Every month, like customs agents with a penchant for literature and a dash of intrigue, we’re scouring the latest imports to these shores looking for the best crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Whether you’re a devotee of Nordic Noir, French crime, or you’re looking for the next big thing from the far corners of the mysterious world, chances are there’s a good book headed your way. This month brings fantastic noir and new thrillers from Brazil, Argentina, Italy, and across Scandinavia.
Boris Akunin, The Coronation (The Mysterious Press)
Akunin’s latest takes place against the backdrop of Tsar Nicholas II’s ill-fated coronation, and Fandorin must track down a kidnapped royal and prevent the loss of an enormously valuable scepter. We’ve been fans of Boris Akunin’s Fandorin series ever since we first read The Winter Queen, and we take much delight in the fact that each of Akunin’s mysteries is a new take on a different subgenre of crime fiction. We’re also always intrigued to learn more details of late imperial Russia through the easy-to-absorb format of historical fiction, as events in the book converge into one of the greatest disasters in the history of mass celebrations.
Helene Tursten, Hunting Game (Soho Crime)
Tursten’s The Hunting Game is a classic interloper mystery with a locked-room set up. Embla Nystrom goes on her family’s annual moose hunt, joined by a handsome stranger. When the hunt is soon plagued by mysterious and violent happenings, it’s up to Embla to discover what’s going on.
Camilla Grebe, After She’s Gone (Ballantine)
While most Scandinavian crime fiction has a little of the fairy tale in it, After She’s Gone has more than most. The novel begins when an injured woman emerges from the ancient forest with no memory of how she got there, and continues as she investigates not only the small community in which she was found, but her own past.
Katja Ivar, Evil Things (Bitter Lemon Press)
Katja Ivar’s quietly menacing tale of Cold War era Finland takes us into the increasingly complex investigation of a murder along the Russian/Finnish border, for a mystery that takes full advantage of overlapping jurisdictions and Soviet paranoia to craft and intense and readable procedural, infused with a deep humanity. You can read an excerpt here.
Yrsa Sigurdardottir, The Reckoning (Minotaur)
In this second installment of Sigurdardottir’s Children’s Home trilogy, she continues to indict those who are silent in the face of children’s suffering, while crafting a nail-biter of a plot, with a classic Scandinavian set-up of past crimes resurfacing to haunt the present in gruesome ways. Sure to be another excellent chiller from the queen of Icelandic crime writing!
Tony Bellotto, Bellini and the Sphinx (Akashic)
Bellini and the Sphinx is the American debut for the wildly popular Sao Paulo-based crime series written by Bellotto, the celebrated Brazilian guitarist and writer. His private eye, Remo Bellini, is an homage to Philip Marlowe and the classic American detectives, but with an identity all his own and a milieu, the streets of Sao Paulo, that are as alive and mysterious as any you’ll come across in the genre. American readers have waited too long for this, but they’ll finally get the chance to visit Brazil through Bellotto / Bellini’s eyes.
Andrea Camilleri, The Overnight Kidnapper (Penguin Books)
Andrea Camilleri has charmed the world with his sly, sardonic Inspector Montalbano series, and his latest promises to be just as off-beat and compelling. Montalbano investigates a set of mysterious kidnappings in Camilleri’s new addition to the Sicily-set series, while taking plenty of time to banter with colleagues and of course, eat delectable Sicilian cuisine. You can read an exclusive excerpt here.
Jenny Rogneby, Any Means Necessary (Other Press)
In this second of pop star-turned-criminologist-turned-crime writer Jenny Rogneby’s Leona Lindberg series, the highly anticipated follow-up to Leona: The Die Is Cast, Lindberg takes a new assignment investigating a terrorist attack in the heart of Stockholm. You can read an exclusive excerpt here.
Volker Kutscher, Goldstein (Picador)
An American gangster visits Germany in 1931 in this latest installment of Volker Kutscher’s series, basis for the popular German television television show, Babylon Berlin. Fans of the works of David Downing, Alan Furst, and Phillip Kerr will eat this richly detailed historical crime series up.
Guillermo Saccomanno, 77 (Open Letter)
Not much is needed to turn a story of 1970s Argentina into a terrifying thriller, but it certainly raises the stakes when the protagonist is a gay man housing two dissidents and having an affair with a homophobic cop. Told through flashbacks and lyrical dreamlike sequences, Gomez recounts the everyday terrors of living under a violent regime at the height of the Dirty War as military raids seize unsuspecting civilians, fear pervades Buenos Aires, and an air of distrust seeps into households and between families. With western democracies on the descent, it’s not hard to read Saccomanno’s novel as a dystopian warning for the present.—Camille LeBlanc, CrimeReads editorial fellow
