The CrimeReads editors make their selections for the best debut novels in crime fiction, mystery, and thrillers.
Katie Gutierrez, More Than You’ll Ever Know
(William Morrow)
This book is full of so much love. Lore Rivera has everything a woman is told to want: a husband who loves her, two children who work hard to succeed, and a career that values her. When her husband’s business falls prey to a recession, she finds herself suppressing her own success to make her husband feel better. Meanwhile, she meets another man in Mexico City who finds her success a turn-on. Soon enough, she’s got two husbands; soon after that, one husband finds out and kills the other. Forty years after, a true crime journalist becomes obsessed with the case and gets Lore to finally agree to an interview baring all. A fascinating meditation on love, career, and family that’s also a stunning page-turner. –MO
Brendan Slocumb, The Violin Conspiracy
(Anchor)
What an absolutely perfect mystery The Violin Conspiracy is, and one that reaches deep into the history of race and inequality in America in its investigation of a seemingly simple crime. A classical violinist – often the only Black musician included in elite musical ensembles – finds out that his own violin, a family heirloom, is a rare Stradivarius once gifted to his ancestor by a slave owner. After discovering the violin’s now-astronomical worth, the descendants of the slave-owning family decide to sue the violinist to recover “their” property. Meanwhile, the violin itself is stolen, and it’s up to the musician to both prove his ownership and recover the stolen instrument. The ending will shock you. But perhaps the ending shouldn’t be so surprising, given the lengths to which white supremacy will go to justify pre-existing inequalities or secure a place at the top. –MO
Adam White, The Midcoast
(Hogarth)
White’s debut is a tense family drama punctuated with page after page of careful and poignant observations that add up to something larger than the (always gripping) story. The lush surroundings don’t hurt, either. A high school English teacher agrees to a weekend visit to see old friends, Ed and Steph Thatch, who have experienced a tremendous and somewhat implausible rise up the ranks of Maine society, to the point where they’re hosting an extravagant reception for the Amherst lacrosse team. Wandering through the sprawling estate, our protagonist finds some deeply disturbing photographs, which look even more suspicious a short time later, when the state police show up to crash the party, and soon he’s launched into an investigation of just exactly how his old friends put together their new fortune, and what they were willing to do to keep it. With The Midcoast, White has staked himself a claim as a gifted observer of American privilege and corruption, a fine literary tradition that was overdue its Maine epic. –DM
Isabel Cañas, The Hacienda
(Berkley)
Isabel Canas takes the gothic novel to the haciendas, just as Sylvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic took on the history of silver mining and imperialism. In The Hacienda, set just after the Mexican War for Independence, heroine Beatriz has been dispossessed of her family fortune after her father’s fall from political grace and subsequent execution. She finds a husband she feels will elevate her status and protect her mother from persecution, but strange happenings at her new estate and rumors of hauntings threaten to derail her new life, and a sexy local priest who moonlights as a witch is her only hope of survival. Lush, beautiful, and completely deserving of the comparisons to Rebecca, The Hacienda is essential reading in the gothic revival. –MO
Samantha Allen, Patricia Wants to Cuddle
(Zando)
This is the lesbian Sasquatch novel you’ve always wanted. A group of finalists for a Bachelor-style show head to a remote British Columbian island to film the final episodes of the contest. While there, they encounter a female Bigfoot and her coterie of admirers, and those that do not admire her (as they properly should) are torn limb from limb because this is the most badass book imaginable. Patricia is the Sasquatch, by the way. The publisher describes it as “viciously funny” but I thought it was also kinda sweet. I’d give Patricia a cuddle. –MO
Eli Cranor, Don’t Know Tough
(Soho)
Cranor’s debut novel is one of the most powerful noirs to come along in years, a finely chiseled slice of upended Americana and a deeply felt study in the ties that bind us and tear us apart. Small-town Arkansas football is the setting, so you know the stakes are going to be high, but Cranor brings to his story so many moments of quiet, cutting grace. The dread is allowed to subtly build in the background, until quite suddenly you’re drowning it. The story is built with rugged, overlapping fabrics: the outsider coach, the hard case player with talent and demons, the town and its yearning to win, with all the violence and heartache that implies—all these human moments come together in sensational fashion to yield a story that’s genuinely shocking, told in language that’s rich, compelling, and finely wrought. Cranor shows himself to be a craftsman of the highest order, and an author whose stories we’re going to be anticipating for years to come. –DM
Harini Nagendra, The Bangalore Detectives Club
(Pegasus)
A truly auspicious beginning to a new series featuring an amateur sleuth, Kaveri, operating in 1920s Bangalore, aided by her sharp mind, her husband’s medical practice, and the preconceived notions about who she should be and where she should go. Her first case stems from a murder at a distinguished club, pointing to a nearby brothel and a wealthy Englishman, an investigation that allows Nagendra to show off her skills as a social critic and a first rate mystery novelist. –DM
Grace D. Li, Portrait of a Thief
(Tiny Reparations)
There’s a ton of good art thrillers coming out this year, but Portrait of a Thief is that rare, perfectly executed heist that reminds us why we love to pair art and crime. When thieves take 23 priceless works of Chinese art from Harvard’s (now-renamed) Sackler Gallery, a nearby Chinese-American student witnesses the crime, and finds himself invited to join a gang dedicated to returning art to its nations of origin or otherwise liberating the stolen artifacts of colonialism. Which means this book will be very, very, good. –MO
Samantha Jayne Allen, Pay Dirt Road
(Minotaur)
A young woman returned home to a small Texas town, adrift, working waitressing shifts and waiting for the next piece of life to come rushing along, joins up with her supposedly retired grandfather as a private investigator. That’s the intriguing setup to this powerful new novel from Samantha Jayne Allen, a major new talent on the crime fiction scene, whose evocative descriptions of the Texas landscape and brooding atmospherics make for a new kind of noir you won’t soon forget. Get a copy of Pay Dirt Road now and expect to be hearing a lot more from Samantha Jayne Allen in the future. –DM
Dwyer Murphy, An Honest Living
(Viking)
A rain-spattered love letter to a bygone New York, a wry homage to a classic of the genre, and a delightfully meta work of neo-noir, Dwyer Murphy’s brilliantly assured debut is the story of an unwitting attorney-turned-private investigator who gets tangled up in a crime of obsession between a reclusive author and her antiquarian bookseller husband. The mystery is beautifully constructed, the writing crackles on every page, and Murphy’s portrait of early 2000s New York City is nothing short of exquisite. If you’re looking to lose yourself inside a smart, atmospheric literary crime novel this winter, An Honest Living will not disappoint. [Murphy is an editor at CrimeReads, a sister site of Lit Hub’s] –Dan Sheehan, Bookmarks Editor at Lit Hub
