Crime – Book and Author News

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup | Books

Tony Ramos — Fri, 15 May 2026 16:47:25 +0000

Honey by Imani Thompson (Borough, £16.99)
Thompson’s smart and incisive debut centres on Yrsa, a young Black woman studying for a sociology PhD and teaching undergraduates at Cambridge. Irritated by her solipsistic, over-privileged students and tired of situationships, she’s fed up with life, and men in particular. Her first killing – that of a much older supervisor who reneges on his promise to leave his wife for a colleague, and steals her research in the process – is an accident, but Yrsa, who has catastrophically poor impulse control, enjoys the sensation and, more importantly, gets away with it. “It’s theory in action”: as victims pile up, her academic research provides a spurious rationale for justifiable anger, as with Hugh, who used her for bragging rights (“Black girl magic, 20 points”). But somebody is on to her, and things are starting to spin out of control … The best kind of campus novel, satirical and razor-sharp, crossed with a crime story: Thompson is an exciting new voice.

Quite Ugly One Evening by Chris Brookmyre (Abacus, £22)
Thirty years after Brookmyre’s debut, his latest novel to feature journalist Jack Parlabane makes a tonal return to his earlier, more irreverent style. Now 60, Jack feels increasingly like a “Boomer Ambassador” to the younger colleagues who are snapping at his heels. With his job on the line, he agrees to investigate a cold case: the death, 40 years earlier, of an MI5 operative. It’s thought to be connected to the Maskyn family, creators of much-loved but now contentious Thunderbirds-style TV series The Imaginators, and Parlabane finds himself on the transatlantic cruise liner hosting the 60th anniversary convention as “several hundred emotionally stunted fanboy incels alongside an over-remunerated family of nepo babies, trust fund pukes and outright fascists” duke it out over The Imaginators’ legacy. Masterfully plotted and scalpel-sharp, this is a riotously good read that uses a Golden Age set-up to take aim at the culture wars, while also providing a thoroughly satisfying mystery.

The Final Chapter by CB Everett (Simon & Schuster, £18.99)
Crime writer Martyn Waites’s second novel as CB Everett is a metafictional tour de force: the story of literary superstar Jon Durward, who achieved critical acclaim, commercial success, well-regarded film adaptations and a Booker prize before he mysteriously disappeared in 2009. When a manuscript turns up purporting to be Durward’s work, his erstwhile best friend, the far less successful writer CB Everett, agrees to edit and annotate it for publication. That’s what’s presented here, and it’s clear from the publisher’s disavowing note that the project has not gone as intended. Durward’s novel Russian Doll is a bog-standard thriller, but peppered with in-jokes and clues as to what happened to him, and, as the story of the two men’s souring relationship is revealed in the notes, Everett’s rueful, blokey tone hardens into something altogether more ambiguous. Buckle up for a darkly funny mystery about friendship, rivalry, ambition and – wannabe novelists look away now – the more soul-destroying aspects of authorship.

The Hollow Boys by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper, £18.99)
Set in Appalachia, prize-winning Scottish author Ashkanani’s latest novel is a masterpiece of smalltown horror, although the cause is in no way supernatural. Blighted by poverty, drug addiction, diseased crops, a mysterious beast that slaughters dogs and an underground coal seam fire that grows ever closer, the town of Aurora seems doomed – and as if this weren’t enough, nine-year-old friends Danny and Will drowned in a boating accident 10 months earlier, their bodies never recovered. When Danny reappears, rejoicing swiftly becomes concern when he insists that he is Will. Not only does he seem unable to say what happened, he has injuries that predate the “drowning” and point to a history of abuse. The Hollow Boys has a well-constructed, propulsive plot and tremendous atmosphere, but it’s the complex, well-drawn characters, led by police chief John Deacon, who is doggedly loyal to the place despite considerable problems of his own, that give the story true depth.

Shrink Solves Murder by Philippa Perry (Hutchinson Heinemann, £18.99)
The first novel from psychotherapist and nonfiction bestseller Perry bears all the hallmarks of a Richard Osman-style cosy: a small community with a picturesque setting; prickly-but-lovable middle-class types who turn to crime-solving in later life. Here, the solver is entertainingly filterless therapist Patricia Phillips, who lives on East Sussex’s South Downs with Dave the cat, and swims in the sea every morning. When her client Henry Clayton’s body is found below cliffs near the notorious suicide spot Beachy Head, the police assume he has taken his own life. Pat, however, disagrees, and, with the help of her eccentric retired neighbour Pritchard, starts to investigate. Suspects include an unscrupulous developer bent on despoiling the coastline with a golf course, a pair of swingers and Henry’s controlling boyfriend, in an enjoyable blend of mystery and gentle satire.

