The CrimeReads editors select the month’s best debut crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers.
Neena Viel, Listen to Your Sister
(St. Martin’s Griffin)
Neena Viel’s well-titled debut takes us into a loving but dysfunctional group of siblings at moment of crisis, then turns the tension up to the max. Mid-twenties Calla Williams is burdened by her role as her youngest brother’s guardian, and resentful of the middle child for his ability to get out of care-giving, but she’s also so terrified of losing her closest family that she’s tortured each night by visions of her siblings dying. When her teenage charge gets in trouble for actions at a protest, she takes the three of them on the road to a rented cabin to let the air clear—bringing along her nightmares, and the potential to destroy not only the tight-knit family, but reality itself. –MO
Ande Pliego, You Are Fatally Invited
(Bantam)
In Pliego’s highly engaging debut, You Are Fatally Invited, a renowned and an aspiring author team up to host a writer’s retreat off the coast of Maine, with the latter planning to use the setting to commit a murder of her own, but soon a surprise body drops and she’s busy sorting out the suspects. It’s a novel steeped in a love of mystery, and offers readers a great deal of fun as they navigate the many twists and turns. –DM
Christine Murphy, Notes On Surviving the Fire
(Knopf)
In this intriguing noir, a grad student tries to solve the murder of her best friend while processing her traumatic sexual assault by a fellow student (one who has gone unpunished). Christine Murphy has a phd in religious studies, informing her protagonist’s study of violence in Buddhism; her expertise lends her novel a certain philosophical depth that, combined with its furious rage, makes for a fascinating combination. –MO
R.S. Burnett, Whiteout
(Crooked Lane)
A researcher in an isolated Antarctic station receives disturbing news in Burnett’s heart-pounding debut: a nuclear war has begun, and she may well be humanity’s last survivor. If there are others still there, she holds pivotal information for their future in the face of climate change disasters. The stakes couldn’t possibly be higher in this impressive survivor thriller. –DM
Emily J. Smith, Nothing Serious
(William Morrow)
In what reads as a referendum against the role of “female best friend for straight male narcissist”, a tech worker finds herself torn between loyalty and morality when her bestie dude bro is accused of murder, and she’s recruited as a character witness to prove how he’s actually, like, totally feminist. Nothing Serious is brutal, complex, and necessary, and joins the growing number of novels in which Silicon Valley is not an object of admiration, but of disgust. –MO
