Poirot’s Beleaguered Heirs

By Fraser Massey
It’s a mystery that would tax even the highly tuned “little grey cells” of Hercule Poirot himself.

Agatha Christie’s diminutive Belgian detective, currently celebrating his centenary year, has undoubtedly been one of the all-time major success stories of British crime fiction—featuring in 33 novels, 59 short stories, and a number of much-loved big- and small-screen adaptations.

So why aren’t bookshops nowadays stacked with volumes featuring the exploits of Poirot’s literary heirs?

Logic dictates that such a winning formula would swiftly be adopted by not only admiring fellow authors eager to offer their own twists on the concept, but also by huckster publishers hoping to make a quick buck by cashing in on the public appetite for European-born mystery-solvers crossing the English Channel to show up their slow-witted UK counterparts.

But where are they? Until very recently the most ardent fan of British-set crime fiction would have been hard-pressed to identify any slew of sleuths from continental Europe who’d followed in Hercule’s wake.

John Harvey’s Charlie Resnick perhaps came closest in terms of popularity. For a quarter of a century, from 1989’s Lonely Hearts to 2014’s Darkness, Darkness, the Resnick series won acclaim from both critics and readers—scoring Harvey a Diamond Dagger in 2007 for “Sustained Excellence in Crime Writing” from the British Crime Writers’ Association. The BBC adapted those yarns for television in the 1990s, with Tom Wilkinson in his pre-Full Monty days playing the deli-sandwich-loving detective.

In a 2020 interview with the Scene of the Crime blog, Harvey explained his views on what lay behind the success of those books. “Resnick is simultaneously an insider and an outsider … able to regard it [Nottingham, the English city where he lived and worked] with a foreign eye,” he said.

That’s the same trick Christie employed with such panache with Poirot, using her protagonist’s outsider standpoint to draw attention to the foibles of the natives of his adopted homeland. You can only marvel at her storytelling skills that a device she’d concocted so long ago was still working so well all those years later.

But there was a subtle difference between Christie’s creation and Harvey’s unorthodox detective inspector: Hercule was Belgian born and bred. Resnick may have been of Polish stock, but he was as English as the mist that rolled off the River Trent and onto the Nottingham streets he policed. Resnick’s parents had fled Eastern Europe during the Second World War and were already settled in Britain by the time Charlie took his first breaths.

While they’ve not yet achieved Resnick levels of public recognition, closer approximations of the Poirot template are at last cropping up on publishers’ lists. And very welcome they are too.

One of them is the protagonist Natalka Kolysnyk, a Ukrainian mathematics genius hiding out on England’s south coast, wary of violent gangs back home. She appears in Elly Griffiths’ The Postscript Murders (Quercus [UK], Houghton Mifflin Harcourt [U.S.]), which has been shortlisted for the 2021 Gold Dagger for crime novel of the year, to be presented this coming Thursday by the CWA.

Like Agatha Christie’s little Belgian, Kolysnyk is blessed with an above-average intellect. She’s also an amateur crime-solver, working alongside—but not with—the police.

And Kolysnyk’s not the only new Euro-sleuth on the block.

Readers today can also enjoy Eva Dolan’s outspoken, rum-drinking Detective Sergeant Mel Ferreira, a Portuguese immigrant now working in Peterborough (a town in a marshy area of eastern England known as the Fens), and Vicki Bradley’s London-based, but Polish-born, Inspector Domenik Kowalski.

Both Dolan’s Ferreira and Bradley’s Kowalski are serving British police officers. One Half Truth (Raven [UK] and due to be published in the States by Bloomsbury on July 6) is the fifth in the Ferreira series. Your Life or Mine (Simon & Schuster [UK]) is the second police procedural to feature Kowalski.

Bradley and Dolan have given their respective sleuths English partners to work with, although in Dolan’s case she’s paired Ferreira with an inspector whose grandfather relocated his family to the United Kingdom from Serbia two generations ago.

In a piece she wrote for the British crime-fiction Web site Dead Good Books back in 2017, Dolan described her protagonist as “driven by a burning sense of injustice born out of her own personal experience of being an unwelcome immigrant in a small fenland community.” It’s an interesting insight that may provide a clue as to why there have been so few Poirot clones during the past century. There’s long been a disturbing element in the British national character—a degree of intolerant bigotry directed towards outsiders—that tends to regard settlers from other nations at best with misgivings, and at worst with open hostility.

UK writers risk alienating potential readers if they choose to make the central figures in their novels non-British nationals.

Unquestioned everyday racist attitudes are something Bradley cleverly plays with in Your Life or Mine. As Inspector Kowalski’s murder team hunt a serial killer who’s been preying on women police officers, he finds his colleagues are treating him as a suspect. It’s an audacious reader-baiting technique. The author is basically forcing those who buy her book to question their own levels of racial prejudice, if they too begin to doubt the only non-English detective on the team.

In an interview for this piece, Bradley expressed some sympathy for anyone who falls into her trap. “It’s human nature to treat people who are different from you with mistrust,” she remarked. “But I wanted to point out that growing xenophobia in Britain is something that people like Kowalski would have to deal with today.”

Although Griffiths is up against some very worthy fellow contenders in Thursday’s competition for the Gold Dagger, a win for The Postscript Murders would indeed be timely. Considering the present political climate in the UK, it would make a positive statement.

Britain’s currently in the grip of increased anti-European feeling. Prime Minister Boris Johnson achieved a landslide election victory at the end of last year, partly on the back of those prejudices. In the months since his government was returned to power, it has been operating a highly controversial policy of tightening border controls and easing legal restrictions on deporting foreign nationals.

The irony in any celebrations of Poirot’s centenary is that if the Belgian detective were real, rather than fictional, and if he wanted to move to Great Britain today, he would most likely be turned away. And if he somehow managed to slip across the border, he’d now be facing legal challenges questioning his right to remain in the UK.

Who knows? That could yet be the fate facing these characters developed by Griffiths, Dolan, and Bradley.

Taking into account the slow nature of the publishing industry, The Postscript Murders, One Half Truth, and Your Life or Mine would all have been written long before the Johnson administration got into its stride. But their arrival at this moment places them firmly inside the #UKculturewars movement and marks them as important works at a time when Britain needs positive role-model images of immigrant figures to counter prevailing negative attitudes. The authors of these three novels should be applauded for writing them.

Let’s give Bradley the final word. “In the current climate in the UK, with the economic situation worsening because of COVID, people are closing ranks and becoming a bit more tribal. As a writer, you need to reflect the prejudices in society, but you also need to challenge them.”

Scottish Firsts

The Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival (September 17-19) today announced its shortlist of candidates for the 2021 Bloody Scotland Scottish Crime Debut of the Year prize, as follows:

• The Silent Daughter, by Emma Christie (Welbeck)
• Edge of the Grave, by Robbie Morrison (Macmillan)
• Waking the Tiger, by Mark Wightman (Hobeck)
• No Harm Done, by Alistair Liddle (Self-published)

Note that the first three of those novels also found places on the longlist of nominees for this year’s McIlvanney Prize. The winners of both awards will be made known on Friday, September 17, during the 2021 Bloody Scotland Festival in Stirling.

In addition, author and Bloody Scotland co-founder Alex Gray has named four debut works that—because their authors hail from outside the country—are not eligible for the Bloody Scotland Debut Scottish Crime Book of the Year:

• One Night, New York, by Lara Thompson (Virago)
• How to Kidnap the Rich, by Rahul Raina (Little, Brown)
• The Long, Long Afternoon, by Inga Vesper (Bonnier)
• The Final Round, by Bernard O’Keefe (Muswell Press)

Congratulations to all of these first-time authors!

