three days in the life of Strom and his wife, Mia, as they travel from their residence in suburban Ohio to their cottage on Lake Erie. Paul promises his wife the best day ever on this trip, but as he narrates their weekend the reader discovers that Paul is not the upright husband, father, and successful ad executive that he pretends to be. He reminisces about his courtship of his wife: “I knew I would do everything in my power to make Mia realize what a catch I was, too. Of course I would succeed, I always do. When you’ve got it, you’ve got it. I’m not bragging, really, I’m just telling you there are some things I’m really good at and this—women—is one of them.” But despite his belief that he has his wife, his sons, and his professional life under control, Paul’s entire existence is going to change over the course of his carefully planned weekend excursion.
American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road by Nick Bilton (Portfolio/Penguin)
A ripping true crime story disguised as a business book, American Kingpin tells the story of the rise and fall of Ross Ulbricht, the mastermind behind the infamous Silk Road website. Ulbricht, a 26-year-old strident libertarian, started the online marketplace in 2011 with the idea that the Web should serve as a clearinghouse for all kinds of goods and services. The Silk Road, located on the Dark Web, which is only accessible using a browser called Tor, quickly becomes a reflection of the dark side of human nature. Drugs, guns, forged documents, counterfeit money, and other unsavory things were all available on the Silk Road. Once the media starts writing about the site, the U.S. government launches a multi-bureau investigation into the site, trying to find Ulbricht, who goes by the moniker Dread Pirate Roberts, a pseudonym borrowed from the movie The Princess Bride. Bilton skillfully lays out the complicated investigation while also chronicling Ulbricht’s building and maintenance of the site, which was a $1.2 billion dollar industry at its height.
Good Me Bad Me by Ali Land (Flatiron Books)
Land’s background as a children’s mental health nurse underpins Good Me Bad Me, the story of fifteen-year-old Milly, who has recently been taken from her mother’s care and placed with a foster family. Milly, whose real name is Annie, is haunted by her mother’s crimes: she was a serial killer who preyed on children, and Annie was the one who turned her into the police. Land writes Milly’s struggle with her own and her mother’s demons, constantly prodding the reader into thinking about nature, nurture, and what makes some people just plain evil. Good Me Bad Me is an impressive and thought-provoking debut.
The Breakdown by B.A. Paris (St Martins)
I was crazy about Paris’s 2016 debut, Behind Closed Doors, a psychological thriller with a great final twist. The Breakdown continues Paris’s winning streak: the story of Cass, who sees a car on a rural road near her house during a downpour, and wakes up to find out someone she knows slightly was murdered on that very road that night. But Cass isn’t sure of exactly what she saw, and it seems like someone may be gaslighting her: she’s suddenly getting mysterious hang-ups on her home phone and she’s forgetting little but vital things. Did she take her pills? Where did she park her car? Did she order an alarm system without remembering signing the contract? And, most importantly, who or what is behind her curious and sudden memory lapses? Does it have to do with the murder, or is her imagination working overtime?
Garden of Lamentations by Deborah Crombie (William Morrow)
If you are a fan of psychological suspense and have Anglophile tendencies, you should be reading Crombie’s long running Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James series. Each book dives deep into a London neighborhood, and in Garden Crombie explores Notting Hill, famous for its greenery and a hotbed of gentrification (and made famous by the Hugh Grant-Julia Roberts rom-com). Crombie carefully balances two Scotland Yard investigations: James is drawn by personal reasons into the murder of an au pair whose body is found in one of the neighborhood’s private gardens. The au pair, Regan Keating, had done some modeling for a friend of James’s, and her charge, a young boy, is a promising ballet dancer who takes lessons at the same dance studio James’s son Toby does. Meanwhile, Kincaid is faced with the return of his former boss, who alludes to corruption in the department and asks for Kincaid’s help in ferreting out the rotten apples in the Yard.
Bones: Brothers, Horses, Cartels, and the Borderland Dream by Joe Tone (Oneworld)
If you’ve ever been curious about the world of high-stakes horseracing, Bones, which tells the story of quarter-horse racing in the US and Mexico, is definitely the book for you. But Tone does much more in this book than just opine on the sport of kings. Bones is an impressive piece of reporting on the borderland and the how the drug trade infiltrated the world of horseracing. The book focuses on the travails of two brothers on opposite sides of the border and the law: José Treviño, a former bricklayer who starts a successful horse breeding operation with the help and funds of his brother, a notorious cartel head named Miguel Treviño. Tone also details the investigation of the Treviño family by a gung-ho FBI agent named Scott Lawson, who develops sources in the horse world to try to prove José’s stable is dependent on the profits of his brother’s drug business. Moving seamlessly from the exciting world of horseracing to the seamy world of the Mexican cartels, Bones is both an excellent piece of true crime reporting and an engrossing family saga.
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware (Scout Press)
Ware first came to crime fiction fans’ attention with her chilling mystery set against a weekend-long bachelorette (or hen, if you’re British) party in In a Dark, Dark Wood. The Lying Game is Ware’s third novel, and she’s grown into a sharp chronicler of female friendship as well as an astute writer of psychological thrillers. Game focuses on the relationships of a group of women who all went to boarding school together in the English coastal village of Salten. The group was notorious in their school days for playing what they called the lying game: telling lies to other students and faculty and laughing behind their backs when they got away with it. But one day a member of their group, Kate, sends an urgent text saying, “I need you,” to her old friends Fatima, Thea, and Isa, who drop everything to return to Salten, where Kate lives in an old structure called the mill house. Kate isn’t lying this time: the mystery which got the women expelled in their senior year, the murder of Kate’s father who also happened to be the school’s art teacher, is heating up again, and in Ware’s expert hands the plot twists and turns quite beautifully.
