I Have Seen the Future ... and It’s a Gigantic, Teetering To-Be-Read Pile

Spring tends to be a difficult period for me, reading-wise. I’m gladly making my way through the many books I received for my birthday (in March), but that were actually released somewhat earlier in the year. And I’ll need to focus next on the deluge of new crime fiction due out in June and July, just in time to pack along on lazy summer trips.

Novels brought out during this interlude between rainy, overcast days and when the air starts to take on the fragrance of suntan lotion again, and deck chairs finally reappear, may not win the same regard as those scheduled for release in anticipation of vacations. Which is quite unfair, because there will be plenty of intriguing crime, mystery, and thriller works making their way to store shelves over the next two months, on both sides of the Atlantic. I won’t have enough free hours to enjoy all of those listed below, but they certainly deserve recognition.

APRIL (U.S.):

• Michael Connelly, The Fifth Witness (Little, Brown)

• Douglas Corleone, Night on Fire (Minotaur)

• Janet Dawson, Bit Player (Perseverance Press)

• P.C. Doherty, Nightshade (Minotaur)

• David Downing, Potsdam Station (Soho Press)

• Terence Faherty, Dance in the Dark (Five Star)

• Heywood Gould, The Serial Killer’s Daughter (Nightbird Publishing)

• Rosemary Harris, Slugfest (Minotaur)

• Tony Hays, The Beloved Dead (Forge)

• Philip Kerr, Field Gray (Putnam)

• Camilla Lackberg, The Preacher (Pegasus)

• Jassy Mackenzie, Stolen Lives (Soho Press)

• Jean-Patrick Manchette, Fatale (NYRB Classics)

• Bill Moody, Fade to Blue (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Anne Perry, Treason at Lisson Grove (Ballantine)

• Lori Roy, Bent Road (Dutton)

• John Shannon, A Little Too Much (Severn House)

• Julia Spencer-Fleming, One Was a Soldier (Minotaur)

• Norb Vonnegut, The Gods of Greenwich (Minotaur)

• Daniel Woodrell, The Bayou Trilogy (Mulholland)

APRIL (UK):

• Stephen Booth, The Devil’s Edge (Sphere)

• Lee Jackson, The Diary of a Murder (Snowbooks)

• Mo Hayder, Hanging Hill (Bantam Press)

• Tobias Jones, White Death (Faber and Faber)

• Peter Lovesey, Stagestruck (Sphere)

• Edward Marston, Blood on the Line (Allison & Busby)

• Steve Mosby, Black Flowers (Orion)

• Andrew Pepper, Bloody Winter (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

• Anne Perry, Acceptable Loss (Headline)

• Imogen Robertson, Island of Bones (Headline Review)

• Zoë Sharp, Fifth Victim (Allison & Busby)

• Kerry Tombs, The Tewkesbury Tomb (Robert Hale)

• Fred Vargas, An Uncertain Place (Harvill Secker)

• S.J. Watson, Before I Go to Sleep (Doubleday)

MAY (U.S.):

• Lawrence Block, A Drop of the Hard Stuff (Mulholland)

• Gyles Brandreth, Oscar Wilde and the Vampire Murders (Touchstone)

• Vicki Delany, Among the Departed (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Aaron Elkins, The Worst Thing (Berkley)

• Chris Knopf, Black Swan (Permanent Press)

• Jo Nesbø, The Snowman (Knopf)

• Clare O’Donohue, Missing Persons (Plume)

• Robert B. Parker, Sixkill (Putnam)

• Thomas Perry, The Informant (Otto Penzler/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• Stefanie Pintoff, Secret of the White Rose (Minotaur)

• Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, Kiss Her Goodbye (Otto Penzler/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

MAY (UK):

• Rory Clements, Prince (John Murray)

• Eoin Colfer, Plugged (Headline)

• James Craig, London Calling (Robinson)

• Jeffery Deaver, Carte Blanche (Hodder & Stoughton)

• Chris Morgan Jones, An Agent of Deceit (Mantle)

• Mari Jungstedt, The Dead of Summer (Doubleday)

• Lars Kepler, The Hypnotist (Blue Door)

• James McCreet, The Thieves’ Labyrinth (Macmillan)

• Brian McGilloway, Little Girl Lost (Macmillan)

• Denise Mina, The End of the Wasp Season (Orion)

• Aly Monroe, Blacklight (John Murray)
• R.N. Morris, The Cleansing Flames (Faber and Faber)

• Matt Benyon Rees, Mozart’s Last Aria (Corvus)

• Leigh Russell, Dead End (No Exit Press)

• Nick Stone, Voodoo Eyes (Sphere)

Would anyone else like to chime in with their own crime-fiction reading recommendations for these two months before summer hits? There’s a Comments tab below. You know how to use it.