Daggers Seek Their Targets

The British Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) today announced its shortlists of nominees for six different Dagger Awards.

The CWA International Dagger:

• Alex, by Pierre Lemaitre,
translated by Frank Wynne (Quercus)
• The Missing File, by D.A. Mishani,
translated by Steven Cohen (Quercus)
• Two Soldiers, by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström,
translated by Kari Dickson (Quercus)
• Ghost Riders of Ordebec, by Fred Vargas,
translated by Siân Reynolds (Harvill Secker)
• Death in Sardinia, by Marco Vichi,
translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Collini Case, by Ferdinand von Schirach,
translated by Anthea Bell (Michael Joseph)

The CWA Non-Fiction Dagger:

• Midnight in Peking, by Paul French (Penguin Viking)
• The Boy in the River, by Richard Hoskins (Pan Macmillan)
• Against a Tide of Evil, by Mukesh Kapila, with Damien Lewis (Mainstream)
• A Fine Day for a Hanging, by Carol Ann Lee (Mainstream)
• Injustice, by Clive Stafford Smith (Random House)
• Murder at Wrotham Hill, by Diana Souhami (Quercus)

The CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger:

• The Heretics, by Rory Clements (John Murray)
• Pilgrim Soul, by Gordon Ferris (Corvus)
• The Paris Winter, by Imogen Robertson (Headline)
• Dead Men and Broken Hearts, by Craig Russell (Quercus)
• The Twelfth Department, by William Ryan (Mantle)
• The Scent of Death, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)

The CWA Short Story Dagger:

• “Method Murder,” by Simon Brett (from The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, Volume 10, edited by Maxim Jakubowski; Constable)
• “Stairway C,” by Piero Colaprico (from Outsiders, edited by Ben Faccini; MacLehose Press)
• “Come Away with Me,” by Stella Duffy (from The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, Volume 10)

• “The Case of Death and Honey,” by Neil Gaiman (from The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, Volume 10)

• “Ferengi,” by Carlo Lucarelli (from Outsiders)
• “Lost and Found,” by Zoë Sharp (from Vengeance, edited by Lee Child; Corvus)

The CWA Dagger in the Library:

• Belinda Bauer
• Alison Bruce
• Gordon Ferris

• Christopher Fowler
• Elly Griffiths
• Michael Ridpath

(The longlist of contenders for this prize can be found here.)

The CWA Debut Dagger:

• Aine Oomhnaill (Ireland), The Assassin’s Keeper
• Finn Clarke (UK), Call Time
• Sue Dawes (UK), TAG
• Alex Sweeney (UK), Working in Unison
• Marie Hannan-Mandel (USA), Lesson Plan for Murder
• Ron Puckering (UK), Honour or Justice
• David Evans (UK), Torment
• Jayne Barnard (Canada), When the Bow Breaks
• D.B. Carew (Canada), Fighting Darkness: The Killer Trail
• Mike Craven (UK), Born in a Burial Gown
• Emma Melville (UK), The Journeyman
• Joanna Dodd (UK), A Cure for All Evils

The winners of these prizes will be announced during a July 15 dinner at Kings Place in London. Also included in those festivities will be the presentation, to Lee Child, of this year’s Diamond Dagger and an announcement of the nominees for the CWA’s annual Gold, Steel, and John Creasey Daggers.

The Book You Have to Read: “The Unquiet Night,“ by Patricia Carlon

(Editor’s note: This is the 126th entry in The Rap Sheet’s ongoing blog series highlighting great but forgotten books. Today’s recommendation comes from Patrick Balester, a mystery writer, photographer, and computer programmer in Kansas City, Missouri. Balester’s first e-novel, In the Dismal Swamp, was published in 2012. He also writes a blog called Picks by Pat.)

I stumbled across Australian author Patricia Carlon quite by accident. I was taking a break from writing my first novel and decided to wander among the fiction aisles of my local library, looking for an author I hadn’t read before. I started at “A” and stopped at “C” when I pulled the 2003 Soho Crime edition of The Unquiet Night from the shelf. At first glance I was attracted to its garish cover photo--a woman in a flaming red skirt with a torn stocking lying on the grass. Well, I thought, shall we give it a go?