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The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup | Thrillers

Tony Ramos — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:18:57 +0000

The Keeper by Tana French (Viking, £16.99)
The final book in French’s Cal Hooper trilogy sees the retired Chicago detective drawn into a power struggle for the future of the small Irish town he has made his home. Ardnakelty is a place where everyone is interconnected, with grudges and loyalties lasting for generations, and Hooper, now engaged to local widow Lena and mentor to 16-year-old Trey, is becoming a part of its fabric. When the body of Rachel Holohan, girlfriend of the son of local bigshot Tommy Moynihan, is recovered from the river, the consensus is suicide, but Trey convinces Hooper to investigate. Tommy doesn’t like people interfering in his business, especially when it emerges that Rachel was concerned about his plans for the town. An immersive, slow-burn of a book, as much about the march of time and the inevitably changing nature of Irish rural life as it is about solving a crime, The Keeper is dense, compelling and superbly atmospheric.

The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman (Virago, £20)
Set in a Chelsea boarding house in 1953, Garman’s debut novel opens with Jimmy Sullivan – who “wore spiv’s shoes and spoke in unmistakable Cockney tones” – bleeding to death under the dispassionate gaze of the landlady and her lodgers. The big Victorian house, presided over by bohemian literary widow Honor Wilson, is home to a debutante fallen on hard times, a wannabe writer, a young cinema usher with social aspirations, and a Jewish poet who managed to escape Hitler but lost his wife and child in the process. All have secrets, but none more than Honor herself, and the arrival of Jimmy, who claims to be the son of an old family retainer, threatens them all. This is not only an excellent mystery, but an evocative portrayal of a group of people displaced socially and geographically by war and its aftermath, with the moral and topographical landscape of 1950s London superbly rendered.

Mrs Shim Is a Killer by Kang Jiyoung, translated by Paige Morris (Doubleday, £14.99)
Episodic but with an overarching plot about the rivalry between two detective agencies that specialise in drastic solutions to their clients’ problems, Korean bestseller Kang’s English-language debut is a droll thriller featuring an unassuming middle-aged widow and mother of two who becomes a contract killer. Mrs Shim, in need of money after losing her job in a butcher’s shop, puts her knife skills to good use at the Smile Detective Agency; her success leaves its nearest competitor, the Happy Agency, rattled. Told through a diverse series of characters, including Mrs Shim’s son who, needing money for university, also becomes a murderer-for-hire, this is a story of conflicting loyalties. It can be hard to keep track of the large cast, and emotional connection to the characters is limited, but it’s a bizarre and fascinating read, with the puzzle pieces slowly locking together for a spectacular final standoff.

A Killer in the Family by Amin Ahmad (Hutchinson Heinemann, £16.99)
Ahmad’s debut novel begins in Mumbai, where dreamy, immature Ali Azeem’s family, their fortunes declining, are desperate to marry him off; they can’t believe their luck when phenomenally rich New York property developer Abbas Khan comes looking for a match for his younger daughter, psychiatric-hospital doctor Maryam. Ali agrees, but finds his prospective sister-in-law, Farhan, six years older and divorced, far more attractive – and the feeling turns out to be mutual. Now living in a grand New York apartment, Ali, very much an innocent abroad, misses red flags left, right and centre; he fails to realise that Farhan’s brash exterior cloaks damage and that Abbas’s urbane veneer hides a dangerous man, and finds his new wife simply unknowable. There’s also the matter of the mysterious postcards, and the growing likelihood that the Khans may be linked to a serial killer. Ali and Farhan pass the narrative baton between them for a propulsive thriller with an enjoyable side order of social satire.

The Drowning Place by Sarah Hilary (Harvill, £16.99)
Trauma has caused paranormal social contagion in Hilary’s fictitious small town in the picturesque Peak District. Aged 11, Joseph Ashe was the sole survivor of a school bus crash in which nine children and three adults drowned in a reservoir; now, 17 years later and a detective sergeant, he still talks to his dead best friend. Other residents sense the dead children, too, and even newly transferred DI Laurie Bower is affected, seeing flashes of her dead younger sister. The booby traps are not only emotional but physical, the former home of one drowned girl having been rigged with a concealed crossbow – and no sooner do Ashe and Bower start figuring out what’s going on, a young couple are found shot. As well as creating compelling mysteries, Hilary is especially good at the delicate but merciless filleting of PTSD, guilt and grief, and here she excels: a flying start to what promises to be a truly excellent new series.

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The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup | Books

Tony Ramos — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 09:19:12 +0000

Killing Me Softly by Christie Watson (Phoenix, £20)
In her second psychological thriller, Watson, a former nurse, perfectly captures the frenetic atmosphere and mordant humour of an under-resourced A&E department in a city hospital. The plot revolves around three strongly drawn characters: senior nurse Aoife, whose extramarital trysts with clinical lead Michael help keep her sane, and whose new intake includes the naive, sanctimonious Eden and the more experienced but alarmingly cynical Sophie. After their arrival, the death rate spikes: long wait times may play a part, but Eden makes mistakes and Sophie has an attitude problem … The conclusion is surprising yet authentic in a story that is ultimately less about individual culpability than the policy failures of successive governments.

