PaperBack: “Dead Weight”

Part of a series honoring the late author and blogger Bill Crider.



Dead Weight, by Frank Kane (Dell, 1953). This was Kane’s fifth novel to feature New York City private eye Johnny Liddell.
Cover illustration by William George.

Sunshine and Serial Murders

The Rap Sheet has already put together an inventory of more than 400 new books that should hold the attention of crime-fiction readers over the next three, warmer months. But now comes Janet Rudolph, updating for Mystery Fanfare her more general list of crime, mystery, and thriller novels set during summertime—everything from Neil Albert’s A Tangled June and Benjamin Black’s A Death in Summer to Camilla Crespi’s The Trouble with a Hot Summer and Anne George’s Murder Makes Waves. You will find all of her selections here.

READ MORE: “The Invention of the ‘Beach Read,’” by Katy Waldman (The New Yorker).

Selecting Scotland’s Best

This morning brings with it the release, from organizers of this year’s Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival (September 20-22), of the lists of books and authors nominated for two 2019 McIlvanney Prizes. There are 13 works vying for the main McIlvanney Prize; two of those same books—by Claire Askew and M.R. Mackenzie—are also among the five competing for the inaugural Debut Prize.

McIlvanney Prize Longlist:
• All the Hidden Truths, by Claire Askew (Hodder)
• No Man’s Land, by Neil Broadfoot (Little, Brown)
• Fallen Angel, by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown)
• Breakers, by Doug Johnstone (Orenda)
• All That’s Dead, by Stuart MacBride (HarperCollins)
• In the Silence, by M.R. Mackenzie (Bloodhound)
• Broken Ground, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)
• A Breath on Dying Embers, by Denzil Meyrick (Polygon)
• Conviction, by Denise Mina (Vintage)
• The Way of All Flesh, by “Ambrose Parry” (Canongate), aka Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman
• In a House of Lies, by Ian Rankin (Orion)
• A Treachery of Spies, by Manda Scott (Transworld)
• Thunder Bay, by Douglas Skelton (Polygon)

McIlvanney Debut Prize Shortlist:
• All the Hidden Truths, by Claire Askew (Hodder)
• From the Shadows, by G.R. Halliday (Vintage)
• Black Camp 21, by Bill Jones (Polygon)
• In the Silence, by M.R. Mackenzie (Bloodhound)
• The Peat Dead, by Allan Martin (Thunderpoint)

A shortlist of contenders for the McIlvanney Prize is supposed to be revealed in early September. The winners of both awards will be announced on Friday, September 20, during an opening reception at the Bloody Scotland convention in Stirling.

These annual commendations, recognizing “excellence in Scottish crime writing,” are named in honor of William McIlvanney, author of the novel Laidlaw. Previous recipients of the McIlvanney Prize—formerly the Scottish Crime Book of the Year Award—are Liam McIlvanney (for The Quaker in 2018), Denise Mina (for The Long Drop in 2017), Chris Brookmyre (for Black Widow in 2016), Craig Russell (for The Ghosts of Altona in 2015), Peter May (for Entry Island in 2014), Malcolm Mackay (for How a Gunman Says Goodbye in 2013), and Charles Cumming (for A Foreign Country in 2012).

(Hat tip to Promoting Crime Fiction by Lizzie Hayes.)

Of Surveys, Series, and Circus Clowns

• After having solicited numerous nominations online for its annual Dead Good Reader Awards, the British crime-fiction Web site Dead Good is now asking people to vote for their favorites in six categories, everything from The Nosy Parker Award for Best Amateur Detective and The Jury’s Out Award for Most Gripping Courtroom Drama to The Cat and Mouse Award for Most Elusive Villain. Included among the candidates this year are The Taking of Annie Thorne, by C.J. Tudor; Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh; The Passengers, by John Marrs; and Beautiful Liars, by Isabel Ashdown. Click here to take part in this competition. Polls will remain open through Wednesday, July 17, with winners set to be announced on Friday, July 19, at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

• If five seasons of Bosch haven’t already satisfied your craving for Michael Connelly television adaptations, then here’s good news: Deadline reports that CBS-TV “has given a series production commitment to The Lincoln Lawyer.” David E. Kelly, creator of The Practice and Ally McBeal, will apparently write the show and serve as one of its three executive producers, along with Connelly and Ross Fineman (Goliath). As with the 2011 big-screen picture based on Connelly’s novel of the same name, CBS’ The Lincoln Lawyer “centers on Mickey Haller, an iconoclastic idealist, who runs his law practice out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car, as he takes on cases big and small across the expansive city of Los Angeles.” There’s no word yet on who’ll play Haller in the series.

• Believe it or not, there’s still no official news yet regarding which books and authors are finalists for the 2019 Nero Award, to be given out by The Wolfe Pack, a New York City-based Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin fan organization. In mid-June, Mystery Fanfare blogger Janet Rudolph posted a partial list of contenders—The Fallen Architect, by Charles Belfoure, and The Man Who Couldn’t Miss, by David Handler—based solely on Web chatter. However, that’s everything either she or I know so far. I have e-mailed Nero Award chair Stephannie Culbertson in search of information, but have heard nothing back. Last year’s Nero recipient was August Snow, by Stephen Mack Jones.

• CrimeReads has released an inventory of what its editors believe are “the best books of the year (so far).” Among those 25 picks are Lauren Wilkinson’s American Spy, Don Winslow’s The Border, Niklas Natt och Dag’s The Wolf and the Watchman, Lyndsay Faye’s The Paragon Hotel, Philip Kerr’s Metropolis, and Ausma Zehanat Khan’s A Deadly Divide. Several of CrimeReads’ choices also appeared on my own my own list of early 2019 crime-fiction preferences.

• Crime-fiction expert and Financial Times contributor Barry Forshaw selects four novels he thinks every reader of crime and mystery fiction should investigate this summer.

• Tim Mason, author The Darwin Affair, recalls Charles Dickens’ great interest in London’s mid-19th-century police force, which helped give rise to what was “perhaps his greatest novel,” Bleak House (1853). In turn, it was Bleak House that inspired Mason’s excellent new historical mystery, The Darwin Affair, which stars Scotland Yard detective Charles Frederick Field, the often impulsive flesh-and-blood model for Dickens’ famous Inspector Bucket.

• In a two-part post for his blog, Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan (see here and here), attorney Bill Selnes reassess the controversial involvement of New York City prosecutor-turned-novelist Linda Fairstein in the notorious Central Park Five case. It was her role in that pursuit of charges against five alleged teenage rapists (beginning in 1990) that has led of late to the Mystery Writers of America withdrawing her nomination as one of its Grand Masters, and to her publisher booting Fairstein from its stable.

• For Mystery Scene magazine, Ben Boulden surveys the long, colorful history of mysteries set around circuses and carnivals.

