July’s crop of new thrillers are as brutal and scintillating as the summer heat. The following list feels a bit like an ur-list of what crime and mystery novels are—their building blocks, their structure, and above all, their consumption. These novels are variations on a theme, like all good genre fiction; dutiful to those who’ve come before, and paving new paths for those who will follow. In short, July’s new crime releases are a masterclass in, well, crime writing. Enjoy!
All blurbs by me unless otherwise stated.
Catherine Cho, The Devoted
(Washington Square Press)
This dark romantic thriller takes us into the world of the Triads, centered around a single question: how far would you tempt fate for the promise of love? As Cho’s narrator, the daughter of a gangster, grows up in ignorance and privilege, she finds herself falling for her childhood friend, now a leader in the same underworld that once destroyed her father. Can she risk loss again, for a brief moment in the sun? Or does she condemn her lover the moment she succumbs to her feelings? A stirring tale that mixes high emotion with mafia realpolitik, this one should make for an excellent miniseries. –MO
Rene Denfield, The Talking Bone
(Harper)
Rene Denfield is a death row innocence advocate in real life, and her experience and empathy shows throughout her latest novel. The Talking Bone follows a private investigator as she methodically searches for evidence that could exonerate an innocent man, two weeks from execution and desperate for help. As Denfield’s heroine uncovers more and more proof that her client has been framed, she begins to unravel the mysteries in her own personal history. A gut-punch of a novel with as much beauty as it has pain, The Talking Bone showcases an author at the top of her game. –MO
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Intrigue
(Del Rey)
A con artist who preys on wealthy older women in 1940s Mexico teams up with a disenfranchised bastard to bilk her aunt of all they can, and just maybe, find happiness with each other. The Intrigue is Silvia Moreno-Garcia in peak form, for another entry in a storied career. –MO
Colson Whitehead, Cool Machine
(Doubleday)
Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy has easily been one of the high water marks for contemporary crime fiction, and the series comes to a fitting conclusion this year with Cool Machine, a wild march into 1980s New York, as Ray Carney dives into the proverbial ‘one last job’, Pepper takes an odyssey through the downtown club scene, and a sliver of redemption is sought through family ties. Whitehead is one of the most talented novelists of the era, and we’re lucky he’s taken on such a deeply felt, wildly entertaining project. –DM
Laura Sims, The Man
(Putnam)
This book is one of the few stories I’ve ever read that successfully pulled off the mid-novel twist. I can’t tell you much more without spoiling it, but to briefly summarize: The Man follows a housewife with a rare talent in photography as she is pushed towards publicizing her brilliance, with deadly results. Sims’ latest profoundly captures the essence of Cicero’s favored saying: cui bono? Who benefits, indeed. –MO
Rowan Beaird, Tenderness
(Flatiron)
Rowan Beaird’s latest, a slow-burn mystery set in the 1970s, takes place on a remote island that will soon host a wedding celebration between an old-money groom and his penniless aristocrat of a fiancee. The bride is recently escaped from a cult and enigmatic in her commitment to her intended; she yearns for escape, for freedom, and for a real chance at love, and feels stifled by the trappings of wealth and convention. The rarified guests have gathered in expectation of scandal, gossip, and perhaps a visit from the cult’s remaining members, while the mysterious bride stays a force of gravity at the center of the celebration, a mirror for all her friends and family and their many insecurities, even as they refuse to acknowledge her own rich interior life or the unvarnished truths behind her supposedly shocking actions. Tenderness is an astute study of human behavior, and a complex portrait of a resonant era. –MO
Otto Penzler (ed), Golden Age of Suspense Stories
(American Mystery Classics)
Detective fiction usually gets the top billing for its golden age, but classic suspense stories are getting their time in the limelight now, too, with this collection featuring fifteen tales from the likes of James M. Cain and Ellery Queen. –DM
Justine Larbalestier, Scott Westerfeld, The Mortons
(Pamela Dorman Books)
Jessica Morton is the daughter of an ancient and powerful family, in competition with her cousins to run their criminal empire. Each generation attends a private boarding school with a shadow curriculum, in which the cousins learn the art of creative accounting, subtle influence, and bold assassination; each generation accepts that they may be culled before they begin to live, for this is their family’s way. But something is changing, has already changed—Jessica’s generation is far too small, her family seems desperate, and a rebellion may be brewing. Once you start reading this one, you won’t be able to stop! Just as the Morton family planned…–MO
Molly Fader, Lady X
(Ballantine)
Lady X is split between the present day, where Fader’s heroine is grappling with the discovery of her Hollywood heart-throb husband’s bad behavior, and New York City in the 1970s, where the mysterious Lady X begins a series of escalating attacks against creeps, rapists, and other misogynist offenders. So good! And, depending on my future career as a graffiti-spraying vigilante painting dicks on a wall in the name of feminist justice, so inspirational… –MO
Catherine Cliff, Miss Bates: Emma Revisted
(Pegasus)
This book is for all those who have grown tired of the Jane Austen marriage market and would prefer to consider the spinster. I’m a sucker for a good backstory for a boring character, and Cliff’s new novel does for the pathetic Miss Bates what Laurie R. King did for Mrs. Hudson, Holmes’ landlady, in The Murder of Mary Russell: restores a little agency to the side-lined helpers and gives them a bit more control over their own narrative, as they puts one over all those snobby central characters and their endless assumptions. Good on you, Catherine Cliff! Now let’s see someone rescue Mrs. Havisham from that awful wedding cake. –MO
