Your Vote Counts: Best Crime Covers, 2016

One of the first things I do at the start of every year now is create a fresh computer folder into which I begin depositing scans of especially creative and interesting covers taken from new works of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction. Twelve months later, I extract from that folder what I believe (and what other folks in the publishing business have suggested) were the genre’s most engaging book fronts, released both in the United States and Britain. Occasionally, as in 2015, the candidates are especially numerous. In other years, the picks are fewer—not necessarily as a result of less artistic talent being demonstrated in this field, but as in 2016, because there were so many novels styled quite similarly to one another, employing what have become all-too-familiar components: shadowy figures, running figures, and men or women photographed from behind.

From a preliminary lineup of almost three dozen choices, I culled out 15 finalists for The Rap Sheet’s Best Crime Fiction Cover of 2016 competition. Some of these contenders are built principally around photos, while others deserve attention for their typographical innovation or the appeal of their illustrations. Several are deliberately ominous, while others are considerably more playful in their conception. Every one of them, however, catches the eye, whether being displayed on a bookstore shelf or a Web page.

This is the ninth year The Rap Sheet has asked its discriminating readership to judge crime novel façades. Below, you will find all of the 2016 nominees—arranged alphabetically—followed by a simple electronic ballot on which you can vote for the cover you think deserves top honors. As a consequence of suspected ballot-stuffing shenanigans last year, I am limiting each poll participant this time to one chance at choosing his or her favorites; however, you can register your support for more than one cover on that single occasion. So make this opportunity count! We’ll keep the voting open here for the next week and a half, until midnight on Wednesday, January 25, after which the results will be announced.

Click on any of the jackets below to open an enlargement.

ONE THING MORE: If you think we have neglected to mention some other crime-fiction cover from 2016 that is also deserving of widespread acclaim, please post a comment about it at the end of this piece. Just be sure to include a link to where on the Web other Rap Sheet readers can see that additional cover for themselves.

Sherlock Giving Way to the Queen

Following “The Lying Detective,” last week’s frenetic and rather weird Season 4 episode of BBC One’s Sherlock—broadcast in the States under the umbrella of PBS-TV’s Masterpiece Mystery series—this coming Sunday’s installment promises still more upheaval in the lives of London crime-solvers Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. “[L]ong-buried secrets finally catch up with the Baker Street duo,” teases the Masterpiece Web site. “Someone has been playing a very long game indeed and Sherlock and John Watson face their greatest ever challenge. Is the game finally over?”

That January 15 show—the third and concluding Sherlock of the new season—is titled “The Final Problem.” If, like me, you’re confused by this fact, recalling that a previous episode, Season 2’s “The Reichenbach Fall,” was already inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story of that same name … well, I guess we’ll all just have to tune in to find out how the show’s writers have dissected Conan Doyle’s 1893 yarn for multiple purposes.

By the way, this weekend’s Sherlock is scheduled to start earlier than normal—at 7 p.m. ET/PT—after which will premiere Victoria, a seven-episode drama recalling the life and monarchy of Britain’s Queen Victoria. It stars the magnetic Jenna Coleman, previously familiar from Doctor Who and Death Comes to Pemberley, and Rufus Sewell of Zen and The Man in the High Castle fame.

READ MORE: “BBC Sherlock Canonical References—‘The Lying Detective’” (Buddy2Blogger).

Exchange Value

Nancie Clare has done a terrific job over the last few years of amassing author interviews for Speaking of Mysteries, the podcast series she created with Leslie S. Klinger. The latest victims … er, focuses of her questioning are Rennie Airth, South Africa-born writer of the John Madden historical mysteries (The Death of Kings), and Ingrid Thoft, the author of books featuring private investigator Fina Ludlow (Duplicity). Give these and Clare’s dozens of previous conversations a listen when you have the chance.

