The best new crime reads in May
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
Harper Lee – author of the slightly well known To Kill a Mockingbird – was by Truman Capote’s side when he wrote the brilliant work of fictionalised nonfiction, and arguably the first ‘true crime’ tale, In Cold Blood. After the copious notes and interviews she had completed for Capote, she thought that, perhaps, she could write her own true-crime story, with more emphasis on the ‘true’ aspect than her oldest friend ever bothered with. When she heard about the case of Reverend Willie Maxwell, she found her story.
Maxwell had five family members who died in suspicious accidents, upon all of whom he had taken out lucrative insurance policies. These were all cashed-in thanks to his determined lawyer, Tom Radney. At the fifth funeral, a relative of one of the dead stood up in the pew before Reverend Maxwell and shot him in front of everyone – an act that caused a town terrified of the Reverend and his voodoo to breathe a sigh of relief. When the shooter needed a lawyer to take his case, the best man for the job was one familiar with many of its aspects – one Tom Radney. The story’s appeal is clear as day, and Harper Lee had the time, the skill and the personality to dig deep on the facts of the case. So why, then, did Lee’s book never eventuate?
From the very beginnings of Alabama’s current landscape to the end of Harper Lee’s life, Casey Cep has crafted a sharply written book, richly detailed and enormously enjoyable. Space is given to every character so that they are fully realised, making the account of these devastating events and all that surrounded them brim with life. Cep’s research and eye for detail is obvious but never laborious, crafting a neat flow in what is really a tremendously complicated tale. There are clever asides, with short, neat facts about authors or history or places – I would often share them aloud – and I resented having to sleep even though the ending was known: there was to be no book by Lee about this. That remains a disappointing fact, but what Cep has achieved in Lee’s wake is more than worthwhile: a chronicle of an enthralling case, and the famous writer who strove to understand it.
NEW CRIME FICTION
From the Shadows by G.R. Halliday
With Australia’s winter closing in and those last few days of warmth almost gone, it’s heading straight into rug-up-with- a-cup-of-tea-and-a-good- police-procedural-from- Great-Britain season.
In G.R. Halliday’s debut, after a gripping opening chapter, Detective Inspector Monica Kennedy finds the body of young Robert in the Scottish Highlands, and knows that this is not just an end – but also the beginning of something much worse. It’s not long before another body, with disturbing similarities to the first, is found by a remote loch. In a department stretched too far, Kennedy can only do so much, even when she’s confronted with a social worker reporting one of his clients missing – and the fact that the initial body may not have been the first after all.
An atmospheric, twisting book – with, I hope, more to follow.
55 by James Delargy
In the remote West Australian town of Wilbrook, not much has ever happened in Sergeant Chandler Jenkins’ poky police station. That’s until the day when a man covered in blood stumbles through the door with quite a story: his name is Gabriel, and he’s just run from a serial killer called Heath who told him he would be his fifty-fifth victim. While Gabriel is under police protection, another man is brought in. He’s been caught trying to steal a car to aid, he says, in his escape from a man called Gabriel – who said he would kill poor Heath and that he’d be victim number fifty-five. Inevitably, the media swarms the town.
Inspector Mitchell Andrews, an old colleague of Chandler’s, also arrives and appears determined to push Chandler off the case. With the disappearance of the man called Gabriel, and Chandler’s fractious relationship with Mitch revived, the case – and the town – feels ready to fall apart.
This is a twisting, terrifying Australian rural noir to send chills up the spine of any outback adventurer.
Life Before by Carmel Reilly
Northam, March, 1993: in a regional Australian town, a typical family – two parents, three semi-grown kids – are knocking around, figuring out where their lives are going to lead, happy for now. Three months later, a police officer leaves the site of a road fatality and travels to a house he knows with the kind of news he wishes he never had to deliver.
In suburban Melbourne, some two decades later, another police officer is on their way to deliver bad news to the now-grown Loren Green: her brother has been in a cycling accident and is in intensive care at a hospital. To admit that she even has a brother is to reopen a wound that hasn’t healed in the intervening twenty years, and when it seems like it wasn’t so much an accident that injured him, the police are now back in Loren’s life, forcing her to relive the series of events that took her family from picture-perfect to shattered.
This is a compelling, deliberate and devastating read, set in some of Readings’ neighbouring suburbs and weighed down heavily with a heartbreaking past.
