CrimeReads editors select the month’s best debuts in crime, mystery, and thrillers.
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Yasmin Angoe, Her Name is Knight
(Thomas and Mercer)
This action-packed origin story introduces one of the most kick-ass heroines I’ve ever encountered. As a child, Nena Knight lost her family and most of her village to violence. Taken in by an elite family of movers and shakers, Nena becomes a highly effective assassin, fulfilling her duties to her adoptive clan with nary a stray thought. But when her latest assignment—coupled with the appearance of an old nemesis—causes Nena to question the pattern of her life, no one is safe (especially Nena). –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
Hannah Morrissey, Hello, Transcriber
(Minotaur)
I’ve been looking forward to Hello, Transcriber for months, just based on the cover design alone, but the plot is just as compelling. Hazel Greenlee works the graveyard shift as a police transcriber in Black Harbor, Wisconsin, a rustbelt city plagued by addiction and hopelessness. Her days are filled with her husband’s hunting exploits, and her nights are taken over by clinically precise descriptions of lurid crime scenes. She tries to keep her emotional distance, but one case in particular—and the mysterious detective working it—takes her from observer to actor, as she begins her own investigation. With echoes of The Conversation and The Lives of Others, Hello, Transcriber is a statement to the eternal human impulse to Get Involved. –MO
Wanda M. Morris, All Her Little Secrets
(William Morrow and Custom House)
This book is so good! Wanda M. Morris takes the traditional legal thriller and gives it a high-concept twist that you’ll never see coming. As All Her Little Secrets begins, Ellice Littlejohn arrives for her usual liaison with her boss, only to find him deceased in her office. Things quickly get worse from there, as Ellice, one of the few Black attorneys at her firm, finds herself the target of a menacing Old Boys Club. –MO
Robert J. Lloyd, The Bloodless Boy
(Melville House)
London, 1678: the English Civil War is only recently ended, the Great Fire of London’s destruction is still visible all around, and the newly discovered corpse of a child drained of all blood threatens to send the tense nation into a spiral of violence. That is, unless Robert Hooke, the Curator of Experiments at the just-established Royal Society, and his trusty assistant Harry Hunt can find the answer behind the killing. –MO
Toni Halleen, The Surrogate
(Harper)
Ruth and Hal are an older couple, desperate for a child. Cally is the surrogate who agrees to carry the baby to term (and donate her own egg in the process). Everything seems to be going well, up until two days after the birth, when Cally takes the infant with her and Ruth finds the hospital, law enforcement, and her own husband rather uninterested in helping her get the baby back. In addition to a suspenseful cat-and-mouse plot full of reversals, characters engage seriously with the physical, emotional, and legal risks of surrogacy. –MO