Settle in for a Long, Cold Winter’s Reading

Seeing as how I’m in the midst of a major library reorganization—relocating hundreds of non-fiction volumes from my home office into a remodeled sitting room, and packing more crime fiction onto my office shelves—the prospect of additional, new books winging through the door is rather daunting. However, my luck might be worse: I could be deprived of fresh novels to enjoy in the near future.

There seems little chance of that, after paging through publisher catalogues and researching forthcoming releases online. I already recommended, in a recent Kirkus Reviews column, seven crime, mystery, and thriller yarns—all due out in the United States over the next three months—that I think deserve special attention. But those represent the merest fraction of what is scheduled to become available, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, during that period. Below, I have compiled more than 300 entries in this genre that are soon to debut in bookstores. Some of them (such as Jane Harper’s The Dry, Dan Chaon’s Ill Will, Reed Farrel Coleman’s What You Break, Edward Marston’s Date with the Executioner, E.S. Thomson’s Dark Asylum, and Ausma Zehanat Khan’s Among the Ruins) stir my personal curiosity, while others should satisfy different tastes. This list is not intended to be comprehensive; there will be many more crime and thriller works going on sale between now and April Fool’s Day (consult The Bloodstained Bookshelf and Euro Crime for supplementary options). Enough, I hope, to please all Rap Sheet readers.

Non-fiction titles are identified below with asterisks (*). The rest are fiction.

JANUARY (U.S.):

• The Absence of Guilt, by Mark
Gimenez (Sphere)

• Afternoons in Paris, by Janice Law (Mysterious Press/Open Road)

• Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes, by Michael Sims (Bloomsbury USA)*

• The Beautiful Dead, by Belinda Bauer (Atlantic Monthly Press)

• Behind Her Eyes, by Sarah Pinborough (Flatiron)

• The Believer, by Joakim Zander (Harper)

• The Bid, by Adrian Magson (Midnight Ink)

• Big Law, by Ron Liebman (Blue Rider Press)

• Blind Man’s Bluff, by Sadie and Sophie Cuffe (Five Star)

• Blood and Bone, by V.M. Giambanco (Quercus)

• Clownfish Blues, by Tim Dorsey (Morrow)

• Coast to Coast: Private Eyes from Sea to Shining Sea, edited by Andrew McAleer and Paul D. Marks (Down & Out)

• Coco Butternut, by Joe R. Lansdale (Subterranean)

• Cold Heart, by Karen Pullen (Five Star)

• Collected Millar: The Tom Aragon Novels: Ask for Me Tomorrow; The Murder of Miranda; Mermaid, by Margaret Millar (Soho Syndicate)

• The Couturier of Milan, by Ian Hamilton (House of Anansi)

• Crimson Snow, edited by Martin Edwards (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Dangerous Ladies Affair, by Marcia Muller and
Bill Pronzini (Forge)

• Dead Secret, by Ava McCarthy (Harper)

• Death Notes, by Sarah Rayne (Severn House)

• The Death of Kings, by Rennie Airth (Viking)

• Devil’s Breath, by G.M. Malliet (Minotaur)

• Different Class, by Joanne Harris (Touchstone)

• The Dry, by Jane Harper (Flatiron)

• Duplicity, by Ingrid Thoft (Putnam)

• Everything You Want Me to Be, by Mindy Mejia (Atria/Emily Bestler)

• Falling into the Mob, by Steve Zousmer (Permanent Press)

• False Friend, by Andrew Grant (Ballantine)

• Fatal, by John Lescroart (Atria)

• Fever in the Dark, by Ellen Hart (Minotaur)

• Fever Dream, by Samanta Schweblin (Riverhead)

• Fickle, by Peter Manus (Diversion)

• The Fifth Petal, by Brunonia Barry (Crown)

• The Final Day, by William R. Forstchen (Forge)

• For Time and All Eternities, by Mette Ivie Harrison (Soho Crime)

• The Futures, by Anna Pitoniak (Lee Boudreaux)

• The Girl Before, by J.P. Delaney (Ballantine)

• The Girl in Green, by Derek B. Miller (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• The Heretic’s Creed, by Fiona Buckley (Crème de la Crime)

