While a new voice in the world of crime fiction is always a thing to be celebrated, this year’s debut authors seem to have sprung, styles fully formed, from some crime novelist version of the head of Zeus. Mature, confident, and knowledgable about the twists and turns of the genre and the vicissitudes of life, these authors are a force to be reckoned with, and we can’t wait to see what they do next. Below, you’ll find a list of the best and notable debuts, representing a diverse set of entries into a variety of subgenres, including multiple women entering the historically male-dominated field of espionage writing.
Lauren Wilkinson, American Spy (Random House)
Lauren Wilkinson’s thrilling tale of Cold War espionage and high stakes romance heralds the arrival of a major new talent. In this intricately plotted novel, a young woman frustrated by her lack of advancement is given a chance to prove her worth as a spy: all she has to do is conduct a successful honeypot scheme against the left-leaning democratically leader of Burkina Faso, who’s charismatic populism has been deemed dangerous by the US government. But all bets are off when she falls in love…
Angie Kim, Miracle Creek (Sarah Crichton Books)
Kim’s astounding debut makes a strong case for revived interest in courtroom drama and for the possibilities of legal thrillers. In Miracle Creek, an explosion at a facility in rural Virginia exposes a string of abuses, secrets, and a community of immigrants in peril. Layer upon layer of mystery is peeled back through dramatic courtroom scenes, but the story has just as much in common with today’s tense psychological thrillers, as the author probes deep into the character’s psyches to reveal a complex web of motivations and coverups. Kim has made a strong impression on the crime world and is going to have many dedicated readers for years to come.
Laura Sims, Looker (Scribner)
This debut is a penetrating and unsettling psychological thriller. A woman’s fixation on her neighbor, a well-known actress, goes from unhealthy to something far more sinister after the women meet at a summer block party. It’s a novel about identity, appearances, and envy, and it’s one of the season’s most timely reads, an innovative experiment in what a thriller can be.
Kristin Innes, Fishnet (Scout)
Kirstin Innes’ debut isn’t strictly a crime novel, but it is about a disappearance, which counts enough to be included it on this list. A young woman named Fiona whose sister Rona vanished years before is stuck raising a young child while hope, friendships, and career prospects dwindle around her. A chance encounter at an old school friend’s wedding gives new clues as to why Rona took off, and Fiona soon finds herself undercover investigating the Scottish sex industry and fighting for sex workers’ rights. This book is infused with politics, passion, and beautifully wrought prose.
Layne Fargo, Temper (Scout)
Layne Fargo’s debut is dramatic–an appropriate choice, given the novel’s theatrical setting. When a young actress is cast in the role of a lifetime, she can’t wait to be directed by the company’s resident bad boy. His methods for getting a good performance out of his new favorite actress are a touch unorthodox from the start, and as boundaries are violated, power dynamics shift, and the line between performance and reality is blurred, confrontation between the principal players becomes inevitable.
Daniela Petrova, Her Daughter’s Mother (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
One of the summer’s most promising debuts, Petrova’s thriller looks at the complicated relationship between two women, one of them an expecting mother and the other an egg donor, who meet on the streets of New York in a chance encounter that takes a dark turn when one of them disappears. Petrova has written a consummate page-turner that also manages incredible layers of emotional depth. This is one of the year’s most provocative and eye-opening novels.
Sarah Gailey, Magic for Liars (Tor)
In Sarah Gailey’s genre-bending debut, we’re introduced to Ivy Gamble, a hard-boiled PI with a grudge against her sister, whose magical abilities garnered her the lion’s share of their parents affections. When a student turns up dead at a school of magic, Ivy’s recruited by her sister (a professor at the school) to investigate, and finds herself involved in a welcome new romance while in pursuit of the killer. This is the queer magical crime debut we all needed!
John Vercher, Three Fifths (Agora)
John Vercher’s social noir debut is power and urgent. Biracial Bobby, raised by his white mother, has always hidden his heritage from everyone around him, but he must confront his own identity when his best friend, a former geek turned white supremacist, commits a hate crime and recruits Bobby to help him cover it up.
Andrea Bartz, The Lost Night (Crown)
The Lost Night is a strong, atmospheric debut steeped in the lush details of Brooklyn in the late aughts. The story centers around a magazine fact-checker compelled to revisit a tragic night ten years before where a presumed suicide felled a well-connected scenester, a death that new video shows may have been something more sinister. Bartz weaves timelines together with style and offers up an insightful portrait of a time and place in recent New York history, a period that’s also a stand-in for heedless, fearless youth corrupted. Expect to read a great deal more from Bartz in the future.
Jessica Barry, Freefall (Harper)
Freefall is a complex novel about mothers and daughters and an impressive debut for Barry. Widowed Maggie Carpenter lives in a small town in Maine, where she and her late husband raised their daughter, Allison. Ally, now living in San Diego, and Maggie have been estranged for years. When Ally is supposedly killed in a private plane crash where her fiance was the pilot, Maggie sets out to find out who her daughter became—and what happened to her. Barry has an assured, nuanced style that that ratchets up the apprehension slowly and steadily until the final, powerful payoffs.
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Notable Selections
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Harriet Tyce, Blood Orange (Grand Central Publishing) · Samantha Downing, My Lovely Wife (Berkley) · Sara Collins, The Confessions of Frannie Langton (Harper) · Kelsey Rae Dimberg, Girl in the Rearview Mirror (William Morrow) · Patrick Coleman, The Churchgoer (Harper Perennial) · Amanda Lee Koe, Delayed Rays of a Star (Nan A. Talese)· Holly Watt, To the Lions (Dutton) · David Koepp, Cold Storage (Ecco) · Lizzy Barber, A Girl Named Anna (MIRA) · Lara Prescott, The Secrets We Kept (Knopf) · Shaun Hamill, A Cosmology of Monsters (Knopf) · Daniel Nieh, Beijing Playback (Ecco) · Tara Laskowski, One Night Gone (Graydon House) · Marie Vandelly, Theme Music (Dutton) · Martin Edwards, Gallows Court (Poisoned Pen) · Patricia Smith, Remember (Polis) · Madeline Stevens, Devotion (Ecco)