• New Zealand actress-singer Lucy Lawless, best known for her ass-kicking role in Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001), is returning to television—at least in Australia. According to The Killing Times, she will play Alexa Crowe, “a brilliant, charismatic and ever-so-slightly scruffy ex-homicide detective,” in My Life Is Murder, a 10-part crime drama scheduled to debut Down Under within the next several weeks. Let’s hope this show eventually makes it to the States.

• And who remembers the 1985 made-for-TV movie Izzy and Moe, featuring Jackie Gleason and Art Carney (formerly co-stars of The Honeymooners) as a pair of Prohibition-era federal cops, their characters based on highly successful, real-life liquor-law enforcers? At least for the nonce, that 92-minute film is available on YouTube in 10 parts. Watch it now, before it disappears!

The Story Behind the Story: “They Tell Me You Are Cunning,” by David Hagerty

(Editor’s note: This is the 84th entry in The Rap Sheet’s “Story Behind the Story” series. Today’s contribution comes from Northern California author David Hagerty, whose new novel, They Tell Me You Are Cunning, is being released by Evolved Publishing. Inspired by the false convictions of 10 men on Illinois’ death row, Cunning is the subject of the essay below. It’s the fourth entry in Hagerty’s Duncan Cochrane mystery series, “which chronicles crime and dirty politics in Chicago during his childhood.” The previous installment in that series was 2018’s They Tell Me Your Were Brutal.)

I hung out in jail for seven years.

True, they let me out every night (I was a teacher there, not an inmate), but I still met a lot of convicts.

One in particular struck me, an older guy I’ll call Harry. Harry was probably in his 50s then, though he looked older, with gray hair and a small build. He came off as the most demure, polite person I knew. When he talked to you, he lowered his eyes and dipped his head submissively.

I couldn’t figure what Harry would have done to land in jail, let alone maximum security, where I met him, but I heard that he had an impressive rap sheet going back decades. His cellie once told me that Harry had a Mr. Hyde side that only came out when he drank. Must have, because in the months I worked with him, I only met Dr. Jekyll.

I don’t mean to sound naïve. I also met plenty of guys who needed to be incarcerated, guys whose thinking was so thoroughly criminal that I’d have to tear them down to the foundation and rebuild from there. Guys like Gary Mack, who made his living pimping and boasted about it; or a youngster whose entire family worked in the drug trade. Not everyone could be redeemed.

But I also met a number of guys who didn’t need to be locked up for life, who showed potential beyond hustling and profiling. Some were young and foolish, others had started out on the wrong path and couldn’t find their way back, and a few were possibly innocent.

The cliché about prisoners is that they all claim to be innocent, which I never found to be true. Talk to them long enough and guys will tell you what they did, only they’ll claim it’s not their fault. Their women, their partners, their need to feed the family (my favorite convict trope) pushed them to it.

There was even a vocabulary to their victim complex:

• “Catching a case” meant you got arrested on a new charge, but it was phrased in the way most of us refer to catching a cold.

• “Getting violated” meant your parole officer arrested you for a violation, but it was usually voiced to imply you’re being railroaded.

Almost daily I heard some version of the following: “My public ‘pretender’ is doing me, trying to get me to plead out to this case. That man wants to give me 10 years. I told him I’m not taking that deal. There’s people up in here killed a body got less time than that.” Yet, this is not what you see on television or in the movies. Don’t get me wrong, I love Orange Is the New Black and Oz. Even Prison Break is a great distraction. But they’re not real. Jail is not that exciting. As I’ve heard said about warfare, it’s 1 percent terror and 99 percent tedium. On television and in most novels, what are emphasized are the fights, the rapes, the schemes, but to me what stuck out was the routine. Your time is divided into tasks: feeding, yard time, linen exchange. Once a week the library shows up to deliver new books, but aside from that, there wasn’t a lot to occupy the mind.

Which is where I came in. I taught inmates to read, write, and calculate better. In most jails and prisons, the majority of inmates couldn’t pass the eighth grade. Not that this alone explains their criminality, but it certainly makes it tough for them to get a job, or even a driver’s license. Truth is, I didn’t care whether or not those prisoners were guilty, only that they preferred my classes to reruns of Jerry Springer.

Which brings me back to Harry. In truth, I don’t know if Harry was innocent in the legal sense. Given his record, I doubt it. But in the biblical sense, Harry was an innocent, a poor, illiterate, homeless soul. So I used him as a model for a character in my latest book, They Tell Me You Are Cunning, the fourth in my Duncan Cochrane mystery series, which is being released this month.

Supporters of the death penalty will tell you that no one has ever been proven innocent after their execution. That may be true, but it’s more true to say that many have been exonerated prior to their executions, especially in my native state of Illinois. There, 13 men were freed from death row after being wrongly convicted. At one point, Illinois had released more men than it executed. That ultimately convinced Governor Pat Quinn to abolish capital punishment in 2011.

(Right) Author David Hagerty

In my books, I also drew inspiration from a couple of true crimes in my hometown. I grew up in Chicago during the 1970s and ’80s, an era of pervasive criminal mischief and political corruption. Those of you who lived through that era will recall John Wayne Gacy, who raped and murdered at least 33 teenaged boys (then buried him under and around his house), and the Tylenol poisonings, which left five people dead in 1982 as a result of cyanide having been injected into their pain medications. You may not recall some of the local criminal dramas, such as when Chicago’s then mayor, Jane Byrne, moved into the city’s most infamous housing project, Cabrini Green, in response to a series of sniper attacks there.

Among these more obscure tales was a police scandal involving Commander Jon Burge, who tortured suspects using electrocution and beatings. His favorite interrogation technique was “bagging,” where he covered the suspect’s head with a typewriter bag until he passed out. Burge lived on a 40-foot boat called The Vigilante and ran a gang of detectives variously known as The A-Team and Midnight Crew. Eventually, he landed in prison too, but not for abusing detainees, since the statute of limitations had run out. Instead, he was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Following that came the Innocence Project, an investigative journalism program at Northwestern University that freed 10 condemned inmates and contributed to Governor George Ryan’s decision, in 2000, to put a moratorium on the death penalty. Four of the men pardoned by the governor had confessed under questioning by Burge. Now, true to form for Illinois, Ryan also landed in prison for selling commercial driver’s licenses to unqualified truckers, but no one has claimed a connection between his forgiveness for killers and his own misdeeds.

When I decided to adapt those two stories into a single novel, I needed a way to tie in my leading man, Duncan Cochrane, a law-and-order governor who (much like Ryan) left office in disgrace. I wanted to give him a reason to care, a personal connection to the crime.

I found it in my character Harry, a down-and-out alcoholic who’s convicted of killing an elderly couple during a routine robbery. Advocates claim that Harry, who was arrested and sentenced during Duncan’s term of office, is the victim of police abuse.