• Her Every Fear, by Peter Swanson (Morrow)

• Home Sweet Home, by April Smith (Knopf)

• Hope’s Peak, by Tony Healey (Thomas & Mercer)

• The House of Fame, by Oliver Harris (Harper)

• Human Acts, by Han Kang (Hogarth)

• Killing Adonis, by J.M. Donellan (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Kill the Father, by Sandrone Dazieri (Scribner)

• Kill the Next One, by Federico Axat (Text)

• K Street, by M.A. Lawson (Blue Rider Press)

• The Last Collar, by Lawrence Kelter and Frank Zafiro (Down & Out)

• Lightwood, by Steph Post (Polis)

• Little Deaths, by Emma Flint (Hachette)

• Little Heaven, by Nick Cutter (Gallery)

• Lock the Door, by Jane Holland
(Thomas & Mercer)

• Maigret at the Coroner’s, by Georges Simenon (Penguin)

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

• The Midnight Man, by David Eric Tomlinson (Tyrus)

• The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, by Lindsey Lee Johnson (Random House)

• Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City’s Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation,
by Brad Ricca (St. Martin’s Press)*

• Murder on the Moor, by Julianna Deering (Bethany House)

• My Husband’s Wife, by Jane Corry (Pamela Dorman)

• Mystery in the Channel, by Freeman Wills Crofts (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Nasty Cutter, by Tim O’Mara (Severn House)

• The Nowhere Man, by Gregg Hurwitz (Minotaur)

• The Old Man, by Thomas Perry (Mysterious Press)

• The Ottoman Conspiracy, by Thomas Ryan (Thomas & Mercer)

• Paris Spring, by James Naughtie (Overlook Press)

• A Perilous Undertaking, by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley)

• A Pilgrimage to Murder, by Paul Doherty (Crème de la Crime)

• The Prisoner, by Alex Berenson (Putnam)

• The Prometheus Man, by Scott Reardon (Mulholland)

• A Puzzle to Be Named Later, by Parnell Hall (Minotaur)

• Quick Off the Mark, by Susan Moody (Severn House)

• Rather Be the Devil, by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown)

• The Return of the Raven Mocker, by Donis Casey
(Poisoned Pen Press)

• Right Behind You, by Lisa Gardner (Dutton)

• The Ripper’s Shadow, by Laura Joh Rowland (Crooked Lane)

• The River at Night, by Erica Ferencik (Gallery/Scout Press)

• Rogues’ Holiday, by Maxwell March (Ipso)

• The Second Mrs. Hockaday, by Susan Rivers (Algonquin)

• She Stopped for Death, by by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli (Crooked Lane)

• The Sleepwalker, by Chris Bohjalian (Doubleday)

• Snowblind, by Ragnar Jónasson (Minotaur)

• Southern Gothic, by Dale Wiley (Vesuvian)

• This Is Not Over, by Holly Brown (Morrow)

• The Trapped Girl, by Robert Dugoni (Thomas & Mercer)

• Trojan, by Alan McDermott (Thomas & Mercer)

• Two Days Gone, by Randall Silvis (Sourcebooks Landmark)

• Under a Watchful Eye, by Adam Nevill (Macmillan)

• Unpunished, by Lisa Black (Kensington)

• An Unsettling Crime for Samuel Craddock, by Terry Shames
(Seventh Street)

• Very Important Corpses, by Simon R. Green (Severn House)

• Walk Away, by Sam Hawken (Mulholland)

• Where I Can See You, by Larry D. Sweazy (Seventh Street)

• World, Chase Me Down, by Andrew Hilleman (Penguin)

JANUARY (UK):

• All of a Winter’s Night, by Phil Rickman (Corvus)

• Athenian Blues, by Pol Koutsakis (Bitter Lemon Press)

• Before the Dawn, by Jake Woodhouse (Penguin)

• The Bone Field, by Simon Kernick (Century)

• The Book of Mirrors, by E.O. Chirovici (Century)

