The best new crime reads in November
After 12 years, this is my final dead write column.
It’s grown in size to take over an entire page (which worked for me, since I always have far too much to say about every book), and I’ve worked with so many amazing Readings Monthly editors over the years (Ed. note: we think you’re amazing too). I’ve also been tremendously lucky to read so many incredible books! Australian crime fiction, especially, continues to impress me every time. Now, I can’t wait to see what the new reviewers have to say about all the excellent new crime books every month. Here’s to many more secretive rural towns, bitter detectives with marital problems, and psychological thrillers that make you doubt everybody on the page. It’s been a blast.
CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH
Clarke by Holly Throsby
When the police officers arrive at Barney’s house, nobody on the street is surprised. It’s been years since Ginny Lawson disappeared from that home, and everybody’s been waiting for confirmation of the inevitable truth: that she is buried under the concrete in the backyard. Barney, however, is a bit surprised, since he only moved into the house recently and wasn’t aware of the property’s shocking past. The past few years have been pretty hard for him – as has driving around Clarke, reliving memories that are too raw – and now there’s a bunch of police in his yard, which isn’t helping matters, but is at least quite diverting. His neighbour, Leonie, is relieved that something is finally happening since the cops didn’t seem to care much about Ginny when she disappeared. The past few years have been pretty hard for her too, and now she’s looking after four-year-old Joe, who loves her dearly but misses his mother. Leonie misses her too. And Ginny. And the life she hasn’t quite got around to living yet.
Holly Throsby brings a warm familiarity to the 1991 depicted on these pages – the heat, the snacks, the television, the whole world as vividly detailed as it felt 30 years ago. Clarke is a town that aches with sadness, hope and love as Leonie and Barney move through it, both waiting to see what the police find buried in that yard. The more they wonder, the more they hear about the details everybody dismissed during Ginny’s disappearance, and what now seems obvious: that the man behind it was her abusive husband, Lou.
Clarke is a glorious slow-burn mystery, but it is also much more. It is a time capsule of a period in Australia’s history, a slow release of sadness and guilt, and a story of two people who can’t see what everybody else can – and who may hold the answers to more questions than they realise.
MORE NEW CRIME FICTION
The Cloisters by Katy Hays
When university graduate Ann Stilwell makes her way to New York City to work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the first thing she finds out is that her job is no more. The HR department tells her that the curator who hired her has gone to Berlin, and she is no longer required. For Ann – who has been desperately saving back in Washington to escape from a life awash with grief – this is crushing. Until another curator steps in with an offer: a job at the Cloisters, a Gothic Renaissance museum that needs help with a particular line of research – one into the history of tarot as both art and as a source of divination. As Ann’s dreams of an expansive New York life close up into a tiny circle of people, her fate becomes more and more murky, even as the cards predict a danger that is hard to ignore.
Ann starts as unsure as the reader, ushered into this dark and cloying museum, heady with art, deep summer sweat, mystery and a garden lush with poisonous plants. Nobody who works with Ann is fully open with the truth, and all of them, from ambitious curator Patrick to her mysterious wealthy colleague Rachel, to the lawless gardener Leo, cause Ann to discover new things about herself and about the world of tarot – discoveries that could blow the art world right open. This claustrophobic, biting mystery is a brilliantly dark Gothic read.
Murder in Williamstown by Kerry Greenwood
It feels unnecessary to describe a Phryne Fisher book; most crime readers have spent time in her lissom presence before, and have been glad for it. The Honourable Miss Fisher is still at her best – solving as many crimes as she can fit into a week, entertaining a fair amount of very handsome men, threatening people with her gun, and hooning about 1920s Melbourne in her Hispano-Suiza generally causing delectable mayhem. As the threat of opium looms in her beloved city, and rampant racism prevents anybody from truly figuring out the problem, Phryne does her best to figure things out – or step back if necessary. Add to that a few threatening letters and a touch of charity embezzlement, and you have the makings of yet another great cocktail of a story.
