CrimeReads editors make their selections for the month’s best debut novels in crime, mystery, and thrillers.
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Jenny Hollander, Everyone Who Can Forgive Me Is Dead
(Minotaur)
A young woman with an enviable media job and a seemingly perfect relationship goes into survival mode when an old classmate reappears, making a big movie about events that she would rather not be dredged up again. Hollander parcels out the truth about what really happened in their grad school days with a perfect sense of pacing and enough twists to keep readers on the edge of their seats. –DM
Sarah Ruiz-Grossman, A Fire So Wild
(Harper)
Ruiz-Grossman’s ambitious debut is set in Berkeley, California, a city of stark divides and outsize pressure points, as a wildfire approaches. Our narrative moves between citizens on all points of the socioeconomic spectrum, tied together by themes of housing and shelter–and what it means when our most basic needs are under threat. Ruiz-Grossman brings this insightful story into focus with deft character sketches and atmospheric prose. –DM
Kobby Ben Ben, No One Dies Yet
(Europa)
In 2019, Ghana declared a “Year of Return” and welcomed tourists from across the diaspora to visit the country. That is the backdrop for Kobby Ben Ben’s psychological thriller featuring four American tourists and their competing guides—one religious and humorless, hired to take the Americans around the official sites, and the other queer and cynical, brought in through a dating app to give the tourists a taste of Ghana’s gay underground. This may be one of my favorite novels ever. It’s so funny. It’s like Patricia Highsmith traded her self-loathing for a decent sense of humor. –MO
Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching
(Pamela Dorman Books/Viking)
Tracy Sierra has done the impossible: changed my mind about the home invasion thriller. In Nightwatching, a young widow is shocked one night to find an intruder in her home, and spends several desperate hours using all her wit and wiles to protect her children and find a way to seek help. While much of the story is about the night itself, just as gripping is what happens afterwards. –MO
Jahmal Mayfield, Smoke Kings
(Melville House)
This book has such a great set-up. In Mayfield’s self-assured and righteously furious debut, a group of Black vigilantes is determined to exact vengeance on those who never received punishment by kidnapping their descendants and making them contribute reparations. When one of their targets turns out to be a white supremacist leader, they must martial all their cunning and resources to defeat him, and in the process, find a way to preserve their mission despite growing doubts. Mayfield’s tough, muscular prose infuses the novel with a beautiful darkness as the characters struggle in ways that will hopefully have the reader thinking too. –MO
Sarah Ochs, The Resort
(Sourcebooks Landmark)
The dark underbelly of a renowned Thai beach resort (and party island) is explored in Ochs’ debut thriller, centered on an expat community that guards its place on the island carefully, but is soon rocked by a series of killings. Ochs brings the island party scene to vivid life, but also shows readers the other side of paradise and the cost of preserving a dream. –DM
