A look at the month’s best reviewed crime novels, mysteries, and thrillers.
Rob Hart, The Paradox Hotel
(Ballantine)
“While there are enough science-fiction elements here to make this a novel that comfortably fits into that genre, the many crime fiction elements present make it a hybrid narrative that instead inhabits the interstitial space between science fiction and crime … This wildly entertaining combination, along with Hart’s relentless pacing, make this a rare hybrid that has something for everyone. Hart’s preoccupation with the future, which he started exploring in The Warehouse, his previous novel, takes center stage here, and the result is a tale of loss with a noir heart and a soul made of hard sci-fi that does each genre justice without ever allowing one of them to overpower the other.”
–Gabino Iglesias (NPR)
Ruta Sepetys, I Must Betray You
(Philomel)
“Sepetys expertly blends historical details into the story and shares archival photos at the back of the book, creating a tale that is as educational as it is thrilling. When you think the story is going to zig, it zags and makes you question everything, and everyone, anew. And that’s the power of I Must Betray You — it doesn’t just describe the destabilizing effects of being spied on; it will make you experience them too.”
–MJ Franklin (New York Times Book Review)
John Darnielle, Devil House
(MCD)
“… terrific: confident, creepy, a powerful and soulful page-turner. I had no idea where it was going, in the best possible sense … The thing about Darnielle’s writing, in all its forms, is this: If you’re that dorky outcast kid drawing a pentagram on the back page of your three-ring binder in algebra class, not because you want to drink anyone’s blood but because you think it’s cool, he sees you. His novels are in close contact with the alternative cultural universes of fantasy and the occult and science fiction, yet they don’t resemble genre fiction. They’re earthy and fly low to the ground. They are plain-spoken and in no hurry … Devil House…[is]never quite the book you think it is. It’s better.”
–Dwight Garner (New York Times)
Lan Samantha Chang, The Family Chao
(W.W. Norton & Co.)
“The Family Chao has a laser focus: one restaurant, one town, and one crime that will transform the family’s fortunes … you get the sense that borrowing the bones of a classic [The Brothers Karamazov has freed up the author to focus on making every interior detail as perfect as it can be. One of the many pleasures of The Family Chao is the way the novel dramatises the gap between how a family wants to be seen, and its messier inner realities.”
–Jonathan Lee (Guardian UK)
Hugo Hamilton, The Pages
(Knopf)
“Ingenious and engaging … Every time [Rebellion], this character, in tones both self-deprecating and wise, lets us know what it sees and feels and remembers, it enhances our sense of its quirky and necessary presence … The idea of story in The Pages is multi-layered and fabulously unstable.”
–Colm Tóibín (The Observer UK)
Nina de Gramont, The Christie Affair
(St. Martin’s Press)
“An ingenious new psychological suspense novel that concocts an elaborate backstory behind Christie’s disappearance … Here’s the neatest narrative trick of all: As Christie characteristically did, de Gramont hides the solution to the mystery of The Christie Affair in plain sight … The Christie Affair is richly imagined; inventive and, occasionally, poignant; and about as true-to-life as Christie’s own tales of quaint villages with their staggering murder rates. But when fabrications are this marvelous, why demand realism?”
–Maureen Corrigan (Washington Post)
Paul Vidich, The Matchmaker
(Pegasus)
“Vidich adds a welcome feminist twist to the familiar espionage theme of human lives trapped in the vice of competing and equally ruthless governments.”
–Bill Ott (Booklist)
Calla Henkel, Other People’s Clothes
(Doubleday)
“… the most fun novel I’ve read this year … Told at the breathless pace of gossip, full of delicious details as though shared over a bottle of wine with a best friend au fait with both high and low culture … As things spiral out of control, the reader starts to wonder who, exactly, is holding the reins. I kept reading late into the night to find out, enjoying every moment.”
–Laura Waddell (The Scotsman UK)
Anna Pitoniak, Our American Friend
(Simon and Schuster)
“… twisty … this fast-paced combination of thriller, Cold War history and sharp commentary on making one’s way in the world as a woman stands on its own … Pitoniak expertly evokes the tense atmosphere of Cold War-era Europe … With sharp observations on everything from D.C. insider politics to the mundane details of family life, Our American Friend is both an engaging feminist thriller and a meditation on the ways history often surprises even the people who make it.”
–Katie Noah Gibson (Shelf Awareness
Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment
(William Morrow)
“Exceedingly clever … What’s especially interesting about the novel, apart from the deft characterizations and the overall feeling of dread, is the way Foley is cagey about exactly what kind of story this is … The author keeps Jess and the reader guessing right up to the end. A fine suspenser from a writer who consistently delivers the goods.
–David Pitt (Booklist)
