Life is terrible right now, we can all agree, but hey, the books coming out are just as amazing as ever! We’ve been spending our quarantine tearing through all the mysteries, thrillers, and works of true crime we can get ahold of, and man, have we got some great recommendations for you! Trends of the summer include: terrible parties, ambiguously missing women, heartbreaking quandaries, historical whodunnits, and liars galore.
The CrimeReads editors have assembled a list for all tastes and reading needs, since we all need some book therapy right now, and in the following list of 80+ titles scheduled for release in summer 2020, you’re bound to find something to please. If you’re looking for personalized recommendations, send us an email at crimereads@lithub.com with three books that you’ve enjoyed, and we’ll include you in our next roundup of quarantine reading recommendations. Also, if you so choose, include a picture of your dog, cat, hermit crab, or other cute creature.
Note: Many of the works below have had publication dates shift several times as the industry adjusts to ongoing events. Please check Bookshop.org or the publisher’s website for the most up-to-date information on release schedules.
June
Nicola Maye Goldberg, Nothing Can Hurt You (Bloomsbury)
As one of the bookseller blurbs attests, this one simply screams Netflix original series. It’s moody, it’s dark, and it’s full of the same kinds of tough, angry, scarred (and of course beautiful) women that made Sharp Objects so compelling. Well, not as scarred as the women in Sharp Objects….hard to be. Nothing Can Hurt You is loosely based on the real life murder of a college student by her boyfriend. In the book, the boyfriend gets off by being rich and using the fact that he was on acid as his defense—temporary insanity—and the book is told by a kaleidoscope of people on the periphery of the murder; one is a courtroom reporter, another is an agoraphobe who finds the body; another is in rehab with the killer; another is the former best friend of the murder, and another is a teenager obsessed with an imprisoned serial killer. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor
Patrick Hoffman, Clean Hands (Atlantic)
Hoffman is one of the foremost practitioners in crime fiction today, a skilled storyteller who weaves together complex narratives to give readers an illuminating look at the darkened links binding global crime and corruption together. (We named his last effort, Every Man a Menace, one of the ten best crime novels of the decade, so you know we’re serious about this.) In Clean Hands, he zeroes in on the world of big law, as a cache of lost documents ensnares a high-priced firm in a blackmail scandal and a young lawyer and an ex-CIA fixer try to fix the mess only to wade deeper into the abyss. This is a dark and nuanced novel that dissects financial crime at the highest levels. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief
Sandy Jones, The Half-Sister (Minotaur)
What happens when a stranger shows up at your door—and tells you she’s family? Two sisters are grieving their father when a woman stops by to let them know she’s their half-sister, the product of a long-hidden affair. She won’t be the only dark family secret that comes to light in the latest psychological thriller from Sandy Jones, who’s becoming known for her skillful, twisty plotting. –MO
Stephanie Scott, What’s Left of Me Is Yours (Doubleday)
Singaporean British writer Stephanie Scott’s lush debut takes us into the shadowy world of Tokyo’s “wakaresaseya” industry, where specialists in the art of break ups help move along stalled divorce proceedings through a…wide variety of tactics. When a wakaresaseya is hired to sleep with a man’s wife and provide him justification to end the marriage, he doesn’t expect to instead, fall desperately in love. If the art of seduction is dangerous, then the struggle for love will prove even more so…I can’t wait to read this deep dive into obsession and jealousy, grounded in a truly weird industry.—MO
Ameera Patel, Outside the Lines (Catalyst)
In this coke-fueled thrill-ride through the underworld of Joburg, characters face difficult decisions and try to find some humanity, even as the quest for money and the need to meet family expectations tear them apart. South Africa is one of the great hot spots for crime fiction these days, and we can’t wait to see more from Ameera Patel. –MO
Robyn Harding, The Swap (Scout)
Harding, author of last year’s provocative The Arrangement, the story of a young woman who becomes involved with a sugar daddy, is one of the few crime writers who successfully integrates sex into her novels. The Swap is, yes, about couples who consensually trade partners. But the event is not just a drunken escapade: it upends their lives in ways they never could have imagined. –Lisa Levy, CrimeReads Contributing Editor
Håkan Nesser, The Summer of Kim Novak (World Editions)
I love Nesser’s quirky and compelling Van Veeteren books, but it’s a treat to see him branch out in this novel set in the 1960s in rural Sweden. In Summer two boys, Erik and Edmund, have a collective crush on a teacher who resembles the actress Kim Novak. But this coming-of-age story veers into a mystery before too long, with Nesser’s trademark knack for suspense. –LL
True Crime Spotlight
Carlos Busqued, r. Samuel Rutter, Magnetized: Conversations with a Serial Killer (Catapult)
Magnetized is in the vein of recent true crime memoirs Visiting Hours by Amy Butcher and The Man in the Monster by Martha Elliott. Author Busqued starts visiting a serial killer, Ricardo Melogno, who at age 19 killed four taxi drivers in Buenos Aires. Now it’s 30 years later, and Busqued slowly coaxes the story of the murders and more out of Melogno. –LL
You-Jeong Jeong, Seven Years of Darkness (Penguin Books)
The unloved son of serial killer finds the shame of his family’s past following him wherever he goes. When a package arrives promising to reveal the truth behind his father’s crimes, he has no choice other than to return to his hometown and finally attempt to discover the full story of the long-ago crimes. I loved You-Jeong Jeong’s psychological thriller The Good Son, and Seven Years of Darkness promises to be just as gripping and intense, and should prove once again that South Korea is the new capital of psycho-noir. –MO
Jessica Barry, Don’t Turn Around (Harper)