Whidbey by T Kira Madden (Tinder, £20)
Native Hawaiian writer Madden’s powerful debut novel explores both the aftermath of child sexual abuse and the commodification of trauma. It’s summer 2013, and former reality TV star Linzie King is publicising her ghostwritten memoir of abuse at the hands of Calvin Boyer, the adult son of the school bus driver. It contains information about Boyer’s other victims, among them Birdie Chang who, unhappy with the appropriation of her story and trying to escape media scrutiny, has fled Brooklyn for Whidbey Island in Washington’s Puget Sound. Linzie is grappling with the narrative produced by the ghostwriter – the truth is considerably more complicated – and Boyer’s mother, who has always defended him, blaming his “sickness”, is struggling to process her feelings after he is deliberately run over and killed. A satisfying mystery, although whodunnit takes second place to Madden’s unflinching, unsettling examination of how girls are conditioned into compliance, and the discrepancy between lived experience and society’s preferred “victim narrative”.

Based on a True Story by Sarah Vaughan (Simon & Schuster, £16.99)
Vaughan’s sixth novel is set on a Cornish cliff, in the grand home of bestselling children’s author and national treasure Dame Eleanor Kingman. Preparations for her 70th birthday party are under way, and a film crew is making what everyone assumes will be a hagiographic documentary, although we know from the flash-forward prologue that nothing goes according to plan. Kingman’s three daughters, who have failed to escape their mother’s shadow, arrive with troubles of their own, and the ruthlessly ambitious writer has made several enemies on the way to the top. There’s the danger that an early, unpublished novel containing autobiographical details may reappear, giving the lie to Kingman’s carefully curated backstory; someone is sending her threatening emails and, before long, the air is thick with the sound of chickens coming home to roost. Expertly plotted and crackling with tension, this is dysfunctional family psychodrama at its unputdownable best.

The Dangerous Stranger by Simon Mason (Riverrun, £16.99)
The fifth in Mason’s Oxford-set series sees his DI odd couple – Ryan Wilkins, the white, trailer park-reared offspring of a violent father, and Ray Wilkins, his altogether more respectable and better-groomed partner of Nigerian heritage – investigating a death at a hotel housing asylum seekers. As attitudes towards immigration harden, racists are emboldened, and when rioting leads to the immolation of a young man, the victim is assumed to be a refugee. When he turns out to be a French tourist, it’s clear that the case is more complicated and more potentially embarrassing than originally thought, and the chief constable, who dislikes the detective duo’s often unconventional methods, is soon breathing down their necks. Meanwhile, the former putative victim, a 15-year-old African boy who speaks no English, is on the run, starving and terrified. Purists may balk at some procedural improbabilities, but Mason is a superb storyteller, accurately depicting the deprivation that coexists with Oxford’s dreaming spires.

Astronaut! by Oana Aristide (Wildfire, £14.99)
Aristide’s second novel is set in Romania, her country of birth, in 1989; it’s a shoddy, drab world of shortages, informers and incessant televised worship of the communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu. When bodies start turning up in different locations with unexplained wounds, police officer Constantin must solve the case – but how to investigate when, officially, criminals only exist in capitalist countries? A colleague’s suggestion that a bear is responsible is seized on with alacrity. The only problem is that this imaginary perpetrator proves impossible to catch, and the bodies keep turning up. Meanwhile, eight-year-old Lia finds herself drawn into a neighbour’s subversive activities. Part thriller, part fable, this is fascinating, funny and very moving – highly recommended.

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The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup | Books

Tony Ramos — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 23:07:15 +0000

The Barbecue at No 9 by Jennie Godfrey (Hutchinson Heinemann, £16.99)
Most of the action in Godfrey’s second novel takes place during the Live Aid concert on 13 July 1985, at a barbecue hosted by the Gordon family in a new-build cul-de-sac in an unspecified part of England. As neighbours arrive and music plays, we gradually learn the backstories of the main characters, from teenage Hanna, who is planning to run away from her pale, preoccupied father and house-proud, socially ambitious mother, to mysterious Rita, newly arrived from Australia to begin a new life, and shell-shocked ex-soldier Steve, whose paranoia is exacerbated by the shadowy figure watching the street. Like Godfrey’s debut, The List of Suspicious Things, this is not so much a whodunnit as a wonderful slow-burn story about friendship, community, and secrets within families, the choices we make and the lies we tell to protect ourselves and others, with the bonus of a terrific built-in soundtrack and a nostalgic vibe.

