CrimeReads editors select the month’s best debuts in crime, mystery, and thrillers.
*
Erin Mayer, Fan Club
(MIRA)
If Catie Disabato and Amina Akhtar had written the screenplay for Josie and the Pussycats, it might read something like Fan Club. In former Bustle editor Erin Mayer’s blistering debut, her millennial narrator is bored out of her mind working at a women’s magazine, obsessing over the beauty editor’s many freebies and taking as many coffee breaks as possible. “One day, she finds new purpose in the hidden meanings of a pop star’s new hit, joining a devoted group of superfans whose dedication to their diva knows no bounds. What’s the true meaning behind the singer’s lyrics? And what could be the purpose of the fandom’s dark rituals? –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
Gus Moreno, This Thing Between Us
(MCD/FSG)
Gus Moreno’s grief-stricken protagonist is experiencing a Very Modern Haunting. Thiago and Vera’s starter home condo was always strange—inexplicable cold spots would appear and disappear, mysterious packages would arrive, and their new smart home speaker, Itza, doesn’t listen to their instructions. When Vera dies, Thiago packs up for a cabin in Colorado, where he must do battle with the supernatural forces possessing his smart speaker as he rages over the death of his beloved. Fascinating, bizarre, and incredibly creative, Gus Moreno’s debut is as hard to pin down as that voice in the speaker, but far more rewarding. –MO
Tess Little, The Last Guest
(Ballantine Books)
Little’s debut is an exhilarating mystery set in the Hollywood Hills, as an actress attends a birthday party for her ex-husband, a director who invites eight guests to celebrate with him, then turns up dead. And he has a pet octopus named Persephone—that’s quite important, too. The Last Guest brings a keen sense of the uncanny to a Christie-style whodunnit, delving into the lives and secrets of Hollywood players and building up the story’s momentum through finely observed character work. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief
Toni Halleen, The Surrogate
(Harper Collins)
This novel dives fearlessly into the fragile triangular relationship between an infertile couple and the surrogate they hire to carry their child. Ruth—carefully described as “fortysomething,” as if her age is an embarrassment and who does she think she is wanting a baby when her eggs are surely rotting? Her husband, Hal, already has two teenage boys, but is willing to do whatever to make Ruth’s dream of motherhood happen. The potential surrogate, Callie, is a nineteen-year-old who wants to go to college, something she could finance with the money from being a surrogate. But when her boyfriend shows up and Callie starts getting cold feet, and they arrange an escape from the hospital immediately after her child—or is it Ruth and Hal’s child?—is born. Halleen is not afraid to examine the emotional and legal implications of surrogacy, a brave undertaking for a debut novelist. –Lisa Levy, CrimeReads contributing editor
Patricia Raybon, All That Is Secret
(Tynedale)
I’m always a sucker for stories where daughters step in to save their fathers or avenge their deaths (can Liam Neeson please make a movie where his daughter saves him) so this one was right up my alley. In All That Is Secret, a Chicago bible instructor heads back to Colorado to find out who killed her father, and since it’s the 1920s, she soon discovers that her own father wasn’t the only Black man being targeted in town. Was his death related to the rise of the Klan, or is there more to learn about his mysterious last days on a ranch and the secrets he might have uncovered? And will the handsome young preacher making eyes at her help or hinder the investigation? –MO
