Best new crime reads of the month
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
If I Die Before I Wake by Emily Koch
Sometimes, when reading a gripping crime novel, you feel almost paralysed with helplessness as things go terribly wrong for your protagonist and all you can do is read in a panic as the author leads them to certain doom.
This feeling is crystallised in If I Die Before I Wake, when, from the very first page, we are in the mind of Alex Jackson, a journalist and rock-climber who is confined to a hospital bed eighteen months after falling from a rock-face and suffering a catastrophic head injury.
The trauma has left him in what others consider a vegetative state, but Alex is fully aware – he can hear, and smell, and when his muscles involuntarily open his eyes, he can even see a little. None of the tests are showing any sign of this, and those who love him are starting to consider that he will never wake. Just as Alex comes to term with it himself, wishing death over this version of life, there’s a shift in what’s happening around him. Secrets are unfurling, overheard visits get more cryptic, but one thing is becoming clear – what happened to Alex was no accident.
Emily Koch has done a superb job of strapping you down and holding you in place, able only to piece together information from snippets of conversation between friends, gossiping nurses, family spats and mournful girlfriends. Alex’s partner, Bea, is starting to worry that someone is following her. Alex’s climbing mate Tom and his girlfriend Rosie are endlessly indecisive about what should be happening. Alex’s sister is angry about a rift from years before that will never heal. Alex, able only to be talked at and never able to respond, can’t take notes, can’t always guarantee his body won’t lull him to sleep or get distracted, and, if no one speaks, is sometimes only left with smell and noise cues to figure out who is in his room – and why they might be there. This makes for an enthralling, read-between-your-fingers story, where the protagonist can’t blunder in, guns blazing, at just the right time, but is left with his wits and determination to figure out what went on that day on the rocks – and what is happening right now.
NEW CRIME FICTION
The Innocent Wife by Amy Lloyd
For decades, American Dennis Danson has been imprisoned for murder – a murder the public is starting to believe he didn’t commit. As documentaries and books revealing the lack of evidence and following his plight stack up, Samantha, a British woman whose life has become dominated by the online message-boards that support him, strikes up a friendship with Dennis that turns into something much more serious when he proposes from behind bars. But the relationship that until this point was only ever experienced behind a Plexiglas wall changes considerably when someone else confesses to the crime, seeing Dennis released – and Sam’s initial thrill is replaced with the worry that this exonerated killer may not be as innocent as she thought. Another unsettling entry into Britain’s growing did-they-or-didn’t-they? psychological thriller genre.
Perfect Criminals by Jimmy Thomson
From a career as an army engineer in Afghanistan to a TV writer in Sydney, Danny Clay has taken an unexpected route. His past haunts his dreams, especially when he’s feeling a bit panicked about an upcoming meeting to sell a show he’s writing. But a terrifying TV producer and a history of defusing bombs is nothing compared to the dangers that await him. Writers are being found dead, and everything’s as suspicious as a plotline in a cop show – and Danny, even with his particular skills in dealing with problems, needs all the help he can get, including from Zan, his neighbour, editor and a possible killer herself. Perfect Criminals is a low-glitz, high-entertainment ride that might make you rethink your summer television schedule.
Redemption Point by Candice Fox
In the Queensland town of Crimson Lake, Ted Conkaffey is settling in – as much as you can when you’re a cop struck from the force after being accused of kidnapping a teenage girl, who is now taking on the job of a private investigator along with Amanda Pharrell, a local woman previously convicted of murder. Ted is still desperate to clear his name, but not everyone wants to hear about it, and distraction comes along when two dead bartenders are found in the Barking Fog Inn. As they work alongside Homicide’s Pip Sweeney, barrelling through her first homicide investigation, they could find the redemption they seek – or a violent end. Candice Fox’s gritty humour and tense writing once again make for a thrilling summertime read.
Seventeen by Hideo Yokoyama (available 13 February)
Newspaper politics go hand-in-hand with one of the world’s deadliest aviation disasters in the new book by Six Four author Yokoyama (who seems to have decided that numbers are the new ‘girl’ in titles). Kazumasa Yuuki is a reporter and avid rock climber (yes, I was just as surprised to get two rock-climbing-based crime books in one month, giving a new meaning to ‘niche market’) who abandons a trip with a friend when a single plane crashes into a Japanese mountain and he’s put in charge of his newspaper’s coverage. Years later, he starts the same trip again, fulfilling a promise made years ago, with a new climbing partner and the weight of the past on his shoulders. Yokoyama was a journalist when the real Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashed, and the newsdesk tensions are a forensically detailed, anxiety-inducing reality, when the horror of the carnage and the thrill of the story change the lives of everyone involved.
The Stakes by Ben Sanders
NYPD Detective Miles Keller has a pretty sweet system going on, if not an entirely legal one. Well, if you’re the type of person who doesn’t think it’s a crime to rob the wealthy criminals that cross your path, it sounds like a good plan, and Keller knows he’ll be out of the system before anyone really works out who he is. Unless, of course, he’s waylaid by murder charges against him, such as the shooting of a hit-man – another one of those things also in that murky is-it-really-a-crime? grey area. But the charges could really put a spanner in the works, especially when the dead hit-man’s cousin is hired to retrieve Nina Stone, the wife of an LA crime boss, and someone who’s passed through Keller’s life before. She’s got an offer for Keller, and sure, the stakes are high, but since when did that bother him? Another fast-paced, thrillingly entertaining tale from New Zealand’s bestselling Ben Sanders.
This I Would Kill For by Anne Buist
When psychiatrist Natalie King is asked to be an expert witness in a custody battle between Jenna and Malik for their daughter Chelsea, it’s the kind of low-key thing she’s interested in now that she’s pregnant. However, since this is a crime book and not a resumé, things aren’t quite as smooth as she expects, and while she grapples with her own personal problems, she has to use all her skills to find out which parent is telling the truth about the danger the other represents to their child. Who is lying? What if neither of them are lying – or both? Anne Buist, the chair of Women’s Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, lays bare the emotional carnage of these battles in this harrowing thriller.
This is What Happened by Mick Herron
Sometimes, as a bookseller, it’s so hard to promote books whose surprises are so integral to the plot that all you can do is shove the book helplessly at a customer and say, ‘It’s good because it is.’ With Gold and Steel Dagger-winning Mick Herron’s This is What Happened, it’s much the same. Maggie, a young woman who has escaped small-town England for London, has an unassuming job and lives a dull, quiet life. When she’s approached by MI5 to indulge in a touch of corporate espionage in her own company, she takes on the challenge. And that is about all we can say: the rest of it is such a surprising, enthralling spy thriller, full of red herrings (red Herrons? Sorry.) Give yourself the afternoon off and settle in.
Zen and the Art of Murder by Oliver Bottini
A Japanese monk arrives in a German town, unnervingly silent and dressed only in a cowl. When the town’s inhabitants are frightened into action, a local police officer is dispatched to speak to him, getting no response but discovering, nonetheless, that the monk is wounded. When Louise Boni – chief inspector with the Black Forest crime squad and your suitably unstable protagonist – joins the investigation, it’s all she can do to follow the monk as he walks purposefully through the German snow in his sandals. Uncovering his motivations – what he’s walking towards, or away from – leads Boni’s team to a horrific crime and deadly consequences. A beautifully translated thriller in which snow is not quite the salve to an Australian summer that we wish it to be.