• Cast Iron, by Peter May (Riverrun)

• Corpus, by Rory Clements (Zaffre)

• Death In Shanghai, by M.J. Lee (HQ)

• Deep Blue, by Alan Judd (Simon & Schuster)

• Deep Down Dead, by Steph Broadribb (Orenda)

• Defender, by G.X. Todd (Headline)

• Essex Poison, by Ian Sansom (Fourth Estate)

• Everything You Told Me, by Lucy Dawson (Corvus)

• The Executioner of St Paul’s,
by Susanna Gregory (Sphere)

• Good Me Bad Me, by Ali Land
(Michael Joseph)

• A Harvest of Thorns, by Corban Addison (Thomas Nelson)

• The House of Four, by Barbara Nadel (Headline)

• Jericho’s War, by Gerald Seymour
(Hodder & Stoughton)

• A Life to Kill, by Matthew Hall (Mantle)

• The Ninth Grave, by Stefan Ahnhem
(Head of Zeus)

• Perfect Remains, by Helen Fields (Avon)

• Puritan, by David Hingley (Allison & Busby)

• Rattle, by Fiona Cummins (Macmillan)

• Run, by Mandasue Heller (Macmillan)

• Rupture, by Ragnar Jónasson (Orenda)

• Safe From Harm, by R.J. Bailey (Simon & Schuster)

• Sirens, by Joseph Knox (Doubleday)

• Tell Me a Lie, by C.J. Carver (Zaffre)

• The Vanishing, by Sophia Tobin (Simon & Schuster)

• Watch Her Disappear, by Eva Dolan (Harvill Secker)

• Watch Me, by Angela Clarke (Avon)

• What Dark Clouds Hide, by Anne Holt (Corvus)

FEBRUARY (U.S.):

• Amberlough, by Lara Elena Donnelly (Tor)

• Among the Ruins, by Ausma Zehanat Khan (Minotaur)

• Angel’s Flight, by Lou Cameron (Stark House/Black Gat)

• August Snow, by Stephen Mack Jones (Soho Crime)

• Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow (Pegasus)

• Blackout, by Mark Dawson (Unputdownable)

• Black Water Lilies, by Michel Bussi (Hachette)

• Blind to Sin, by Dave White (Polis)

• Bone Box, by Faye Kellerman (Morrow)

• A Book of American Martyrs, by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)

• Compromised, by James R. Scarantino (Midnight Ink)

• Copper Kettle, by Frederick Ramsay (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Crow Trap, by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur)

• Cruel Mercy, by David Mark (Blue Rider Press)

• The Dalliance of Leopards, by Stephen Alter (Arcade)

• A Darkness Absolute, by Kelley Armstrong (Minotaur)

• Dead Letters, by Caite Dolan-Leach (Random House)

• A Death in the Dales, by Frances Brody (Minotaur)

• Death of a Ghost, by M.C. Beaton (Grand Central)

• Desert Vengeance, by Betty Webb (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Desperation Road, by Michael Farris Smith (Lee Boudreaux)

• The Devil Crept In, by Ania Ahlborn (Gallery)

• The Dime, by Kathleen Kent (Mulholland)

• A Divided Spy, by Charles Cumming (St. Martin’s Press)

• The English Agent, by Phillip DePoy (Minotaur)

• Envy the Dead, by Robert J. Randisi (Down & Out)

• Facials Can Be Fatal, by Nancy J. Cohen (Five Star)

• A Falling Knife, by Andrew Case (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Fifth Element, by Jørgen Brekke (Minotaur)

• The Freedom Broker, by K.J. Howe (Quercus)

• The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Moonstone’s Curse, by Sam Siciliano (Titan)

• Garden of Lamentations, by Deborah Crombie (Morrow)

• The German, by James Patrick Hunt
(Five Star)

• The Good Daughter, by Alexandra Burt (Berkley)

• Gunmetal Gray, by Mark Greaney (Berkley)

• Hellhound On My Trail, by J.D.
Rhoades (Polis)

