Breaking into the crime game isn’t easy, but every month, a few brave and talented souls make a go of it. For readers, there are few experiences so thrilling as finding a new author whose career is just beginning and whose work promises years of enjoyment to come. But it’s sometimes hard to find those debuts. That’s where we come in. We’re scouring the shelves in search of auspicious debuts and recommending the very best for your reading pleasure.
Sara Sligar, Take Me Apart (MCD)
Art! Archives! Big houses! Brooding, handsome millionaires! This book has everything. When a woman flees the big city after a traumatizing incident at work and returns home to her parents’ gossipy small town in California, she finds herself pressured into taking a gig sorting out the dust-covered papers of a brilliant, transgressive artist, whose sudden death placed much of the town under suspicion, including her stiff-upper-lipped son, who may know more than he’s letting on. The archival project allows Sligar’s protagonist both time to meditate on the nature of modern art and a chance to investigate the artist’s mysterious demise.
Anika Scott, The German Heiress (William Morrow)
One of my biggest pet peeves with historical fiction is that authors and filmmakers often assume we want to read and identify with the stories of heroes. I much prefer the stories that place the reader in the difficult place of having to identify with the morally ambiguous behavior of those whose commitment to ethics isn’t nearly as secure as their commitment to their own interests (although the current heroism of front-line workers in the fight against Covid is making me rethink these assumptions…although on the other hand, there are all those toilet paper hoarders to remind us that we are indeed selfish at heart). Anika Scott’s The German Heiress features a protagonist who’s not just morally compromised—she’s quite literally a war criminal. After running her family’s ironworks during the war, she goes on the run from those who’d like to see her punished for her crimes, but the friend she turns to for refuge is herself missing, triggering an investigation into her disappearance, and into the dark hearts of collaborators everywhere.
David Moloney, Barker House (Bloomsbury)
From a former department of corrections officer comes a powerful new novel of prison wardens, power struggles, and crushing compromises. Told from the perspective of two rookies, Barker House follows nine jailers through a single year. Some are sadists, some are voyeurs, but each has their own unique coping mechanisms to deal with the world of mass incarceration.
Steven Wright, The Coyotes of Carthage (Ecco)
This book is so good! After losing an election, a campaign manager gets one chance to redeem himself with his tough-as-nails boss—he’s headed to a backwoods community that makes its living off of natural abundance to flood the town with a quarter mil of dark money and convince the townsfolk to allow mountain-top removal coal mining to destroy their little bit of paradise. You will never find a more cynical take on politics.
Camilla Bruce, You Let Me In (Tor/Forge)
This one is a meta-mystery perfect for fans of Knives Out. A bestselling author is reported dead, but she leaves behind only her money and her last manuscript—no body to be found. As the curious and the serious swarm on the small town near the writer’s vast estate, questions from the author’s past once again bubble to the surface, and even those who pretend not to care still recall her infamous trial and the suspicious death of her husband…