Barry’s Freefall was one of last year’s most promising debuts, and she more than delivers with the follow-up, a riveting thriller that starts tense and never lets up. Two women meet on a semi-abandoned stretch of road in New Mexico and come to understand that the lone car there may be hunting them, and that some dark secrets may bind them together. Barry crafts a truly unsettling, powerful story. –DM
Gene Wolf, Interlibrary Loan (Tor)
Interlibrary Loan has a novel premise—in the distant future, you can check out not only books from your local library, but also flesh-and-blood clones of your favorite authors. Of course, such a system is ripe for exploitation, we soon learn, as the main character, the clone of a detective novelist, is checked out of the library by an unstable heiress who wants to use him as a private investigator to track down her errant husband, who has his own prurient and experimental plans for the clones in his care. –MO
Elizabeth Kay, Seven Lies (Pamela Dorman Books)
Seven Lies is a chilling psychological thriller about friendship in all its complex machinations and the fallout from a confession between two lifelong friends. Kay handles the suspense with precision and verve, as the story unfolds in increasingly unsettling fashion and readers come to realize the many secrets underlying the relationship at the heart of the story. –DM
Kimberly Belle, Stranger in the Lake (Park Row)
I have always said, you can’t trust lakes. What are they hiding?!? Here to join me in my anti-lake agenda is Kimberly Belle, known for her twisty psychological thrillers exploring the thrills and pitfalls and domesticity. Her latest tale of marriage gone awry takes us to a sleepy lakeside community where the only gossip concerns the young bride of a wealthy widower—at least, until a body is found in the same spot where the widower’s previous spouse met her watery demise. –MO
True Crime Spotlight:
Arthur J. Magida, Code Name Madeleine: A Sufi Spy in Occupied Paris (Norton)
I’ve been reading the Wikipedia page for Noor Inayat Khan any time I need inspiration for years, so I’m psyched to read an entire book about her courageous actions during WWII. The daughter of a Sufi leader from a noble Indian family and an American from Albuquerque, Khan grew up all over the world before the onset of war inspired her to join the OSE, despite her pacifist beliefs. She became the first female wireless operator sent undercover to France, where she sent out messages in a distinctive heavy-handed style due to chilblains on her fingers before being betrayed, arrested, and later executed by the Nazis. Total. Badass. –MO
Laurie R. King, Riviera Gold (Bantam)
Love, love, LOVE King’s Mary Russell series (so much so that when I met in person, I almost had a heart attack while fangirling), but my favorite in the series so far was King’s revisionist history of Mrs. Hudson, The Murder of Mary Russell, where the usually staid housekeeper and landlady is recast as a reformed con artist who could hold her own with Vanity Fair’s Becky Sharp. In Riviera Gold, Mrs. Hudson is missing, and we revisit her shocking past as Mary Russell races to find out what has happened to her. –MO
Laura Purcell, The House of Whispers (Penguin Books)
Purcell’s work is pure gothic pleasure. I’m a sucker for weird Victorian experiments that expose only the hubris of the wealthy benefactors, so I’m definitely the target audience for this one, but I think all should enjoy this strange tale of the consequences of playing god and failing to respect the power of the land. On a large Victorian estate, a family ravaged by consumption decides to set up a refuge for convalescent prisoners in the large caves by their seaside home. Years later, a disgraced doctor arrives to care for the family’s now-mute daughter, the only survivor of her clan, as the townsfolk whisper of fairies coming to steal people in the night. –MO
Lauren A. Forry, They Did Bad Things (Arcade Crimewise)
As we’re all learning during the pandemic, roommates can be the worst. I gobbled this one up (partially because, like all of us, I’m currently obsessed with books about lots of people crowded into small spaces), and man, is this one satisfying. Five former college roommates who once shared a party house gather together at a run-down mansion being used as a B&B. Things start to get weird as soon as they get there and discover that the mansion’s interior has been turned into an exact replica of their old college house, down to the cigarette burns in the ratty couch, and get even weirder as flashbacks slowly reveal the terrible events from decades before that bind them together. –MO
Lucy Foley, The Guest List (William Morrow)
Worst. Wedding. Ever. When the guests begin to arrive at a remote Irish island for the fabulous wedding of a golden couple, things of course take a turn downhill. Old resentments emerge, new hatreds grow, and a storm traps everyone on the island until bloody resolution is achieve. For those who like Ruth Ware, Lucy Foley has a similarly intoxicating blend of psychological thriller and gothic funhouse. The Guest List is THE pageturner you need to get through this very long summer of our discontent. –MO
Megan Miranda, The Girl From Widow Hills (Simon & Schuster)
Loosely based on the story of Baby Jessica, The Girl From Widow Hills features a protagonist with night terrors tied to a childhood trauma—she went missing while sleepwalking during a storm, and was dramatically rescued two weeks later. As an adult, she’s changed her name and tried to move on from her headline-grabbing past, but when the 20th anniversary of her disappearance approaches, she finds herself sleepwalking again—right into a murder. –MO
Ha Seong-nan, Bluebeard’s First Wife, translated by Janet Hong (Open Letter)
This beautiful collection of short stories takes us into the dark side of Seoul’s suburbia, where petty resentments flare into unpredictable and shocking violence, and momentary lapses have long-lasting implications. Ha Seong-nan stunned me with her debut collection, Flowers of Mold, and her second set of stories to reach the US promises to be just as wondrous a combination of the horrifying and the banal. –MO
Nina Laurin, A Woman Alone (Grand Central)
Laurin crafts a Rebecca for a new generation, tapping into the old fears of domestic security, predecessor anxiety, and adding in a dash of high-tech paranoia. After a nasty break-in, a couple installs a new security system, only to find a previous owner’s influence closing in on them. This is domestic suspense taken to a logical, terrifying extreme. –DM
Sarah Stewart Taylor, The Mountains Wild (Minotaur)