A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage by MK Oliver (Hemlock, £16.99)
Former headteacher Oliver’s first novel centres on yummy mummy Lalla Rook, who lives with her banker husband Stephen and their young children Nelly and Nathan in the leafy north London suburb of Muswell Hill. It’s a privileged existence, but Lalla, who is not only admirably resourceful but also manipulative and utterly lacking in empathy, has her eye on a larger house in considerably pricier Hampstead as well as a place at an exclusive school for Nelly, who is already demonstrating that the antisocial apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Murder, body disposal, blackmail – Lalla will stop at nothing to achieve her ends, but things get complicated when it begins to looks as if the intruder she dispatched with a kitchen knife minutes before the start of four-year-old Nathan’s birthday party was trying to uncover her murky past. Told with gusto, plus wonderfully twisty plotting and lashings of lifestyle porn, this satirical thriller is the perfect antidote to the winter blues.

A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford (Bantam, £16.99)
Set in the late 1970s in the Possilpark district of Glasgow, an area riven by poverty, crime and sectarianism, Crawford’s superb debut is told from two points of view: 12-year-old Janey, who is walking her dog when she stumbles upon the body of a young woman; and her grandmother Maggie, who has cared for Janey since she was rescued, as a baby, from the gas explosion that killed her immediate family. Janey is afraid to tell the police all she knows, but finds herself caught up in the machinations of the grownup world. Maggie, who has secrets of her own, is desperate to protect her granddaughter, but poverty and lack of choice make her vulnerable, and the dead woman has connections to a well-known criminal family. A well-observed, well-told account of trauma, grief and the concomitant magical thinking, this coming-of-age mystery has flashes of humour and pathos that provide fuel for real suspense.

Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo, translated by Joheun Lee (Picador, £14.99)
Given that “parasocial” was Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year for 2025, the first novel from this young Korean writer to be translated into English is nothing if not topical. Four women, each with an obsessive imagined connection to a handsome K-pop idol, band together to kidnap him, holding him captive in a mansion in the mountains surrounding downtown Seoul. As their backstories unfold, we learn the reasons for their delusions of intimacy with this complete stranger whom they compete to nurture and protect, but things become increasingly complicated when the son of the ringleader’s old acquaintance shows up unexpectedly. It’s a terrific premise, and although the storytelling is somewhat convoluted, Lee Heejoo does a wonderful job creating an unhinged, febrile tension and ramping up the sense of foreboding. However, the translation, which is stilted, overliteral and occasionally downright confusing, does the story no favours.

A Stranger in Corfu by Alex Preston (Canongate, £18.99)
For his latest novel, Preston has repurposed the tiny Ionian island of Vidos, from which both Corfu and Albania are visible, as “spyland”. It’s a sunlit version of the purgatory of Mick Herron’s Slough House, where compromised or burnt-out members of MI6 are “neither detained or precisely free”. In 1995, six years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nina Woolf is sent there, suffering from PTSD. When shots are fired at her and an older agent as they walk in the woods, she accepts the explanation of trigger-happy Corfiot poachers, but when another of the old guard is found drowned, it looks as if the past may, at last, be catching up. The story then rewinds 50 years to a group of idealistic Oxford students who resolve to dedicate their lives to advancing the cause of communism from within the British establishment. This story of betrayal, disillusionment and the terrible cost of adherence to ideology is both compelling and humane.

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I’m a crime writer. Here’s why we make the best Traitors contestants | Crime fiction

Tony Ramos — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 14:13:09 +0000

This time last year a rumour swept through the close-knit British crime-writing community, not whispered in a quiet moment in the billiard room but shared on group chats and message boards. The producers of The Traitors were recruiting contestants for 2026, and wanted one of us to take part. Of course they did! The Traitors is a controlled, lower-stakes, stylised version of the golden age country house whodunnit, which is itself a controlled, lower-stakes, stylised version of real-life murder. It is crime writers’ job to examine the dark side of human behaviour. Betrayal of trust and manipulation are all in a day’s work. We often write from multiple perspectives, identifying with victim, perp and detective, giving us a unique kind of empathy. We spent the rest of the year wondering who it would be. (I didn’t get the call.)

Last November, in that howling no man’s land between the finale of Celebrity Traitors and the transmission of series four, I went along with 13 fellow crime novelists to the Traitors Live Experience in Covent Garden. Despite being professional pattern-finders with highly tuned powers of observation, none of us at the replica round table guessed that the Chosen One was among us, and had already completed her stint on the real thing.

Harriet Tyce, the barrister turned thriller writer, is perfect for the show, says former detective and bestselling novelist Clare Mackintosh. “The cat-and-mouse game in crime and thriller novels isn’t only between detective and villain, it’s between author and reader – who will reach the truth first? Whether Traitor or Faithful, a crime writer makes a formidable opponent.”