It turned out to be one of the most suspenseful and terrifying novels I have ever read. It lacks the hardcore violence of today’s thrillers, yet the writing is so powerful and straightforward, the author’s mastery of language so complete, that even now--nearly 50 years after it was first published--the story speaks without being dated. Except for its lack of cell phones, it could have been published last week.

In The Unquiet Night we meet Martin Deeford, and by the end of the first sentence (“He hadn't meant her to die”), we know he is in deep trouble. He’s just strangled Rose Gault, a young woman he picked up at a bus stop on a rainy Sunday afternoon and took to an isolated nature reserve. After disposing of her body in a nearby lake and leaving the scene of his crimes in a panic, Martin stumbles across a child, 9-year-old Ann Penghill, and her aunt, Rachel Penghill, who had come to the reserve for a picnic. Rachel looks right at him and Martin quickly realizes that if she comes forward after Rose is declared missing or her body is found, he’ll go to prison for murder. Without knowing little Ann’s name, he is later forced to rely on his knowledge of their small town to track her down. And through her he hopes to find the woman. The woman he plans to silence.

It may seem hard in our own day and age to believe that adults would willingly give up names to a voice over the telephone, but Martin works in a retail shop. He knows his customers and knows how to talk to them. His cleverness only takes him so far, though; each clue to Rachel’s identity and whereabouts becomes a dead end, leaving him angry, frustrated, and--as the night of his crimes progresses--more of a threat to anyone who crosses his path. Yet Martin is no criminal mastermind. He is impulsive, violent, and quick to blame others for his shortcomings. His fear of discovery is palpable and almost sympathetic. When he finally finds his intended victim, it is by luck.

He tricks Rachel into opening the door to her jewelry shop, but confronted by the chance to actually murder her, he vomits, revealing his cowardice. Then Rachel makes a tremendous blunder without even realizing it. She blurts out, “I've seen you before”--a statement that seals her fate. It reminds Martin of his nefarious goal, and a glance around the shop where Rachel works as a designer suddenly shows him how best to finish her: he entombs her in a vault. In there, he’s sure, she will soon suffocate--a slow and agonizing death.

Rachel thinks this is only a robbery, and she waits patiently to be released. Only slowly does it dawn on her that Martin is not coming back. Her only hope is to be missed--and that’s a vague hope, indeed. She had told several people that she’d be out of town at a jewelry convention. She has recently broken it off with a boyfriend. A handyman who was planning to make repairs to the shop fails to show. Small clues which might otherwise have alerted neighbors that something was amiss go unnoticed. The suspense builds painfully over the course of this story, and the reader does not learn Rachel’s fate until the very last sentence.

The Unquiet Night was originally released in 1965, when Patricia Carlon was at the height of her creative powers. (Another of her books, published that same year, was Crime of Silence.) She had been producing romance and mystery stories ever since her teens, when she’d entered a writing contest and won. Unfortunately, Carlon could not initially find a publisher in her native Australia and most of her best work was released first in the United Kingdom. Not until much later, when she was in her 70s, did this author finally see her stories published Down Under, something that brought her great satisfaction.

Isolation and a sense of insignificance are themes that found their way into many of Patricia Carlon’s tales. Her characters often lack the ability to warn others of impending danger or protect themselves. The author’s own life suggested a self-imposed desire to hide from the world. She lived in a small town, next to her parents. She had a handicap--deafness--that she hid so well, her own publisher and most of her neighbors were unaware of it until it was discovered after her death. Yet it may have strongly influenced her writing.

For me, what started out as a one-night stand evolved quickly into a lifelong love affair with this remarkable writer’s works of suspense. Yet even though her books were published through conventional channels in the United States, they aren’t yet available for e-readers. It’s ironic that an author who mastered the sense of isolation in her storytelling is, in a real sense, still isolated from many readers. I hope this will soon be corrected. Carlon deserves a much wider audience.

