Every season, the book world lines up to sing the praises of the debut, but what about the second novel? When it comes time to support writers embarking on the hard work of building a career in crime literature, the establishment, and readers, are often more muted with their applause. Part of this is our modern urge to seek the new, and another part is the worry, among many well-read genre fans, of becoming emotionally beholden to favorite series, to the exclusion of other worthwhile stories. But how about throwing caution to the wind and falling in love with an author who’s just establishing their voice? How about taking that journey with them? From now on, we’ll be rounding up the best and brightest in sophomore mysteries, crime novels, and thrillers, each season. Here’s our summer round up of nine second books, from nine authors to watch.
Kristen Lepionka, The Last Place You Look (Minotaur)
Lepionka wowed audiences with her debut mystery What You Look For, and the crime world is now singing the praises of What You Want to See, the second in her series featuring Roxane Weary, a wisecracking cynic with the classic PI’s heart of gold. Lepionka has been lauded for crafting her bisexual protagonist as a complex and appealing character who is neither shy about her sexuality nor defined by it. She’s also this list’s shout-out to the Midwest.
Jessica Knoll, My Favorite Sister (Simon & Schuster)
This playful and cutting crime novel is everything we could have hoped for in Jessica Knoll’s sophomore mystery. Knoll’s debut, Luckiest Girl Alive, is grounded in Knoll’s personal experiences, in both its portrait of the magazine world and in its depiction of trauma. The Favorite Sister is a significant departure for Knoll in subject matter, exploring the ultra-competitive environment of reality TV. Like Luckiest Girl Alive, however, The Favorite Sister serves as a primer on how society turns women against each other.
Patrick Hasburgh, Pirata (Harper Perennial)
Hasburgh’s debut novel, Aspen Extreme, came out back in 2004 (and was a Shamus finalist), so it’s been a long wait for his follow-up, but well worth it. Pirata fits perfectly in the surf noir tradition—think Boone Daniels from the Don Winslow series—with protagonist Nick Lutz living a contented beach bum life south of the border, until old vices catch up with him and he goes down a dark path back into crime. The details of the coastal washout life are realized in convincing fashion, and Hasburgh, a former Hollywood writer now surfing, skiing and writing fiction, has a keen sense of plotting, but also a soulful way with his big cast of characters.
Flynn Berry, A Double Life (Viking)
Last year’s winner of the Edgar Award for best debut novel, Berry is back with an incisive study of privilege, violence, and family in Britain. A London doctor is informed that after decades of searching, police have apprehended her father, a former lord turned fugitive wanted for murder, based on the case of Lord Lucan from the 1970s. A Double Life is suspense at its very best, a penetrating investigation into crimes both intimate and expansive.
Sheena Kamal, It All Falls Down (William Morrow)
Nora Watts, the sardonic, troubled narrator of Kamal’s previous novel, The Lost Ones, returns in It All Falls Down. In both books, Nora is tasked with uncovering truths and finding people: in The Lost Ones, it’s her daughter (who she gave up for adoption) who’s missing. It All Falls Down finds Nora searching for her own parents. Her quest takes her from her home in Vancouver to fleabag hotels and derelict buildings in Detroit, where her father, who later committed suicide, grew up. The more Nora learns about the past the more questions she has: how did her father meet her mother? Could she still be alive? And, the most question she’s grappled with her entire life: Why did her parents abandon her and her sister?
Michele Campbell, She Was the Quiet One (St. Martin’s Press)
Campbell, a former New York prosecutor turned thriller writer, had one of last summer’s hits with the intense page-turner, It’s Always the Husband, and is back this year with her follow-up effort, She Was the Quiet One, set in an elite New England boarding school charged by unspoken rules and rivalries. Once again, Campbell peels back the layers of a perfect marriage to reveal something dark and unexpected, while also exposing a privileged world full of contradictions. Campbell is building herself an admirable career telling stories about the underbelly of ‘success’.
Rena Olsen, With You Always (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Rena Olsen works as a marriage therapist, which is why the relationships in her books are so realistically messed up. Her first psychological thriller, The Girl Before, begins with the slow untangling of an abusive relationship, while her followup, With You Always, takes us through how such a relationship comes to be, but the theme of each is the same—the harm of magical thinking and unquestioning love in relationships. Olsen is also fascinated by closed societies and how they enable abuse, and while her first book took us into literally a backwoods compound, her new book takes place in a church whose members become increasingly isolated from the outside world as they are initiated into the church’s inner echelons.
Kellye Garrett, Hollywood Ending (Midnight Ink)
Kellye Garrett won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel for her debut, Hollywood Homicide, and we expect her second installment in her Detective by Day series, featuring protagonist Dayna Andrews, to be just as charming. Hollywood Ending takes place mid-awards season, and while fashion was key to solving the crimes in Hollywood Homicide, we can only hope that as many dazzling outfits make their way through the pages of Garrett’s second.
Gina Wohlsdorf, Blood Highway
Gina Wohlsdorf’s first thriller, Security, proved her sense of the cinematic and the stylish, and her second looks to cement her reputation as one of the most visual and stylized crime writers around. While both Security and Blood Highway feature scrappy protagonists with comic book names denoting moxy and toughness, Security was a locked room mystery where Wohlsdorf spent the better part of the action playing with contained space, while Blood Highway takes its show on the road, as a young woman and her fugitive father go on a hell-raising road trip in search of some cash.