Is It Hot Enough for You?

Whatever happened to the mild temperatures usually associated with America’s Pacific Northwest? According to CNN,

Seattle [Washington] topped its all-time record high Sunday when thermometers climbed to 104 degrees—so hot that even the normally freezing temperatures above 10,000 feet on Mt. Rainier reached 73 degrees.

Portland [Oregon] set an all-time high of 112 degrees Sunday, but that record will likely be short-lived as the forecast high Monday is 115. That would mark the third day in a row when the heat was above 107 degrees.

Temperatures are expected to remain scorching in the area until Tuesday. That is when highs are supposed to dip to 93 degrees—still far above the usual 75 at this time of year.

If all of this puts you in mind of summertime-associated paperback fronts (or is that just a subject that occurs to me?), check out Killer Covers’ extensive selection of examples.

Bullet Points: Back from Vacation Edition

I spent last week in Minneapolis, Minnesota, visiting my best friend from college, Byron Rice. The break from work was much appreciated. Beyond sampling a new restaurant or two, imbibing some novel local beers, and engaging in a bit of birdwatching, we also did touristy things, such as visiting George Floyd Square, the memorial created at the intersection of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue, where in the spring of 2020, a white cop knelt fatally upon the neck of a 46-year-old hip hop artist and mentor, setting off social-justice protests worldwide. (See the photo above; that’s yours truly on the left.) We paid an extended call on Once Upon a Crime, a fine indie bookshop in the Whittier neighborhood, specializing in mystery fiction, where—among other things—I procured a couple of William Campbell Gault books not already in my collection. And we swung by Magers & Quinn Booksellers, on Hennepin Avenue, to browse its broader array of works.

Oh, and of course, we spent a lot of time reading out in Byron’s backyard—in shade whenever possible, as temperatures ranged from the high-80s to the mid-90s. I made my way through four books: The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer, by Dean Jobb (Algonquin); People of Abandoned Character, by Clare Whitfield (Head of Zeus); The Killing Hills, by Chris Offutt (Grove Press); and Ridley’s War (FriesenPress), the second novel by sometime Rap Sheet contributor Jim Napier. I might have read more, but I felt the need periodically to toss tennis balls around with Byron’s dog, Shiloh—an endeavor that resulted in my sailing a couple over the back fence, never to be seen again. (Whoops!)

One weird thing happened on the flight back to Seattle. About half an hour before we landed, cabin attendants were summoned to assist a guy—maybe in his 40s—who was seated at the window two rows forward of me and on the left. He seemed to have stopped breathing, and a quick call was put out to anyone aboard with medical training. An evidently experienced older doctor and several younger men and women rushed to help, moving the patient out into the aisle at my feet, where they began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The patient was eventually relocated to the rear galley, where there was supposed to be more room. When we landed, emergency personnel rushed onto the plane and carried the man into the airport terminal. The rest of us were kept onboard for most of the next hour, and eventually off-loaded down a movable staircase onto the tarmac. We never did hear what had happened to the man, though I caught the end of a comment from one of the flight attendants, who said something about how it had been “too late by the time we got to him.”

Since my return home, I’ve searched for news online about this incident, but have come up with absolutely nothing.

I have, however, turned up a number of recent crime-fiction-related stories. In the absence of more information about that man on the plane, I’ll share some of those leads and tidbits here.

• A month after announcing its four shortlisted nominees—and sooner than the July 1 deadline previously set—Britain’s Crime Writers’ Association has declared a winner in the 2021 Margery Allingham Short Story Mystery Competition. She’s Netherlands resident and novelist Camilla Macpherson, whose tale “Heartbridge Homicides” was judged to fit Allingham’s definition of what makes a great story: “The Mystery remains box-shaped, at once a prison and a refuge. Its four walls are, roughly, a Crime, a Mystery, an Enquiry and a Conclusion with an Element of Satisfaction in it.” As this year’s victor, Macpherson will receive £500 as well as a pair of passes to CrimeFest 2022.

• Meanwhile, independent-press-oriented Foreword Reviews has made known the recipents of its 2021 INDIES Book of the Year Awards, in multiple categories. As far as Thriller/Suspense works go, Kevin Doherty’s The Leonardo Gulag is the Gold Winner, with Michael Pronko’s Tokyo Traffic being the Silver Winner, Michael Bradley’s Dead Air being the Bronze Winner, and Honorable Mention going to The Spiderling, by Marcia Preston. Mystery category champs are: A Child Lost, by Michelle Cox (Gold); The Burn Patient, by Sue Hinkin (Silver); Glass Eels, Shattered Sea, by Charlene D’Avanzo (Bronze); and Honorable Mention given to Andrew Nance’s Red Canvas. UPDATE: I neglected to mention, additionally, that Ann Parker’s seventh Silver Rush mystery, Mortal Music, was the Bronze winner in the INDIES’ Historical Adult Fiction category.

• Steve Aldous, author of The World of Shaft (2015), notes in his blog that June 23 marked the 50th anniversary of Richard Roundtree’s debut as New York City private eye John Shaft, in the 1971 movie Shaft. “Whilst by no means perfect,” Aldous remarks, “the film (based on Ernest Tidyman’s novel published the previous year) is rightly regarded as a landmark in cinema history. Shaft opened Hollywood up to black filmmakers, actors and technicians, and an explosion of ‘Blaxpolitation’ movies dominated cinema for the next two or three years. … Shaft was recognised at the 1972 Academy Awards, with Isaac Hayes’ theme winning the Oscar for Best Song and his soundtrack also nominated. In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.’” Aldous adds, “Here in the UK, the 50th anniversary is being celebrated by screenings of Shaft at a number of Everyman theatres across the country on Monday 28 June at 8.45 p.m.” If it has been some time since you last saw Shaft, maybe it’s time you watched it again yourself.

• After being brought down weeks ago by computer hackers, the Web site Shots appears to be back up and running.

• Speaking of Shots, its affiliated blog carries word of the four rookie novelists best-seller Val McDermid will showcase during her “New Blood” panel discussion at this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival (July 22-25). Her choices:

— Greg Buchanan, Sixteen Horses (Mantle)
— Lara Thompson, One Night, New York (Virago)
— Patricia Marques, The Colours of Death (Hodder)
— Anna Bailey, Tall Bones (Doubleday)

“The unveiling of McDermid’s selection has become one of the most anticipated moments of the publishing calendar,” says Shotsmag Confidential, “with readers on the lookout to uncover their new favourite author and add the ‘next big thing’ to their bookshelves.”

• Making a welcome comeback, as well, is The Columbophile, whose unnamed author had been offline for months, due to a health crisis involving his/her young daughter. While I was away in the Midwest, though, what should appear but a piece about the Season 10 Columbo episode “Caution: Murder Can Be Hazardous to Your Health” (1991). Guest-starring George Hamilton, it’s described as “a tale of resentment, blackmail, pornography and murder set against the backdrop of hit network TV crime show Crime Alert.”

• Did you know director John Huston’s 1941 big-screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon was, at one time, slated to be retitled as The Gent from Frisco? Blogger Evan Lewis has the newspaper clippings to prove it.

• As In Reference to Murder reported last week, “On June 8, mystery pioneer Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935) was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame in a ceremony that included an appearance by Rebecca Crozier, Green’s great-great granddaughter. Green’s The Leavenworth Case is one of the first mysteries penned by an American woman, and she is credited with developing the series detective in the form of Ebenezer Gryce of the New York Metropolitan Police Force (although in three novels he is assisted by the nosy society spinster, Amelia Butterworth, the prototype for Miss Marple).” Video footage from those festivities can be enjoyed here.

