Favorite Crime Fiction of 2021, Part II: Ali Karim

Ali Karim is The Rap Sheet’s longtime British correspondent, a contributing editor of January Magazine, and the assistant editor of Shots. In addition, he writes for Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, Crimespree Magazine, and Mystery Readers International.

• The Passenger, by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, translated by Philip Boehm (Pushkin Press):

Written in a fury over just four weeks, this novel—my favorite crime thriller of 2021—helped Ulrich Boschwitz, then a 23-year-old German Jew living in England, cope with the horrors of Kristallnacht, the November 1938 pogrom that exposed the Nazi Party’s malicious plans for European Jews. When first published in the United States in 1939 (under the title The Man Who Took Trains), and the next year in Britain (as The Fugitive), it provoked scant notice. The author himself died in 1942, after being arrested in England as an “enemy alien” and interned on the Isle of Man, then later in Australia. Not until 2016 was the original typescript of The Passenger rediscovered in a German archive, and it was subsequently revised per instructions Boschwitz had left behind.

This gripping yarn should act as a warning, a message from the past to all of us living in the present. Its narrative details the various journeys undertaken by successful German-Jewish (but Aryan-looking) businessman Otto Silbermann after his Berlin home is ransacked as a consequence of the ’38 pogrom. Trying to evade Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists, who have embedded themselves throughout all the societal structures of Germany, Silbermann tries but fails to reach Belgium; afterward, he becomes a man on the run, hopping one train after the other, crisscrossing the Fatherland with survival his only goal, and paranoia his sole companion. The people Silbermann meets and the situations he must confront, make this a tense, fascinating, and occasionally claustrophobic chase thriller, one that provokes deep contemplation. It’s said that “paranoia is a heightened sense of awareness,” and for Silbermann it is also a descent into the darkest edges of a personal hell—a test of his mental and physical endurance.

Boschwitz’s observations of the Nazis and the lead-up to the Second World War will strike familiar chords with readers who are cognizant of today’s rise of anti-Semitism and those concerned for democracy’s resilience in the face of authoritarian campaigns. My memory of reading this novel will lay in my mind like the shards of glass that fell throughout Germany during Kristallnacht.

• Fragile, by Sarah Hilary (Macmillan UK):

Two years ago, when I reviewed Never Be Broken, Sarah Hilary’s sixth novel, I opined in Shots that the author “has established herself as penning some of the most thought-provoking police procedurals currently in print, and she always presents the reader with a junction at the close of each book. The fork in the road is not just for the reader, it’s also written for the writer as she leaves behind a challenge: How do you ‘top’ this one?” Incredibly, Hilary does indeed top her previous work with Fragile. How? By penning a standalone, parking her award-winning Marnie Rome police-procedural series, and entering the shadows of the Gothic.

Nell Ballard spent a good portion of her childhood in foster care, under watchful and frequently uncaring eyes. Then she ran away, hungry for love and security, and carting a secret she has no wish to share. She finds employment as a housekeeper at Starling Villas, the much-neglected London residence of Dr. Robin Wilder, an inscrutable, stoic, and seemingly very angry man. And so this situation may not provide Nell with the safe refuge she ostensibly craves. There’s palpable tension in that ominous home (if it reminds you of Daphne du Maurier’s Manderley, that’s probably not mere coincidence), and it seems Wilder—a middle-aged gent contained within a pen of self-inflicted rules—has his own secrets worth safeguarding. Nell is soon run ragged by all of her responsibilities, and the sudden appearance of Wilder’s calculating wife doesn’t make things any easier. But is there more to Nell washing up at Starling Villas than we understand?

I don’t wish to detail Fragile’s plot any further, because the story is best enjoyed without benefit of major clues regarding the twisted, treacherous path down which Hilary will lead the reader. The surety of this writer’s ability to engage your mind plays as a counterpoint to the slipperiness of the story she unfolds. Although contemporary, the novel’s atmosphere seems very much of another era, part-imagined and part-nightmare, unsettling yet captivating. It’s set in London, but trails threads to Wales. It’s a lush blend of rejection, redemption, horror, and the understanding of childhood frights and how those fears can reappear in adulthood. It’s creepy as hell—but with heart.

• The Devil’s Advocate, by Steve Cavanagh (Orion UK):

It takes rare literary skill to produce a courtroom drama that is as compelling and riveting as a car chase, yet remains intellectually stimulating. This sixth outing for New York City-based con man-turned-attorney Eddie Flynn (following 2020’s Fifty-Fifty) should come with a warning, because it will surely deprive the reader of a night’s sleep, such is the compelling nature of its narrative.

Flynn and his crack legal team depart Gotham, bound for America’s Deep South—(fictitious) Buckstown, Alabama, to be specific. Flynn’s task there is to defend a 19-year-old Black man, Andy Dubois, who’s accused of brutally murdering his co-worker, a popular young white woman named Skylar Edwards. Dubois’ original advocate has vanished, and Flynn’s efforts to see and speak with his new client are repeatedly obstructed. The local sheriff’s department is riddled with bigotry and corruption, and the district attorney, one Randall Korn, revels sadistically in the fact that he’s sent more prisoners to their deaths (not all of whom were guilty) than anyone else in the United States. He isn’t about to have that record tarnished. And there seems little chance of such a thing happening, anyway: Despite the thin evidence against Dubois (he was simply the last person to see Edwards alive), the whole town is convinced he committed the dastardly deed, and the judge is already in Korn’s pocket. The likelihood of the accused receiving a fair trial is almost nonexistent. Flynn will have to pull out every trick he has to persuade (or con) a jury into declaring Dubois innocent. In the meantime, it becomes clear that Edwards’ slaying was merely the start of a deadly series; the real killer remains on the loose, and Flynn is a likely near-future target.