• In the Shadow of Lakecrest, by Elizabeth Blackwell (Lake Union)

• I See You, by Clare Mackintosh (Berkley)

• Koreatown Blues, by Mark Rogers (Brash)

• The Last Night at Tremore Beach, by Mikel Santiago (Atria)

• Leon’s Legacy, by Lono Waiwaiole (Down & Out)

• The Lioness Is the Hunter, by Loren D. Estleman (Forge)

• The Lost Woman, by Sara Blaedel (Grand Central)

• Lucidity, by David Carnoy (Overlook Press)

• Maigret and the Old Lady, by George Simenon (Penguin)

• Marked for Revenge, by Emelie Schepp (Mira)

• Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars, by Miranda Emmerson (Harper)

• Most Dangerous Place, by James Grippando (Harper)

• The Murder of Willie Lincoln, by Burt Solomon (Forge)

• The Night Bird, by Brian Freeman (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Nightwalker, by Sebastian Fitzek (Pegasus)

• Old Bones, by Trudy Nan Boyce (Putnam)

• The Origins of Benjamin Hackett, by Gerald M. O’Connor
(Down & Out)

• Outside the Law, by Phillip Thompson (Brash)

• The Possessions, by Erin Moon (Harper)

• Prayer for the Dead, by James Oswald (Crooked Lane)

• The Proud Sinner, by Priscilla Royal (Poisoned Pen Press)

• Racing the Devil, by Charles Todd (Morrow)

• Road to Purgatory, by Max Allan Collins (Brash)

• Rush of Blood, by Mark Billingham (Atlantic Monthly Press)

• Rusty Puppy, by Joe R. Lansdale (Mulholland)

• A Separation, by Katie Kitamura (Riverhead)

• Shadows on the Lake, by Giovanni Cocco and Amneris
Magella (Penguin)

• Sherlock Holmes and the Eisendorf Enigma, by Larry Millett (University of Minnesota Press)

• The Shimmering Road, by Hester Young (Putnam)

• Shining City, by Tom Rosenstiel (Ecco)

• Six Four, by Hideo Yokoyama (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

• Snatch, by Gregory Mcdonald (Hard Case Crime)

• Spook Street, by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)

• Swann’s Lake of Despair, by Charles Salzberg (Down & Out)

• Swiss Vendetta, by Tracee de Hahn (Minotaur)

• The 12.30 from Croydon, by Freeman Wills Crofts
(Poisoned Pen Press)

• Under the Knife, by Kelly Parsons (St. Martin’s Press)

• The Undesired, by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir (Minotaur)

• The Unseeing, by Anna Mazzola (Sourcebooks Landmark)

• Universal Harvester, by John Darnielle (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

• War, Spies & Bobby Sox, by Libby Fischer Hellmann (Red Herrings)

• What You Break, by Reed Farrel Coleman (Putnam)

• Where the Lost Girls Go, by R.J. Noonan (Crooked Lane)

• Whirlwind, by Hilary Norman (Severn House)

• Winterlong, by Mason Cross (Pegasus)

• The Winter Over, by Matthew Iden
(Thomas & Mercer)

• Zodiac, by Sam Wilson (Pegasus)

FEBRUARY (UK):

• Agents of the State, by Mike
Nicol (Old Street)

• All the Missing Girls, by Megan
Miranda (Atlantic)

• The Black Sheep, by Sophie McKenzie (Simon & Schuster)

• The Caller, by Chris Carter (Simon & Schuster)

• The Chalk Pit, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)

• Cursed, by Thomas Enger (Orenda)

• The Damselfly, by S.J.I. Holliday (Black and White)

• Date with the Executioner, by Edward Marston (Allison & Busby)

• Dead Girls Dancing, by Graham Masterton (Head of Zeus)

• The Doll Funeral, by Kate Hamer (Faber and Faber)

• The Draughtsman, by Robert Lautner (Borough Press)

• Every Pretty Thing, by Chris Mooney (Penguin)