Maggie D’Arcy was inspired to become a cop by her cousin’s mysterious disappearance in Ireland. 20 years later, she has a chance to leave Long Island and return to the Emerald Isle for one more crack at solving the case. We’re looking forward to this series debut that’s already gaining comparisons to the great Tana French. –MO
Susie Steiner, Remain Silent (Random House)
In Susie Steiner’s third installment of her acclaimed Manon Bradshaw series, her detective is splitting her time between toddler-rearing and cold-case-investigating when she comes across the body of a Lithuanian immigrant in her bucolic suburban neighborhood. Bradshaw is soon drawn into a web of lies and deceit (and given a necessary break from childcare) as she attempts to ascertain if the woman died by murder or suicide. The perfect read for all those on the hook for quarantine childcare! –MO
Rosalie Knecht, Vera Kelly is Not A Mystery (Tin House)
Knecht’s Who Is Vera Kelly? was one of the most invigorating, innovative espionage novels in recent memory, following mid-century spies in Argentina and across the Cold War landscape. Now Knecht is having a go at the private detective novel, a development that should be extremely heartening to PI aficionados. In this follow-up, the CIA-trained spy is back Stateside without a job or a girlfriend and so falls into the private detective business, as one does. The usual globetrotting ensues, as well as beautiful startling passages that will stop you in your tracks. –DM
Maddie Day, Nacho Average Murder (Kensington)
For those of us who won’t be spending the summer traveling, the next best thing is to pick up Maddie Day’s latest Country Store mystery, as Day’s heroine heads to Santa Barbara to reconnect with familiar faces and eat tons of delicious food, but instead ends up investigating the death of an environmentalist as wildfires begin to rage around her. So…maybe it’ll make us feel better about not traveling? –MO
Heather Young, The Distant Dead (William Morrow)
Young’s followup to The Lost Girls is a searing, powerful story about a teacher’s death in a small Nevada town and the sweeping reverberations of a community in grief. A middle school boy finds a burned body in the desert to start this story, and the remains are soon identified as belonging to a teacher who recently quit his university job to come teach math in this desert waystation. The teacher was a newcomer, but his death reveals several fault lines in the town, as Young paints a vivid portrait of a charged, ominous landscape and the intersecting lives carrying on in that desert hold. –DM
July
S.A. Cosby, Blacktop Wasteland (Flatiron)
Blacktop Wasteland concerns a stand-up family guy named Beauregard, aka Bug, who used to drive getaway for robberies, and gets sucked back into the life when bills come due that he can’t pay any other way. Featuring a compelling protagonist and awesome car chase sequences, plus a heist gone south which is always fun to read about, this rural noir set in Virginia with a black protagonist who kicks a lot of ass is the highlight of the summer. Bonus points: it also doubles as a helpful read for quitting smoking! –MO
Eva Garcia Saenz, The Silence of the White City (Viking)
The Silence of the White City is the first installment in a trilogy that’s already something of a sensation in the Spanish-reading world. The novels tell the story of the hunt for a serial killer in Basque country, combining textures of contemporary European noir, police procedurals, and the unique mythology of the Basque peoples, Garcia Saenz paints a vivid, unforgettable landscape. –DM
Lee Conell, The Party Upstairs (Penguin)
In a Manhattan tower building, a super and his daughter are drawn towards an explosive confrontation with the residents of the penthouse—a wealthy financier and his spoiled daughter—over the course of a single day. It’s a complex depiction of class, art, and privilege that I think would really resonate with viewers; the super’s daughter and the daughter of the rich guy have always been childhood friends, but as we go through the book, we realize more and more that the rich girl has always been exploiting her friend, even as she thinks she’s been helping her, and we begin to hope that the super will finally stand up to the whiny tenants and the daughter will finally confront her childhood friend with the truth of their relationship. –MO
Celia Rees, Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook (William Morrow)
The great age of the female-driven espionage thriller continues! In Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook, a bored schoolteacher heads to occupied Berlin to help rebuild Germany, but instead finds herself working for the OSS to hunt down a notorious war criminal who was once friends with her brother. –MO
Stephen Graham Jones, The Only Good Indians (Saga)
Something is killing a group of friends, and that something wants revenge. In Stephen Graham Jones’ ghostly thriller, four buddies and their families are brought together by the news that a ghostly entity is picking them off. Could it be the spirit of an elk they once killed that they had no right to hunt? Jones grounds his work both in the noir tradition and in Native American spiritual lore, for a hard-boiled take on nature’s well-deserved revenge. –MO
Abigail Mangin, Size Zero (Visage)
This book is so weird…It begins on a fashion runway, where a model is released from her cage and thrown onto the catwalk wearing nothing but a suit made of human flesh. The police soon discover that the body suit is none other than the skin of a woman missing for 10 years, and her suspected killer is dragged home from the monastery where he had long sought refuge to aid his terrifying fashionista mother in discovering who wants to wreck their modeling agency empire. –MO
Daniel Silva, The Order (Harper)
I’m going to speak directly to Daniel Silva fans for a moment, knowing that we are legion and you will understand me…When a Gabriel Allon book starts out with Chiara at home reading a book, you just know it’s going to be a good one, don’t you? There’s something about that particular form of Allon family bliss that just sets the right tone for what’s to come. In Silva’s newest, Allon is headed back to familiar haunts in Italy, where a papal death drives him to the legendary Vatican archives. Honestly that should be all you need to know. There are going to be conspiracies, art, rare books, and more conspiracies. Allon in his old element. –DM
Lynn Coady, Watching You Without Me (Knopf)