Reluctantly, Duncan starts to investigate, and he finds a case as shaky as his own reputation. His only option is to re-enter the body politic and urge others to atone for his mistakes. Along the way, he runs afoul of several other Chicago luminaries, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Oprah Winfrey, reporters working for Rupert Murdoch, and a host of politicians and cops who do not want to hear from their deposed boss.

Like all of the books in my series, They Tell Me You Are Cunning mixes true crimes with dirty politics, Chicago style. Even decades removed from Prohibition and Al Capone, the Second City retains its criminal character.

READ MORE: “Shout Out: David Hagerty, Novelist from the North Shore,” by Daniel I. Dorfman (Chicago Tribune).

Digging the Art of “Chinatown”

It was 45 years ago today—on June 20, 1974—that French-Polish film director Roman Polanski’s now renowned period detective film, Chinatown, was first released by Paramount Pictures. I didn’t see it until years later, however, when, as a member of my college’s movie-selection committee, I helped bring Chinatown to campus for a two-night showing on a big theater screen. As a result of that effort, I wound up with a copy of the original promotional poster shown above, which is now prominently displayed in my office.

The painting for that placard—which the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) says is “arguably the greatest movie poster of all-time”—is credited to Pennsylvania-born artist Jim Pearsall. His image of Chinatown stars Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, both of them at risk of being upstaged by a lazy drift of cigarette smoke, was reportedly inspired by a famous 1890s advertisement for JOB cigarette rolling papers, created by Czech graphic artist Alphonse Mucha.

While Pearsall’s Chinatown poster is unquestionably the best remembered, there have been alternative notices created over the last four decades, several recalling a painful-to-watch nose-cutting scene in the flick. I’m embedding a dozen of the most memorable examples below, including the one at the very bottom—a European version created by prolific American artist Richard Amsel.















READ MORE: “The Most Iconic Nose Injuries in the History of (Crime) Film,” by Dwyer Murphy (CrimeReads); “The Big Town” (Pulp International).

A Mystery Lover’s Mishmash

• B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder alerts us to the winners of this year’s Foreword Indies Book Awards, presented by Foreword Magazine and “honor[ing] the very best of indie publishing” for 2018. Here’s the quartet of recipients in the Mystery category:

— Gold: One for the Rock, by Kevin Major (Breakwater)
— Silver: A Gentleman’s Murder, by Christopher Huang (Inkshares)
— Bronze: Burning Ridge, by Margaret Mizushima (Crooked Lane)
— Honorable Mention: Uncivil Liberties, by Bernie Lambek (Rootstock)

There were also prizes given out in the Thriller & Suspense category, but you should click through to Lawson’s blog to find them.

• A couple of months ago I remarked on the coming Epix cable-TV drama series Pennyworth, which will star Jack Bannon as Alfred Pennyworth, better known as the faithful butler to Bruce Wayne, aka Batman. Set in 1960s London, this 10-episode spy series finds Pennyworth as “a former British SAS soldier in his 20s,” working in a private security consultant capacity for youthful American billionaire Thomas Wayne, destined to become Bruce’s father. Back then, I could point you only to a 17-second trailer for the show, but now the blog Double O Section features a more satisfying two-minute version. Pennyworth is scheduled to premiere on July 28.

• Sometime Rap Sheet contributor Mark Coggins (whose seventh August Riordan detective novel, The Dead Beat Scroll, is due out from Down & Out this fall) attended a recent bookstore event in honor of James Ellroy. He came away from it with this memorable story.

• I’ve already mentioned on this page 11 of my favorite new reads from the first half of this year. But now comes Omnivoracious: The Amazon Book Review with its own selections, including Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient, which it applauds as “a debut that just might be the thriller of 2019.”

• Wow! They sure don’t build towers like this anymore.

• Finally, Crime Fiction Lover identifies “10 Crime Shows That Time Forgot”—most of which I would contend aren’t forgotten at all, at least not by those of us with long memories. Mentioned among the bunch are McMillan & Wife (1971-1977), McCloud (1970-1977), and the BBC’s Lord Peter Wimsey (1972-1975).

Variations on a Theme: Put Your Hands Up!

Monday’s Lie, by Jamie Mason (Gallery, 2015)—selected by Rap Sheet readers as one of the Best Crime Fiction Covers of 2015. After the Eclipse, by Fran Dorricott (Titan UK, 2019).

Pale Horse, “Pale” Writer

An intriguing item from B.V. Lawson’s In Reference to Murder:

BBC One, Victoria outfit Mammoth Screen and Agatha Christie Limited are teaming up on The Pale Horse, a TV drama adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel first published in 1961. Sarah Phelps (The Witness for the Prosecution) has scripted the two-part drama which has Amazon Prime Video on board as U.S. co-production partner. In the novel, a mysterious list of names is found in the shoe of a dead woman, and one of those named, Mark Easterbrook, begins an investigation into how and why his name came to be there. He is drawn to The Pale Horse, the home of a trio of rumored witches in the small village of Much Deeping. Word has it that the witches can do away with wealthy relatives using dark arts, but as the bodies mount up, Easterbrook is certain there has to be a rational explanation.

I am cautiously optimistic that this will go well. I quite enjoyed screenwriter Phelps’ mini-series adaptations of Christie’s The Witness for the Prosecution and Ordeal by Innocence, but had to practically force myself to sit through all three parts of The A.B.C. Murders, her peculiar take on that 1936 Hercule Poirot mystery.

Faulty Pursuits of Justice

Until now, I’ve chosen to leave the reporting on New York prosecutor-turned-author Linda Fairstein’s recent downfall to other media outlets. I don’t have unique knowledge of the story or any original angle from which to approach it. And I see no reason to comment on Fairstein’s situation simply for the sake of reading my opinions in print. (I already wrote, late last year, about the Mystery Writers of America’s decision to withdraw her nomination as one of its Grand Masters.)

However, I think it’s worth pointing readers of this page to a piece in yesterday’s Washington Post, penned by critic and author Sarah Weinman (The Real Lolita), that offers some useful perspective on Fairstein’s plight and public service career. It begins:

The month of June has not been kind to Linda Fairstein, the former head of the sex-crimes division of the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Since Ava DuVernay’s limited Netflix series “When They See Us” debuted on May 31, the prosecutor-turned-bestselling crime writer has been under fire for her role in shaping the prosecution of the group of wrongfully convicted teens who became known as the Central Park Five. (I know Fairstein slightly through the world of crime writing.) Dutton, her longtime book publisher, and ICM Partners, her longtime agency, both dropped her, and social media campaigns spurred her to resign from the boards of the victims’ resource group Safe Horizon and Vassar College.