• Exposure, by Aga Lesiewicz (Macmillan)

• The Fatal Tree, by Jake Arnott (Sceptre)

• Incendium, by A.D. Swanston (Bantam Press)

• The Intrusions, by Stav Sherez (Faber and Faber)

• The Killing Bay, by Chris Ould (Titan)

• The Mermaid’s Scream, by Kate Ellis (Piatkus)

• My Sister’s Bones, by Nuala Ellwood (Penguin)

• The Name of the Game Is a Kidnapping, by Keigo Higashino (Vertical)

• Purged, by Peter Laws (Allison & Busby)

• Ragdoll, by Daniel Cole (Trapeze)

• The Riviera Express, by T.P. Fielden (HQ)

• Stasi Wolf, by David Young (Zaffre)

• Under the Harrow, by Flynn Berry (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

• What You Don’t Know, by JoAnn Chaney (Mantle)

• The Women of Baker Street, by Michelle Birkby (Pan)

• Written in Bones, by James Oswald (Michael Joseph)

• Wrong Place, by Michelle Davies (Macmillan)

• The Wychford Poisoning Case, by Anthony Berkeley
(Collins Crime Club)

MARCH (U.S.):

• Anatomy of Innocence: Testimonies of the Wrongfully Convicted, edited by Laura Caldwell and Leslie S. Klinger (Liveright)*

• The Ashes of London, by Andrew Taylor (HarperCollins)

• The Axeman of New Orleans: The True Story, by Miriam C. Davis (Chicago Review Press)*

• Bad Boy Boogie, by Thomas Pluck (Down & Out)

• The Black Tortoise, by Ronald Tierney (Raven)

• Blue Light Yokohama, by Nicolás Obregón (Minotaur)

• Bone White, by Wendy Corsi Staub (Morrow)

• Bound by Mystery: Celebrating 20 Years of Poisoned Pen Press, edited by Diane DiBiase (Poisoned Pen Press)

• The Bridge, by Stuart Prebble (Mulholland)

• Bum Luck, by Paul Levin (Thomas & Mercer)

• Catalina Eddy: A Novel in Three Decades, by Daniel Pyne
(Blue Rider Press)

• Celine, by Peter Heller (Knopf)

• Coney Island Avenue, by J.L. Abramo (Down & Out)

• Conviction, by Julia Dahl (Minotaur)

• The Cutaway, by Christina Kovac (Atria/37 INK)

• Cut to the Bone, by Alex Caan (Skyhorse)

• Dead Man Switch, by Matthew Quirk (Mulholland)

• A Death by Any Other Name, by Tessa Arlen (Minotaur)

• The Devil’s Feast, by M.J. Carter (Putnam)

• The Devil’s Triangle, by Catherine Coulter and J.T. Ellison (Gallery)

• Duplicity, by Jane Haseldine (Kensington)

• Dying on the Vine, by Marla Cooper (Minotaur)

• The Fall of Lisa Bellow, by Susan Perabo (Simon & Schuster)

• Find Me, by J.S. Monroe (Mira)

• The Forgotten Girls, by Owen Laukkanen (Putnam)

• Girl in Disguise, by Greer Macallister (Sourcebooks Landmark)

• Hap and Leonard: Blood and Lemonade, by Joe R. Lansdale (Tachyon)

• Ill Will, by Dan Chaon (Ballantine)

• Imperial Valley, by Johnny Shaw
(Thomas & Mercer)

• In Farleigh Field, by Rhys Bowen
(Lake Union)

• In This Grave Hour, by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper)

• Lenin’s Roller Coaster, by David Downing (Soho Crime)

• Lola, by Melissa Scrivner Love (Crown)

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

• Make Them Pay, by Allison Brennan (St. Martin’s Paperbacks)

• Mangrove Lightning, by Randy Wayne White (Putnam)

• Mississippi Blood, by Greg Iles (Morrow)

• Mister Memory, by Marcus Sedgwick (Pegasus)

• Murder on the Serpentine, by Anne Perry (Ballantine)

