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 Spain, Korea, and Quebec, as well as a rugged mystery from the Australian outback.
Marc Fermandez, Mala Vida (Arcade)
Fernandez’s Mala Vida is an unsettling look at contemporary Spain, its rightward shift, and demons from the Franco era that continue to haunt the country today. His protagonist is Diego Martin, a radio journalist concerned whether he’ll still have a job now that the Spanish right is coming back to power after a decade plus of Socialist rule, presumably ready to clear ranks and bring back conservative morality. Martin decides to start looking into a killing, but the clues lead him instead to a string of murders that seem to implicate different pillars of the right, eventually pointing to a terrible secret from the era of Franco and his brutal suppression of domestic enemies. Mala Vida is a brooding and powerful noir, equal parts social critique, personal journey, and scintillating mystery, from an author with substantial expertise in both Spanish history and the art of mystery fiction.
Patrick Senécal, Seven Days (Simon and Schuster)
Senécal is Canada’s answer to Scandinavian crime fiction: cold climes, vicious crimes of passion, blockbuster thrillers. In the Quebecois author’s latest, Seven Days, a man loses a young daughter and kidnaps the perpetrator from police custody, stealing away with him to exact a chilling plan for revenge; detective Hervé Mercure, believing he can read the grieving father’s intentions, sets about tracking him down, learning more and more about the troubled man as the story goes. This is a heart-pounding thriller that explores the nature of revenge. Senécal’s fame in Canada and abroad is well-earned: his stories are as captivating as they come.
Chris Hammer, Scrublands (Touchstone)
A rural outpost in the rugged Australian countryside is the setting for this powerful, atmospheric debut from longtime Australian journalist, Chris Hammer. A town is haunted by a mass killing by the local priest as the anniversary of the massacre approaches; a reporter who’s sent to write about how the town is coping with the trauma begins to suspect that the company line about what happened there isn’t true. New murders arise and secrets intersect as Hammer builds the tension and points toward a chilling conclusion. Scrublands is a thrilling, confident crime debut that will have readers all over the world taking notice.
Guillermo Valcarcel, Shadows Across America (AmazonCrossing)
Spanish author Valcárcel’s new thriller begins in Florida but soon becomes a fevered odyssey south as a bail bondsman travels across Central America looking for the daughter of an ex whose been kidnapped by organized crime figures and either killed or trafficked. Valcárcel’s is a nightmarish vision of the violence tearing the region apart and the depravity of the human trafficking rings that have recently seized power during new periods of instability. Valcárcel’s work is visceral and highly charged, a penetrating look at corruption and its personal costs.
Un-Su Kim, The Plotters (Doubleday)
This stylish thriller follows a professional assassin who works for a host of shadowy underworld kingpins known as “plotters” as he begins to question the morality of his profession. With such literary touches as a library headquarters for assassins, this one may pander a bit to bookish audiences—and we’re all in favor of that.
Amsterdam Noir, edited by Rene Appel and Josh Pachter (Akashic)
The latest in Akashic’s popular city Noir series heads to Amsterdam, a city whose ambivalence is on full display in the stories collected by editors Rene Appel and Josh Pachter. At once, Amsterdam is an idyllic city of orderly cafes, canals, relative abundance and safety; on the other, it’s a place that has long dealt in sex, drugs, and other activities traditionally categorized as vice. It’s a sometimes combustible combination, and the stories in Amsterdam Noir go a long way to probing the everyday noirs of Amsterdam’s many and diverse residents.
