The CrimeReads editors make their picks for the best noir fiction of 2023.
(As is our annual tradition, we decline to define ‘noir’ even for the purposes of this exercise, because who knows, it’s just sort of a feeling, don’t you think?)
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Margot Douaihy, Scorched Grace
(Zando, Gillian Flynn Books)
Margot Douaihy’s chain-smoking nun Sister Holiday may be the most original character you’ll come across for quite some time. Douaihy wanted to reclaim pulp tropes for a female protagonist, and I have to say, Sister Holiday is punk AF. Set in New Orleans, Scorched Grace takes place at a Catholic school where an arson attack has harmed several students. Sister Holiday, a fan of detective fiction, is ready to solve the case (or else face suspicion herself). –MO
Lou Berney, Dark Ride
(William Morrow)
Berney‘s new novel, Dark Ride, introduces readers to an immediately unforgettable character: Hardly Reed, a twenty-one year old stoner working at an amusement park, breezing through life’s various travails when he comes across a pair of kids he suspects of being abused. When Hardly, against all odds and his own inclinations, decides to get involved and try to help the kids, he soon finds himself pitted against a local lawyer who’s also at the helm of a dangerous drug trafficking operation. Berney brings a compelling human touch to a story that grabs hold of the reader early and never lets go. –DM
Scott Von Doviak, Lowdown Road
(Hard Case Crime)
Von Doviak’s new book is an absolutely rollicking, roaring journey across 1970s America, as two cousins with a jackpot of weed decide to pack it into their car and move it across country to the site of a daredevil feat: a motorcycle jump across Snake River Canyon. Von Doviak has the period details just right, but even more importantly he captures the uncanny, corrupt atmosphere of the Seventies in exquisite detail, all while moving an intricate plot relentlessly forward. (The cousins happen to have a big-time trafficker and the law on their tail.) This is noir that manages to be both gritty and light on its feet. You’d be hard pressed to find a more fun road trip story. –DM
Laura Sims, How Can I Help You
(Putnam)
Laura Sims’ latest is a Highsmithian cat-and-mouse thriller featuring two librarians: Margo is hiding something, and Patricia is obsessed with discovering her secrets. A suspicious death of a patron becomes the catalyst for curiosity and a looming, explosive confrontation in this uneasy thriller. Sims’ work harkens back to the complex personality studies of mid-century psychological fiction, and pays homage to middle-aged womanhood—serial killers age too, after all.–MO
Chloé Mehdi, Nothing Is Lost
Translated by Howard Curtis
(Europa)
This pitch-dark French noir explores the aftermath of violence and the questions still unanswered in the wake of a teen’s murder by police. 11-year-old Mattia spends his days emotionally managing the adults around him, trying to keep his teachers from realizing he’s gifted, and thinking hard about the murder of 15-year-old Said during a police identity check. As he considers the life and death of Said, he puts together the larger puzzle of oppression in the heavily policed suburbs. Mehdi’s writing conjures the best of French noir, and reminds us why the French named the genre. –MO
Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers
(Catapult)
The Berry Pickers is a sensitive and devastating saga of families broken, children stolen, and fierce reckonings with the traumas of history. As the novel begins, a 4-year-old Mi’kmaq child goes missing, her disappearance sending her loved ones into their own private hells. We’re then introduced to a girl growing up with a paranoid mother and an aloof father, dreaming of another family and wondering at her parents’ reticence when it comes to her earliest years. The novel starts in 1962 and spans over 50 years, with an emotional climax that will leave most readers with at least a tear in their eye. –MO
S.A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed
(Flatiron Books)
S.A. Cosby does Thomas Harris!! And proves that the serial killer novel is back with his cleverly plotted and socially relevant take on the hunt for a monstrous killer. Cosby goes Southern Gothic with the backstory, focusing on the sins of society and how indifference and prejudice are the true culprits behind the most terrible acts. In true Cosby fashion, the novel manages to touch on all manner of hot button topics.
The novel begins with a school shooting, where a white police officer kills the shooter: a Black man who was a former student at the school, and who claims his victim, a popular teacher, was hiding a terrible secret. When the town sheriff, the first Black man elected to the post in the small Southern town, begins to investigate the teacher’s horrific acts, the townspeople are deeply resistant to the truth, and meanwhile, he’s got a showdown coming between right-wingers determined to protect a Confederate monument and the protestors who want it gone. A fast-paced book that will also have you asking deep questions about the nature of faith, All the Sinners Bleed is one of my favorite books of the year. –MO
Jordan Harper, Everybody Knows
(Mulholland)
Harper’s Everybody Knows is noir at its absolute finest: at once perfectly in line with the long tradition of cynical, world-weary Angelenos delving into the moral abyss, and a thoroughly modern story about the city’s dominant industry and all the sins and compromises that are being covered up every day in order to keep the thing humming along. The story’s plot follows a public relations crisis, but soon enough the ‘case’ is spiraling outward to reveal something even more corrupt at the fabric of the entertainment industry. Harper approaches it all with an insider’s steely resolve, so at times it can seem like we’re reading a particularly heinous exposé, but his writing retains an air of dark poetry that only accentuates and elevates the disturbing material at hand. –DM
Deepti Kapoor, Age of Vice
(Riverhead)
What an epic read. Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice is a vast take-down of the corruption of the wealthy, told from three main perspectives: a reluctant scion of an infamous family, a loyal manservant who cannot forget what he has witnessed, and a curious (but possibly corruptible) journalist. Kapoor’s genius is not only in her characterization, but also the carefulness of her plotting, setting up the convergence of characters and the real-life consequences of their moral choices with perfect interior logic and pacing. We need more stories about money, the having of it and the absence, as the world becomes increasingly economically stratified—we are in a new Gilded Age (perhaps, as Deepti Kapoor titles it, an Age of Vice) and Kapoor is an exemplary voice in exploring the woes of capitalism. –MO
Eli Cranor, Ozark Dogs
(Soho)
Cranor’s sophomore novel is an absolutely relentless, hair-raising thriller that manages to be just as full of emotion as it is adrenaline. In a small-town in Arkansas, a young woman is kidnapped the night of the homecoming game, launching her grandfather into a mad search for the one good thing in his life and maybe the possibility of some redemption. But this is a dark, tough story and nobody gets out unscathed. Cranor has staked himself a claim as one of the premier noir writers coming up today, but with Ozark Dogs, it’s the family feeling—that ache of love, obligation, and lineage—that really draws us into the story and drives us toward the fateful end. This is Southern Noir at its finest, and Cranor is an author on a rapid rise. –DM