• Murder, Stage Left, by Robert Goldsborough (Mysterious Press/
Open Road)

• My Darling Detective, by Howard Norman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

• Never Let You Go, by Chevy Stevens (St. Martin’s Press)

• The New York Times Book of Crime: More Than 166 Years of Covering the Beat, by Kevin Flynn (Sterling)*

• One by One, by Sarah Cain (Crooked Lane)

• Only the Truth, by Adam Croft (Thomas & Mercer)

• The Outsider, by Anthony Franze (Minotaur)

• Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly, by Adrian McKinty (Seventh Street)

• Quicksand, by Malin Persson Giolito (Other Press)

• The Road to Ithaca, by Ben Pastor (Bitter Lemon Press)

• Saratoga Payback, by Stephen Dobyns (Blue Rider Press)

• Say Nothing, by Brad Parks (Dutton)

• The Secrets You Keep, by Kate White (Harper)

• Signature Wounds, by Kirk Russell (Thomas & Mercer)

• Silent Approach, by Bobby Cole (Thomas & Mercer)

• A Simple Favor, by Darcey Bell (Harper)

• Skeleton God, by Eliot Pattison (Minotaur)

• The Trophy Child, by Paula Daly (Grove Press)

• A Twist of the Knife, by Becky Masterman (Minotaur)

• Unquiet Spirits, by Bonnie MacBird (Collins Crime Club)

• Vicious Circle, by C.J. Box (Putnam)

• The Violated, by Bill Pronzini (Bloomsbury USA)

• Wait for Dark, by Kay Hooper (Berkley)

• The Weight of This World, by David Joy (Putnam)

• The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, by Lyndsay Faye (Mysterious Press)

• The Widow’s House, by Carol Goodman (Morrow)

• The Will to Kill, by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Titan)

• Wrath, by T.R. Ragan (Thomas & Mercer)

MARCH (UK):

• The Adventuress, by Arthur B. Reeve (Collins Crime Club)

• Arrowood, by Mick Finlay (HQ)

• Bryant & May: Wild Chamber, by Christopher Fowler (Doubleday)

• A Dangerous Crossing, by Rachel Rhys (Doubleday)

• Dark Asylum, by E.S. Thomson (Constable)

• Deadly Game, by Matt Johnson (Orenda)

• Death at Melrose Hall, by David Dickinson (Constable)

• Ed’s Dead, by Russel D. McLean (Saraband)

• Falling Creatures, by Katherine Stansfield (Allison & Busby)

• Follow Me Down, by Sherri Smith (Titan)

• Follow My Leader, by M.J. Arlidge (Michael Joseph)

• The Fourth Victim, by Mari Jungstedt (Corgi)

• The G-String Murders, by Gypsy Rose Lee (Saraband)

• A Handful of Ashes, by Rob McCarthy (Mulholland)

• Hoffer, by Tim Glencross (John Murray)

• The Legacy, by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir (Hodder & Stoughton)

• Let the Dead Speak, by Jane Casey (HarperCollins)

• The Long Drop, by Denise Mina (Harvill Secker)

• The Owl Always Hunts at Night, by Samuel Bjork (Doubleday)

• Parallel Lines, by Steven Savile (Titan)

• The Pictures, by Guy Bolton (Oneworld)

• Quieter Than Killing, by Sarah Hilary (Headline)

• Sherlock Holmes in Context, by Sam Naidu (Palgrave Macmillan)*

• The Silence Between Breaths, by Cath Staincliffe (Constable)

• Six Stories, by Matt Wesolowski (Orenda)

• The Surgeon’s Case, by E.G. Rodford (Titan)

• Tattletale, by Sarah J. Naughton (Trapeze)

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

• When It Grows Dark, by Jørn Lier Horst (Sandstone Press)

• The Witchfinder’s Sister, by Beth Underdown (Viking)

So, have I missed anything? Please feel free to suggest other promising, upcoming crime and thriller works in the Comments section at the bottom of this post.