Northern (Leading) Lights

During a ceremony held tonight at the Arts & Letters Club in Toronto, Ontario, the Crime Writers of Canada organization announced the winners of its 2013 Arthur Ellis Awards. They are as follows:

Best First Novel:
The Haunting of Maddy Clare, by Simone St. James (NAL)

Also nominated: The Beggar’s Opera, by Peggy Blair (Penguin Canada); Confined Space, by Deryn Collier (Simon & Schuster); The Dead of Winter, by Peter Kirby (Linda Leith); and A Private Man, by Chris Laing (Seraphim)

Best Novel: Until the Night, by Giles Blunt (Random House Canada)

Also nominated: Trust Your Eyes, by Linwood Barclay (Doubleday Canada); The Trinity Game, by Sean Chercover (Thomas & Mercer); The Messenger, by Stephen Miller (Delacorte Press); and Niceville, by Carsten Stroud (Knopf)

Best Novella: Contingency Plan, by Lou Allin (Orca Rapid Reads)

Also nominated: A Winter Kill, by Vicki Delany (Orca Rapid Reads); Evil Behind that Door, by Barbara Fradkin (Orca Rapid Reads); and Reunion, by Christopher G. Moore (from Phnom Penh Noir, edited by Christopher G. Moore; Heaven Lake Press)

Best Short Story: “Spring-blade Knife,” by Yasuko Thanh
(from Floating Like the Dead, McClelland & Stewart)

Also nominated: “Life without George,” by Melodie Campbell (Over My Dead Body!, August 2012); “Sins of the Fathers,” by Sandy Conrad (from Daughters and Other Strangers, The Brucedale Press); “Cruel Coast,” by Scott MacKay (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July 2012); and “Mad Dog,” Jas R. Petrin (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, October 2012)

Best Non-fiction: The Devil’s Cinema: The Untold Story behind Mark Twitchell’s Kill Room, by Steve Lillebuen (McClelland & Stewart)

Also nominated: Bloody Justice: The Truth behind the Bandidos Massacre at Shedden, by Anita Arvast (John Wiley); Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street’s Wildest Con, by Guy Lawson (Crown/Random House); and Thieves of Bay Street: How Banks, Brokerages and the Wealthy Steal Billions from Canadians, by Bruce Livesey (Random House Canada)

Best Juvenile/Young Adult:
Becoming Holmes, by Shane Peacock (Tundra)

Also nominated: Live to Tell, by Lisa Harrington (Cormorant Books); The Agency: The Traitor in the Tunnel, by Y.S. Lee (Candlewick Press); Crush Candy Corpse, by Sylvia McNicoll (James Lorimer); and The Lynching of Louie Sam, by Elizabeth Stewart (Annick Press)

Best Crime Book in French: La Nuit des albinos: Sur les traces de Max O’Brien, by Mario Bolduc (Libre Expression)

Also nominated: De pierres et de sang, by André Jacques (Druide); L’homme du jeudi, by Jean Lemieux (La courte échelle); Je me souviens, by Martin Michaud (Goélette); and L’inaveu, by Richard Ste Marie (Alire)

Best Unpublished First Crime Novel (“The Unhanged Arthur”):
Sins Revisited, by Coleen Steele

Also nominated: Cold Black Tide, by William Hall; and The Raffle Baby, by Ilonka Halsband

Derrick Murdoch Award: Lyn Hamilton

Congratulations to the winners as well as the other nominees!

(Hat tip to Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan.)

Firsts From the Fest

CrimeFest 2013 opened its doors earlier today in Bristol, England. Sadly, I won’t be attending that much-heralded mystery- and thriller-fiction convention, though my name will evidently be uttered somewhere along the line: a collection of 20 trivia questions about Donald Hamilton’s Matt Helm espionage thrillers that I put together recently will feature in the con’s Criminal Mastermind Quiz.

Fortunately, there are other bloggers attending, and I hope to provide links from this page to some of their reporting over the next three days. Stanley Trollip, one of the two authors behind the Detective Kubu Bengu series, has already filed his first post for Murder Is Everywhere, and Peter Rozovsky of Detectives Beyond Borders has commenced penning what should be a succession of posts from Bristol.

Tomorrow night is set to bring the announcement of who has won this year’s Dagger in the Library Award (the contenders are here), and four other prizes will be handed out on Saturday, June 1, during a “gala dinner” (click here to see the shortlists of nominees).

