CRIME FICTION OF THE MONTH:

Good Money by J.M. Green

This time is an unfair part of the year for picking my Book of the Month. When confronted with Gentill, Disher, Rankin, Galbraith and more, somehow I’m supposed to make a decision? Of course, like you, dear reader, I’m just going to gather all the November titles into a big pile of happiness, hug them to my chest and make no plans for the next few weekends. And along with those delicious favourites, why not dig into a debut novel, set in Melbourne’s west and introducing a main character with an arresting personality (and an excellent surname, if I do say so myself) in social worker Stella Hardy?

Hardy is called to a client’s house early one morning, finding a family in mourning over the death of teenager Adut Chol. She does all she can to ease their grief, until a discussion with the dead boy’s brother, Mabor, leads to a discovery that stops her in her tracks – her home address in Adut’s notebooks. Stella knows this can only mean he knows about the one thing Stella can’t forgive herself for. As she tries to find out how much Adut knew, her friendly new neighbour goes missing, her errant brother returns to insinuate himself in her life, a handsome artist asks for her number, Mabor makes some godawful friends, and the next thing she knows she is being escorted by limousine to luxurious apartments to chat with high-profile business moguls connected to shifty mining practices. All of this without her old pal, cop Phuong Nguyen, to help her out – unless they both decide to let go of the past and take hold of the future with a touch of make-up breaking-and-entering.

Stella is wonderfully likeable – determined but as easily sidetracked as the rest of us, be it by the internet (guilty) or handsome artists (also guilty). She is sometimes hopeful and sometimes bitter about the world, her friends, and her family; as an outsider everywhere, she is full of scathing remarks about people but willing to be called out on it. This is a powerhouse debut, full of excitement, jokes, brutality and scenic flights over Australia’s dangerous red centre, and the very bad use of very good money.

NEW CRIME FICTION:

Give the Devil His Due by Sulari Gentill

My colleagues have long since learned of my excitement about a new Sulari Gentill, and many are now series-long fans themselves after listening to me bluster excitedly about Rowland Sinclair and his cronies every time a customer brings one of her books to the counter. Rowly is a dashing young man of Australia’s 1920s, well-bred, well-connected, and doesn’t give a hoot if such things get in the way of a good time with his bourgeois pals. And for all his adventures – this time, to take his handsome new wheels in a race on the Maroubra Speedway – he always runs into trouble, fists-up, morals raised, and ready to save the day. Endless fun, historically fascinating, tense, gritty, as always, these are everything you could want in crime fiction.

Dark Corners by Ruth Rendell

This is, sadly, the last of Rendell’s books, as she passed away in May, leaving a hole in crime bookshelves everywhere. Of course, that’s only if you haven’t already bought her eighty-plus books – enough to fill a bookshelf on their own, really – and no better place to start, end, or remind yourself of her style, than with Dark Corners. This is the story of seemingly average people who do not bring light to the world – Carl, who indirectly caused the death of a friend; the tenant who finds out and blackmails him; the dead woman’s thieving friend – and an uneasy yet brilliant and incisive look at humanity from a truly great writer.

Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith

Sadly, this reviewer wasn’t able to get her paws on this book until after deadline, but here is what I’m going to assume about it: I am going to read it in an excited frenzy; I’m going to be thrilled at veteran detective Cormoran Strike and his colleague Robin Ellacott being reunited for another case; something gruesome is going to happen – in this one, the delivery to Robin of a severed leg – and I’m going to look at my Harry Potter collection and be shocked that J.K. Rowling (under the Galbraith pseudonym) can think of such things; and when someone in the shop says to me, ‘I’m looking for a crime book that–’ I’m going to press this into their hands before they get any further.

The Crossing by Michael Connelly

Harry Bosch may be forcibly retired from the LAPD, but since when did a little retirement ever stop anyone? When his half-brother, Mickey ‘Lincoln Lawyer’ Haller, asks for his help in a murder case that on the surface appears completely unwinnable, Bosch initially refuses. But when faced with the idea that if Mickey is right, a killer is still out there, he puts his trust in Haller and steps in to assist. But a cop helping a defence lawyer is not how the force operates, and soon Bosch has something much more terrifying than his unfair dismissal fight to deal with.

