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.
W.M. Akers, Westside (Harper Voyager)
A heady, exhilarating hybrid of fantasy and crime, Akers debut is set in an alternate reality 1921 Manhattan, when the city has been divided in two and the westside of the island turned into a retrogade wasteland populated by the underclasses and bohemians. There, a curious girl practices her father’s old trade as a private detective. She intends to take on the westside’s “small” mysteries—everyday riddles and conundrums—but finds herself entangled in a larger, more murderous web of lies, corruption, and subterfuge. Westside is a wild trip of a novel, full of homages yet wholly original and a powerful work of noir imagination.
Sara Collins, The Confessions of Frannie Langton (Harper)
Sara Collins knows her history—and her confessional narratives—very well. In this gorgeous piece of historical fiction that also happens to be an incredibly self-assured debut, a woman about to be executed for the murder of her employer recounts the story of her life, and examines how she went from enslaved on a Caribbean plantation to employed as a maid by the woman who would become her lover. If that doesn’t seal the deal, both Emma Donahue and Lyndsay Faye blurbed it, so this one is officially approved by two authors who are historical fiction royalty.
Juliet Grames, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna (Ecco)
I love sweeping family dramas, especially when they’re as full of intrigue, insight, and near-fatality as Juliet Grames’s debut. Told from the perspective of an unnamed granddaughter intent on understanding the mysterious hatred between 100-year-old Stella and her younger sister, the narrative takes us from Calabria to Connecticut as the family journeys from Italy to America in the 1940s, the life of headstrong and self-possessed Stella reconstructed through her many near-death experiences. This messy, complex, and intoxicating tale is as haunting as it is heartening, and these characters are sure to be remembered for a long time.
Jason Allen, The East End (Park Row)
This strong debut is a perfect brooding summer read. A working class kid in the Hamptons, New York City’s summer playground, passes the time before the season starts by working odd jobs and occasionally breaking into his wealthy neighbors’ seaside mansions. When he breaks into the wrong house and witnesses a crime, he’s strong-armed into a coverup that spirals out of control. Allen captures the landscape, the culture clash, and the suspense beautifully, holding onto a powerful sense of dread throughout this poignant novel.
S.R. Masters, The Killer You Know (Redhook)
The Killer You Know is a taut, assured first novel from S.R. Masters, who lays out the story of a small-town reunion and a tight-knit group of friends who come to suspect that one of theirs might well be a serial killer with deeply sinister designs. The dynamics of the friendships are richly drawn and the suspense is genuinely chilling as the circle closes in. Fair warning: don’t read this one before attending any kind of reunions or hometown visits, especially if one of your friends has an especially dark sense of humor.
August Norman, Come and Get Me (Crooked Lane)
Norman’s debut is a finely paced thriller about a celebrated journalist who returns to who alma mater for an honorary degree and finds herself assisting in the investigation into a campus predator. A richly layered backstory adds plenty of power to the case, as Norman unfolds a dark, atmospheric tale about trauma and evil.