The prodigal daughter’s return home to Nova Scotia is marred by tragedy—she’s there to put things in order and care for her developmentally disabled sister after their mother’s sudden death. Lonely and overwhelmed, Coady’s narrator allows her sister’s home health aide to lend a shoulder to cry on, until she slowly begins to realize he’s got more on his mind than helping. –MO
Zoje Stage, Wonderland (Mulholland)
Zoje Stage, the author of the rich, disturbing Baby Teeth, has a knack for unsettling atmospherics. In her new novel, Wonderland, a city couple moves upstate to the Adirondacks and begins settling into the new rural bliss when things take a dark, strange turn. To explain much more about this one would be unfair, but suffice it to say that anyone dreaming of moving out of the city and getting a little space to themselves is going to read this one and find their deepest fears about that dream exposed. Wonderland is a perfect, chilling parable for summer. –DM
Julie Clark, The Last Flight (Sourcebooks)
I love anything about strangers coming together to switch lives or trade murders—Lisa Lutz’s The Passenger, Amy Gentry’s Last Woman Standing, and of course Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train all come to mind—so I can’t wait to dive into Clark’s The Last Flight, which should also make me feel way better about not being able to travel right now. A politician’s wife meets a stranger at an airport. Both desperate to get out of bad situations, they agree to swap tickets, but when one flight crashes en-route, questions arise as to what each woman was really trying to escape. –MO
True Crime Spotlight:
Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit and Obsession, edited by Sarah Weinman (Ecco)
This anthology of contemporary true-crime writing, edited by the incomparable Sarah Weinman, contains thirteen short pieces of high-caliber journalism that shook the culture and helped inspire today’s true-crime phenomenon. With pieces by Michelle Dean, Pamela Colloff, and with an introduction by Patrick Radden Keefe, this book will be sure to keep you riveted. –OR
Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe (Lake Union)
Lydia Kang is one of the great virtuosos of the crime genre—a doctor and author, she splits her writing between historical mysteries, popular history, and young adult scifi. Opium and Absinthe takes place in 1899, where an opium-addicted heiress investigates the mysterious death of her sister by puncture wound, even as the popularity of Bram Stoker’s Dracula soars. Well-researched, grounded in the past, and ultra-relevant to today’s opioid epidemic, this one is not to be missed. –MO
Camilla Lackberg, The Golden Cage (Knopf)
An extremely satisfying thriller from the ever-compelling Camilla Läckberg, The Golden Cage begins with an anxious housewife trapped in a loveless marriage that she’s determined to hold together, and soon evolves into one of the most twisted and triumphant revenge thrillers I’ve ever come across. –MO
Alex North, The Shadows (Celadon)
Alex North, author of last year’s well-received The Whisper Man, is ready to creep us out again with her delightfully disturbing new novel The Shadows. 15-year-old Paul left town and swore never to return after one of his friends murdered another friend in a shocking crime. 25 years later, his mother is ailing, and Paul reluctantly heads home, even as a wave of copycat killings sparks new theories about the never-resolved case of his youth. –MO
Kristin Lepionka, Once You Go This Far (Minotaur)
A new Roxane Weary novel is always a treat. In Kristin Lepionka’s latest, the fourth to feature her compelling detective, Weary investigates the mysterious falling death of an experienced hiker, hired by the woman’s daughter, who suspects her ex-cop father of doing the dirty deed. Despite the ex-husband’s connections, Weary’s soon knee-deep in details that prove he’s an ass, but there may be more to the woman’s death than an angry ex, especially when a crooked politician gets tied to the murder. –MO
Paul Tremblay, Survivor Song (William Morrow)
Here’s a good one for the pandemic—in Paul Tremblay’s latest novel, which has a very Tremblay take on the zombie/vampire mashup genre, a rabies-like virus has overrun Massachusetts. Bites turn regular people into ferocious attackers of their friends and family in less than an hour, and the hospital system, although in possession of an effective vaccine, is inundated by the diseased. When a pregnant woman is bitten, it’s up to her resourceful friend to get her to the hospital and vaccinated before the new virus can devour both her and her unborn child. Harrowing and fast-paced, this one is guaranteed to keep you up late reading (although we wouldn’t advise reading it at night). –MO
Jeff Abbott, Never Ask Me (Grand Central Publishing)
It is every Austin mystery reader’s dream to see our beloved city become a starring character in the world of crime and suspense (fictional, of course), and Jeff Abbott delivers with his latest foray into the quiet violence and buried secrets of the booming city’s wealthy suburbs. In Lakehaven, which I can only assume is a thinly disguised version of Westlake, a respected adoption counselor is found murdered, sparking questions not only about her death, but about the origins of the many children she paired with desperate parents. –MO
Ace Atkins, The Revelators (Putnam)
Ace Atkins Tibbehah County novels are some of the richest, most vibrantly populated crime stories in recent memory, and each new installment is a journey to a familiar, fraught stretch of the south where everything is just a little more charged than normal, and lawman Quinn Colson is always on the case. The Revelators is, in many ways, a culmination, as several long-running plots and rivalries come to a head and Atkins crafts some truly mesmerizing set pieces. Atkins is at the top of his game, and faithful readers will find The Revelators one of his most satisfying yet. –DM
Anna Downes, The Safe Place (Minotaur)
When a failed actress loses her apartment and gets a job offer to be a personal assistant in the same week, it feels like kismet, but when she arrives on the vast, secretive estate of her new employer (#quarantineparadise), she can tell something’s off with her wealthy new patrons and their always-hidden daughter. How off, I’ll leave you to discover, but I can assure you, I devoured this one in a matter of hours. –MO
Joe R. Lansdale, More Better Deals (Mulholland)
