Best new crime books in February
NEW CRIME FICTION
Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty
The fifth book in the Sean Duffy trilogy proves yet again that we should be grateful that McKinty went into literature and not maths. I’ve yet to meet a reader who wasn’t thrilled by Duffy’s company – he’s the kind of down-on-his-luck but quick-on-the-uptake character you love to spend time with, always losing girlfriends for various reasons and colleagues to the general danger that is Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Here, Duffy is again embroiled in a second locked-room mystery – except the room is Carrickfergus Castle and the mystery is the death of a journalist, found at the bottom of a wall. Each of these Tom-Waits-song-titled books are a satisfying treat of taut and witty writing, dialogue, and characters. Bring your umbrella and dive in.
Victim Without a Face by Stefan Ahnhem (translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles)
Obviously, a new year of Dead Write can’t possibly start without a Scandinavian thriller, and this has a great hook. Fabian Risk has uprooted his family from Stockholm to take up a position in his hometown of Helsingborg and avoid the fallout from a previous case. He has six weeks of leave before taking up the position but, as we know, no literary police officer ever actually gets a holiday. After the gruesome discovery of a dehanded man’s body alongside a defaced class picture, Risk’s new boss calls him in – after all, he’s in the picture too. All too soon, more of his classmates are found murdered in grotesquely inventive ways that tie into their schoolyard past, and Risk cannot leave the case alone, even when sent off it. An excellent, twisting debut.
The Falling Detective by Christoffer Carlsson
After last year’s excellent The Invisible Man From Salem, police officer Leo Junker has outwardly recovered from the murder case that saw him, despite being suspended, tied so close that it almost killed him. Now in homicide, paired up with the unlikely Gabriel Birck, who he’s barely past loathing, winter has barely started when they are put on the case of a sociology professor found killed in an alley. His papers show that he wasn’t the only person in danger, but before Junker and Birck can figure it out the case is snatched away from them. But who in crime fiction ever lets a little reassignment get in the way of solving an investigation? No one, that’s who – and here’s another time we as readers are more than happy to follow our characters into trouble.
Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart
By now, dear readers, you can probably imagine my impatient face when I’m presented with another book with ‘Girl’ in the title, especially when (like always) said ‘Girl’ is in fact a Woman. Or, perhaps more appropriate for the time period here, a Lady: Miss Constance Kopp, oldest of three sisters, recently shaken by the death of her mother and, more recently, physically shaken by a brazen buggy accident whereupon the other driver was at fault. Constance, despite her sisters’ entreaties, turns up at the driver’s factory doorstep to claim their expenses and instead is met with a war: silk merchant gang vs. sisters who will not stand for such nonsense. Based on the true story of how a tall farm girl became one of the United States’ first female deputy sheriffs, this is a delight: humorous, thrilling, and strung with danger.
The Method by Shannon Kirk
Lisa is 16 years old and pregnant when she is abducted and thrown into a van, taken to a house, and kept there with one ultimate goal: that her child, when born, will be taken from her. So far so grim, but with one problem the baby farmers didn’t allow for: Lisa is less what I was at 16 (into perms and Mariah Carey) and more calculating genius. She takes in everything in her cell and methodically lists each item until she can develop a way – Method 15/33 – to escape from her captors. While Lisa has the ability to cut off her emotions when she needs to, readers won’t be doing any such thing – they’ll be too busy cheering or holding their breath.
NEW TRUE CRIME
Evil Life: The True Story of the Calabrian Mafia in Australia by Clive Small and Tom Gilling
Former Assistant Commissioner of Police Small and investigative journalist Gilling are true-crime writers who have now turned their pens to the story of Australia’s connection with the Calabrian Mafia, one that the authorities are keen to downplay. But from the northern cane fields in the early twentieth century to just about everywhere in Australia today, there’s a history of the Calabrian underworld’s ties to this country that can’t be ignored. Tracing the network of crime around the world and through dead bodies and hard drugs, this book does all it can to unmask a powerful threat.
A Murder Without Motive: The Killing of Rebecca Ryle by Martin McKenzie-Murray
‘ A Murder Without Motive is thoughtful, careful and intimate in its approach. It digs into issues of masculinity, violence and Australian culture, and McKenzie-Murray examines the murderer’s possible motives from all angles. I found it hard to read at times because my heart ached for Ryle and her family, but this is an important work by a talented writer, and a book I urge you to read.’
– From the review by Nina Kenwood, Marketing Manager