Fairstein’s fall is the result of a long-overdue public reckoning with New York’s response to the 1989 rape and attempted murder of Trisha Meili, the crime for which the Five were wrongly imprisoned. In measuring the cost of that case, it isn’t simply that Fairstein played a role in pursuing the wrong suspects. It’s that, as I wrote earlier this month, other women were assaulted, raped, and in one instance, murdered by Matias Reyes, the man solely responsible for the attack on Meili. The New York Police Department and the prosecutor’s office failed these women, some of whom were attacked after Meili, because they believed, incorrectly, that Meili was just one victim of a crime wave taking place in Central Park that night.

Our reckoning also needs to go beyond the Central Park jogger case. Fairstein joined an unjust system in the 1970s and, at first, she helped revolutionize certain aspects of that system. But, as our ideas about the criminal-justice system evolved, hers did not. Neither the excoriating op-ed Fairstein wrote in her own defense, nor Felicity Huffman’s villainous portrayal of her in “When They See Us” captures the full arc of what happened to Fairstein—and why it matters for the rest of us.

Again, you’ll find Weinman’s whole piece here.

READ MORE: “Linda Fairstein, Former 'Central Park 5' Prosecutor, Dropped By Her Publisher,” by Colin Dwyer (NPR); “The Slippery Moral Calculus of Linda Fairstein,” by Monica Hesse (The Washington Post); “Trump Still Refuses to Admit He Was Wrong About the Central Park 5,” by Aaron Rupar (Vox).

Can Ya Dig It?

With the release this week of the latest Shaft film, starring Samuel L. Jackson, Jessie Usher, and Richard Roundtree, what better time could there be to revisit the songwriting/singing/acting career of Isaac Hayes, who composed the original Shaft theme?

Movie and TV music authority Jon Burlingame is your host in this 2015 YouTube video that includes mentions of Hayes’ theme for the 1972-1973 ABC-TV “umbrella series,” The Men, and his three appearances on The Rockford Files. Hayes died in 2008 at age 65.

(Hat tip to Lee Goldberg.)

LISTEN UP: “Shaft Theme, Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.”

Revue of Reviewers, 6-14-19

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

Can We Get a Ruling on This?

The American Bar Association’s ABA Journal today announced a trio of nominees for this year’s Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. “The finalists,” says Molly McDonough, the Journal’s editor and publisher, “represent the diversity of this year’s submissions, from a novel about Sri Lankan refugees seeking a new start, to the story of a trailblazing woman lawyer fighting for her clients in 1920s India, and finally a charming middle-school book featuring a spunky student who goes to court after he’s suspended for protesting homework. The characters are as inspiring as they are engaging.”

Contenders for this ninth annual prize are:

• The Boat People, by Sharon Bala (Doubleday)
• Class Action, by Steven B. Frank (HMH Books for Young Readers)
• The Widows of Malabar Hill, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)

Readers are encouraged to weigh in on which of these three books deserves to reign victorious. Click here to vote for your favorite among them. Online voting is scheduled to close at 11:59 p.m. CT on Sunday, June 30. The winner will be declared during “an August ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the National Book Festival. The winner will receive a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird signed by Harper Lee.”

According to a press release, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction “was authorized by the late Harper Lee [and was] established in 2011 by the University of Alabama Hugh F. Culverhouse Jr. School of Law and the ABA Journal to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird. It is given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change.”

Previous recipients of this honor are John Grisham (who won in both 2011 and 2014), Michael Connelly, Paul Goldstein, Deborah Johnson, Attica Locke, James Grippando, and C.E. Tobisman.

New Reads for the Old Man

My father passed away 16 years ago, and my wife’s stepfather died last fall, so Father’s Day is no longer something I need to remember. But I do happen to know that other Americans will be celebrating it this coming Sunday, June 16. In advance of that occasion, Mystery Fanfare’s Janet Rudolph has updated her lists of Father’s Day Mysteries and Fathers and Daughters and Fathers and Sons in Crime Fiction. Just in case you’d like to pick out a gift for your paterfamilias.

How About Some Villainy and Vice to Go Along with This Season’s Sand and Sunshine?

It’s happening already: print magazines, blogs, and other Web sites are announcing their choices of “the best books of 2019 (so far).” The Guardian, Real Simple, Esquire, New York magazine’s Vulture site—they have all done it, racing ahead of the usual November/December ritual of choosing the foremost works released during the preceding 12 months, as if their editors can’t possibly wait another half-year to broadcast their considered, if perhaps premature, opinions.

This isn’t an exercise in which I customarily take part. However, I have been impressed by a number of the crime, mystery, and thriller novels I’ve tackled over the last six months. Impressed enough that I have decided to applaud 10 of them early:

— Blood & Sugar, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
— The Darwin Affair, by Tim Mason (Algonquin)
— The Devil Aspect, by Craig Russell (Doubleday)
— The King’s Evil, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)
— Metropolis, by Philip Kerr (Putnam)
— The Moroccan Girl, by Charles Cumming (St. Martin’s Press)
— The Paragon Hotel, by Lyndsay Faye (Putnam)
— Smoke and Ashes, by Abir Mukherjee (Pegasus)
— The Summer of Ellen, by Agnete Friis (Soho Crime)
— The Wolf and the Watchman, by Niklas Natt och Dag (Atria)

In addition, I should mention British author-historian Hallie Rubenhold’s The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), a sedulously researched work that currently ranks as my favorite true-crime tale of 2019.

Of course, none of the aforementioned titles is guaranteed a spot on my year-end register of reading preferences; there are far too many books in this genre, due out between now and New Year’s Day, that still await my attention and may prove to be even more to my liking. For instance, Martin Walker has a new Bruno Courrèges yarn, The Body in the Castle Well (Knopf), just out, and we can look forward later in June to fresh fiction from Kate Atkinson (Big Sky), Mick Herron (Joe Country), Denise Mina (Conviction), and Andrew Martin (The Winker). As we move deeper into summer, we’ll also be offered new stories by Adrian McKinty (The Chain), Laura Lippman (Lady in the Lake), Richard Russo (Chances Are …), Helen Phillips (The Need), Peter Lovesey (Killing with Confetti), S.J. Rozan (Paper Son), James Oswald (Nothing to Hide), Christobel Kent (A Secret Life), Robert Crais (A Dangerous Man), Louise Penny (A Better Man), Alex Segura (Miami Midnight), Lisa Lutz (The Swallows), and Max Byrd (The Sixth Conspirator). Keep a watch, too, for Swedish author David Lagercrantz’s final Lisbeth Salander adventure, The Girl Who Lived Twice; a collection of unpublished works by Gil Brewer, Death Is a Private Eye; Jo Nesbø’s Knife, his 12th case for Norwegian detective Harry Hole; what I hope will be a wonderful anthology of vintage crime-fiction short stories, The Best of Manhunt; the third entry in John A. Connell’s World War II-era series about U.S. Army investigator Mason Collins, Blood of the Innocent; and Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre, a non-fiction release to which I contributed an essay.