Mark Edwards, Traitors superfan and author of The Wasp Trap, agrees. “When talking to my family about The Traitors I referred to the players as ‘characters’, a slip that proves I watch it in the same way I read crime fiction. Writing crime novels makes us very good at games. That’s why Harriet was able to see that Hugo was a Traitor immediately.”

Ah yes, the takedown that launched a thousand memes. Harriet’s uncloaking of Traitor Hugo in episode three was masterly. It’s one thing to have your suspicions, another to present them convincingly. Her speech was the stuff of the courtroom dramas she writes; eloquent, controlled, incisive. “It has occurred to me from the moment that I found out that you were a barrister that you would be a prime target for the Traitors to take out,” she said, as the nation watched with barely controlled lust. “You have experience at cross-examination, you’re good at presenting your case and you’re highly articulate.” She closed with: “Those are hard facts, as far as I’m concerned.” In Ardross Castle, hard facts are thinner on the ground than protective Shields, but by presenting theory as data, Harriet made sure it became fact. Misdirection is all about delivering near-truths with such panache that the reader doesn’t question it. In a show in which so many banishments are vibes-based (“I’m voting for yourself because you took the last croissant at breakfast”), a novelist’s persuasive skills are powerful.

‘Prime target’ … Hugo, on left, in The Traitors. Photograph: BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry

Harriet is, in Traitors parlance, “playing a blinder”. (We will overlook her misstep with Ross, the most doomed Faithful ever. All good sleuths have a fatal flaw.) I’m not sure writing mysteries automatically qualifies one to excel at the game. We spend most of our time alone, typing and wearing fleeces covered in pet hair. Yes, I practice to deceive, but it takes me months to get those plot twists down on paper. In conversation, I fumble my words and, like Stephen the Traitor, I’m a blusher. That said, authors do develop soft skills that might equip them well for life in the castle. In my time at literary festivals and libraries, I’ve learned how to engage a room of strangers quickly. “To be a successful author you have to be comfortable talking to people and making them like you,” says Edwards. “The players who are good at networking, like Jessie, are far less likely to be banished.”

That’s our suitability for the Faithfuls established, but what of the dark side? “To make twists work,” says Edwards, “we have to be able to create characters who are good at lying and pretending to be good guys. These baddies are always the most fun characters to write, and I think we would all relish the chance to be one of them, if only for a few weeks.”

When we played the Traitors Live, Harriet began as a Faithful but was recruited as a Traitor halfway through the game. If she crosses the floor in the show, the day job will give her further advantage. Crime writers love playing with dramatic irony. We are puppet masters, never happier than when the readers know something the characters don’t. What is that if not the essence of Traitorhood? That, and the inability to resist a chance to make mischief.

The Night Stairs by Erin Kelly is published by Vintage in July. To support the Guardian, pre-order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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The Long Shoe by Bob Mortimer audiobook review – typically quirky cosy crime | Books

Tony Ramos — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 02:36:50 +0000

Matt Giles, the thirtysomething protagonist of The Long Shoe, is having a run of bad luck. Shortly after losing his job as a bathroom salesman, he learns that he and his girlfriend Harriet are being evicted from their flat. Can life get any worse? Apparently, it can. Matt finds a note from Harriet saying she has left him and that he shouldn’t contact her. But then he receives a call from a stranger offering him a job that comes with a luxury apartment, leading him to wonder if his fortunes are turning.

Perhaps Harriet will come back if she knows they have a fancy new home. The third mystery novel from comedian Bob Mortimer comes with his trademark quirky touches including a talking animal in the form of Matt’s cat, Goodmonson, and whimsical metaphors; for Matt, trying to place a familiar face is akin to “trying to find a mouse’s handbag in a builder’s skip”.

The narrative is built around the alternating viewpoints of Matt, Harriet and their neighbour Carol, a sharp-tongued divorcee. While Mortimer reads Matt’s chapters, Arabella Weir gives voice to Carol, whose liking for a younger man frequently lands her in trouble. Harriet, who we soon discover hasn’t left Matt at all but has been the victim of a crime, is read by Diane Morgan, whose delivery is as drily funny as you’d expect from the star of Philomena Cunk. If the plot strains under the weight of numerous contrivances, the surreal humour and sharp performances will be enough to keep you listening.

Available via Simon & Schuster, 7hr 25min

Further listening

Every Kind of People: A Journey into the Heart of Care Work
Kathryn Faulke, Penguin Audio, 9hr 48min
By turns poignant, funny and uplifting, this memoir by Faulke, a home care-worker, lifts the lid on the lives of the old and infirm and the people who tirelessly tend to them. Narrated by Ayesha Antoine.

The Mighty Red
Louise Erdrich, Little, Brown Audio, 11hr 27min
Marin Ireland reads this sweeping story of secrets and regret from the author of The Plague of Doves. In the Red River valley in North Dakota, a bride and groom with very different expectations for the future are set to marry.