• From that same blog comes this brief update to a story we posted here in March: “Harry Melling, best known as Dudley from the Harry Potter franchise, is set to play a young Edgar Allan Poe in the Netflix/Scott Cooper-directed murder mystery, The Pale Blue Eye. The film is a passion project of Cooper, who has tried making it for more then a decade, and also stars Christian Bale as a veteran detective tasked with solving a series of murders that took place in 1830 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Bale’s detective partners with a detail-oriented young cadet (Melling), who will later become the world-famous author we all know today.”

• It looks like the ITV/BBC crime drama Shetland is back in business. According to The Killing Times, the sixth and seventh series of that show, based on novels by Ann Cleeves, “were due to film in 2020 and 2021 in locations on the Shetland Isles and around Scotland, and will again feature six hour-long episodes each. However, it looks as though production was halted due to the COVID pandemic.” No word yet on when Shetland might return to the airwaves.

• Earlier this month, CrimeReads carried a piece about vintage Shadow films that’s well worth finding. Penned by Hector DeJean, associate director of publicity at Minotaur Books, it begins:

The crimefighter known as the Shadow was a pop-culture sensation who arrived on the detective fiction scene before Perry Mason, Nero Wolfe, and Philip Marlowe, and whose extravagant war on evildoers predated those of Superman, Batman, the Lone Ranger, and Doc Savage. Americans during the Great Depression got regular doses of the Shadow via the radio and pulp magazines, and his adventures continue to this day in comic book form. Oddly, the character was never a big hit with movie audiences, despite decades of films that create an occasionally compelling but ultimately confusing portrait of the clever, menacing protagonist. Amazon Prime subscribers can check out some of these early attempts for free, and while none of the films are astounding, there are enjoyable elements sprinkled throughout, and none demand more than roughly an hour of one’s attention.

• Finnish author Juri Nummelin, who’s composing a book about American sleaze paperback writers, has assembled a list of their works that deserve consideration as crime fiction, too.

• The Rap Sheet already presented an extensive rundown of new crime, mystery, and thriller works due for publication this season. But now comes Janet Rudolph with her own lengthy inventory of older mysteries set during the warmer summer months.

• I read and enjoyed both Come Spy With Me and Live Fast, Spy Hard, Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens’ initial two John Sand espionage novels, though I haven’t yet had a chance to write about them. And now the pressure to do so is even greater: Collins writes in his blog that the series’ third installment, To Live and Spy in Berlin, is due out on July 14, from Wolfpack. That makes three fast-paced, James Bond-ish adventures published in just nine months! No wonder I can't keep up. “Will there be more John Sand books?” Collins asks. “That’s up to you. We have left something of an incredible effing cliffhanger [in book three] that needs resolving, so it’s on your conscience not ours if sales don’t justify that resolution.”

• Asks Literary Hub: “Which writers have the best tombstone inscriptions?” I’m going to go here with Billy Wilder.

• This may be just what you need: The organization Sisters in Crime has announced it “will award researchers grants of $500 for the purchase of books to support research projects that contribute to our understanding of the role of women or underrepresented groups in the crime-fiction genre. This may include but is not limited to research on women mystery writers, on the position of women writers in the crime fiction marketplace, or on gender, race, or ethnicity as an aspect of crime fiction.” The deadline for applications is July 15, 2021.

• Here’s something to look forward to. From a news release:

Titan Comics and Hard Case Crime are excited to announce Gun Honey, a new 4-part crime comic series written by Charles Ardai, the Edgar and Shamus award winner and co-founder of Hard Case Crime, with art by Ang Hor Kheng. Issue #1 launches September 15, 2021, with covers by superstar artist Bill Sienkiewicz and legendary movie poster artist Robert McGinnis.

Praised by comic creators Max Allan Collins (Ms. Tree), Ed Brubaker (Captain America) and Duane Swierczynski (Birds of Prey), Gun Honey is a story about weapons supplier Joanna Tan, the best in the world at providing the perfect weapon at the perfect moment. But when a gun she smuggles into a high-security prison leads to the escape of a brutal criminal, the U.S. government gives her an ultimatum: track him down or spend the rest of her life in a cell. …

“Gun Honey is a project I’ve been working on ever since we launched Hard Case Crime Comics five years ago, and I’m thrilled to finally get to share it with readers,” said Charles Ardai. “Anyone who loves Modesty Blaise or Alias or Uma Thurman in Tarantino’s Kill Bill will be drawn to Joanna Tan’s story the same way I was, and anyone who loves great comic book art will be floored by Ang Hor Kheng’s stunning debut.”

• A Shroud of Thoughts brings word that California-born actress Joanne Linville, “who guest starred on such classic TV shows as Studio One, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and Columbo, died on June 20, 2021, at the age of 93.” I remember Linville best for her performance as a duped Romulan Commander in the third-season Star Trek episode “The Enterprise Incident.” However, her credits also include appearances on The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen, Have Gun—Will Travel, The Defenders, The Fugitive, Hawaii Five-O, Switch, Barnaby Jones, and L.A. Law. “Joanne Linville played a wide variety of roles throughout her career,” observes Terence Towles Canote, “and she gave a good performance nearly every time.”

• Finally, a few author interviews deserving of attention: Virginia writer S.A. Cosby chats with Do Some Damage’s Angel Luis Colón about his soon-forthcoming novel, Razorblade Tears; Texas’ Murder by the Book YouTube page hosts an entertaining conversation between Gytha Lodge (Lie Beside Me) and Chris Whitaker (We Begin at the End); former President Bill Clinton and James Patterson speak with Lee Child about their second joint thriller, The President’s Daughter; and if you’re a Twitter user, you can watch a recent CBS This Morning segment about Laura Lippman and her new standalone, Dream Girl.

Another New Imprint to Watch

Blogger B.V. Lawson reports that British publishing house John Murray will launch a “‘distinctive new crime and thriller imprint’ titled Baskerville, and has hired Jade Chandler away from Harvill Secker to head up the new division. Chandler has worked with best-selling author Jo Nesbø, award-winning Abir Mukherjee, Costa Prize-shortlisted Denise Mina and Emily Koch, whose debut If I Die Before I Wake was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month. In 2018, Chandler also set up the Harvill Secker/Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Award to find the most exciting new crime fiction by writers of color.”

“Everybody Counts or Nobody Counts”

This coming Friday, June 25, will bring the premiere, on Amazon Prime, of the seventh and final season of the popular crime drama Bosch. Energetic efforts by fans to convince Prime honchos to continue the series, which is based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novels about Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch, amounted to little. However, plans have already been announced to launch a Bosch sequel on Amazon’s ad-supported streaming service, IMDb.TV.



According to The Killing Times, this latest run of the Titus Welliver-led series “takes its inspiration from novels written 20 years apart—The Concrete Blonde from 1994 and 2014’s The Burning Room, with Bosch and partner [Jerry] Edgar”—the latter played by Jamie Hector—“tackling two separate murder investigations.” It quotes an Amazon press release as saying the show “puts Harry’s famous motto centre stage: ‘Everybody counts or nobody counts.’ When a 10-year-old girl dies in an arson fire, Detective Harry Bosch risks everything to bring her killer to justice despite opposition from powerful forces. The highly charged, politically sensitive case forces Bosch to face a gruelling dilemma of how far he is willing to go to achieve justice.”

