Cover art has always been an integral part of the crime fiction experience. No area of literature has dedicated more time and ingenuity to creating a graphic experience for dedicated readers and casual bookstore browsers alike. Provocative, inspired, and insightful, the best crime covers bring out new layers in the texts they enclose. Despite the occasional fallow period of stock photography and jumbo fonts, the art isn’t dead. It’s alive and well. To celebrate the tradition, each month CrimeReads editors highlight five of the best covers from the newest books in crime, mystery, and thrillers.
Peter Heller, The River (Knopf)
Design by Kelly Blair
A color palette you won’t soon forget and an insidious creep of shapes simulating a river’s pull.
Niklas Natt Och Dag, The Wolf and the Watchman (Atria)
Design by James Iacobelli
A striking silhouette with hints of blood and an eery cityscape for this epic Swedish tale of corruption and dark family secrets.
Nina Revoyr, A Student of History (Akashic)
Design by Trudi Gershinov
A perfect snapshot of nature tamed and bent toward a very particular world vision, and a perfectly uncanny first image for Revoyr’s unsettling tale of Los Angeles across the eras, always glittering, always hiding something corrupt.
Harlan Coben, Run Away (Grand Central)
Design by Jaya Miceli
A Hitchockian interlude for a fine piece of domestic suspense. A father and daughter with sight lines just barely obscured is a nice summation for the anxieties that make Coben’s work so powerful.
Samantha Downing, My Lovely Wife (Berkley)
Design by Emily Osborne and Anthony Ramondo
A witty comment on the crime cover cliche of the partially obscured face, this time in a knife, which gives you a pretty good sense of the relationship at the heart of this wild, subversive thriller.