Southern crime legend Joe Lansdale channels his best James M. Cain world vision with a story about a frustrated used car salesman in 1960s East Texas who allows himself to get drawn into a steamy affair and a murder-for-insurance scheme. Readers can expect to be transported in the usual Lansdale fashion, as nobody does those East Texas period details quite like Lansdale, who always delivers with a finely-crafted, engaging, compulsive crime story in his home terrain. –DM
Alexandra Burt, Shadow Garden (Berkley)
This is truly the perfect quarantine read. In a luxurious complex, a wealthy woman has a staff catering to her every need—but why is she there? Why can’t she get ahold of her family? And why does her condo feel more like a prison than a home? Alexandra Burt’s brilliant slow burn tales of domesticity gone awry are always a treat, and I can’t wait to read the new one. –MO
Stan Parish, Love and Theft (Doubleday)
Parish has crafted one of the strongest contributions in recent memory to a genre much-beloved here at CrimeReads: the heist novel. In Parish’s version of this classic story, a successful thief just off a big Vegas score meets an impressive single mother at a party in Princeton. The two quickly escalate their relationship and end up in Tulum for a weekend, when the thief’s past begins to catch up with him and he realizes he needs to orchestrate the legendary “one last score” in order to get out of the game for good. Parish manages to weave together genuinely compelling arcs of crime and complicated human entanglements. –DM
Josh Malerman, Malorie (Del Rey)
Josh Malerman returns to the universe of Bird Box, this time solely focusing on Malorie’s perspective, as the saga of Malorie and her children continues. I’m hoping that this new installment will bring more answers about the mysterious visions that caused much of the world to kill themselves in the previous volume. –MO
Suzanne Rindell, The Two Mrs. Carlyles (Putnam)
Maybe I’m projecting here, but who doesn’t want read a tale of obsession and murder set against the backdrop of the San Francisco earthquake? In an ode to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, a second wife finds herself haunted by the specter of her wealthy husband’s first spouse, and increasingly wary of how she’s managed to profit from a disaster that’s reaped only destruction for all those around her. –MO
Alice Feeney, His & Hers (Flatiron)
Who doesn’t love a tale told from alternating perspectives, each of whom is hiding something very dark indeed? Feeney splits her new psychological thriller between a TV reporter’s coverage of a murder in her hometown, and a cop’s investigation into that same murder. Both of them knew the victim, but which one had the motivation to want her dead? Alice Feeney is a rising voice in the crime world, and we can’t wait to read her latest! –MO
True Crime Spotlight:
Jax Miller, Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth and the Case of Two Missing Girls (Berkley)
Jax Miller first got on my radar for Freedom’s Child, a furious and breakneck journey across an apocalyptic American landscape, based on Miller’s own experiences with hitchhiking and addiction in her 20s, and her new true crime book is just as beautiful and devastating. Hell in the Heartland digs deep into a case involving a trailer fire, two missing best friends, and an interconnected web of drug trafficking, murder, and cops looking the other way. –MO
Shari Lapena, The End of Her (Pamela Dorman)
This one’s perfect for that quarantine-induced insomnia we’re all having. In rising star Shari Lapena’s latest, a stay-at-home mom struggling to soothe her colicky new-born twins finds herself in a sleep-deprived fog. When a stranger comes knocking to deliver suspicions about the death of her husband’s first wife, Lapena’s narrator begins to lose faith in her partner’s story of a deadly car crash, and must fight to protect her family, no matter the cost. –MO
Alaya Dawn Johnson, Trouble the Saints (Tor)
In a magical envisioning of Manhattan’s underworld set in 1940s Harlem, Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Trouble the Saints combines noir sensibilities with a creative and unique magic system for the summer’s must-read crime/fantasy crossover. In Trouble the Saints, a young woman with fearsome knife skills is recruited for a mysterious project; 10 years later, she’s haunted by those who are gone, and ready to finally seek vengeance. –MO
Lauren Beukes, Afterland (Mulholland/Little Brown)
This one takes place after a pandemic wipes out most of the men on Earth, as a woman goes on the run from her ruthless sister, determined to protect her 12-year-old son from the many competing factions trying to get ahold of him. Lauren Beukes always takes us on a terrifying but worthwhile ride, and her latest promises to be no exception. –MO
True Crime Spotlight
Rose Andersen, The Heart and Other Monsters: A Memoir (Bloomsbury)
Rose Andersen lost her sister to the opioid epidemic—and possibly, to murder. In this heartbreaking memoir, Andersen describes her experiences with her sister, narrates the story of addiction, explores her family history of struggle and depression, and investigates the suspicious circumstances around her sister’s overdose on methamphetamines. –MO
Tom Cooper, Florida Man (Random House)
Cooper tells the generations-spanning story of Reed Crowe, a kind of spiritual cousin to Elmore Leonard’s own Florida Crowes, as he chases after the secrets of his little stretch of the Sunshine State’s swampland and fends off a few criminals and rogues who want him gone. Florida Man manages to be at once uproarious and oddly touching, as a man puts himself up against some of the crazier forces a crazy state has to offer and meanwhile explores his own heritage and his connection to the land. –DM
Alexander McCall Smith, The Geometry of Holding Hands (Pantheon)
Isabel Dalhouse, queen of the philosophical mystery, is back, this time to investigate the mysterious rumors spreading all about Edinburgh. We’ve of course been enjoying Smith’s new Scandi-Blanc series featuring lighthearted detective Inspector Varg, but we’re glad to see he’s continuing to craft new tales for old favorites. –MO
True Crime Spotlight
Mark Bowden, The Case of the Vanishing Blonde: And Other True Crime Stories (Atlantic)
We’re in the midst of a true crime boom, no doubt about it, but Mark Bowden has been producing deeply investigated, richly told stories of true crime for decades, and many a faithful reader will be encouraged to find six of his long true crime stories collected in one volume this summer, including three articles featuring the Long Island private detective, Ken Brennan, who has featured so prominently in Bowden’s work over the years. It’s hard to match Bowden for compulsive, illuminating storytelling, a point The Case of the Vanishing Blonde proves yet again. –DM