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The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup | Books

Tony Ramos — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 20:54:47 +0000

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Canongate, £9.99)
The award-winning Australian writer’s third adult novel begins with a lone woman, Rowan, washed up on a remote island between Tasmania and Antarctica. Shearwater is a research outpost, home to the global seed vault created as a bulwark against climate catastrophe and to colonies of seals, penguins and birds. For eight years, Dominic Salt and his children have lived there, but dangerously rising sea levels mean that they, and the vault, will shortly be evacuated. Dominic cannot understand why Rowan has ended up on Shearwater, and Rowan is mystified by the absence of the scientists and researchers, about whom the family are tight-lipped – and the island’s communication centre has been mysteriously sabotaged, isolating them still further. McConaghy writes beautifully about the natural world and expertly ratchets up the tension, as mutual suspicion increases and secrets are gradually revealed. This is a powerful read that encompasses not only grief, sacrifice and perseverance in the face of disaster, but also survival strategies and their concomitant moral dilemmas.

Darkrooms by Rebecca Hannigan (Sphere, £20)
When chaotic kleptomaniac Caitlin returns to her small Irish home town after the death of Kathleen, the mother from whom she has been estranged for many years, she’s pleased to be welcomed by the Branaghs, friendly neighbours she remembers from childhood. Less pleasant is being forced to confront past traumas, including the disappearance of her nine-year-old friend Roisin from a local wood 20 years earlier. Caitlin feels guilty about this, as does Roisin’s older sister Deedee, who is sure that Caitlin is still hiding something. Having joined the garda to find answers that never materialised, Deedee is drinking heavily, making poor decisions and jeopardising both her job and her relationship, and both women desperately need closure … This impressive, if bleak, debut is a slow-burning but well paced story of shame, guilt, misplaced loyalty and generational trauma, the conclusion of which, once one is in possession of all the facts, has a heartbreaking inevitability.

The Nancys and the Case of the Missing Necklace by RWR McDonald (Orenda, £9.99)
Winner of the Ngaio Marsh award for best first novel, New Zealander McDonald’s debut is set in a small town in South Otago. Eleven-year-old Tippy Chan has had a tough year after the death of her father, and when her mother goes on a Christmas cruise, leaving her in the care of her uncle Pike and his new partner Devon, she’s not sure what to expect. Pike, who fled to Sydney many years earlier, and Devon, a fashion designer, arrive in a blizzard of sequins and exuberance, but what begins as a jolly romp against a background of queeny flamboyance and inappropriate innuendo – which, mercifully, sails over our young narrator’s head – darkens when one of Tippy’s teachers is found dead in suspicious circumstances. Uncle and niece being devotees of the Nancy Drew mysteries, they feel compelled to investigate, and the Nancys detection club is born. As well as a compelling mystery, this is a funny and touching account of family, friendship and loss, with a trio of appealing characters at its heart.

Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino (Doubleday, £16.99)
American journalist Kashino’s first novel is a satirical thriller about the housing market, set in Washington DC. PR executive Margo and her lawyer husband Ian are desperate to move out of their cramped flat and buy a home where they will be able to start a family but, demand far outweighing supply for the type of property they desire – colonial style in a good area, the very benchmark of Successful Adulthood – they keep losing bidding wars. When Margo, the cynical but sensitive product of an unstable childhood, hears of a perfect house about to be put on the market, she decides to persuade the owners into a private sale. What begins with stalking and befriending under false pretences soon escalates, and events spiral out of control as Margo becomes increasingly deranged in pursuit of her life goals. Dark, funny and inventive, this is an ingeniously entertaining take on millennial anxieties.

Your Every Move by Sam Blake (Corvus, £14.99)
More dirty dealings in the world of property, this time among the estate agents themselves. Your Every Move is set in London, where Sterling & Co sell houses that would attract the highest band of mansion tax to the uber-rich. Successful saleswoman Rosie Kinsella, who is also an influencer with an Instagram account full of property porn, usually enjoys her work, but now she’s being stalked. “Michael” appears to believe that he has a relationship with Rosie and, terrifyingly, has progressed from messaging to sending her photographs clearly taken from inside her home. Meanwhile her boss, Yaraslava, has problems of her own – and then a colleague is found murdered in one of the luxury houses on their books. Seasoned crime readers may work out whodunnit fractionally before Rosie does, but this zippy chick lit/psychological thriller mashup with a dash of romantic suspense is just the job for a long winter evening.