There’s never any doubt of Dubois’ innocence; Flynn doesn’t defend people he’s convinced are culpable. The drama here is found, instead, in watching Cavanagh’s protagonist turn inevitable defeat into ultimate success—and knock the villainous, arrogant Korn off his high horse in the process. There’s the whiff of High Noon about this tightly plotted tale, with shadows of Bad Day at Black Rock thrown in. It’s also a story charged with relevance, reminding readers of America’s halting reckoning with its persistent prejudices. Cavanagh’s novel may not require a bookmark, but you might invest in leather gloves to prevent the paper cuts that come from turning its pages too quickly.

• Endings, by Linda L. Richards (Oceanview):

The prolific Ms. Richards (Death Was in the Blood, The Indigo Factor) has—once again—reinvented herself and her writing, this time taking readers into a dark and very troubling world. Her protagonist, or antagonist (Richards leaves that distinction to each person’s value system) is likewise in the processes of remaking herself.

Written in an urgent first-person, present-tense style, Richards’ latest novel leaves the name of its lead character unrevealed. However, we do know a bit of her back story: She was once a wife and the proud mother of a 9-year-old son, at least until that boy perished in a house fire she’d caused by leaving an iron plugged in and running. Her life thus torn apart, the narrator is confronted by choices, by moral dilemmas as she gathers up the flotsam and jetsam of her past, and reassembles everything into a new shape … or is it a shadow?

Five years after her child’s demise, this formerly “nice person” has taken on a whole new identity—as a killer for hire. Other “nice” folks now employ her to cleanly remove troublesome people from their lives. As it turns out, she’s pretty good at this assassination business, staying several steps ahead of the law, never getting too involved. But then one day she learns of a serial slayer named William Atwater, who preys on children and has brought fear to California’s (fictional) San Pasado County. Atwater is thought to be responsible for the recent disappearance of a 6-year-old girl. The damaged narrator comes to the realization that her much-honed skills as a killer might be useful in tracking down someone else with blood on his hands. It’s the first time she’s gone in deadly pursuit of somebody without a paycheck waiting at the end, and she’s not exactly clear on whether its revenge or salvation she’s after.

Although Endings has been marketed as a “thriller,” it is far superior to what used to be called a “penny dreadful.” It’s a thought-provoking parable of sorts, an exploration of the costs of re-invention that asks whether the ends of an act ever really justify the means. Like Patricia Highsmith and Thomas Harris before her, Richards explores linkages between the good and the bad that are resident in the human condition. Allowing for the gender switch, I was reminded of a line from the TV series True Detective: “The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.” Because when the door is closed, we have endings—plural, not singular.

A sequel to Endings, titled Exit Strategy, is due out in May 2022.

• Nerve Attack, by S. Lee Manning (Encircle):

In my opinion, the test of a writer’s skill is rarely the debut novel; instead, it’s the novelist’s ability to climb back on the horse and pen a sophomore work that engages the reader even more elegantly. Debut novels are often written blindly, but the follow-up has to take the reader on a new journey, one that requires some raising of the bar.

Last year, surrounded by the troubling reality of COVID-19, societal lockdowns, and politicians who downplayed pandemic dangers, I enjoyed an escape thanks to the captivating Trojan Horse, former attorney Manning’s launch as a novelist. I hoped that her second book would be equally engaging, and I’m pleased to say that my wish was fulfilled. There is particular comfort to be found in the return, in Nerve Attack, of former U.S. intelligence operative Nikolai Ivanovich Petrov, aka Kolya. Here we find him being sucked back into the espionage game by a childhood friend, Dmitri Lemonsky, who Kolya sent to prison a decade ago, but who is now evidently integral to heading off a nightmarish attack by terrorists in possession of a lethal nerve agent. Before you can shout out “Novichok” and slip into a hazmat suit, the game is afoot. But can Kolya really trust Dmitri, and can he rely on his own PTSD-stressed abilities to bring what may be his final mission to a triumphant close?

As this surprises-packed story races along, we see Manning’s players zip between North America and the Russian Federation, and other points in between, hoping to prevent catastrophe. (Who knew Vermont could be so dangerous?) The author’s characterizations are deft, brushstroke in style, with the players standing resolutely upright on the page, and her description are vivid but are kept concise so the plot’s propulsion is not affected—instead, it’s enhanced. This is quite a second novel. It attacks the reader’s nerves intently, as they cling to the book as if their hands were nailed to the binding.

Other 2021 Favorites: When Ghosts Come Home, by Wiley Cash (Morrow); The Dark Hours, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown); The Nameless Ones, by John Connolly (Atria/Emily Bestler); The Night She Disappeared, by Lisa Jewell (Atria); and Billy Summers, by Stephen King (Scribner).