Samantha Downing, He Started It (Berkley)
It’s no secret that I was a big fan of Downing’s debut, My Lovely Wife, which delved into the secrets of a seriously twisted marriage. He Started It is about siblings—who happen to be grifters—on a road trip with their grandfather’s ashes in the trunk. They are going to scatter the remains of Grandad, but even in his present form he has a hold on his heirs, a car full of liars and cheats driving cross-country and checking out creepy Americana (a UFO watchtower, a reconstruction of the death of Bonnie and Clyde) along the way. It’s going to be a twisted ride. –LL
J.P. Delaney, Playing Nice (Ballantine)
Playing Nice explores a parent’s worst nightmare, when a stranger comes calling at a couple’s home to explain that their toddlers were switched at birth, then attempts to sue for custody of both children. Stay-at-home dad Pete and his partner Maddie aren’t about to just accept their new reality, but when those connected to the custody case start turning up dead, it’s time to question what each couple knows—and what each couple is hiding. –MO
August
Susanna Lee, Detectives in the Shadows: A Hard-Boiled History (Johns Hopkins Press)
In this wide reaching account of America’s fascination with the private detective, that figure steeped in moral ambiguity and fluent in the vernacular of both sides of the law. Lee analyzes the classics of hardboiled detective fiction, but also extends her arguments to recent TV shows like The Wire, Jessica Jones, and True Detective. –LL
Nelson George, The Darkest Hearts (Akashic)
We’re big fans of music mysteries here at CrimeReads, so I’m psyched for the new Nelson George. George’s bodyguard-turned-talent manager D Hunter is living it up in Los Angeles after making the cross-coastal switch from NYC (and isn’t that what we all wish we’d done this year?) when one of his acts signs a sponsorship deal with a liquor company with a rather problematic CEO. Meanwhile, a dead body in Brooklyn turns up with connections to D and his hit man friend Ice, and a human trafficking ring in London being investigated by D’s sometimes collaborator takes things international for a complex mystery that should serve as the perfect quarantine distraction. –MO
Lawrence Osborne, The Glass Kingdom (Hogarth)
Osborne is among the finest pure writers at work today, and at this point he’s more than earned the Graham Greene comparisons. In his newest, The Glass Kingdom, he returns to a scenario that will enthuse admirers of his The Ballad of a Small Player: a mysterious fugitive settles into uncanny, luxurious surroundings in an Asian city. Here, the city is Bangkok, and the fugitive in question is a young American woman with a mysterious source of funds and a new address in a tony Bangkok apartment building. She soon taps into an odd community of expats from across the globe, all confined to the building’s louche surroundings, with too many secrets to count among them. –DM
David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Winter Counts (Ecco)
Winter Counts is one of 2020’s most exciting debut novels, the start of what we hope will be a long and many-volumed career in crime fiction. Meet Virgil Wounded Horse, the man who takes on the jobs traditional law enforcement can’t handle on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He’s determined to find out how heroin is flooding the reservation, a crusade that takes him across the parched, corrupted landscapes of the American West and after organized crime figures fueling the systemic injustices already in place on the reservation. This is urgent, hard-hitting crime fiction that will keep you reading. –DM
Poppy Gee, Vanishing Falls (William Morrow)
This literary thriller paints as vivid a landscape as any book coming out this summer, setting its story in a mysterious town within a Tasmanian rainforest. The mystery centers on the disappearance of a local socialite and eccentric, but the story soon widens to encompass the secrets kept by seemingly everyone in this odd little corner of the world. Gee creates a lush, tantalizing world that readers will want to travel into deeper and deeper. –DM
Vivien Chien, Killer Kung Pao (St. Martin’s Press)
The world needs some comfort reading right now, and Vivien Chien’s latest delectable Noodle Shop Mystery is bound to deliver! One of my favorite subgenres of mystery fiction is the about-to-finally-relax-oh-wait-there’s-been-a-murder novel, in which Killer Kung Pao firmly belongs. Chien’s heroine Lana Lee just wants a chance to spend a nice weekend with her cop boyfriend away from the Chinese restaurant she’s inherited from her family, but when she witnesses a car accident, then learns of an electrocution by beauty shop foot bath, she’s got no choice but to get involved and hunt down a killer. –MO
Denise Mina, The Less Dead (Mulholland)
Hot on the heels of last year’s Conviction, soon to be a TV series, comes Mina’s latest standalone, The Less Dead. Margot is newly single and at her wits end at work when her mother’s death affords her the chance to finally discover the identity of her birth family. When Margot tracks down a long-lost aunt, she’s hit with a two-fisted gut punch—not only was her birth mother murdered, but the killer has never been found, and continues to send taunting letters to the family of his victims. Margot finds a new purpose in life when she decides to track down the murderer, but she’ll face plenty of danger on her way to discovering the shocking truth. I’m a huge fan of Mina’s work and I can’t wait to tear through this one. –MO
Julia Heaberlin, We Are All The Same In The Dark (Ballantine)
In a small Texas town, a man haunted by the ghost of his murdered sister finds a young girl on the side of the road and decides to save her. When his policewoman ex-girlfriend gets involved, the town grows suspicious, and old accusations against the man and family rise to the surface. Heaberlin is one of my favorite Texas writers, and she once again brilliantly captures the atmosphere and rough beauty of a strange and divided state. –MO
Megan Collins, Behind the Red Door (Atria)