Day’s End by Garry Disher
Garry Disher is back in South Australia with the fourth outing of Paul Hirschhausen – that’s Hirsch to you. A rural cop with a beat thousands of kilometres squared, he never has just one thing going on at a time. There are welfare checks, petty thefts, the young German traveller who goes missing during the pandemic’s closed borders, and the dead body in the suitcase set on fire. All in a day’s work when you’re Hirsch. A laconic character endeared to readers (if not to those whose cars he’s towed), it’s a joy, as always, to follow Hirsch to the dry ends of Tiverton and beyond.
The Resemblance by Lauren Nossett
Homicide detective Marlitt Kaplan is on site at the University of Georgia, visiting her professor mother, when she hears the screams. She runs towards the sound, and finds the dead body of a student, killed instantly in a hit-and-run. The witnesses are upset, shocked. But they do agree on something: the driver of the car was smiling, and he looked exactly the same as the victim. As Marlitt and her partner Teddy investigate, they’re thrown into the thorny world of college fraternities, where bonds of brotherhood are tight enough to hurt. Getting anybody to speak feels impossible, but Marlitt doesn’t parse fear the same way as everyone else, and will do anything to bring the killer to justice. This bracing college thriller will make your blood boil in the best way.
The Next Girl by Pip Drysdale
If you were accused of being the one who lost a court case, what would you do to save your reputation – and, more importantly, save the perpetrator’s next victim? Billie is not flawless, but she is determined to stop Samuel Grange from ever hurting anyone ever again. He got away this time, but to prove that he’s the monster she knows he is, Billie has a plan: to become the next girl herself. Pip Drysdale knows how to squeeze every moment of tension out of a juicy story, and make you believe entirely in the fierce pluck of a character like Billie.
A Death in Tokyo by Keigo Higashino
Under the kirin statue at the centre of Tokyo’s famous Nihonbashi Bridge, a man collapses, seemingly drunk. He is not drunk, however, but murdered – stabbed in the chest. Not long after, the dead man’s wallet is found on the body of a young man who suffers a terrible car accident trying to escape from police. This sounds like a straightforward solution, but would make a pretty short novel. Enter Tokyo Police Detective Kaga – a man who always looks closer, even when his superiors deny there’s a need for it. Kaga believes there’s more to this case than what the easy facts say. Another gripping police procedural from a Japanese master of the mystery.
Ashes in the Snow by Oriana Ramunno
So many unspeakable crimes happened at Auschwitz that it feels unnerving to focus on just one – but that’s the job of Hugo Fischer, sent in a snowy 1943 winter to investigate the murder of Doktor Sigismund Braun outside the office of one Josef Mengele. There, Fischer meets a young Jewish boy named Gioele – a twin – who found Braun’s body, and sketched the scene of his death. Fischer is already hiding the truth about himself and his health from those who would see him as more test subject than human, and now, as he sees what happens in this place, he must find a way to shine a light on its dark reality. Harrowing and disturbing, but ultimately compelling.
The Night Man by Jørn Lier Horst
I almost feel like I need to give a warning before this plot description, so, if you’re looking for something more relaxed in your crime summaries: take heed. Norwegian Police Inspector William Wistig is called to Larvik, whose inhabitants awoke to a grotesque sight in the town square: the severed head of a young girl, impaled on a stake. Nobody knows who she is, or what happened, and the day is not even over before another body is dragged from the river. The media is all over the case, including Wistig’s journalist daughter Line, who receives a tip-off and realises that what is happening may not be contained to Norway alone. Author Jørn Lier Horst, a police officer himself in a previous life, knows what he’s talking about – and doesn’t hold back on what the bad guys are capable of.
The Cat Who Caught a Killer by L.T. Shearer
A cosy crime mystery set in modern times yet rooted in the past, this is the tale of ex-detective Lulu Lewis, recently widowed after her husband Simon was killed in a hit-and-run. Lulu is expecting to lead a mellow life on a canal boat, but when Simon’s mother Emily dies at her care home, Lulu’s detective instincts are pricked – as are those of Conrad, a new and quite furry addition to Lulu’s life. Despite being, well, a cat, Conrad has his own opinions of Emily’s death – ones that Lulu is not inclined to ignore.