Midnight Sun by Jo Nesbo

Running from his own betrayal, and his likely end at the hands of the criminal he betrayed, Jon hides so far north in Norway that they are in eternal daytime. With some help from locals, he feels almost safe in a remote cabin, where, for a while, the biggest danger is his own mind in this endlessly bright and disorienting landscape. But protagonists can never escape their pasts for long, and soon those who know his real story are coming for him. Expect long shadows, heavy blinds, excellent characters and the strong writing Nesbo is renowned for.

The Undesired by Yrsa Sigurdardottir

Looking for something a bit on the unnerving side this month? Hoping to sit indoors with most of the lights off and a harsh wind sending branches scratching at your window? You’d do well to read The Undesired, then – the tale of how two deaths at a juvenile detention centre in the far reaches of (the already far from populous) Iceland tie in with a modern investigation into abuse at the same place. Odinn is a single father, grieving alongside his daughter for the wife he lost, when a colleague dies and leaves the investigation unfinished. And the further he looks into it, the closer the investigation gets to his own family …

Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin

Nothing says crime like a nemesis, and few do crime as well as beloved Scot, Ian Rankin. So everyone’s happy when John Rebus (no longer a detective, but still detecting), old friend D.I. Siobhan Clarke and ex-Complaints now-cop Malcolm Fox team up, as it were, when Rebus is the only one who can get through to his old enemy Big Ger Cafferty, after someone takes a shot through his window. He’s also received a note – ‘I’ll kill you for what you did’ – the same as one found on a recently dead body. So to find out who wants to kill them, they’ll need to find out what they did – even if the victims aren’t entirely sure themselves.

The Heat by Garry Disher

Disher’s back, and so is Wyatt – his whittled marble slab of an anti-hero. From a Melbourne more grimy than you would ever notice from its tourist-pocked city streets and beachside motels, to a Noosa on the opposite side of the coin from family friendly, Wyatt cracks his knuckles and gets his teeth into some juicy crime. And not as a detective, you hear – Wyatt is more on the committing than the prevention side, but hey, no reader feels bad for a terrible person if their painting gets stolen, do they? Disher’s Wyatt, perfectly crafted in gripping, calculated prose, is someone you’ll happily follow into heists, thefts, and stopping their own murder.

The Drowning Ground by James Marrison

Nothing says picturesque Cotswolds quite like a pitchfork through the neck, does it? Detective Guillermo ‘Shotgun’ Downes – ex-Argentinian, two decades into his posting, and still treated like the new kid – knows the victim, Frank Hurst, a man who’s been on the police radar after the apparently accidental death of his wife and the disappearance of two young girls loosely linked to him, though he was cleared of any involvement. Downes and new partner Sergeant Graves are determined to find the killer – and Downes to make good on the promise he made to the girls’ parents years earlier. A chilling psychological thriller.

Tom & Lucky and George & Cokey Flo by C. Joseph Greaves

A book true to its name, it’s the parallel stories of Thomas E Dewey (prosecutor), Lucky (Charles Luciano, mob boss), George Morton Levy (Lucky’s lawyer) and Cokey Flo (a prostitute with the power to bring Lucky down). Based on true events of the 1930s in mob-soaked New York, it centres on Lucky’s court case for his prostitution rackets. Dewey is gleeful to catch the mobster at anything, even after Lucky’s morally ambiguous saving of Dewey’s life after whacking the criminal planning on whacking Dewey. Heavily researched and with characters as real as your frantic fingers turning the page, this is an organised crime story you should organise yourself to buy.

The Hunter of the Dark by Donato Carrisi (available 10 November)

The stylish Carrisi haunts bookshelves again, bringing Rome to life as much as any of the characters in his work. This is a breathless pursuit of a murderer by forensic analyst Sandra Vega and the cryptic Marcus, from the Penitenzieri – a sort of Pope-endorsed crime-fighting team against evil. Both are adept at finding irregularities in scenes – Sandra from behind a camera, Marcus from in front – and when a nun is found dead in the Vatican, and couples killed, it will take the best of their skills to find out who, or what, is causing these deaths.

Fiona Hardy