“Meanwhile,” explains Radio Times, Edgar “is spiralling after his showdown with Jacques Avril in season six. This strains but deepens Bosch and Edgar’s relationship, as Welliver told EW: ‘I think that will be the big payoff, to see how they work their way through it, unpack that, and it’s a lot of stuff. You know, while there is a healthy dose of action and things going on, I always feel like [Bosch] comes down to stories about people, and the fragility of human nature.’”

If you could use a refresher on Bosch’s history, click here.

READ MORE: “Bosch Season 7 Preview: In a Changed World, How Should We Feel About Police Shows?” by Keith Roysdon (CrimeReads); “TV’s Hero Cops Are Under Scrutiny. But Bosch Knew the System Was Broken All Along,” by Greg Braxton (Los Angeles Times); “A Fond and Fearless Goodbye to Bosch,” by Colette Bancroft (Tampa Bay Times).

Strand, Goldsboro Prizes Up for Grabs

As part of my effort to catch up with awards-related news, following my recent blogging hiatus, I should note that The Strand Magazine last week announced its nominations for the 2021 Strand Critics Awards. This is an annual judged competition, intended to recognize “excellence in the field of mystery fiction and publishing.” Winners will be declared in early September. Below are this year’s contenders.

Best Mystery Novel:
• Snow, by John Banville (Hanover Square Press)
• You Again, by Debra Jo Immergut (Ecco)
• Trouble Is What I Do, by Walter Mosley (Mulholland)
• The Missing American, by Kwei Quartey (Soho Crime)
• A Song for the Dark Times, by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown)
• Survivor Song, by Paul Tremblay (Morrow)
• Confessions on the 7:45, by Lisa Unger (Park Row)

Best Debut Novel:
• Amnesty, by Aravind Adiga (Scribner)
• Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam (Ecco)
• When No One Is Watching, by Alyssa Cole (Morrow)
• Empire of Wild, by Cherie Dimaline (Morrow)
• A Burning, by Megha Majumdar (Knopf)
• A Certain Hunger, by Chelsea G. Summers (Unnamed Press)
• Catherine House, by Elisabeth Thomas (Custom House)

In addition, The Strand will present this year’s Lifetime Achievement Awards to Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, and Alexander McCall Smith. And Josh Stanton of Blackstone Publishing has been chosen to receive the 2021 Publisher of the Year Award.

* * *

Finally, London-based Goldsboro Books has broadcast its register of a dozen works longlisted for the 2021 Glass Bell Award. “Now in its fifth year,” explains a news release, “the Glass Bell Award celebrates the best storytelling across contemporary fiction, regardless of genre. The 2021 longlist heralds a particularly strong year for debut novels: eight out of the twelve longlisted titles are first novels—including the bestselling sensation The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman and The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré, both of which were nominated for the British Book Awards.”

Half of the nominees fall into the crime/mystery/thriller category, and are identified below with asterisks:

• The Sin Eater, by Megan Campisi (Mantle)
• Blacktop Wasteland, by S.A. Cosby (Headline)*
• The Girl With the Louding Voice, by Abi Daré (Sceptre)
• The Familiar Dark, by Amy Engel (Hodder & Stoughton)*
• The Court of Miracles, by Kester Grant (Harper Voyager)
• The First Sister, by Linden Lewis (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Three Hours, by Rosamund Lupton (Viking)
• Apeirogon, by Colum McCann (Bloomsbury)
• The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman (Viking)*
• Eight Detectives, by Alex Pavesi (Michael Joseph)*
• The Devil and the Dark Water, by Stuart Turton (Bloomsbury Raven)*
• People of Abandoned Character, by Clare Whitfield (Head of Zeus)*

Expect to see a shortlist of candidates for this year’s award by August 5, with news of the winner coming on September 30.

Attention Seeking

Just for the record, it should be noted that The Rap Sheet last week added its 8,000th post. It only took 15 years to reach that goal!

PaperBack: “Savage Summer”

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



Savage Summer, by Margaret Duval (Dell, 1976). The wraparound cover illustration is by Victor Livoti. See the full jacket, as originally published, by clicking here.

British Honors in the Offing

Well, I’m back in the saddle at Rap Sheet headquarters, after a week off. (More about that later.) There’s a lot of catching up that needs doing, beginning with a couple of prominent awards-related announcements. Let’s begin with the 13-strong longlist of works contending for the 2021 McIlvanney Prize:

• The Cut, by Chris Brookmyre (Little, Brown)
• The Silent Daughter, by Emma Christie (Welbeck)
• Before the Storm, by Alex Gray (Little, Brown)
• Dead Man’s Grave, by Neil Lancaster (HQ)
• The Coffinmaker’s Garden, by Stuart MacBride (HarperCollins)
• Still Life, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)
• Bad Debt, by William McIntyre (Sandstone)
• The Less Dead, by Denise Mina (Vintage)
• How to Survive Everything, by Ewan Morrison (Saraband)
• Edge of the Grave, by Robbie Morrison (Macmillan)
• The April Dead, by Alan Parks (Canongate)
• Hyde, by Craig Russell (Constable)
• Waking the Tiger, by Mark Wightman (Hobeck)

A press release explains, “Finalists for the McIlvanney Prize will be revealed at the beginning of September, coinciding with publication of The Dark Remains,” the fourth and final Inspector Jack Laidlaw novel, started by William McIlvanney before his death in 2015, but finally completed by Ian Rankin. A winner will be identified on Friday, September 17, during this year’s Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival in Stirling.

* * *

Meanwhile, the half-dozen novels shortlisted for the 2021 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year have been named. They are:

• The Lantern Men, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)
• Three Hours, by Rosamund Lupton (Viking)
• The Last Crossing, by Brian McGilloway (Constable)
• Death in the East, by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)
• We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker (Zaffre)
• The Man on the Street, by Trevor Wood (Quercus)

Members of the public are now invited to vote for their favorite nominee by clicking here. The winner will be revealed on Thursday, July 22, the opening night of this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England.

The longlist of rivals for the 2021 prize can be found here.

Time for a Time Out

Because of other editorial obligations and my need to take a small recuperative break in advance of the summertime rush, I must put The Rap Sheet on hiatus this week. I’ll resume blogging soon.

Revue of Reviewers, 6-11-21

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

It’s a Start

Never a company to miss opportunities for promoting its products, Amazon has published an inventory of what it proclaims are the “Best Books of the Year So Far.” Among those top 20 are several works of crime fiction: We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker; The Plot, by Jean Hanff Korelitz; The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris; The Good Sister, by Sally Hepworth; and Girl A, by Abigail Dean.

A companion selection seeks to identify the “Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2021 So Far.” Those novels include four of the five works mentioned above, plus The Last Thing He Told Me, by Laura Dave; The Sanatorium, by Sarah Pearse; Northern Spy, by Flynn Berry; Later, by Stephen King; Mirrorland, by Carole Johnstone, and others.

I haven’t yet given serious thought to which works might appear on my own “Best Crime Fiction of the Year So Far” list, but the following would all be worthy candidates:

• Blackout, by Simon Scarrow (Headline UK)
• Daughters of Night, by Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle UK)
• In the Garden of Spite, by Camilla Bruce (Berkley)
• Nightshade, by E.S. Thomson (Constable UK)
• The Royal Secret, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins UK)
• The Trawlerman, by William Shaw (Riverrun UK)
• We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker (Henry Holt)
• Wedding Station, by David Downing (Soho Crime)

I still need to tackle a number of new releases from the opening six months of 2021, so this tally of “favorites” may change as time progresses. For now, though, it’s a good preliminary tally.