When a woman spots the victim of a 20-years-old kidnapping on the nightly news, she finds herself thinking the victim looks strangely familiar. As she continues to have a recurring dream in which the kidnapping victim shows up, she begins to wonder if it’s not a dreamscape, but a memory. Megan Collins is previously the author of lyrical and intricate Winter Sister, and I’m looking forward to the hazy landscape of her new thriller. –MO
Karin Slaughter, The Silent Wife (William Morrow)
In the Queen of Atlanta Crime Fiction’s latest action-packed thriller/procedural, detective Will Trent is assigned a case with eerie similarities to a one from years earlier. The problem is, the guy who did it is already in jail, where’s he’s protested his innocence from Day One of his arrest. Trent must work together with the prisoner to reinvestigate the decade-old crime in hopes of stopping a present day killer. –MO
Tampa Bay Noir, edited by Colette Bancroft (Akashic)
For too long readers have connected Florida Noir with the admittedly fascinating locales of Miami-Dade County, thanks to a slew of talented and popular writers no doubt, but there’s another major metropolitan area on the Gulf Coast that’s every bit Miami’s equal for bizarre noir. Tampa Bay gets a much-deserved turn in the spotlight with this new collection in the Akashic series, edited by Collette Bancroft and featuring some stellar contributions from writers out of the greater Tampa diaspora, including Michael Connelly, Tim Dorsey, Sarah Gerard, Ace Atkins, and Lori Roy. –DM
Addis Ababa Noir, edited by Maaza Mengiste (Akashic)
Addis is one of Africa’s—and the world’s—most vibrant, dynamic scene, and the new Akashic collection displays it in all its complexity. With acclaimed writer Maaza Mengiste at the editing helm, the book brings together an exciting collection of voices exploring the city’s noir side. This is a chance for readers to discover an important literary scene and to explore a city’s past and present. –DM
Araminta Hall, Imperfect Women (MCD)
I was blown away by Hall’s American debut, Our Kind of Cruelty, and her new novel, Imperfect Women, promises to please those who enjoy psychological thrillers and all those who love Elena Ferrante but wish her series was just a bit (okay, a lot) more twisted. Told from the perspectives of three friends since college and their ups and downs over the next decades, culminating in the untimely death of the center of the group, Hall’s suspenseful and astute thriller should keep us guessing till the very last reveal. –MO
Alex Pavesi, The Eighth Detective (Henry Holt)
Fans of meta-detective fiction, this one’s for you! A detective novelist who one calculated the seven most perfect permutations of “murder + detective = crime story” now lives in self-imposed isolation on a private island. But soon enough, an interloper comes knocking—in this case, a young editor who’s determined to bring his work back into print, but soon begins to uncover dark secrets in the author’s past, hidden in the pages of his masterpiece.
Hank Phillippi Ryan, The First to Lie (Forge)
Reporter and crime writer Hank Phillippi Ryan weaves a crafty mystery in The First to Lie. I love cat-and-mouse thrillers so I can’t wait to dive into this tale of big pharma and journalistic exposes. A pharmaceutical saleswoman, an investigative reporter, and an assistant producer are all trying to find out more about a pharmaceutical company’s plan to sell tons of drugs to women desperate to get pregnant. What is the company hiding? And what are the secrets motivating these women to take on a giant corporation? –MO
Megan Goldin, The Night Swim (St. Martin’s)
Goldin’s new thriller uses the true crime podcast boom as the perfect vehicle for a new kind of crime fiction protagonist. Her lead, Rachel Krall, is an investigative podcaster traveling to new towns to research new mysteries, and in The Night Swim she’s looking into a local sports hero’s assault on the police chief’s granddaughter. It makes for tense material, all the more so when Krall herself becomes a target. Goldin has great control over the building suspense and a way with quick, vivid character sketches. –MO
Peter Lovesay, The Finisher (Soho)
Fifty years after Lovesay published his first novel, he’s finally revisiting the subject of his debut—running. The Finisher is split between the story of a reluctant marathon runner conned into participating through a series of unfortunate events, and a cop working crowd control at the race, who suspects something has gone very wrong when a runner vanishes. –MO
Jennifer Hofmann, The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures (Little, Brown)
The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures promises to be true to the spirit of classic Cold War espionage, with a hint of mid-century absurdism. In the late 80s, a Stasi officer slowly dying of illness goes on the hunt for a missing waitress while having flashbacks to encounters with a paranormal physicist from a quarter century before. –MO
James Lee Burke, A Private Cathedral (Simon and Schuster)
James Lee Burke’s novels have always had a spiritual side. That’s part of what makes the long-running Dave Robicheaux series so appealing to readers, that and Burke has the poetic gifts to match the otherworldly musings his Louisiana lawman occasionally finds himself dwelling on. The latest installment is the furthest yet Robicheaux has wanted into the other side, as he finds himself in the middle of a dark, generations-long feud between two criminal families, and also finds himself hunted and hunting a mysterious assassin who seems more specter than man. –DM
And a Look Ahead at Fall 2020…
September
Alyssa Cole, When No One is Watching (William Morrow)
After a month of being too stressed out by the pandemic to finish anything, this is the book that got me going again and restored my faith in the power of books. It’s very Jordan Peele influenced, and it’s about a woman whose block is in the throes of gentrification—and her neighbors are mysteriously disappearing. The houses on the block are being sold at obscene prices, partially because the city is funding a new opioid recovery center in the old neighborhood hospital, shuttered for decades, and that adds insult to injury since the neighborhood didn’t get much help from the medical community during the crack cocaine epidemic. I can’t give too much away, but it was AWESOME, and I literally cheered at the end. –MO
Robert Gallbraith, Troubled Blood (Mulholland)
This one doesn’t even have a cover yet, but we’re already very excited about a new Cormoran Strike novel by Robert Gallbraith, the mystery writing pseudonym for Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.
