CRIME FICTION OF THE MONTH:

All These Perfect Strangers by Aoife Clifford

Pen Sheppard is listless in her mother’s country home, lost again in the world of her childhood – her mother’s bad boyfriends, a town full of fakery, gossip as currency, and reputations that never die. Pen hoped she was rid of her hometown when she went to university, living on campus and making a new life, yet here she is, recovering in the only place that would have her back. Just six months since she left and she’s in the town psychiatrist’s office, as she was before she left, but this time she has a different story to tell – if he can get her to tell it. And that’s if she can piece together, for herself, the six months of university life that started as a delirious, unnerving freedom and then turned into a semester of murky dangers, and on-campus claustrophobia that makes even a small town seem large.

Clifford’s debut novel is full of strengths: her sense of place and time is delivered with the utmost clarity, the late ’80s is rendered in a way that brings on waves of nostalgia without resorting to cheap tricks (or references to Cheap Trick). The emotional intensity of starting university is made even headier by undercurrents of threat on campus that start as a game, then turn into something much more vicious. It’s a haunting read, a psychological thriller with loose threads picked at and unravelled chapter by chapter, from past to present, from truth to fiction and back again. This is one for anyone who wonders what really happens down those cobblestone paths on university grounds, or to what lengths people will go to protect their secrets.

NEW CRIME:

Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz

On one of those days when you kind of want to see a movie but immediately become outraged when thinking about the price of popcorn, pick up Orphan X instead – it’s a treat of an action thriller. Evan Smoakes was Orphan X, a brash little kid chosen to join a secret operation that turned him into a pint-sized assassin. But as he grew, all those smarts he picked up showed him a way out of that lifestyle and into one that does good instead of bad – now he’s known as The Nowhere Man, someone who will go to any lengths to help those in need who call on him. But can you ever avoid your past when you’re an assassin in literature? Of course not – and the next time The Nowhere Man’s phone rings, it’s the sound of your adrenaline starting up.

Ghost Girls by Cath Ferla

Sophie Sandilands has a history with private detectives that she’d rather forget. Now, she avoids talking about her cultural background and the circumstances that led her to Sydney, and instead teaches English to international students, staying clear of crime – until one of her students jumps out of a window. Even through her grief she takes notes on what’s happening, and when it turns out the student was using a false identity, her detective side kicks in and she starts to investigate the expansive business ruining – and sometimes taking – students’ lives. Vividly depicting the way the world around her smells and tastes, Ghost Girls is mouth-watering enough to make you hungry and heart-stopping enough to put you off eating.

Viral by Helen FitzGerald

From the Too Real pile of books comes the former-Victorian-now-Glaswegian FitzGerald, who tells the story of a teenage girl filmed performing a sex act in a Spanish club – a film which somehow makes it into everyone’s social media feed. Su Oliphant-Brotheridge watches the number of views climb from the hotel room she has retreated to, still unclear as to what really happened, but unable to look away. Back home, her mother Ruth – a respected judge – is dealing with the fallout, as well as Su’s sister Leah, who returned from Spain without her. The tale of Ruth’s skewed quest for justice for her daughter while Su herself seeks to find the truth about her recent and distant past is short and sharp, fast-paced and dramatic.

The Ex by Alafair Burke

There’s a bit of a vengeance theme in some of the books this month, it seems. Don’t be misled by the title – this ex is no rabid stalker, but NYC defence attorney Olivia Randall, summoned by phone to a jail cell inhabited by a man she’s been studiously avoiding for nearly twenty years. Jack Harris is her ex-fiancé, but more recently he became a New York darling as a successful writer who was made a widower during a mass shooting. And now he’s been arrested for a triple homicide. Not such a darling any more, obviously, but Olivia is convinced the Jack she knows is no killer, even when a connection between Jack and one of the dead strikes everyone else as a very clear motive for murder. Thrilling, smart writing, and – unlike past relationships – a story you won’t regret.

The Perfect Girl by Gilly MacMillan

Zoe Maisey is a teenage prodigy with a genius IQ and piano skills that bring her adoration and scholarships. She also has a criminal record and eighteen months in detention behind her, but all that is in the past – now she is a new girl in a new town, with a new surname and a new step-family. And now, a new concert to start her new life, until someone comes crashing down the aisle. Everything falls apart so swiftly that the next day she’s at a criminal lawyer’s outfit, asking for help. Her mother is dead. Her old life has found her. And the truth will come find her as well. Told from multiple points of view, this is a psychological thriller to make you terrified of teenagers, and of everyone you know and love.

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama (translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies)

This month’s entry into the ‘book that doubles as a weapon’ category comes the 640-page Six Four. The title is the code name for a case some fourteen years old, unsolved to this day. A seven-year-old girl goes for a walk to her uncle’s house. She is kidnapped, and ransom is demanded and supplied. A week later they find her dead body in the boot of a car. Fourteen years later her case is revisited, and Yoshinobu Mikami, once-detective and now media liaison, is the one tangled in all the politics that surround the past, the present, the press, the police, and the victim’s now-reclusive father. Six Four is an addictive police procedural to get fully immersed in, heavy on the detail yet always light on its feet.

The Soldier’s Curse by Meg Keneally and Tom Keneally

The Booker Prize has long been blind to the merits of genre fiction, as we all (angrily) know, but maybe they’ll notice with a previous winner in the mix: here’s Tom Schindler’s Ark Keneally and his daughter and co-writer Meg’s colonial crime fiction series, led by the dashing yet unfortunate Hugh Llewelyn Monsarrat, dapper in his waistcoat but sadly imprisoned in a penal settlement for second offenders. His position as clerk affords him some luxuries, including a good reputation and the opportunity for cups of tea with his housekeeper friend Mrs Mulrooney – until she is accused of poisoning the Commandant’s wife. Keen to free his friend, Monsarrat is on the case, and it’s such a smartly funny, cleverly researched tale that we should all be jolly glad of it, to be quite honest.

Maestra by L.S. Hilton

This book will be released on Wednesday 16 March.

If luxe-crime isn’t a genre, I feel it’s about to be, with Hilton’s Maestra crashing all over our shelves and into a movie deal within a week of hitting American shores. It’s the rags-to-reprobate story of Judith, who is undervalued and unimpressed by the British art auction house she works at, and discovers a world of bar work that leads to generous male patrons, extra favours for said patrons, a spot of accidental murder, and losing one’s identity completely in the heady world of the ultra-rich. Judith – now Lauren – is up for anything to stay in this entertaining new lifestyle, and one body is hardly enough to be interesting. Maestra_ is unflinchingly erotic, flashy as a yacht, and fast as a … (note to self, learn about cars faster than the Mazda3).

Fiona Hardy