CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH

Sunset City by Melissa Ginsburg

Short and anything but sweet, Sunset City paints a neon-soaked picture of Houston’s grimiest places, visited by a drunk and bereaved Charlotte Ford, trying to find solace after the death of her oldest friend. Danielle was murdered – beaten to death in a hotel room – and the cops are wondering why, after years of distance, Charlotte spoke to her just days before she died. Charlotte wonders the same thing, and can’t help but see herself as the turning point that led Danielle – clean enough now after a stint in prison – from a chipper evening out to being bludgeoned in a hotel. Charlotte finds respite among those who knew Danielle from her final job as a porn actress, even as they all take whatever they can to stave off the reality that someone killed Danielle, and no one knows who.

Enough for a contact high brought on just by reading it, this is the kind of book that is immersive in a way that is almost terrifying – addictive, though it seems trite to say that about a book about addicts. Everyone seems to have their poison: be it the heroin that drove Danielle to jail, Danielle’s mother’s obsession with money and power (which destroyed their relationship), or Charlotte’s mother’s addiction to prescription drugs, which ultimately caused her death just after Charlotte turned eighteen. Charlotte herself cannot let go of the memories of Danielle from her past, those moments in high school where all they had was each other, where they were each other’s sun in the sky.

Sunset City is like a heady night out – electric with anticipation, joyously beautiful and agonisingly grim in turn, over in one intense evening, as sexually charged as a kiss against a wall in a darkened bar, and as unexpectedly violent as a punch out of nowhere. I was still reeling from this the day after – it almost needs a calming cup of tea and a couple of Panadol to recover from. Would it be that more books knocked you around like this.

NEW CRIME

The Unfortunate Englishman by John Lawton

Spy novels have been a little thin on the ground lately (wait, pretend I said ‘flown under the radar’) but here we have the second in Lawton’s espionage series starring Joe Wilderness (yes, I snorted over that name too.) Wilderness begins the book imprisoned in Berlin after an accidental shooting, but is soon set free on one condition  – he rejoins MI6 and is now in the debt of his superior (and father-in-law) Burne-Jones. Wilderness returns to England just long enough to get on his feet before he’s sent back to Berlin, Vienna, and the Bridge of Spies for an exchange. Joe is not the kind of person to let a little official work get in the way of some unofficial business, and this look at the Cold War is a detailed and exciting spy thriller.

A Hero in France by Alan Furst

Ah, a month full of spy novels – and what a delight they are. Furst’s nail-biting tale reveals the French Resistance in its early days, showing the danger of every moment in occupied Paris, a place where no one looks each other in the eye and anyone with power could be capable of destroying you. Mathieu is a youngish man who wants only to do something in a place that feels so defeated, and we follow him and those who assist in doing what they can to aid fugitives to Vichy France. The pages are electric with tension, a visceral way of feeling something of what it was like seventy-five years ago to live in the beautiful city that tourists visit in droves today – something of what it was like to be a mostly ordinary person, driven to fight for the home you love.

Dead Men Don’t Order Flake by Sue Williams

In the town of Rusty Bore, there’s a takeout joint that doesn’t just supply everyone with the best to-go food in town (though let’s not underestimate the importance of that fact) – the owner, Cass Tuplin, is also something of a detective, much to the chagrin of her police-officer son Dean. But he won’t take seriously what she does, and in this case, it’s the death of a woman whose father insists that the car accident that killed her was no accident. Whether Gary is a father who doesn’t want to believe in the facts, or whether he’s onto something, Cass is the person to reel in the truth (I’m really grateful when I get a book that allows me to unleash the puns), not only about Gary’s daughter, but also about what happened to Leo Stone, who, despite the memorial service the town held for him twenty years ago, has just walked through her door.

The Plea by Steve Cavanagh

Eddie Flynn is a down-and-out lawyer, sleeping in the back of his office, kicked out of home after endangering the life of his daughter. He’s also a smart man who knows someone’s broken into said office even before he sees the men rifling through his files; Flynn’s past as a conman is not really so much in the past after all. This break-in isn’t a theft, though, but someone asking a favour: take on a particular case, get a guilty man to take a plea bargain. In exchange, money and another favour – one that would save his family. Flynn would do anything for them, especially if it’s convicting someone guilty – but what happens when he starts to have his doubts, about his new client, about everyone around him? Breakneck thriller reads happen, that’s what.

The Crime Writer by Jill Dawson

In a quaint English village in 1964 a writer unpacks (or doesn’t unpack) the boxes in her new home, a cottage by a brook, and near the married lover she can’t stand to be apart from. The villagers are as intent on talking to her as she is intent on ignoring them, and now a journalist is coming to call. Ginny wears long yellow boots and is all quivering nerves as she interviews Pat, the writer, and her visit sparks change in Pat’s almost-perfect life, which is now becoming haunted by prowlers and stalkers and all manner of ills. Miss Highsmith might have a Hitchcock-directed movie behind her, but it’s what’s in front of her that makes this recreation of a famous author’s external and internal lives so exquisitely unnerving.

Die of Shame by Mark Billingham

Billingham pumps out books like nobody’s business and, without fail, they are completely entertaining crime thrillers. Tony DeSilva runs a therapy group from his house, and on Mondays, a group of people suffering from addictions come by for a meeting. They get along – mostly – and one day one of them has a party. The next day one of them is dead. Homicide detective Nicola Tanner knows that one of them is the killer, but when everyone is sworn to secrecy  – and has their own reasons to hide the truth – how will she find out who it was? Why do reviewers always ask rhetorical questions? At least one of those questions will be answered – and Billingham’s grim humour and entertaining character interactions will make this a ride worth taking.

In the Month of the Midnight Sun by Cecilia Ekbäck

I adored Ekbäck’s first novel, Wolf Winter – a haunting tale set on the mountain of Blackåsen in the early 1700s – and here, she sets her most recent tale on and around that same eerie mountain, in 1856, as the days stretch so long that night lasts barely long enough to be noticed. In Stockholm in June, Magnus – geologist and son-in-law of the State Minister for Justice  – is tasked to investigate a massacre in Lapland. There are politics afoot, and he is entrusted with not only figuring it out and keeping the peace, but also keeping his unexpected partner – his sister-in-law Lovisa – away from trouble, away from the father who has banished her. On Blackåsen itself, Ester, a widowed Lapp mourning her lost love, tries to make sense of the carnage, of her husband’s demise, and of what he predicted. Ekbäck is just wonderful, able to make centuries-gone Sweden come to visceral, frightening, glorious life in these pages.

Fiona Hardy