Rachel Howzell Hall, And Now She’s Gone (Forge)
Rachel Howzell Hall is one of my favorite crime writers that I’ve discovered since I began working in crime and mystery, and I’ve been psyched to follow her journey from series author to crafting stellar stand-alones. In her new novel, And Now She’s Gone, Hall mixes psychological thriller tropes with classic detective sleuthing as one woman works to track down another woman who may or not be missing. Despite the dark days ahead, this book gives me something to look forward to at the end of summer… –MO
Smith Henderson and Jon Marc Smith, Make Them Cry (Ecco)
Henderson’s first novel, Fourth of July Creek, was one of the most powerful debuts in recent memory. His follow-up, co-authored with Jon Marc Smith, is sure to have thriller readers feeling very encouraged, as he turns to a high-octane world of drug violence, dangerous borders, and government conspiracies. Make Them Cry is reminiscent of the best 1970s thrillers, but its secrets are of the moment, as a former prosecutor turned DEA agent gets wind of a cartel secret and heads to Mexico City to investigate. This is chiseled, adrenaline-fueled thriller writing at the highest level. –DM
Ruth Ware, One by One (Gallery/Scout)
I adore all of Ruth Ware’s books, but one concerned with a group of coworkers trapped in a ski chalet during a blizzard who slowly hack each other to pieces sounds tailor-made for the current pandemic. In One by One, the Silicon bros that make up the elite of a tech company head to Switzerland for a bonding trip that soon enough goes sour when a blizzard traps them in their luxurious abode with a sadistic killer, who may or may not be one of them. Hilarious, well plotted, and vintage Ware, this one is not to be missed. –MO
Elizabeth Hand, The Book of Lamps and Banners (Mulholland)
After Curious Toys, last year’s delightful foray into dark carnival fiction, Elizabeth Hand returns to her nihilist punk rock narrator, Cass Neary, who’s on the hunt for a mysterious ancient manuscript that may hold the code to rewiring people’s brains—for good or for evil. As cool and topical as the rest of the series, this one features game designers, Swedish black metal enthusiasts, evil neo-nazis, strange rare-book dealers, and a timeline that’s a count-down to this year’s pandemic, ending two days before the US lockdown was declared. While fans of the series will of course enjoy The Book of Lamps and Banners, it’s completely accessible to those with no previous experience with the series (such as myself, I’m rather embarrassed to admit, although I’ll soon rectify the error and read through the rest of this series). Also, if you’re wondering what to do in quarantine on a Saturday night that will still make you feel really cool, try reading any of Elizabeth Hand’s cult favorites. –MO
Susan Yang, White Ivy (Simon & Schuster)
Ivy grows up with a harsh family that stifles her imagination, except for her hard-scrabble grandmother, who teaches her to lie and steal to get what she wants. After a humiliating run at a rich private school, Ivy heads to China to visit a relative who soon transforms the young teenager into one who imitate with ease the sophisticated elite. When Ivy reconnects with a classmate years later, she’s finally ready to use her new knowledge and old skills to take what she wants—and what she deserves. –MO
Craig Johnson, Next to Last Stand (Viking)
Johnson heads into art thriller territory with a wild plot involving Anheuser-Busch’s favorite painting, “Custer’s Last Stand,” which was ostensibly destroyed in a fire in 1946—or was it? Johnson’s Longmire novels have been the basis for a successful TV series (and a less successful set of movie tie-in covers; no one wants those on their shelves) but his novels will always be our first loves when it comes to the zany residents of Absaroka County. –MO
Louise Penny, All The Devils Are Here (Minotaur)
The Gamaches have decamped to Paris on holiday in Penny’s latest, but of course, they won’t get to enjoy their vacation for long; Armand’s billionaire godfather is attacked in what is no random act of violence, and the Inspector must dig deep into the secrets of the past in order to protect his loved ones from any further harm. –MO
October
Tana French, The Searcher (Viking)
As detective Cal Hooper and the denizens of HGTV find out quickly, a fixer-upper is always more stressful than the buyer realizes going in. Hooper is the star of French’s latest novel, which she insists will be far less depressing than the downer that was The Trespasser (hey, I still loved it!). He’s an ex-cop who heads to Ireland to get a break from Chicago PD, but soon finds himself investigating a missing persons case with far-reaching implications. And that’s as much as I’ll know until I can somehow get my hands on an advanced reading copy….Any senders? –MO
