Summery Judgment 2010

I don’t know why I always look ahead to see what new crime and thriller novels are set to be released in the near future. It’s not like I couldn’t be locked up in my house, and still have at hand sufficient reading material for the next two years! However, those of us with serious book addictions cannot but dream of works yet to be had.

With the first day of summer fast approaching on June 21, I’ve been amassing suggestions of what might best be read during this year’s warmer days. Whether one is stretched out on a beach amidst the lithe and lightly clad crowd (most members of which, I would hope, are not as well armed as the woman photographed here), or simply lounging in a sticky plastic backyard recliner, the opportunity to enjoy a cool libation and an even cooler novel is something one ought not pass up.

Admittedly, the reading lists below are highly idiosyncratic. My taste generally runs to stories that promise superior writing and character development, rather than just dialogue-heavy scenes and edge-of-the-seat action. And while I appreciate modern yarns suffused with credible human emotions and desperate motives, I am particularly fond of historical mysteries, hoping always to learn something new and wrap myself in a distinctly different world as I follow the ins and outs of a criminal investigation rooted in a far-gone era.

There are many more books listed below than I shall find the chance to read over the next few months. My expectations inevitably exceed my spare summer hours and energy, and don’t account for the fact that there are some books published earlier this year (such as Sam Eastland’s Eye of the Red Tsar, Norman Green’s Sick Like That, Jassy Mackenzie’s Random Violence, and Gar Anthony Haywood’s Cemetery Road) that I haven’t yet found time to sink into with pleasure. But perhaps my interests overlap your own, and you’ll find a few works here worth picking up as the Summer Solstice approaches.

MAY (U.S. releases):
• Gabriel Cohen, The Ninth Step (Minotaur)
• Caryl Férey, Zulu (Europa Editions)
• Barbara Fister, Through the Cracks (Minotaur)
• David Hewson, City of Fear (Delacorte)
• Adrian Hyland, Gunshot Road (Soho Crime)
• Paul Johnston, Maps of Hell (Mira)
• Jim Kelly, Death Watch (Minotaur)
• Chris Knopf, Elysiana (Permanent Press)
• Ken Kuhlken, The Biggest Liar in Los
Angeles (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (Knopf)
• William Link, The Columbo Collection
(Crippen & Landru)
• Stefanie Pintoff, A Curtain Falls (Minotaur)
• Laura Joh Rowland, Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë (Overlook)
• Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, The Big Bang
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Olen Steinhauer, The Nearest Exit (Minotaur)
• Peter Temple, Truth (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• Scott Turow, Innocent (Grand Central Publishing)
• Simon Wood, Terminated (Leisure)

MAY (UK releases):
• Ken Bruen, The Devil (Transworld Ireland)
• John Connolly, The Whisperers (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Ann Granger, A Better Quality of Murder (Headline)
• Stuart MacBride, Dark Blood (HarperCollins)
• Zoë Sharp, Fourth Day (Alison & Busby)

JUNE (U.S. releases):
• Rebecca Cantrell, A Night of Long Knives (Minotaur)
• Linda Castillo, Pray for Silence (Minotaur)
• Sarah Cortez and Liz Martínez, Moscow Noir (Akashic Books)
• Blake Crouch, Snowbound (Minotaur)
• R.J. Ellory, The Anniversary Man (Overlook)
• Alan Furst, Spies of the Balkans (Random House)
• John Harvey, Far Cry (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Michael Koryta, So Cold the River (Little, Brown)
• Sophie Littlefield, A Bad Day for Pretty (Minotaur)
• Richard North Patterson, In the Name of Honor (Henry Holt)
• Dennis Tafoya, The Wolves of Fairmount Park (Minotaur)

JUNE (UK releases):
• Tom Bale, Terror’s Reach
(Preface Publishing)
• Susanna Gregory, The Killer of Pilgrims (Sphere)
• Edward Marston, Railway to the Grave (Allison & Busby)
• Carol McCleary, The Illusion of Murder (Hodder & Stoughton)

JULY (U.S. releases):
• Michael Atkinson, Hemingway Cutthroat (Minotaur)
• Dan Fesperman, Layover in Dubai (Knopf)
• James Lee Burke, The Glass Rainbow (Simon & Schuster)
• Tana French, Faithful Place (Viking)
• Michael Genelin, The Magician’s Accomplice (Soho Crime)
• Lynn Kostoff, Late Rain (Tyrus Books)
• Christopher G. Moore, Asia Hand (Black Cat)
• David Morrell and Hank Wagner, editors, Thrillers: 100 Must Reads (Oceanview Publishing)
• Arthur Nersesian, Mesopotamia (Akashic Books)
• Bill Pronzini, Betrayers (Forge)
• Martin Walker, The Dark Vineyard (Knopf)
• Don Winslow, Savages (Simon & Schuster)

JULY (UK releases):
• Tony Black, Long Time Dead (Preface Publishing)
• David Downing, Potsdam Station (Old Street Publishing)
• Karin Fossum, Bad Intentions (Harvill Secker)
• Reginald Hill, The Woodcutter (HarperCollins)
• Marek Krajewski, The Phantoms of Breslau (Quercus)
• Håkan Nesser, The Inspector and Silence (Mantle)
• Craig Russell, The Long Glasgow Kiss (Quercus)
• Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Ashes to Dust (Hodder & Stoughton)

AUGUST (U.S. releases):
• James Church, The Man with the Baltic Stare (Minotaur)
• Thomas H. Cook, The Last Talk with Lola Faye
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Bill Crider, Murder in the Air (Minotaur)
• Loren D. Estleman, Amos Walker: The Complete Short Story
Collection (Tyrus Books)
• Chris Ewan, The Good Thief’s Guide to Vegas (Minotaur)
• Zoë Ferraris, City of Veils (Little, Brown)
• Dick Francis and Felix Francis,
Crossfire (Putnam)
• Zygmunt Miłoszewski, Entanglement
(Bitter Lemon Press)
• Dennis Palumbo, Mirror Image (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Sara Paretsky, Body Work (Putnam)
• Peter Robinson, Bad Boy (Morrow)
• Mark Haskell Smith, Baked (Black Cat)
• Martin Cruz Smith, Three Stations
(Simon & Schuster)

AUGUST (UK releases):
• Kate Atkinson, Started Early, Took My Dog (Doubleday)
• Mark Billingham, From the Dead (Little, Brown)
• Jeremy Duns, Free Country (Simon & Schuster)
• Michael Gregorio, Unholy Awakening (Faber and Faber)
• Caro Ramsay, Dark Water (Penguin)
• Ruth Rendell, Tigerlily’s Orchids (Hutchinson)

Looking for more U.S. releases to read this summer? Check out Ashley McConnell’s The Bloodstained Bookshelf and the new hardcover releases page at Stop, You’re Killing Me! Forthcoming British titles of note can be found in the Future Releases section of Karen Meek’s Euro Crime site and the Web pages of London’s Goldsboro Books.

A question for readers: Are there other crime novels due out over the next several months that I’ve failed to mention, but that you think are worth investigating? If so, please let us all know their names by dropping a note into the Comments section of this post.