(Hat tip to In Reference to Murder.)

An Unexpected Pandemic Casualty

This marks the end of a looooong era. From The Guardian:

Oxford University’s right to print books was first recognised in 1586, in a decree from the Star Chamber. But the centuries-old printing history of Oxford University Press will end this summer, after the publishing house announced the last vestige of its printing arm was closing.

The closure of Oxuniprint, which will take place on 27 August subject to consultation with employees, will result in the loss of 20 jobs. OUP said it follows a “continued decline in sales”, which has been “exacerbated by factors relating to the pandemic”.

Oxuniprint’s closure will mark the final chapter for centuries of printing in Oxford, where the first book was printed in 1478, two years after Caxton set up the first printing press in England. There was no formal university press in the city over the next century, but the university’s right to print books was recognised in a decree in 1586, and later enhanced in the Great Charter secured by Archbishop Laud from Charles I, entitling it to print “all manner of books”.

You can read the piece in its entirety here.

Let’s Call It a Tie(-in)

The International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, “dedicated to enhancing the professional and public image of [movie, TV, and video game] tie-in writers,” today announced the nominees for its 2021 Scribe Awards. There are six prize categories, but the one that may be of foremost interest to Rap Sheet readers—“General Original Novel and Adapted Novel”—features the following contenders:

• Masquerade for Murder, by Mickey Spillane and
Max Allan Collins (Titan)
• Mindgame, by David J. Howe (Telos)
• Day Zero: Watchdogs Legion, by James Swallow and
Josh Reynolds (Aconyte)
• The Rise of Skywalker, by Rae Carson (Del Rey)

Scribe winners are to be declared on Friday, July 2, on the IAMTW’s Facebook page, beginning at 4 p.m. Pacific time.

Meanwhile, Iowa author Max Allan Collins reports in his blog that he’s been chosen to receive this year’s Faust Award for lifetime achievement from the IAMTW, an organization he co-founded with Lee Goldberg back in 2006. Collins notes that this is his “third lifetime achievement award (preceded by the Eye from the [Private Eye Writers of America] and the Grand Master Edgar from [Mystery Writers of America]), which is either an incredible honor bestowed upon me by my peers, or an indication that they think I’ve lived long enough.”

A Season of Reading and Recovery

Last summer, when we were all so hungry to escape from our locked-down pandemic existences, we grabbed for pretty much any book that could transport us to another place or time. This summer, with the dangers of COVID-19 apparently more in check (at least in Biden-era America), and with publishing schedules back on track once more, our reading choices can be made with slightly more deliberation than desperation. That’s good, because there seems to be an even greater number of forthcoming titles from which to choose.

After poring over publisher catalogues, bookstore Web sites, and reading-related blogs, I came up with a preliminary list of more than 360 crime, mystery, and thriller works, all scheduled for release between now and September 1—on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean—and all well worth investigating. These range from hard-boiled detective novels and cop yarns, to lighthearted traditional mysteries and classic crime reprints, to volumes of non-fiction that I suspect will draw the eye of anybody interested in the history of crime.

You should be on the lookout for fresh fiction by Laurie R. King, Stephen King, Megan Abbott, James Ellroy, Laura Lippman, Dan Fesperman, Hilary Davidson, Mark Billingham, Karin Slaughter, Brad Parks, Lyndsay Faye, Alex Michaelides, Camilla Läckberg, John Connolly, Naomi Hirahara, Michael Robotham, Elly Griffiths, Martin Edwards, Sujata Massey, James Lee Burke, and so many others. These next three months will introduce the first entries in new series by John McFetridge and Val McDermid; a long-awaited new Phryne Fisher mystery from Kerry Greenwood, Death in Daylesford; S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, his follow-up to last year’s Blacktop Wasteland; the UK edition of Anthony Horowitz’s third Daniel Hawthorne mystery, A Line to Kill (set for an October U.S. premiere); a second collaboration between former President Bill Clinton and James Patterson, The President’s Daughter; the British debut of Peter Lovesey’s 20th Peter Diamond novel, Diamond and the Eye (also due out out in the States come October); an opening crime tale from Chris Offutt, The Killing Hills; a gripping alternative history, Widowland, penned by Philip Kerr’s widow, Jane Thynne, under the pseudonym C.J. Carey; an 1870s San Francisco-set thriller from J.D. Rhoades, The Killing Look; plus Martin Walker’s 16th Bruno Courrèges puzzler, The Coldest Case. Oh, and expect, too, the 40th-anniversary reprint of John Gardner’s first James Bond continuation novel, Licence Renewed.

Books marked below with an asterisk (*) are non-fiction; the remainder are fiction, either novels or short-story collections.