I’ll try to stay on top of these doings, even if from afar.

Is “Miss Montreal” Coming to Your Home?

One week ago, as we celebrated The Rap Sheet’s seventh anniversary, we also announced the kickoff of our latest book-giveaway competition. The prizes were seven copies of Miss Montreal, Canadian crime-fictionist Howard Shrier’s fourth novel featuring Toronto private investigator Jonah Geller, but the first to be set primarily in the author’s native Montreal, Quebec. Today we’re pleased to announce the winners of that drawing, chosen at random. They are:

• Sharon Berger of Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Alison Scarrow of Parry Sound, Ontario
• Keith Logan of Matane, Quebec
• Annie Chernow of Inverness, Illinois
• Barbara Lorentz of Redding, California
• Gordon Bingham of Tampa, Florida
• Patricia Beuerlein of Edmonton, Alberta

Shrier’s publisher, Random House/Vintage Canada, will send copies of Miss Montreal directly to those seven lucky Rap Sheet readers.

Thanks to everyone for entering this contest. And if you didn’t win? Well, don’t worry: you’ll have many more opportunities to pick up free books from The Rap Sheet in the near future.

Stay tuned.

Pierce’s Picks: “A Conspiracy of Faith”

A weekly alert for followers of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction.

A Conspiracy of Faith, by Jussi Adler-Olsen (Dutton):
What more tantalizing inspiration could there be for a criminal investigation than a message written in blood and secreted in a bottle? Unfortunately, that cast-off communication was discovered years ago and hundreds of miles away from Denmark, where it was dropped into the sea, and its lettering has faded badly since. In fact, the only really legible word is the first one: “Help.” But that’s enough to get Detective Carl Mørck and his eccentric colleagues from the Copenhagen Police Department’s cold-case division, Department Q, involved. Is this cry for rescue authentic, and if so, who sent it--and are they still alive? Once deciphered, the note suggests that children were kidnapped, and yet there were no reports of missing youngsters filed at the time and in the location it specifies. Further complicating matters, when Mørck & Co. finally determine who at least one of the absent youths must be, his parents stonewall the police rather than help them. Can Mørck and his two more energetic associates, Hafez el-Assad and Rose Knudsen, track down the first kidnap victims before their abductor snatches the next couple of children he’s targeted? Danish author Adler-Olsen’s first English-translated Department Q novel, The Keeper of Lost Causes (2001), earned him considerable attention, in part because enthusiastic readers of the late Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy” were hungry for more Nordic crime fiction. Keeper’s sequel, The Absent One (2012), kept interest in Department Q high, and no doubt Conspiracy (which will be released in the UK in July as Redemption) will attract a comparably wide audience. Although these books can be frustratingly thin on nuance, as far as the development of some characters (particularly the “bad guys”) goes, their detection components are strong and their pacing is dramatic.

* * *

Also new and worth finding a copy of this week is Tapestry (Mysterious Press/Open Road), Canadian author J. Robert Janes’ 14th novel featuring Chief Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the French Sûreté and his partner, German Detektiv Inspektor Hermann Kohler. Their latest adventure, set in Paris during an early 1943 blackout, finds them investigating a burglarized stamp collector’s shop, the brutal murder of a young man found naked, black-market dealings in improperly confiscated goods, and the rape of a woman--the spouse of a prisoner of war--whose nighttime attack may trace to her alleged willingness to accept other, Nazi companionship in her husband’s absence. The concluding pages of this work suggest Janes may actually have penned Tapestry prior to Bellringer, which was published last year; however, you needn’t read that earlier novel to enjoy this new one. ... And British shoppers should be on the lookout for The Dying Hours (Little, Brown), Mark Billingham’s 11th outing for Detective Inspector Tom Thorne. Here we find the oft-reprimanded and lately demoted Thorne seeing something more sinister than suicide behind the recent deaths of elderly Londoners. Naturally, none of his police colleagues take Thorne’s warnings of a serial slayer seriously, so he sets out on his own to find a killer who has nothing to lose. Billingham’s yarns are dark and frequently bleak, but they’re also pretty darn gripping. The Dying Hours is due out in the States in early August.