Below, you will find a curated selection of more than 400 books—all due to appear in stores (on both sides of the Atlantic) during the next three, warmer months—that should be of particular interest to devotees of crime and thriller fiction. Those marked with asterisks (*) belong on the non-fiction shelves; the rest are novels or short-story collections. To learn which of them I find most engrossing, you’ll have to be patient until I post my “best of 2019” list in December.

JUNE (U.S.):

• The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective: Secrets and Lies in the Golden Age of Crime, by Susannah Stapleton (Picador)*

• All the Lost Things, by Michelle Sacks (Little, Brown)

• Assassin of Shadows, by Lawrence Goldstone (Pegasus)

• Aunt Dimity and the Heart of Gold, by Nancy Atherton (Viking)

• Backlash, by Brad Thor (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• Beautiful Liars, by Isabel Ashdown (Kensington)

• Before I Wake, by David Morrell (Subterranean)

• Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, by Malin Persson Giolito (Other Press)

• Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson ( Little, Brown)

• The Body in Question, by Jill Ciment (Pantheon)

• The Body in the Castle Well, by Martin Walker (Knopf)

• The Body Lies, by Jo Baker (Knopf)

• Bone Deep, by Sandra Ireland (Gallery)

• Breaking the Dance, by Clare O’Donohue (Midnight Ink)

• The Buy Back Blues, by Ralph Dennis (Brash)

• Chai Another Day, by Leslie Budewitz (Seventh Street)

• Charlie-316, by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro (Down & Out)

• City of Fear, by Larry Enmon (Crooked Lane)

• Conviction, by Denise Mina (Mulholland)

• The Cutting Room, by Ashley Dyer (Morrow)

• The Darwin Affair, by Tim Mason (Algonquin)

• Dead Big Dawg, by Victoria Houston (Gallery)

• Dead Wrong: The Continuing Story of City of Lies, Corruption and Cover-Up in the Notorious BIG Murder Investigation, by Randall Sullivan (Atlantic Monthly Press)*

• Death in Kew Gardens, by Jennifer Ashley (Berkley)

• Death in Summer, by Michael Theurillat (Manilla)

• Deep Waters: Mysteries on the Waves, edited by Martin Edwards (British Library)

• Die Behind the Wheel: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Steely Dan, edited by Brian Thornton (Down & Out)

• The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth, by Leonard
Goldberg (Minotaur)

• The Ditch, by Herman Koch (Hogarth)

• Drink to Every Beast, by Joel Burcat (Headline)

• Fake Like Me, by Barbara Bourland (Grand Central)

• A Family of Strangers, by Emilie Richards (Mira)

• The First Mistake, by Sandie Jones (Minotaur)

• The Friend, by Joakim Zander (Harper)

• Girl Gone Missing, by Marcie Rendon (Cinco Puntos Press)

• Girl in the Rearview Mirror, by Kelsey Rae Dimberg (Morrow)

• The Gone Dead, by Chanelle Benz (Ecco)

• Gone Too Long, by Lori Roy (Dutton)

• Grab a Snake by the Tail, by Leonardo Padura (Bitter Lemon Press)

• Her Daughter’s Mother, by Daniela Petrova (Putnam)

• Hitchcock and the Censors, by John Billheimer (University
Press of Kentucky)*

• I Know You, by Annabel Kantaria (Crooked Lane)

• I’ll Never Tell, by Catherine McKenzie (Lake Union)

• Joe Country, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)

• Just One Bite, by Jack Heath (Hanover Square Press)

• Killing State, by Judith O'Reilly (Head of Zeus)

• A King Alone, by Jean Giono (NYRB Classics)

• The Last House Guest, by Megan Miranda (Simon & Schuster)

• The L.A. Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz, by James Ellroy (Everyman’s Library)

• The Last of the Armageddon Wars, by Ralph Dennis (Brash)

• The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, a Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation, by Rich Cohen (Spiegel & Grau)*

• The Last Widow, by Karin Slaughter (HarperCollins)

• Like This Afternoon Forever, by Jaime Manrique (Kaylie Jones/Akashic)

• A Long Way Down, by Randall Silvis (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Man of the Year, by Caroline Louise Walker (Gallery)

• A Matter of Will, by Adam Mitzner (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Mausoleum, by David Mark (Severn House)

• A Merciful Promise, by Kendra Elliot (Montlake Romance)

• Miss Pinkerton, by Mary Roberts Rinehart (American Mystery Classics)

• Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing, by
Maryla Szymiczkowa (Oneworld)

• Murder in Bel-Air,
by Cara Black (Soho Crime)

• Murder in the Crooked House,
by Soji Shimada (Pushkin Vertigo)

• My Life as a Rat,
by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)

• A Nearly Normal Family, by M.T. Edvardsson (Celadon)

• Norco ’80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History, by Peter Houlahan (Counterpoint)*

• One Night at the Lake, by Bethany Chase (Ballantine)

• The Perfect Fraud, by Ellen LaCorte (Harper)

• The Perfect Plan, by Bryan Reardon (Dutton)

• A Philosophy of Ruin, by Nicholas Mancusi (Hanover Square Press)

• A Plain Vanilla Murder, by Susan Wittig Albert (Persevero Press)

• The Playground Murders, by Lesley Thomson (Head of Zeus)

• Rag and Bone, by Joe Clifford (Oceanview)

• Random Act, by Gerry Boyle (Islandport Press)

• Recursion, by Blake Crouch (Crown)

• The Right Sort of Man, by Allison Montclair (Minotaur)

• The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: The Greatest Detective Stories, 1837-1914, edited by Graeme Davis (Pegasus)

• Rogue Strike, by David Ricciardi (Berkley)

• Rouge, by Richard Kirshenbaum (St. Martin’s Press)

• The Safe House, by Kiki Swinson (Dafina)

• Searching for Sylvie Lee, by Jean Kwok (Morrow)

• The Secret Mother, by Shalini Boland (Grand Central)

• Seven Ways to Get Rid of Harry, by Jen Conley (Down & Out)

• The Shallows, by Matt Goldman (Forge)

• Shoot the Bastards, by Michael Stanley (Poisoned Pen Press)

• A Shot of Murder, by J.A. Kazimer (Midnight Ink)

• Sleepless Summer, by Bram Dehouck (World Editions)

• Smallbone Deceased, by Michael Gilbert (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Snakes, by Sadie Jones (Harper)

• The Spies of Shilling Lane, by Jennifer Ryan (Crown)

• The Starter Wife, by Nina Laurin (Grand Central)

• Ten Swedes Must Die, by Martin Österdahl (Amazon Crossing)