JUNE (U.S.):
• The Abduction of Pretty Penny, by Leonard Goldberg (Minotaur)
• The Art of Betrayal, by Connie Berry (Crooked Lane)
• Bad Moon Rising, by John Galligan (Atria)
• Barcelona Dreaming, by Rupert Thomson (Other Press)
• Bath Haus, by P. J. Vernon (Doubleday)
• Beneath Devil’s Bridge, by Loreth Anne White (Montlake)
• Black Ice, by Carin Gerhardsen (Scarlet)
• Body Zoo, by J.D. Allen (Severn River)
• The Bombay Prince, by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime)
• Bones of Hilo, by Eric Redman (Crooked Lane)
• Canaryville, by Charlie Newton (Blacktype Press)
• Castle Shade, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
• The Cat Saw Murder, by Dolores Hitchens (American
Mystery Classics)
• Collectibles, edited by Lawrence Block (Subterranean)
• Confess to Me, by Sharon Doering (Titan)
• The Constant Man, by Peter Steiner (Severn House)
• Crime Cop / Body of the Crime, by Lorenz Heller (Stark House Press)
• A Cut for a Cut, by Carol Wyer (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Damage, by Caitlin Wahrer (Pamela Dorman)
• A Dark and Secret Place, by Jen Williams (Crooked Lane)
• Darkness Beyond, by Marjorie Eccles (Severn House)
• Dead by Dawn, by Paul Doiron (Minotaur)
• Dead Dead Girls, by Nekesa Afia (Berkley)
• Dead-End Jobs: A Hitman Anthology, edited by Andy Rausch (All Due Respect)
• The Dead Letter, by Seeley Regester (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Death in Daylesford, by Kerry Greenwood (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Death on the Night of Lost Lizards, by Julia Buckley (Berkley)
• The Disappearing Act, by Catherine Steadman (Ballantine)
• A Distant Grave, by Sarah Stewart Taylor (Minotaur)
• Dominus, by Steve Saylor (St. Martin’s Press)
• Double Down, by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime)
• Dream Girl, by Laura Lippman (Morrow)
• Dust Off the Bones, by Paul Howarth (Harper)
• An Empty Grave, by Andrew Welsh-Huggins (Swallow Press)
• Every City Is Every Other City, by John McFetridge (ECW Press)
• Far Gone, by Danielle Girard (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Fatal Picnic / Their Nearest and Dearest, by Bernice Carey
(Stark House Press)
• The Fiancée, by Kate White (Harper)
• Forest of Secrets, by Fiona Buckley (Severn House)
• A Good Kill, by John McMahon (Putnam)
• The Great Mistake, by Jonathan Lee (Knopf)
• Gumshoe in the Dark, by Rob Leininger (Oceanview)
• Hairpin Bridge, by Taylor Adams (Morrow)
• Hardcastle’s Secret Agent, by Graham Ison (Severn House)
• The Hive, by Gregg Olsen (Thomas & Mercer)
• Hostage, by Clare Mackintosh (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• The Keepers, by Jeffrey R. Burton (Minotaur)
• Kennedy’s Avenger: Assassination, Conspiracy, and the
Forgotten Trial of Jack Ruby, by Dan Abrams and David Fisher (Hanover Square Press)*
• The Killing Hills, by Chris Offutt (Grove Press)
• The Lammas Wild, by Alys Clare (Severn House)
• Lesson in Red, by Maria Hummel (Counterpoint)
• Lie Beside Me, by Gytha Lodge (Random House)
• The Maidens. by Alex Michaelides (Celadon)
• Mr. Campion’s Coven, by Mike Ripley (Severn House)
• Moon Lake, by Joe R. Lansdale (Mulholland)
• Moonlighting: An Oral History, by Scott Ryan (Fayetteville
Mafia Press)*
• Murder at Beaulieu Abbey, by Cassandra Clark (Severn House)
• Mystic’s Accomplice, by Mary Miley (Severn House)
• The Night Hawks, by Elly Griffiths (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Night, Neon: Tales of Mystery and Suspense, by Joyce Carol Oates (Mysterious Press)
• The North Face of the Heart, by Dolores Redondo (Amazon Crossing)
• The Old Enemy, by Henry Porter (Atlantic Monthly Press)
• The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris (Atria)
• Our Woman in Moscow, by Beatriz
Williams (Morrow)
• Palace of the Drowned, by Christine Mangan (Flatiron)
• A Past That Breathes, by Noel Obiora
(Rare Bird)
• A Place for Snakes to Breed, by Patrick Michael Finn (Down & Out)
• The President’s Daughter, by Bill Clinton and James Patterson (Little, Brown/Knopf)
• Resistance, by Val McDermid and Kathryn Briggs (Atlantic Monthly Press)
• River, Sing Out, by James Wade (Blackstone)
• Runner, by Tracy Clark (Kensington)
• The Secrets of Us, by Lucinda Barry (Thomas & Mercer)
• Shadow Target, by David Ricciardi (Berkley)
• The Shape of Darkness, by Laura Purcell (Penguin)
• Sirens of Memory, by Puja Guha (Agora)
• Somebody’s Voice, by Ramsey Campbell (Flame Tree Press)
• Sons of Valor, by Brian Andrews and Jeffrey Wilson (Blackstone)
• A Study in Crimson, by Robert J. Harris (Pegasus Crime)
• Suburban Dicks, by Fabian Nicieza (Putnam)
• Survive the Night, by Riley Sager (Dutton)
• Their Man in the White House, by Tom Ardies (Brash)
• These Tangled Vines, by Julianne MacLean (Lake Union)
• The Third Grave, by Lisa Jackson (Kensington)
• To Poison a Nation: The Murder of Robert Charles and the Rise of Jim Crow Policing in America, by Andrew Baker (New Press)*
• The Transparency of Time, by Leonardo Padura (Farrar,
Straus and Giroux)
• Trouble at the Brownstone, by Robert Goldsborough
(Mysterious Press/Open Road)
• An Unlikely Spy, by Rebecca Starford (Ecco)
• The Wake, by Jeremy Brown (Wolfpack)
• Walking Through Needles, by Heather Levy (Polis)
• Warn Me When It’s Time, by Cheryl A. Head (Bywater)
• The Wedding Night, by Harriet Walker (Ballantine)
• What’s Done in Darkness, by Laura McHugh (Random House)
• What to Do When Someone Dies, by Nicci French (Morrow)
• When Evil Lived in Laurel: The “White Knights” and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer, by Curtis Wilkie (Norton)*
• Who They Was, by Gabriel Krauze (Bloomsbury)
• Widespread Panic, by James Ellroy (Knopf)
• Wolf Kill, by Cary J. Griffith (Adventure Publications)
• A Writer Prepares, by Lawrence Block (LB Productions)*

JUNE (UK):
• The Blood Divide, by A.A. Dhand (Bantam Press)
• The Bones of Wolfe, by James Carlos Blake (No Exit Press)
• Brass Lives, by Chris Nickson (Severn House)
• Brazilian Psycho, by Joe Thomas (Arcadia)
• Consolation, by Garry Disher (Viper)
• The Cursed Girls, by Caro Ramsay (Black Thorn)
• The Dartmoor Murders, by Stephanie Austin (Allison & Busby)
• Dead Ground, by M.V. Craven (Constable)
• A Death on Stage, by Caroline Dunford (Headline Accent)
• The Family Tree, by Steph Mullin and Nicole Mabry (Avon)
• The First Day of Spring, by Nancy Tucker (Hutchinson)
• For Any Other Truth, by Denzil Meyrick (Polygon)
• The Forever Home, by Sue Watson (Bookouture)
• Fragile, by Sarah Hilary (Macmillan)
• The Girl Who Died, by Ragnar Jónasson (Michael Joseph)
• Guilty Creatures: A Menagerie of Mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards (British Library)
• Her Ocean Grave, by Dana Perry (Bookouture)
• The Hiding Place, by Helen Phifer (Bookouture)
• Hour of the Assassin, by Matthew Quirk (Head of Zeus)
• I Am Vengeance, by Ethan Cross (Head of Zeus/Aries)
• I Know What I Saw, by Imran Mahmood (Raven)
• In Harm’s Way, by Anthony Mosawi (Penguin)
• In the Shadow of the Fire, by Hervé Le Corre (Europa Editions)
• The Lies We Tell, by Jane Corry (Penguin)
• Mammon in Malmö, by Torquil MacLeod (McNidder & Grace)
• Mrs. England, by Stacey Halls (Manilla Press)
• Murder at Madame Tussauds, by Jim Eldridge (Allison & Busby)
• Murder at the Piccadilly Playhouse, by C.J. Archer (C.J. Archer)
• The Murder of Graham Catton, by Katie Lowe (HarperCollins)
• One Child Alive, by Ellery A. Kane (Bookouture)
• One Way Street, by Trevor Wood (Quercus)
• The Other Mother, by Michel Bussi (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• Phone for the Fish Knives, by Daisy Waugh (Piatkus)
• Right to Kill, by John Barlow (HQ)
• Scorpion, by Christian Cantrell
(Michael Joseph)
• Sleepless, by Romy Hausmann (Quercus)
• Spy and Spy Again, by Ray Saunders (Vanguard Press)
• Strictly Murder, by Julie Wassmer (Constable)
• Strange Tricks, by Syd Moore (Point Blank)
• True Crime Story, by Joseph Knox (Doubleday)
• Truth or Dare, by M.J. Arlidge (Orion)
• A Wake of Crows, by Kate Evans (Constable)
• When You Are Mine, by Michael Robotham (Sphere)
• Widowland, by C.J. Carey (Quercus)
• Widow’s Island, by L.A. Larkin (Bookouture)