“Small Hill” Wins Big

A Small Hill to Die On (Minotaur), by Toronto resident Elizabeth J. Duncan, was named tonight as the winner of the 2013 Bloody Words Light Mystery Award, aka the Bony Blithe. This was the second year in which Canada’s Bloody Words Mystery Conference has presented that prize, which celebrates “traditional, feel-good mysteries.”

Duncan’s novel was vying for the Bony Blithe against five other books: Threaded for Trouble, by Janet Bolin (Berkley Prime Crime); Food for the Gods, by Karen Dudley (Ravenstone); A Private Man, by Chris Laing (Seraphim); Blood, Bath & Beyond, by Michelle Rowen (NAL Obsidian); and The Mastersinger from Minsk, by Morley Torgov (Dundurn).

The next Bloody Words convention is set for June 6-18, 2014, in Toronto, with the 2015 event taking place in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Death Among the Pet Set

Arizona-based mystery-fiction publisher Poisoned Pen Press today announced the winner of its 2013 Discover Mystery Award. Now in its second year, the contest celebrates unpublished debut works. This year’s recipient is Eileen Brady, whose novel, Dog Shows Are Murder, will be released by Poisoned Pen in 2014.

Other finalists for the 2013 award were Peggy McKeep Barnhill (Uniformly Dead), Judy L. Murray (Murder in the Master), and Carmen Will (A Practicum for Murder).

Fair Weather Finds

My Kirkus Reviews column this week examines eight crime, mystery, and thriller works--all of them due for release between now and September 1--that I think would be particularly worth investing your time to read, either at home or on a much-needed vacation. Of course, that’s only a small taste of what U.S. publishers have waiting for fans of this genre over these coming summer months.

In order to ensure that I had a solid handle on the wide range of books soon to become available, I spent considerable time perusing catalogues and Web sites that track coming releases. (The Bloodstained Bookshelf and Euro Crime’s future releases page do an especially fine job of that.) And even though, in the end, I restricted my Kirkus choices to books that will be peddled by American retailers, my original inventory of works featured more than 200 titles, scheduled for printing on both sides of the Atlantic.

Rather than round-file that overabundance of research, I am posting below my full rundown of crime and thriller books due out (in English) in June, July, and August of this year. This is not an exhaustive compilation; instead, it’s a selective sampler of the fiction that looks most promising to me, or that comes from authors whose prose I’ve enjoyed in the past. Now, if I only had time to read all of these ...

JUNE (U.S.):

• Always Watching, by Chevy Stevens (St. Martin’s Press)

• Bad Monkey, by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf)

• Baskerville: The Mysterious Tale of Sherlock’s Return, by John O’Connell (Atria/Marble Arch Press)

• Blood From a Stone, by Dolores Gordon-Smith (Severn House)

• The Boy Who Said No, by Patti Sheehy (Oceanview)

• The Child Thief, by Dan Smith (Pegasus)

• Choke Point, by Ridley Pearson (Putnam)

• Circle of Shadows, by Imogen Robertson (Pamela Dorman)

• Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, by Sara Gran
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• Classic Mistake, by Amy Myers (Severn House)

• The Confessions of Al Capone, by Loren D. Estleman (Forge)

• Corrupt Practices, by Robert Rotstein (Seventh Street)

• Crime of Privilege, by Walter Walker (Ballantine)

• Death of a Dyer, by Eleanor Kuhns (Minotaur)

• Death of the Demon, by Anne Holt (Scribner)

• The Doll, by Taylor Stevens (Crown)

• Enigma of China, by Qiu Xiaolong (Minotaur)

• Escape from Paris, by Carolyn Hart (Seventh Street)

• Evil and the Mask, by Fuminori
Nakamura (Soho Crime)

• The Execution of Noa P. Singleton, by Elizabeth L. Silver (Crown)

• The Flinch Factor, by Michael A. Kahn (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Fort, by Aric Davis (Thomas & Mercer)

• Gift Wrapped, by Peter Turnbull (Severn House)

• Green-Eyed Lady, by Chuck Greaves (Minotaur)

• Grey Dawn, by Clea Simon (Severn House)