• Their Little Secret, by Mark Billingham (Atlantic Monthly Press)

• Thin Air, by Lisa Gray (Thomas & Mercer)

• This Storm, by James Ellroy (Knopf)

• Those People, by Louise Candlish (Berkley)

• Traitor’s Codex, by Jeri Westerson (Severn House)

• The Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World’s Most Expensive Fungus, by Ryan Jacobs (Clarkson Potter)*

• The Ugly Truth, by Jill Orr (Prospect Park)

• Ungentlemanly Warfare, by Howard Linskey (No Exit Press)

• Unraveling, by Karen Lord (DAW)

• The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone, by Felicity McLean (Algonquin)

• Wherever She Goes, by Kelley Armstrong (Minotaur)

• The Woman in Our House, by Andrew Hart (Lake Union)

• The Woman Who Spoke to Spirits, by Alys Clare (Severn House)

• Your Life Is Mine, by Nathan Ripley (Atria)

JUNE (UK):

• The Art of Deception, by Louise Mangos (HQ)

• The Beijing Conspiracy, by Shamini Flint (Severn House)

• Black Summer, by M.W. Craven (Constable)

• The Boy Who Fell, by Jo Spain (Quercus)

• The Colours of Murder, by Ali Carter (Point Blank)

• Date with Poison, by Julia Chapman (Pan)

• Death at Burwell Farm, by Betty Rowlands (Bookouture)

• Death in Avignon, by Serena Kent (Orion)

• The End of the Line, by Gillian Galbraith (Polygon)

• The Exiled, by David Barbaree (Zaffre)

• A Fatal Game, by Nicholas Searle (Viking)

• The Friend Who Lied, by Rachel Amphlett (Saxon)

• Girl at Midnight, by Katarzyna Bonda (Hodder & Stoughton)

• I Looked Away, by Jane Corry (Penguin)

• The Killing Gene, by E.M. Davey (Duckworth)

• The Lies We Tell, by Niki Mackay (Orion)

• A Line of Forgotten Blood, by Malcolm Mackay (Head of Zeus)

• Mr. Campion’s Visit,
by Mike Ripley (Severn House)

• Mosaic, by Caro Ramsey (Severn House)

• The Most Difficult Thing,
by Charlotte Philby (Borough Press)

• The Mother-in-Law,
by Sally Hepworth (Hodder)

• Murder at Whitby Abbey, by Cassandra Clark (Severn House)

• Naked Flames,
by Graham Ison (Severn House)

• The Nanny, by Gilly Macmillan (Century)

• Now You See Me, by Chris McGeorge (Orion)

• The October Man, by Ben Aaronovitch (Gollancz)

• One Way Out, by A.A. Dhand (Bantam Press)

• Our Little Secrets, by Peter Ritchie (Black and White)

• The Perfect Betrayal, by Lauren North (Corgi)

• The Serpent’s Mark, by S.W. Perry (Corvus)

• Shadowplay, by Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker)

• The Sleepwalker, by Joseph Knox (Doubleday)

• Somewhere Close to Happy, by Lia Louis (Trapeze)

• Spring Cleaning, by Antonio Manzini (Harper)

• Tell Me Your Secret, by Dorothy Koomson (Headline Review)

• Trap Lane, by Stella Cameron (Creme de la Crime)

• The Unseen Hand, by Edward Marston (Allison and Busby)

• White Hot Silence, by Henry Porter (Quercus)

• Who Killed Ruby? by Camilla Way (HarperCollins)

• Who’s Sorry Now? by Maggie Robinson (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Winker, by Andrew Martin (Corsair)

• Wolves at the Door, by Gunnar Staalesen (Orenda)

• Your Truth or Mine? by Trisha Sakhlecha (Macmillan)

JULY (U.S.):

• Almost Midnight, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur)

• American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century, by Maureen Callahan (Viking)*

• The Arrangement, by Robyn Harding (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Bad Axe County, by John Galligan (Atria)

• Bark of Night, by David Rosenfelt (Minotaur)

• Beijing Payback, by Daniel Nieh (Ecco)

• The Best of Manhunt, edited by Jeff Vorzimmer (Stark House Press)

• Betrayal in Time, by Julie McElwain (Pegasus)

• The Bird Boys, by Lisa Sandlin (Cinco Puntos Press)

• Black Sun, by Owen Matthews (Doubleday)

• Blindsided, by Kate Watterson (Crooked Lane)

• Blood in Eden, by Peter Tremayne (Severn House)

• Bodies from the Library 2: Forgotten Stories of Mystery and Suspense by the Queens of Crime and other Masters of Golden Age Detection, edited by Tony Medawar (Collins Crime Club)

• The Body in Griffith Park, by Jennifer Kincheloe (Seventh Street)

• Bones of the Innocent, by John A. Connell (Nailhead)

• A Capitol Death, by Lindsey Davis (Minotaur)

• The Chain, by Adrian McKinty (Mulholland)

• Chances Are …, by Richard Russo (Knopf)

• The Churchgoer, by Patrick Coleman (Harper Perennial)

• The Content Assignment, by Holly Roth (Dover)

• The Dead Girl in 2A, by Carter Wilson (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Dead Silence, by Wendy Corsi Staub (Morrow)

• Death in a Desert Land, by Andrew Wilson (Washington Square Press)

• Deep Dive, by Chris Knopf (Permanent Press)

• Dragonfly, by Leila Meacham (Grand Central)

• The Dreaming Tree, by Matthew Mather (Blackstone)

• The Escape Room, by Megan Goldin (St. Martin’s Press)

• First Tracks, by Catherine O’Connell (Severn House)

• Fragments of Fear, by Carrie Stuart Parks (Thomas Nelson)

• Frozen Secrets, by Michael L. Douglas (MCP)

• Game of Snipers, by Stephen Hunter (Putnam)

• The Ghost Clause, by Howard Norman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• Girls Like Us, by Cristina Alger (Putnam)

• Good Girl, Bad Girl, by Michael Robotham (Scribner)

• Goodnight Stranger, by Miciah Bay Gault (Park Row)

• The Gomorrah Gambit, by Tom Chatfield (Mulholland)

• Grave Expectations, by Heather Redmond (Kensington)

• Greasy Bend, by Kris Lackey (Blackstone)

• Gretchen, by Shannon Kirk (Thomas & Mercer)

• Growing Things and Other Stories, by Paul Tremblay (Morrow)

• The Hallows, by Victor Methos (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Hard Stuff, by David Gordon (Mysterious Press)

• The Haunted Martyr, by Kenneth Cameron (Felony & Mayhem)

• The Heart Keeper, by Alex Dahl (Berkley)

• Heart of Barkness, by Spencer Quinn (Forge)

• Heavy on the Dead, by G.M. Ford (Thomas & Mercer)