JULY (U.S.):
• After You Died, by Dea Poirier (Agora)
• An Ambush of Widows, by Jeff Abbott (Grand Central)
• Antiques Carry On, by Barbara Allan (Severn House)
• April in Paris, by John J. Healey (Arcade)
• Arrowood and the Meeting House Murders, by Mick Finley (HQ)
• The Basel Killings, by Hansjörg Schneider (Bitter Lemon Press)
• The Bone Code, by Kathy Reichs (Scribner)
• The Bucket List, by Peter Mohlin and Peter Nyström (Overlook Press)
• The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer, by Dean Jobb (Algonquin)*
• The Cellist, by Daniel Silva (Harper)
• Choose Me, by Tess Gerritsen and Gary Braver (Thomas & Mercer)
• City Problems, by Steve Goble (Oceanview)
• A Comedy of Terrors, by Lindsey Davis (Minotaur)
• The Comfort of Monsters, by Willa C. Richards (Harper)
• The Cover Wife, by Dan Fesperman (Knopf)
• Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir (Revised and Expanded Edition), by Eddie Muller (Running Press)*
• Dear Miss Metropolitan, by Carolyn Ferrell (Henry Holt)
• Fallen, by Linda Castillo (Minotaur)
• Falling, by T.J. Newman (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)
• False Witness, by Karin Slaughter (Morrow)
• Fierce Little Thing, by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore (Flatiron)
• For Your Own Good, by Samantha Downing (Berkley)
• Golden Age Detective Stories, edited by Otto Penzler
(American Mystery Classics)
• A Good Day for Chardonnay, by Darynda Jones (St. Martin’s Press)
• Her Last Breath, by Hilary Davidson (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Heathens, by Ace Atkins (Putnam)
• The Heretic’s Mark, by S.W. Perry (Atlantic)
• The Hollows, by Mark Edwards (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Hollywood Spy, by Susan Elia MacNeal (Bantam)
• How to Find Your Way in the Dark, by Derek B. Miller
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• The Hunted, by Gabriel Bergmoser (HarperCollins)
• The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science, by Sam Kean (Little, Brown)*
• An Irish Hostage, by Charles Todd (Morrow)
• Island of Thieves, by Glen Erik Hamilton (Morrow)
• Just One Look, by Lindsay Cameron (Ballantine)
• Kill All Your Darlings, by David Bell (Berkley)
• The Last Commandment, by Scott Shepherd (Mysterious Press)
• Look What You Made Me Do, by Elaine Murphy (Grand Central)
• The Lords of Time, by Eva García Sáenz (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
• The Man with the Silver Saab, by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon)
• Midnight, Water City, by Chris McKinney (Soho Crime)
• M, King’s Bodyguard, by Niall Leonard (Pantheon)
• My Mistress’ Eyes Are Raven Black, by Terry Roberts (Turner)
• Nantucket Penny, by Steven Axelrod (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Not a Happy Family, by Shari Lapena (Pamela Dorman)
• One Half Truth, by Eva Dolan (Raven)
• The Only Good Secretary / The Man With the Cane, by Jean Potts (Stark House Press)
• Palm Springs Noir, edited by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett (Akashic)
• People Like Them, by Samira
Sedira (Penguin)
• Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron)
• Red Traitor, by Owen Matthews (Doubleday)
• Seat 7A, by Sebastian Fitzek (Head of Zeus)
• Shadow Hill, by Thomas Kies
(Poisoned Pen Press)
• The Shadow People, by Joe Clifford (Polis)
• Silence in the Library, by Katharine Schellman (Crooked Lane)
• Silver Tears, by Camilla Läckberg (Knopf)
• Sleeping Bear, by Connor Sullivan (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Sleep with Strangers, by Dolores Hitchens (Library of America)
• The Storytellers: Straight Talk from the World’s Most Acclaimed Suspense & Thriller Authors, edited by Mark Rubinstein (Blackstone)*
• The Stranger Behind You, by Carol Goodman (Morrow)
• The Stranger in the Mirror, by Liv Constantine (Harper)
• Such a Quiet Place, by Megan Miranda (Simon & Schuster)
• The Temple House Vanishing, by Rachel Donohue (Algonquin)
• The Therapist, by B.A. Paris (St. Martin’s Press)
• The Thing Beyond Reason / Echo of a Careless Voice / Blotted Out, by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (Stark House Press)
• The 22 Murders of Madison May, by Max Barry (Putnam)
• Unthinkable, by Brad Parks (Thomas & Mercer)
• UTube, by Rozlan Mohd Noor (Arcade Crimewise)
• We Were Never Here, by Andrea Bartz (Ballantine)
• Woman in Shadow, by Carrie Stuart Parks (Thomas Nelson)
• A Woman of Intelligence, by Karin Tanabe (St. Martin’s Press)
• The Wonder Test, by Michelle Richmond (Atlantic Monthly Press)

JULY (UK):
• All Her Fault, by Andrea Mara (Bantam Press)
• Amber, by Heather Burnside (Aria)
• Ascension, by Oliver Harris (Little, Brown)
• Ask No Questions, by Claire Allan (Avon)
• A Beginner’s Guide to Murder, by Rosalind Stopps (HQ)
• The Beresford, by Will Carver (Orenda)
• Bloody Foreigners, by Neil Humphreys (Muswell Press)
• Bryant & May: London Bridge Is Falling Down, by Christopher
Fowler (Doubleday)
• Cabin Fever, by Alex Dahl (Head of Zeus)
• The Cottage, by Lisa Stone (HarperCollins)
• The Crooked Shore, by Martin Edwards (Allison & Busby)
• A Cursed Place, by Peter Hanington (Two Roads)
• Death and Croissants, by Ian Moore (Farrago)
• Diamond and the Eye, by Peter Lovesey (Sphere)
• The Doll, by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Dog Rose Dirt, by Jen Williams (HarperCollins)
• Down By the Water, by Elle Connel (Wildfire)
• The Dying Day, by Vaseem Khan (Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Dying Squad, by Adam Simcox (Gollancz)
• Elena Knows, by Claudia Piñeiro (Charco Press)
• Farewell to the Liar, by D.K. Fields (Head of Zeus/AdAstra)
• Fast Track, by Stephen Leather (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Girls Who Lie, by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir (Orenda)
• The Guest House, by David Mark (Head of Zeus/Aries)
• The House of Death, by Peter Tremayne (Headline)
• How to Kill Your Family, by Bella Mackie (Borough Press)
• The Hunt and the Kill, by Holly Watt (Raven)
• I Know What You’ve Done, by Dorothy Koomson (Headline Review)
• Into the Dark, by Stuart Johnstone (Allison & Busby)
• Karolina, or the Torn Curtain, by Jacek Dehnel (Point Blank)
• The Killer Inside, by Matthew Frank (Michael Joseph)
• The Killing Tide, by Lin Anderson (Macmillan)
• Kyiv, by Graham Hurley (Head of Zeus)
• Midsummer Mysteries: Secrets and Suspense from the Queen of Crime, by Agatha Christie (HarperCollins)
• Mother Midnight,
by Paul Doherty (Headline)
• The Murder Box,
by Olivia Kiernan (Riverrun)
• My Best Friend’s Murder,
by Polly Phillips (Simon & Schuster)
• The Nameless Ones,
by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Our Friends in Beijing,
by John Simpson (John Murray)
• Pretty as a Picture,
by Elizabeth Little (Pushkin Vertigo)
• Rabbit Hole, by Mark Billingham (Little, Brown)
• Red Wolves, by Adam Hamdy (Pan)
• The Rising Tide, by Sam Lloyd (Bantam Press)
• Risk of Harm, by Lucie Whitehouse (Fourth Estate)
• Rogue Asset, by Andy McDermott (Headline)
• Rosy & John, by Pierre Lemaitre (MacLehose Press)
• The Runner, by P.R. Black (Head of Zeus/Aries)
• The Second Woman, by Charlotte Philby (Borough Press)
• The Secret Life of Writers, by Guillaume Musso
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• The Shetland Sea Murders, by Marsali Taylor (Headline Accent)
• The Stalker, by Sarah Alderson (Avon)
• That Night, by Gillian McAllister (Penguin)
• The Therapist, by Helene Flood (MacLehose Press)
• The Trenches, by Parker Bilal (Black Thorn)
• The Truth-Seeker’s Wife, by Ann Granger (Headline)
• Where the Missing Gather, by Helen Sedgwick (Point Blank)
• Whitethroat, by James Henry (Riverrun)