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The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

Tony Ramos — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 18:45:38 +0000

The Murder at World’s End by Ross Montgomery; The Confessions by Paul Bradley Carr; The Good Nazi by Samir Machado de Machado; Bluff by Francine Toon; The Token by Sharon Bolton

The Murder at World’s End by Ross Montgomery (Viking, £16.99)
The first novel for adults by award-winning children’s author Montgomery is a locked-room mystery set in 1910 on a remote tidal island off the Cornish coast. At Tithe Hall, Lord Conrad Stockingham-Welt is busy instructing his servants to prepare for the apocalyptic disaster he believes will be triggered by the imminent passage of Halley’s comet. The labyrinthine house is a nest of secrets and grudges, harboured by both staff and family members, who include an irascible and splendidly foul-mouthed maiden aunt, Decima. When Lord Conrad is discovered in his sealed study, killed by a crossbow bolt to the eye, she co-opts a new footman to help her find the culprit. With plenty of twists, red herrings and a blundering police officer, this is a terrific start to a series that promises to be a lot of fun.

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The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup | Books

Tony Ramos — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 18:28:55 +0000

Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre, £20)
Dismissed from his role as a back-room boffin in the British secret service, Major Boothroyd, AKA Q, returns to his market-town roots in Khan’s excellent James Bond spin-off. This Q is currently in his 50s; his backstory includes a fling with Miss Moneypenny, and emotional baggage in the form of his retired history don father. What’s drawn him home is the mysterious drowning of his old friend, quantum scientist Peter Napier, who has left him an encrypted note; although the coroner has ruled the death to be accidental and Q’s old flame, DCI Kathy Burnham, is not minded to reopen the case. The stakes here are worthy of the Fleming canon – Napier’s revolutionary work may have terrible consequences – and even if you’re not a Bond fan, you can’t fail to enjoy this solidly plotted and unexpectedly funny blend of nostalgia and new technology.

The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves (Macmillan, £22)
Bestseller Cleeves’s latest novel is billed as the return of Jimmy Perez, as Perez and his life partner DI Willow Reeves, now living on the Orkney Islands with their young son, team up to solve a murder. It’s nearly Christmas when Jimmy’s old friend Archie Stout is found dead at the site of an archeological dig, felled by a Neolithic stone purloined from the local heritage centre. Suspects soon proliferate: the artist with whom roving-eyed Archie may have been having an affair; teacher and local history enthusiast George Riley; mediagenic archeology professor Tony Johnson, and even the deceased’s wife. With an evocation of place that is second to none, Cleeves keeps the narrative plates spinning beautifully to create a complex plot that takes in both the thorny issue of who controls heritage and the pernicious effects of online misogyny.

The Long Shoe by Bob Mortimer (Gallery, £22)
Unemployed bathroom salesman Matt, protagonist of Bob Mortimer’s third novel, is someone who aims low in life and usually misses. He will be familiar, albeit with a different name and CV, to anyone who has read the first two books, right down to his ventriloquised cat, this symbol-of-loneliness role having previously been taken by, respectively, a squirrel and a pigeon. Not only has Matt lost his job, but his girlfriend Harriet has left and he’s about to be made homeless. Offered a rent-free luxury flat, he jumps at the chance, but of course there’s a catch; and meanwhile, Harriet is having problems of her own. Whether or not you enjoy this will depend more on your fondness for Mortimer’s surreal humour than your liking for crime fiction. Matt’s inability to take appropriate action at any given moment will have punctilious readers foaming at the mouth, but at the heart of the preposterous plot is a touching story about human relationships.

Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet (Polygon, £12)
Graeme Macrae Burnet’s latest is part of the Darkland Tales series of contemporary takes on Scottish history and legends. The Booker-shortlisted author has chosen a true story from 1857, when labourer Angus McPhee murdered his parents and aunt at their small farm in Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides. Tried and found to be criminally insane, he spent the rest of his life in the Criminal Lunatic Department of Perth Prison. Based on such records as are available, Burnet’s account of the events is narrated, some years after the fact, by Angus’s brother Malcolm, who is still living, alone and largely ostracised by the community, in the family home. Recalling the events that led up to the killing, Malcolm slowly loses his grip on reason as he tries to make sense of something senseless. Burnet’s vivid portrayal of a troubled household by a man attempting to explain the inexplicable is dark, intense and utterly compelling.

The Winter Warriors by Olivier Norek, translated by Nick Caistor (Open Borders, £18.99)
Prize-winning French author Norek, best known for his cop series, has turned his hand to crime on a grand scale: the 1939 Soviet invasion of Finland. The “Winter war”, during which the temperature plummeted to -51C and the massively outnumbered Finns succeeded in keeping the Russian bear at bay and inflicting far heavier casualties than they sustained, was so embarrassing to the Kremlin that the conflict was written out of official Soviet history. Although Norek gives us a god’s eye view of proceedings, the moral and dramatic centre of the action is Finnish sniper Simo Häyhä, who, like most of the main characters, is drawn from life, and whose skill earned him the nickname “White Death”. The Soviet generals were more afraid of Stalin than of the enemy; horribly topical and wholly immersive, with descriptions vivid enough to make you shiver, this astonishing book is not only a testament to bravery and resilience, but a powerful indictment of the cruelty and needless suffering that result when ideology comes up against reality.