• The Hanging, by Søren Hammer (Minotaur)

• The Heist, by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg (Bantam)

• Her Boyfriend’s Bones, by Jeanne Matthews (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Her Last Breath, by Linda Castillo (Minotaur)

• Hour of the Rat, by Lisa Brackmann (Soho Crime)

• House Odds, by Michael Lawson (Atlantic Monthly Press)

• The Ides of April, by Lindsey Davis (Minotaur)

• If You Were Here, by Alafair Burke (Harper)

• Joyland, by Stephen King (Hard Case Crime)

• The Kill Room, by Jeffery Deaver (Grand Central)

• The King’s Deception, by Steve Berry (Ballantine)

• The Last Conquistador, by Michael Elias (Open Road)

• The Last Kind Word, by David Housewright (Minotaur)

• Lexicon, by Max Barry (Penguin Press)

• Lost, by S.J. Bolton (Minotaur)

• Masaryk Station, by David Downing (Soho Crime)

• Missing in Machu Picchu, by Cecilia Velastegui (Libros)

• Mr. Monk Helps Himself, by Hy Conrad (NAL)

• The Navigator, by Michael Pocalyko (Forge)

• Night Fall, by Frank Smith (Severn House)

• No Show, by Simon Wood (Thomas & Mercer)

• Peril in the Royal Train, by Edward Marston (Allison & Busby)

• Play Dead, by Bill James (Creme de la Crime)

• The Rules of Wolfe, by James Carlos Blake (Mysterious Press)

• Shadow People, by James Swain (Tor)

• Sherlock Holmes and Frankenstein’s Diary, by Barry Grant
(Severn House)

• The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes (Mulholland)

• Slingshot, by Matthew Dunn (Morrow)

• Stoker’s Manuscript, by Royce Prouty (Putnam)

• Summer Death, by Mons Kallentoft (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• Swimming with Sharks, by Nele Neuhaus (AmazonCrossing)

• The Trojan Colt, by Mike Resnick (Seventh Street)

• Until She Comes Home, by Lori Roy (Dutton)

JUNE (UK):

• Already Dead, by Stephen Booth (Sphere)

• The Anarchist Detective, by Jason Webster (Chatto & Windus)

• Bad Blood, by Arne Dahl (Harvill Secker)

• Blood and Stone, by Chris Collett (Creme de la Crime)

• Bricks and Mortality, by Ann Granger (Headline)

• The Crocodile, by Maurizio de Giovanni (Abacus)

• Dead Man’s Time, by Peter James (Macmillan)

• The Devil and the River, by R.J. Ellory (Orion)

• Everyone Lies, by A.D. Garrett
(C & R Crime)

• The Feast of Artemis, by Anne Zouroudi (Bloomsbury)

• The Gift of Darkness, by V.M. Giambanco (Quercus)

• The Good Suicides, by Antonio Hill (Doubleday)

• Inquest, by Paul Carson (Matador)

• Killman, by Graeme Kent (C & R Crime)

• The Lost Abbot, by Susanna Gregory (Sphere)

• Love Story, With Murders, by Harry Bingham (Orion)

• Never Fuck Up, by Jens Lapidus (Pantheon)

• The Obituary Writer, by Lauren St John (Orion)

• Pray for the Dying, by Quintin Jardine (Headline)

• The Resistance Man, by Martin Walker (Quercus)

• Secrets, by Jane A. Adams (Severn House)

• The Vanishing, by John Connor (Orion)

• Waiting for Wednesday, by Nicci French (Michael Joseph)

JULY (U.S.):

• Bad Tidings, by Nick Oldham (Severn House)

• The Bat, by Jo Nesbø (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

• Brilliance, by Marcus Sakey (Thomas & Mercer)

• Close My Eyes, by Sophie McKenzie (St. Martin’s Press)

• Countdown City, by Ben H. Winters (Quirk)

• The Dark Man: An Illustrated Poem, by Stephen King
(Cemetery Dance)

• Death and the Olive Grove, by Marco Vichi (Pegasus)

• Death Was in the Blood, by Linda L. Richards (Five Star)

• The Devil’s Cave, by Martin Walker (Knopf)