AUGUST (U.S.):
• Another Kind of Eden, by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster)
• The April Dead, by Alan Parks (World Noir)
• Autumn Leaves, 1922, by Tessa Lunney (Pegasus Crime)
• The Barrister and the Letter of Marque, by Todd M. Johnson
(Bethany House)
• Before the Storm, by Alex Gray (Sphere)
• Billy Summers, by Stephen King (Scribner)
• The Bitter Taste of Murder, by Camilla Trinchieri (Soho Crime)
• Bullet Train, by Kotaro Isaka (Overlook Press)
• The Cannonball Tree Mystery, by Ovidia Yu (Constable)
• Chasing the Boogeyman, by Richard Chizmar (Gallery)
• Clark and Division, by Naomi Hirahara (Soho Crime)
• The Coldest Case, by Martin Walker (Knopf)
• Danger at the Cove, by Hannah Dennison (Minotaur)
• The Darkness Knows, by Arnaldur Indriðason (Minotaur)
• Dark Roads, by Chevy Stevens (St. Martin’s Press)
• A Different Dawn, by Isabella Maldonado (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Double Mother, by Michel Bussi (World Noir)
• Dust to Dust, by Audrey Keown (Crooked Lane)
• Eight Faces at Three, by Craig Rice (‎American Mystery Classics)
• The Family Plot, by Megan Collins (Atria)
• Felonious Monk, by William Kotzwinkle (Blackstone)
• 56 Days, by Catherine Ryan Howard (Blackstone)
• A Gingerbread House, by Catriona McPherson (Severn House)
• Gone By Morning, by Michele Weinstat Miller (Crooked Lane)
• Gone for Good, by Joanna Schaffhausen (Minotaur)
• Graveyard Fields, by Steven Tingle (Crooked Lane)
• The Guide, by Peter Heller (Knopf)
• The Guilt Trip, by Sandie Jones (Minotaur)
• The Husbands, by Chandler Baker (Flatiron)
• In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, by Ashley Winstead
(Sourcebooks Landmark)
• The Irish Assassins: Conspiracy, Revenge and the Phoenix Park Murders that Stunned Victorian England, by Julie Kavanagh
(Atlantic Monthly Press)*
• The Island, by Ben Coes (St. Martin’s Press)
• Jim Hanvey, Detective, by Octavus Roy Cohen (Poisoned Pen Press)
• The Killing Look, by J.D. Rhoades (Polis)
• The King of Infinite Space, by Lyndsay Faye (Putnam)
• The Knight’s Tale, by M.J. Trow (Severn House)
• The Last Mona Lisa, by Jonathan Santlofer (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• Lightning Strike, by William Kent Krueger (Atria)
• The Madness of Crowds, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• Murder Most Fair, by Anna Lee Huber (Kensington)
• Murder Most Fowl, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur)
• Murder on Principle, by Eleanor Kuhns (Severn House)
• The Night Singer, by Johanna Mo (Penguin)
• No Witness, by Warren C. Easley (Poisoned Pen Press)
• The Other Me, by Sarah Zachrich Jeng (Berkley)
• The Perfect Ruin, by Shanora Williams (Dafina)
• The Perfume Thief, by Timothy Schaffert (Doubleday)
• Rabbit Hole, by Mark Billingham (Atlantic Monthly Press)
• The Receptionist, by Kate Myles (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Return of Sherlock Holmes: Further Extraordinary Tales of the Famous Sleuth, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Mango)
• Say Goodbye, by Karen Rose (Berkley)
• Scarred, by Nick Oldham (Severn House)
• The Silver Waves of Summer, edited by David M. Olsen (Kelp)
• The Sister-in-Law, by Pamela Crane (Morrow)
• A Slow Fire Burning, by Paula Hawkins (Riverhead)
• Then She Vanishes, by Claire Douglas (Harper)
• Tokyo Redux, by David Peace (Knopf)
• The Turnout, by Megan Abbott (Putnam)
• An Unreliable Truth, by Victor Methos (Thomas & Mercer)
• Velvet Was the Night, by Silvia
Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)
• Where I Left Her, by Amber Garza (Mira)
• Where the Truth Lies, by Anna
Bailey (Atria)

AUGUST (UK):
• The Body on the Moor, by Nick
Louth (Canelo)
• Celtic Cross, by Sara Sheridan (Constable)
• The Chancellor’s Secret, by Susanna Gregory (Sphere)
• Cold Sun, by Anita Sivakumaran (Dialogue)
• A Corruption of Blood, by Ambrose Parry (Canongate)
• The Dark, by Emma Haughton (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Death Comes to Bishops Well, by Anna Legat (Headline Accent)
• Deep Cover, by Leigh Russell (No Exit Press)
• The Devil’s Advocate, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion)
• End of Summer, by Anders de la Motte (Zaffre)
• The Ex-Husband, by Karen Hamilton (Wildfire)
• The Good Death, by S.D. Sykes (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Graveyard to Hell, by Jack Higgins (HarperCollins)
• The Great Shroud, by Vera Morris (Headline Accent)
• The Great Silence, by Doug Johnstone (Orenda)
• Half-Past Tomorrow, by Chris McGeorge (Orion)
• The Heights, by Louise Candlish (Simon & Schuster)
• Hell and High Water, by Christian Unge (MacLehose Press)
• I Shot the Devil, by Ruth McIver (Tinder Press)
• Licence Renewed, by John Gardner (Orion)
• A Line to Kill, by Anthony Horowitz (Century)
• Many Deadly Returns: 21 Stories Celebrating 21 Years of Murder Squad, edited by Martin Edwards (Severn House)
• The Midas Game, by Abi Silver (Lightning)
• Mimic, by Daniel Cole (Trapeze)
• Missing, by Erin Kinsley (Headline)
• Murder After Midnight, by Lesley Cookman (Headline Accent)
• Murder at the Seaview Hotel, by Glenda Young (Headline)
• My Name Is Jensen, by Heidi Amsinck (Muswell Press)
• A Narrow Door, by Joanne Harris (Orion)
• 1979, by Val McDermid (Little, Brown)
• The Origins of Iris, by Beth Lewis (Hodder Studio)
• A Rattle of Bones, by Douglas Skelton (Polygon)
• Replace You, by Andrew Ewart (Orion)
• The Saboteur, by Simon Conway (Hodder & Stoughton)
• Say Goodbye, by Karen Rose (Headline)
• The Secrets of Thistle Cottage, by Kerry Barrett (HQ)
• The Soul Breaker, by Sebastian Fitzek (Head of Zeus)
• Stolen, by Tess Stimson (Avon)
• The Stone Chamber, by Kate Ellis (Piatkus)
• Unholy Murder, by Lynda La Plante (Zaffre)
• The Unwelcome Guest, by Amanda Robson (Avon)
• The Vacancy, by Elisabeth Carpenter (Orion)
• The Wedding Party, by Tammy Cohen (Black Swan)
• The White Devil, by Paul Hoffman (Michael Joseph)
• Who Took Eden Mulligan? by Sharon Dempsey (Avon)
• Wolf at the Door, by Sarah Hawkswood (Allison & Busby)

As incredible as it may seem, this inventory is nowhere near comprehensive. There are plenty more crime, mystery, and thriller works hoping to join your to-be-read pile this summer. If you wish to recommend other new or forthcoming releases, please do so in the Comments section at the end of this post.