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The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup | Books

Tony Ramos — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 03:34:18 +0000

The Predicament by William Boyd (Viking, £20)
A second adventure for amateur spy Gabriel Dax, first seen in Boyd’s 2024 novel Gabriel’s Moon. It’s early 1963, and Dax, a travel writer, is in his Sussex cottage working on his latest book, struggling with emotional baggage and yearning for his MI6 handler and sometime girlfriend, Faith Green. She persuades him to go to Guatemala to check out the popular leftwing leader who is threatening to topple the country’s CIA-backed government, but Dax is forced to flee when things go seriously awry. He ends up being sent to West Berlin to gather intelligence on a possible assassin, whose arrival in West Germany just before the visit of US president John F Kennedy may not be coincidental. Beautifully crafted, with echoes of le Carré, Greene and Forsyth, this is a superb evocation of a vanished world, seen through the eyes of a relatably hapless accidental hero.

The Killer Question by Janice Hallett (Viper, £18.99)
Hallett’s latest centres on that staple of British social life, the pub quiz, and like its predecessors it’s told in emails, WhatsApp messages, texts and transcripts. We know from the start that things haven’t gone well for pub landlords Sue and Mal Eastwood: their nephew is pitching a true crime documentary to Netflix, promising “intrigue, tension, betrayal, deception and … murder”. Rewind to five years earlier: Sue and Mal, desperate to keep their struggling business afloat, are pleased at the arrival of a new quiz team. However, the Shadow Knights proceed to sweep the board every week, prompting accusations of cheating. So far, so nerdy – but when the body of someone already outed as a quiz cheat is discovered in a nearby river, things take a darker turn. Some suspension of disbelief is necessary – why Sue and Mal chose to communicate via WhatsApp rather than talking to each other is unclear – but Hallett is a master of misdirection, and this plot is up there with her fiendishly clever best.

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman (Viking, £22)
The fifth novel in Osman’s bestselling Thursday Murder Club series sees crime-solving pensioners Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron engaging with secret codes, drug dealers, impecunious aristocrats and cryptocurrency, with assistance from former cocaine queenpin Connie, friendly cop Donna, Bogdan the handyman and Ron’s clever nine-year-old grandson. Although still grieving for her husband, Elizabeth steps up when Nick, the best man at Joyce’s daughter’s wedding, confides that somebody is trying to kill him. Nick and his business partner Holly own a high-security storage facility and once accepted a payment in bitcoin, the value of which has risen to £350m. They want to cash out, but the money is protected by two codes, and as Nick and Holly have one each, neither can access it alone. When Nick disappears, the quartet gets on the case. The central mystery is a satisfactory head-scratcher, but the true pleasure is a gently humorous read, peopled with characters who feel like old friends.

59 Minutes by Holly Seddon (Orion, £10.99)
Seddon’s seventh novel is a high-concept, inhale-at-a-sitting tour de force. On a Friday afternoon in November, the announcement of an imminent nuclear strike on southern England – just 59 minutes until impact – causes instant chaos. The public are told to seek immediate shelter, but Carrie, stuck in a crowd of panicked commuters at Waterloo station, is desperate to get home to her family. Frankie and Otis, on a romantic minibreak in Devon, are trying to find enough supplies to sustain them until it’s safe to leave their rented cottage, but the queue at the local store soon degenerates into a melee, with worse to follow. As the clock ticks down, Seddon paints a terrifyingly convincing picture of what happens when everything we take for granted breaks down in a matter of seconds, as well as creating characters you’ll be rooting for and keeping up a breakneck pace with a plot that twists, turns, and – without giving too much away – somersaults back on itself.

Deadman’s Pool by Kate Rhodes (Orenda, £9.99)
The eighth novel in Rhodes’s splendid series set on the Isles of Scilly begins when DI Ben Kitto’s dog discovers the remains of an emaciated girl on the uninhabited island of St Helen’s. Kitto and his colleagues are baffled: no one has been reported missing, and rumours about rich islanders being involved in a people-smuggling conspiracy are dismissed as the imaginings of bored schoolkids. Kitto’s narrative is interspersed with that of Mai, a Vietnamese girl who is being held captive in a basement, alone now that her younger sister and her baby – the result of rape by her captor – have been taken away. And when a tiny baby is found abandoned at the police station, the race is on to find the mother before it’s too late. An atmospheric and moving depiction of a tightly knit community in a rugged and often dangerous landscape, Deadman’s Pool is tense and deftly plotted, the pathos fuelling true suspense.

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