April brings new releases from some of the most prominent names in crime writing, alongside plenty of rising voices and several hotly anticipated series installments. Below, you’ll find picks for every reader, whether they seek historical or horror, traditional or thriller, and beyond. Enjoy!
Monika Kim, Molka
(Erewhon)
Monika Kim’s sophomore horror novel was inspired by a rash of real-life scandals in South Korea involving molkas (hidden cameras, originally from a game show similar to Candid Camera, now used to spy on unsuspecting women). Those caught with camera feeds experienced few consequences, sparking an upswell in feminist ire and class-conscious critiques of pervasive patriarchy. In Kim’s rage-fueled tale of injustice and comeuppance, an office worker steadily loses her mind and seeks bloody vengeance after being preyed upon by a wealthy playboy and an incel security guard. I adored Kim’s elegantly grotesque debut, The Eyes are the Best Part, and Molka establishes her as one of the most compelling new voices in the genre. –MO
Evelyn Clarke, The Ending Writes Itself
(Harper)
I’ve been so excited about this wild, knowledgeable meta-mystery, part locked-room extravaganza, part mystery novel labyrinth, and part publishing satire. Check out the plot: six struggling authors are invited to the private island home of a reclusive mystery master, only to find out that he is dead and his last novel is unfinished… and there is an unfathomable prize for whichever of them ghostwrites the best ending and finishes the book. Only, you know, nothing is ever so simple. Listen to me and get this book. It’s fantastic. –OR
Ed Lin, The Dead Can’t Make a Living
(Soho)
After a few years of hiatus, Ed Lin’s Night Market series returns, and I’m psyched to reunite with my favorite Joy-Division-loving, record-collecting drummer as he runs a food stand in Taipei’s popular Night Market and solves crimes in his spare time. That is, the spare time he has while he’s not drumming or searching for Joy Division rarities. The man’s busy, okay? –MO
Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece
(Mulholland)
Jordan Harper, the modern-day master of Los Angeles crime fiction, takes on his most ambitious story yet, a kaleidoscopic vision of the city’s underground. Crimes and voices braid together to form an unsettling new beast, as Harper channels his inner Ellroy and emerges with a wholly new and original style that captures something of the city’s corrupt soul. –DM
Kelly Yang, The Take
(Berkley)
Wellness horror meets capitalism noir in Kelly Yang’s vicious send-off of the lies we tell to those we exploit. In The Take, a young woman in need of quick cash applies to assist an aging Hollywood director with an experimental new blood treatment that shaves years off the receiver’s life—and ages the donor just as dramatically. So good! And so horrifying… –MO
Anthony Horowitz, A Deadly Episode
(Harper)
Nobody writes a meta-whodunnit quite like Anthony Horowitz, and in his latest, A Deadly Installment, the layers run deep. In the novel, a film is being made of the Hawthorne/Horowitz investigations, and the star of the movie is killed; everyone’s a suspect, although it’s not at all clear that the killer didn’t mean to target the actual Hawthorne, rather than the actor playing him. Got all that straight? Horowitz is his usual clever, charming self, and the new book makes for an absolutely delightful murder mystery. –DM
Kylie Lee Baker, Japanese Gothic
(Hanover Square)
Kylie Lee Baker’s last novel, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, stuck out for its visceral intensity and righteous fury, and her new novel is just as powerful, showing the author’s versatility with its slower build and more intricate plotting. In Japanese Gothic, a modern-day college student hides out with his distant father on a remote country estate, while a century and a half in the past, in the same house, the daughter of one of Japan’s last samurais prepares to confront the imperial forces with the remnants of her father’s comrades. When the two begin to see glimpses of each other, time and space fold in on themselves, and their storylines enter into a collision course that will threaten reality itself. Japanese Gothic is both great historical fiction and an excellent speculative thriller, and I can’t recommend it enough. –MO
James Wolff, Spies and Other Gods
(Atlantic Crime)
A mysterious assassin working across borders and without clear patterns has British intelligence in chaos mode in this new international spy thriller from one of the boldest voices in the genre. –DM
Shay Kauwe, The Killing Spell
(Saga)
I’m a sucker for anything involving language magic, and The Killing Spell delivers linguistic shenanigans enough to fill a Scrabble dictionary. In this startlingly original story, displaced Hawaiians have resettled at the edge of a magically inundated Los Angeles, where linguistic communities vie for recognition as spell-casters, some reaping the benefits of official status, while others languish in unregulated gray markets. When a major magician turns up dead from a spell that could only be cast in Hawaiian, the eccentric leader of a small clan gets an ultimatum from the powers-that-be: track down the killer or find her language’s magic facing a permanent ban. –MO
Indrek Hargla, The Secret of Saint Olaf’s Church
Translated by Adam Cullen
(Pushkin Press)
Setting: 15th Century Latvia
Indrek Hargla’s tale of a crime-solving apothecary is based in obscure, and very real, history; the mystery unraveled by the amateur sleuth takes its jumping off point from a mysterious note in Latvian historical records, for a richly detailed and vividly imagined take on a high-water mark in Latvia’s regional influence. In The Secret of Saint Olaf’s Church, the murder of an aging knight leads a city luminary towards a horrifying secret with deep implications for the city’s fragile economic status and unstable power structure. –MO
