Favorite Crime Fiction of 2014, Part I: Jim Napier

Jim Napier is a crime-fiction critic based in Quebec. His book reviews and author interviews have appeared in several Canadian papers as well as in Spinetingler Magazine, The Rap Sheet, Shots, Reviewing the Evidence, January Magazine, the Montreal Review of Books, and the Ottawa Review of Books. In addition, Napier maintains an award-winning crime-fiction site called Deadly Diversions.

• The Killer Next Door, by Alex Marwood (Penguin):
Marwood is the pseudonym of accomplished British journalist Serena Mackesy, whose previous book, The Wicked Girls (2013), was shortlisted for an Edgar Allan Poe Award. Here, a young woman is on the run after witnessing her boss murder a man. He’s tracked her from London to Spain and back again. Desperate, and with no confidence in the police, who want her as a material witness, she seeks anonymity in a rundown house in South London that’s been divided into flats, each occupied by one of the city’s many marginalized people. Unknown to her, one of them is a killer. A dark and harrowing tale of the anonymous lives of people who have slipped through the cracks of civilized society.

• Letters to My Daughter’s Killer, by Cath Staincliffe (Constable & Robinson):
Cath Staincliffe is best known for her award-winning series of standalone crime novels. But when approached to write tales based on British television’s popular crime drama, Scott & Bailey, she couldn’t resist--and we are all the richer for it. Every bit as well-crafted as those in her standalone stories, this book’s characters lead complex lives, and the layered plots form compelling narratives of both policing and the troubled society in which officers must do their jobs. A homeless man is found in the remains of a fire in an abandoned chapel, and the autopsy reveals he had been shot in the head first. Detective Constables Rachel Bailey and Janet Scott wonder who could have done such a thing, and why. Their efforts will take them into a murky world inhabited by hate-mongers and drug-dealers and impressionable teens, and the deaths have only just begun.

• Mr. Campion’s Farewell, by Mike Ripley (Severn House):
Long a respected reviewer of crime fiction, as well as the author of a fine original series of more than a dozen comic crime novels based on the highly eccentric and engaging character of private detective Fitzroy Maclean Angel, Mike Ripley adds yet another arrow to his quiver with Mr. Campion’s Farewell, the first of two novels in the classic Albert Campion series of tales that were begun by Margery Allingham but were left unfinished at the time of her death in 1966. Albert Campion is paying an innocuous visit to his niece in a sleepy Suffolk village presided over by a mysterious group known as the Carders, when his car is vandalized. Shortly afterwards Campion is very nearly killed in a hunting incident, and he resolves to get to the bottom of things. The result is a delightful, timeless tale that will appeal to all lovers of the Golden Age of British crime fiction.

• The Secret Place, by Tana French (Viking): Five books and counting, and every one a winner. Tana French is Ireland’s answer to Ian Rankin, each of her novels fresh and compelling, carefully crafted and perfectly capturing a distinct atmosphere, with the trademark darkness of Irish crime fiction. The Secret Place puts an exclusive girls’ boarding school under the microscope, where all of the petty bickering, rivalry, and scheming of adolescent teens is brought out in sharp relief. A hunk from the nearby boys’ school has been murdered; but who did it, and how is a police detective’s daughter involved? A riveting, original tale from Ireland’s rapidly rising star.

• Walt, by Russell Wangersky (House of Anansi):
With five books to his credit, one a finalist for the Giller Prize, Russell Wangersky has carved out an impressive career as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. With Walt, the reader is introduced to the very private world of a unprepossessing grocery store janitor, a person ignored and overlooked by almost all who come into contact with him, but who harbors very dark secrets. Walt has a seemingly harmless habit: he collects other peoples’ discarded shopping lists. From these he forms a picture of the shopper--single or in a relationship, happy or troubled, middle-class or simply making do. But Walt doesn’t stop there. His interest becomes an obsession, and he seeks to learn more about their lives. The result is a harrowing tale of just how vulnerable most people are, and how easily their lives can be accessed. And underneath it all lurks the question, Whatever became of his wife? You will never look at a grocery store list the same way again.