• Downfall, by Jeff Abbott (Grand Central)

• Drift, by Jon McGoran (Forge)

• The English Girl, by Daniel Silva (Harper)

• The Executioner’s Heart, by George Mann (Tor)

• Eye for an Eye, by Ben Coes (St. Martin’s Press)

• Fallout, by Garry Disher (Soho Crime)

• The Fame Thief, by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime)

• The Fire Witness, by Lars Kepler (Sarah Crichton)

• First Frost, by James Henry (Minotaur)

• Full Ratchet, by Mike Cooper (Viking)

• Gridlock, by Byron L. Dorgan and David Hagberg (Forge)

• The Hen of the Baskervilles, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur)

• The Highway, by C.J. Box (Minotaur)

• The Homecoming, by Carsten Stroud (Knopf)

• The Last Whisper in the Dark, by Tom Piccirilli (Bantam)

• Let It Burn, by Steve Hamilton (Minotaur)

• Light of the World, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster)

• The Man From Berlin, by Luke McCallin (Berkley)

• A Marker to Measure Drift, by Alexander Maksik (Knopf)

• Massacre Pond, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur)

• Mystery Girl, by David Gordon (New Harvest)

• Nemesis, by Bill Pronzini (Forge)

• The Never List, by Koethi Zan (Pamela Dorman)

• No Regrets, Coyote, by John Dufresne (Norton)

• Not the Killing Type, by Lorna Barrett (Berkley)

• Please Don’t Tell, by Elizabeth Adler (Minotaur)

• The Right Side of Wrong, by Reavis Z. Wortham (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Seventh Trumpet, by Peter Tremayne (Minotaur)

• The Silent Wife, by A.S.A. Harrison (Penguin)

• Skinner, by Charlie Huston (Mulholland)

• Stranded, by Alex Kava (Doubleday)

• Sunrise, by Al Lamanda (Five Star)

• Sugar Pop Moon, by John Florio (Seventh Street)

• The Terrorist Next Door, by Sheldon
Siegel (Poisoned Pen Press)

• These Mortal Remains, by Milton T.
Burton (Minotaur)

• Visitation Street, by Ivy Pochoda
(Dennis Lehane/Ecco)

JULY (UK):

• An Act of Kindness, by Barbara Nadel (Quercus)

• Atonement of Blood, by Peter Tremayne (Headline)

• A Bitter Taste, by Annie Hauxwell (William Heinemann)

• Broken Homes, by Ben Aaronovitch (Gollancz)

• Crimson Rose, by M.J. Trow (Creme de la Crime)

• Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone, by Catriona McPherson (Hodder & Stoughton)

• The Double Silence, by Mari Jungstedt (Doubleday)

• The Extremist, by Roger Pearce (Coronet)

• Holy Orders, by Benjamin Black (Mantle)

• How a Gunman Says Goodbye, by Malcolm Mackay (Mantle)

• I Am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes (Bantam Press)

• Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, by Kate Griffin
(Faber and Faber)

• The Long Shadow, by Mark Mills (Headline Review)

• The Norfolk Mystery, by Ian Sansom (Fourth Estate)

• Ostland, by David Thomas (Quercus)

• The Red Road, by Denise Mina (Orion)

• Soho, 4 a.m., by Nuala Casey (Quercus)

• Solid Citizens, by David Wishart (Creme de la Crime)

• The Stranger You Know, by Jane Casey (Ebury Press)

• The Tudor Conspiracy, by Christopher Gortner (Hodder & Stoughton)

• The Unquiet Grave, by Steven Dunne (Headline)

• The Ways of the World, by Robert Goddard (Bantam Press)

AUGUST (U.S.):

• Bait, by J. Kent Messum (Plume)

• The Beast, by Faye Kellerman (Morrow)

• Beyond the Bridge, by Tom MacDonald (Oceanview)

• Blind Justice, by Anne Perry (Ballantine)

• Blood of the Lamb, by Sam Cabot (Blue Rider Press)

• Bones of the Lost, by Kathy Reichs (Scribner)

• The Bride Box, by Michael Pearce (Severn House)

• A Cold White Sun, by Vicki Delany (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Compound Fractures, by Stephen White (Dutton)