• Her Deadly Secrets, by Laura Griffin (Gallery)

• The Honorary Jersey Girl, by Albert Tucher (Shotgun Honey)

• Hope Rides Again, by Andrew Shaffer (Quirk)

• The Hound of Justice, by Claire O’Dell (Harper Voyager)

• A House Divided, by Jonathan F. Putnam (Crooked Lane)

• Invisible Blood, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Titan)

• Killer in the Carriage House, by Sheila Connolly (Minotaur)

• Killing with Confetti, by Peter Lovesey (Soho Crime)

• Knife, by Jo Nesbø (Knopf)

• Labyrinth, by Catherine Coulter (Gallery)

• Lady in the Lake,
by Laura Lippman (Morrow)

• The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt, by Andrea Bobotis (Sourcebooks Landmark)

• Layover, by David Bell (Berkley)

• Lock Every Door, by Riley Sager (Dutton)

• The Magic Chair Murder,
by Diane James (Severn House)

• Maigret’s Childhood Friend, by Georges Simenon (Penguin Classics)

• Marah Chase and the Conqueror’s Tomb, by Jay Stringer (Pegasus)

• Marked Men, by Chris Simms (Severn House)

• The Mountain Master of Sha Tin, by Ian Hamilton
(House of Anansi Press)

• Murderabilia, by Carl Vonderau (Midnight Ink)

• Murder at Crossways, by Alyssa Maxwell (Kensington)

• A Necessary Murder, by M.J. Tjia (Legend Press)

• The Need, by Helen Phillips (Simon & Schuster)

• Never Have I Ever, by Joshilyn Jackson (Morrow)

• Never Look Back, by Alison Gaylin (Morrow)

• The New Girl, by Daniel Silva (Harper)

• The Night of Rome, by Carlo Bonini and Giancarlo de
Cataldo (World Noir)

• Off the Grid, by Robert McCaw (Oceanview)

• One Good Deed, by David Baldacci (Grand Central)

• One Little Secret, by Cate Holahan (Crooked Lane)

• The Other Mrs. Miller, by Allison Dickson (Putnam)

• Paper Son, by S.J. Rozan (Pegasus)

• Pretty Revenge, by Emily Liebert (Gallery)

• Purgatory, by Guido Eekhaut (Skyhorse)

• The Reunion, by Guillaume Musso (Little, Brown)

• Rocket to the Morgue, by Anthony Boucher (American
Mystery Classics)

• The Russian, by Ben Coes (St. Martin’s Press)

• Season of Darkness, by Cora Harrison (Severn House)

• Second Sight, by Aoife Clifford (Pegasus)

• Shamed, by Linda Castillo (Minotaur)

• The Shameless, by Ace Atkins (Putnam)

• Sherlock Holmes: Adventures in the American West,
by John S. Fitzpatrick (Riverbend)

• Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Seven, edited by Martin
Rosenstock (Titan)

• Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu: The Adventure of the Innsmouth Mutations, by Lois H. Gresh (Titan)

• Shibumi (40th Anniversary Edition), by Trevanian (Rare Bird)

• A Shroud of Leaves, by Rebecca Alexander (Titan)

• A Sinner’s Prayer, by M.P. Wright (Black and White)

• Slugger, by Martin Holmén (Pushkin Vertigo)

• Smokescreen, by Iris Johansen (Grand Central)

• Snowball, by Jimmy Sangster (Brash)

• Someone We Know, by Shari Lapena (Pamela Dorman)

• Speaking of Summer, by Kalisha Buckhanon (Counterpoint)

• A Stranger on the Beach, by Michele Campbell (St. Martin’s Press)

• The Subject of Malice, by Cynthia Kuhn (Henery Press)

• Surfeit of Suspects, by George Bellairs (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Tangled Roots, by Marcia Talley (Severn House)

• Tell Me Everything, by Cambria Brockman (Ballantine)

• Temper, by Layne Fargo (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Theme Music, by T. Marie Vandelly (Dutton)

• This Side of Night, by J. Todd Scott (Putnam)

• Too Close, by Natalie Daniels (Harper)

• True Believer, by Jack Carr (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• Triumph of the Spider Monkey, by Joyce Carol Oates
(Hard Case Crime)

• The Two Lila Bennetts, by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke (Lake Union)

• Under the Cold Bright Lights, by Garry Disher (Soho Crime)

• An Unsettled Grave, by Bernard Schaffer (Kensington)

• The Venetian Masquerade, by Philip Gwynne Jones (Constable)

• Watchers of the Dead, by Simon Beaufort (Severn House)

• We Went to the Woods, by Caite Dolan-Leach (Random House)

• Whisper Network, by Chandler Baker (Flatiron)

JULY (UK):

• The Bear Pit, by S.G. MacLean (Quercus)

• The Bone Fire, by S.D. Sykes (Hodder & Stoughton)

• A Breath on Dying Embers, by Denzil Meyrick (Polygon)

• Call Him Mine, by Tim MacGabhann (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

• The Closer I Get, by Paul Burston (Orenda)

• Come Back for Me,
by Heidi Perks (Century)

• Darkest Truth, by Catherine Kirwan (Arrow)

• Death’s Dark Valley,
by Paul Doherty (Headline)

• Don’t Tell Teacher, by Suzy K. Quinn (HQ)

• A Grave for Two, by Anne Holt (Corvus)

• The Hidden Wife,
by Amanda Reynolds (Wildfire)

• The Holiday, by T.M. Logan (Zaffre)

• The Home, by Sarah Stovell (Orenda)

• The Housemate, by C. L. Pattison (Headline)

• Hudson’s Kill, by Paddy Hirsch (Corvus)

• The July Girls, by Phoebe Locke (Wildfire)

• The Maltese Herring, by L.C. Tyler (Allison and Busby)

• Nothing to Hide, by James Oswald (Wildfire)

• On My Life, by Angela Clarke (Mulholland)

• The Poison Garden, by Alex Marwood (Sphere)

• The Possession, by Michael Rutger (Zaffre)

• The Room of the Dead, by M.R.C. Kasasian (Head of Zeus)

• Sanctuary, by Luca D’Andrea (MacLehose Press)

• A Secret Life, by Christobel Kent (Sphere)

• Short Range, by Stephen Leather (Hodder & Stoughton)

• Stone Cold Heart, by Caz Frear (Harper)

• Tightrope, by Marnie Riches (Trapeze)

AUGUST (U.S.):

• An Artful Assassin in Amsterdam, by Michael Grant (Severn House)

• Below the Line, by Howard Michael Gould (Dutton)

• Below the Radar, by Dana Ridenour (Wise Ink)

• A Better Man, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)

• The Birthday Girl, by Melissa de la Cruz (Dutton)

• The Bitterroots, by C.J. Box (Minotaur)