American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
It’s 1984, and Thomas Sankara is the president of Burkina Faso, approaching his tenure there with ideas that rattle the cage of the United States and compell the FBI to send a team to bring him down. Chosen for the task is Marie Mitchell, a young black intelligence officer who up until now has too often found herself tasked with paperwork and admin rather than the external work for which she’d been trained. While she’s thrilled to finally be out there, she can’t help but wonder if it’s her appearance alone that’s seen her chosen for the job. Still reeling from the unresolved death of her sister, Marie must also admit that Sankara’s ideas aren’t always so far from her own, and that the country she’s gone so far to defend has done so very little for her. Espionage thrillers are frustratingly thin on the ground, and to have one like this – based loosely on real Cold War events, and with such diversity and complexity – is a treat to hunt down, and fast.
A Good Enough Mother by Bev Thomas (Available 6 May)
Dr Ruth Hartland walks into the waiting room of her trauma therapy offices and is shocked by who she sees there: a young man who, for a moment, looks exactly like her son. But Dan Griffin is not Tom, despite the fact that Ruth – a professional with many accolades – has trouble separating the two in her mind. She should refer him to one of her colleagues, but that would mean telling them about Tom, about how he has been missing for two years and she doesn’t know where he is, or if he’s even still alive. And so Dan becomes her patient, a choice with consequences that reach beyond the office walls and threaten all of Ruth’s deepest dreams. This is a slow burn of a thriller, thick with psychological theory and the heartbreak of those who suffer from the grip of trauma.
Sibanda and the Rainbird by C.M. Elliott
It’s always great to see crime from other countries, and it’s rare we see crime books from African countries – though last year’s My Sister, the Serial Killer from Nigeria was a standout. Here, we have the Zimbabwe-set story of Detective Inspector Jabulani Sibanda, who works in a large village on the border of a national park, and who knows the bush and many other things better than almost everyone around him. When a grisly scene is found near a luxury lodge, the body is first thought to have been attacked by vultures, until Sibanda realizes that, sadly, something more human has been at work. Along with Sergeant Ncube – and Ncube’s much-loved car – Sibanda searches far over Zimbabwe’s lushly written landscape to find the killer. Humorously written but not skimping on the country’s brutal past, this is a riveting mystery to take you out of autumn.
Boxed by Richard Anderson (Available 7 May)
Richard Anderson, the author of last year’s bestselling Retribution, returns with another evocative Australian story. It’s that of Dave Martin, a man so bowed by his wife’s departure and his farm’s failings that he barely cares about the world around him. While others reach out, he lives only for the boxes that arrive in the post supplying him with the cheap tools he’s purchased online. Then one day a box arrives, with no note and no tools: just money, and a hell of a lot of it. Is it for Dave, or isn’t it? When more boxes arrive – without money but with something much more foreboding – Dave finds himself in the middle of full-on chaos that may just bring him back into the world – or remove him from it completely.
The Better Sister by Alafair Burke (Available 6 May)
It’s Mother’s Day this month, which means the juiciest family-based crime books are on show. In Alafair Burke’s newest release, the question is who is the better sister? The troubled Nicky, who married a lawyer and was wronged by Chloe; or magazine editor Chloe, who stands up for everyone’s rights, but married Nicky’s husband once he left her? Chloe has mostly cut Nicky out of her life, and now lives a gilded existence with Nicky’s ex-husband Adam and his teenage son, Ethan. Chloe’s star is on the rise, and with it Adam’s – until she comes home from an industry party to find Adam murdered. With him gone, Nicky must return to her sister’s and son’s life, but the two of them have not confronted their past – and with Ethan the target of the police’s suspicion, it’s time for them to face it head on.
ALSO OUT THIS MONTH
Check out The Sound of Her Voice (Orion, PB, $32.99), written by undercover New Zealand cop Nathan Blackwell – though his name has been changed to protect his identity; Tony Cavanaugh’s Blood River (Hachette, PB, $32.99); John Connolly’s A Book of Bones (H&S, PB, $32.99); Snorri Kristjansson’s Council (Jo Fletcher, PB, $32.99), which is probably not about getting planning permits for a new shed; Chris Brookmyre’s Fallen Angel (Little, Brown, PB, $32.99); Melanie Golding’s Little Darlings (HQ Fiction, PB, $29.99); Yrsa Sigurdardottir’s The Absolution (H&S, PB, $32.99); another Scottish Highlands mystery with Lexie Elliott’s The Missing Years (Corvus, PB, $29.99); Jeffery Deaver’s The Never Game (HarperCollins, PB, $29.99), John Sandford’s Neon Prey (S&S, PB, $32.99) … and more!