• Compound Murder, by Bill Crider (Minotaur)

• Dark Prairie, by John D. Nesbitt (Five Star)

• Dark Waters, by Robin Blake (Minotaur)

• The Dead and the Beautiful, by Cheryl Crane (Kensington)

• Death Canyon, by David Riley Bertsch (Scribner)

• Devil’s Night, by Todd Ritter (Minotaur)

• Downtown Strut, by Ed Ifkovic (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Dying Hours, by Mark Billingham (Atlantic Monthly Press)

• Eva’s Eye, by Karin Fossum (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• A Fatal Likeness, by Lynn Shepherd (Delacorte Press)

• Flashpoint, by Ed Gorman (Severn House)

• Going Home Again, by Dennis Bock (Knopf)

• Good As Gone, by Douglas Corleone (Minotaur)

• The Good Thief’s Guide to Berlin, by Chris Ewan (Minotaur)

• Guilt Edged, by Judith Cutler (Severn House)

• The Hanging of Samuel Ash, by Sheldon N. Russell (Minotaur)

• Heirs and Graces, by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)

• How the Light Gets In, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

• It Happens in the Dark, by Carol O’Connell (Putnam)

• Kwik Krimes, edited by Otto Penzler (Thomas & Mercer)

• Land of the Silver Dragon, by Alys Clare (Severn House)

• The Last Alibi, by David Ellis (Putnam)

• Let Me Go, by Chelsea Cain (Minotaur)

• The Memory Key, by Conor Fitzgerald (Bloomsbury)

• Middle Man, by David Rich (Dutton)

• The Mojito Coast, by Richard Helms (Five Star)

• Night Film, by Marisha Pessl (Random House)

• 101 Nights, by Christoph Spielberg (AmazonCrossing)

• Out of the Black, by John Rector (Thomas & Mercer)

• A Place of Confinement, by Anna Dean (Minotaur)

• A Question of Honor, by Charles Todd (Morrow)

• Runaway Man, by David Handler (Minotaur)

• Sandrine’s Case, by Thomas H. Cook (Mysterious Press)

• Save Yourself, by Kelly Braffet (Crown)

• A Spider in the Cup, by Barbara Cleverly (Soho Crime)

• Strong Rain Falling, by Jon Land (Forge)

• Tamarack County, by William Kent Krueger (Atria)

• A Tap on the Window, by Linwood
Barclay (NAL)

• Tell No Lies, by Gregg Hurwitz
(St. Martin’s Press)

• You Make Me Feel So Dead, by Robert J. Randisi (Severn House)

AUGUST (UK):

• The Black Life, by Paul Johnston
(Creme de la Crime)

• Brother Kemal, by Jakob Arjouni
(No Exit Press)

• Children of the Revolution, by Peter Robinson (Hodder & Stoughton)

• The Corporal’s Wife, by Gerald Seymour (Hodder & Stoughton)

• Dead Line, by Chris Ewan (Faber and Faber)

• Death at the Clos du Lac, by Adrian Magson (Allison & Busby)

• Death in Florence, by Marco Vichi (Hodder & Stoughton)

• The Death of Lucy Kyte, by Nicola Upson (Faber and Faber)

• The Disappeared, by Kristina Ohlsson (Simon & Schuster)

• Flesh Wounds, by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown)

• The Funeral Owl, by Jim Kelly (Creme de la Crime)

• Light in a Dark House, by Jan Costin Wagner (Harvill Secker)

• Never Go Back, by Lee Child (Bantam Press)

• No Man’s Nightingale, by Ruth Rendell (Hutchinson)

• The Riot, by Laura Wilson (Quercus)

• The Siege, by Arturo Perez-Reverte (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

• A Song from Dead Lips, by William Shaw (Quercus)

• Strange Shores, by Arnaldur Indridason (Harvill Secker)

• Watching You, by Michael Robotham (Sphere)

• Worse Can Happen, by Niamh O’Connor (Transworld Ireland)

So, did I miss mentioning any books that you’re looking forward to reading? In the Comments section below, please feel free to recommend other works in this genre due out over the coming three months. Maybe we can all learn something.