• The Broken Fixer, by Ralph Dennis (Brash)

• Careful What You Wish For, by Hallie Ephron (Morrow)

• The Catholic School, by Edoardo Albinati (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

• City of Pearl, by Alys Clare (Severn House)

• City of Windows, by Robert Pobi (Minotaur)

• The Cold Way Home, by Julia Keller (Minotaur)

• Cold Woods, by Karen Katchur (Thomas & Mercer)

• A Conspiracy of Wolves, by Candace Robb (Crème de la Crime)

• A Dance of Cranes, by Steve Burrows (Oneworld)

• A Dangerous Man, by Robert Crais (Putnam)

• A Darker State, by David Young (Bonnier Zaffre)

• Dead at First Sight, by Peter James (Pan Macmillan)

• A Deadly Deception, by Tessa Harris (Kensington)

• Death Comes to Dartmoor, by Vivian Conroy (Crooked Lane)

• Death Is a Private Eye, by Gil Brewer (Stark House Press)

• Devotion, by Madeline Stevens (Ecco)

• The Doll Factory, by Elizabeth Macneal (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• The Dragon Lady, by Louisa Treger (Bloomsbury Caravel)

• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, by Olga
Tokarczuk (Riverhead)

• Empty Hearts, by Juli Zeh (Nan A. Talese)

• Forgotten Bones, by Vivian Barz (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America,
by Karen Abbott (Crown)*

• The Girl on the Porch, by Richard Chizmar (Subterranean)

• The Girl Who Lived Twice, by David Lagercrantz (Knopf)

• Gumshoe Rock, by Rob Leininger (Oceanview)

• The Hidden Things, by Jamie Mason (Gallery)

• Inheritance Tracks, by Catherine Aird (Severn House)

• Invitation to Die, by Barbara Cleverly (Soho Crime)

• Killer’s Choice, by Louis Begley (Nan A. Talese)

• The Lake of Learning, by Steve Berry and M.J. Rose
(Evil Eye Concepts)

• The Last Good Guy, by T. Jefferson Parker (Putnam)

• The Last Widow, by Kari Slaughter (Morrow)

• Lost You, by Haylen Beck (Crown)

• Love and Death Among the Cheetahs,
by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)

• Maigret and the Killer,
by Georges Simenon (Penguin Classics)

• The Man in the White Linen Suit,
by David Handler (Morrow)

• The Man Who Wouldn’t Die,
by A.B. Jewell (Morrow)

• The Memory Police,
by Yoko Ogawa (Pantheon)

• Miami Midnight, by Alex Segura (Polis)

• The Missing Ones, by Edwin Hill (Kensington)

• Murder in the Mill-Race, by E.C.R. Lorac (Poisoned Pen Press)

• No Good Deed, by James Swain (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Passengers, by John Marrs (Berkley)

• The Peaceful Valley Crime Wave, by Bill Pronzini (Forge)

• The Pearl Dagger, by L.A. Chandler (Kensington)

• The Perfect Son, by Laura North (Berkley)

• The Perfect Wife, by J.P. Delaney (Ballantine)

• Play with Fire, by William Shaw (Mulholland)

• Relative Fortunes, by Marlowe Benn (Lake Union)

• The Runaway, by Hollie Overton (Redhook)

• Run, Hide, Fight Back, by April Henry (Henry Holt)

• Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession, by Rachel Monroe (Scribner)*

• The Second Biggest Nothing, by Colin Cotterill (Soho Crime)

• Simply Dead, by Eleanor Kuhns (Severn House)

• Singapore Sapphire, by A.M. Stuart (Berkley)

• The Sixth Conspirator, by Max Byrd (Permuted Press)

• Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980, edited by Andrew Nette and
Iain McIntyre (PM Press)*

• Stolen Things, by R.H. Herron (Dutton)

• The Swallows, by Lisa Lutz (Ballantine)

• The Third Mrs. Durst, by Ann Aguirre (Midnight Ink)

• Thirteen, by Steve Cavanagh (Flatiron)

• This Poison Will Remain, by Fred Vargas (Penguin)

• Tin Badges, by Lorenzo Carcaterra (Ballantine)

• The Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Twisted at the Root, by Ellen Hart (Minotaur)

• Vanishing in the Haight, by Max Tomlinson (Oceanview)

• The Warehouse, by Rob Hart (Crown)

• The Warlow Experiment, by Alix Nathan (Doubleday)

• What You Did, by Claire McGowan (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Whisperer, by Karin Fossum (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• The Whisper Man, by Alex North (Celadon)

• The Wolf Wants In, by Laura McHugh (Spiegel & Grau)

• The Woman in the Park, by Teresa Sorkin and
Tullan Holmqvist (Beaufort)

AUGUST (UK):

• The Art of Dying, by Douglas Lindsay (Mulholland)

• The Art of Dying, by Ambrose Parry (Canongate)

• At Your Door, by J.P. Carter (Avon)

• Bad Day at the Vulture Club, by Vaseem Khan (Mulholland)

• The Bastille Spy, by C.S. Quinn (Corvus)

• Black Ops, by Chris Ryan (Coronet)

• The Burning Land, by George Alagiah (Canongate)

• The Cabin, by Jørn Lier Horst (Michael Joseph)

• Control, by Hugh Montgomery (Zaffre)

• The Darker Arts, by Oscar de Muriel (Orion)

• The Dirty Dozen, by Lynda La Plante (Zaffre)

• Don’t Say a Word, by Rebecca Tinnelly (Hodder)

• Drowned Lives, by Stephen Booth (Sphere)

• The Family Upstairs, by Lisa Jewell (Century)

• Fugitive 13, by Rob Sinclair (Orion)

• How the Dead Speak, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)

• Ice Cold Heart, by P.J. Tracy (Michael Joseph)

• Impolitic Corpses, by Paul Johnston (Severn House)

• I Spy, by Claire Kendal (HarperCollins)

• Laetitia Rodd and the Case of the Wandering Scholar,
by Kate Saunders (Bloomsbury)

• The Murder Map, by Danny Miller (Bantam Press)

• Night, by Bernard Minier (Mulholland)

• Sanctuary, by V.V. James (Gollancz)

• The Sanctuary Murders, by Susanna Gregory (Sphere)

• Take It Back, by Kia Abdullah (HQ)

• Then She Vanishes, by Claire Douglas (Penguin)

• Time for the Dead, by Lin Anderson (Macmillan)

• The Victim, by G.D. Sanders (Avon)

• The White Feather Killer, by R.N. Morris (Severn House)

When compiling this list, I sought a mix of darker, hard-edged crime and lighter-weight fiction, historical and modern stories, and both plot-driven and character-propelled yarns. If you believe I’ve missed mentioning any works of particular note, please let us all know about them in the Comments section at the end of this post.