Our crime specialist shares 12 great crime reads to look out for this month.

CRIME BOOK OF THE MONTH

No Country for Girls by Emma Styles

Doing this column is a great pleasure and privilege. It’swonderful to be able to introduce new authors and their books to new fans. September is a bumper month for crime releases. It’s a Sizzler all-you-can-eat situation: police procedurals, private investigators, forensic pathologists, missing children, cold cases and meta-literary crime. From debuts to old hats, there really is something for everyone.

For our featured title – drum roll please – we have this excellent debut from UK-based Australian author Emma Styles. And what a mysterious affair this is! No Country for Girls is tense and atmospheric. Not moody atmospheric. Instead, think of the searing heat of central Western Australia, the vast distance of the Great Northern Highway, the sweat trickling down one’s back, as much from crippling fear as from the heat.

Nao and Charlie each have their own terrible secret. They are thrown together on a dark, hot night after two shocking events. An equally surprising discovery of a bag of gold forces them to make a decision, and the pair hit the road, heading north in the most ridiculous getaway car: a lime-green, souped-up ute. Soon they are wanted, like fugitives on the run, and a menacing figure wants the gold by any means necessary, all of which leads to a long-range, hectic chase north across the western state, deep into iron ore country.

What’s great about this book is the grittiness and the tension, coupled with the grim Thelma and Louise-like determination of our two central characters. There’s gold, theft, murder, dead bodies and a raft of consequences. As readers we’re rewarded with a satisfying ending, but you’d be silly to think it’s a happy one, and it comes as more of a release – that long exhalation of breath you hadn’t realised you’d been holding. What a ride

NEW CRIME FICTION

Paper Cage by Tom Baragwanath

Aotearoa/New Zealand, known fondly as ‘the land of the long white cloud’, has a rich history of crime writing, with huge names such as Ngaio Marsh, Alan Carter and Paul Thomas producing some fabulous reads over the last century. To this stable we can add newcomer Tom Baragwanath, who delivers a big win for GLAM sector representation (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) in the genre. In this tense book, an unorthodox collaboration between Lorraine, a police station records clerk in Masterton, and the local investigators results in a race against time to find three missing children.

Blood and Ink by Brett Adams

In a previous column my esteemed colleague Fiona sang the praises of Sulari Gentill’s The Woman in the Library, an incredibly ‘meta’ crime novel. This month’s metanarrative crime offering is Blood and Ink, and, if you’ll forgive the Dahl-isms, it is a hornswoggler of a novel, a ripsnorter with many layers to the literary-soaked mystery. If one thing remains true after reading this book, it’s that literature professors should stay away from investigating acts of crime lest they become naively embroiled in the twisted imaginings of their ambitious students. Blood and Ink is a hoot of a read, from a fresh new voice!

The Bullet That Missed (The Thursday Murder Club Mystery, Book 3) by Richard Osman

Richard Osman’s hugely popular, bestselling Thursday Murder Club books really need no introduction nor ‘shout- out’ from me, or Readings’ own Monthly. Who would’ve thought that four retirees, thoroughly uninterested in the humdrum lifestyle of their retirement home, but fascinated by cold cases, would turn into a publishing juggernaut? I hope when I’m that age, I’m up to similar hijinks! What are they up to now? Well, turns out another intriguing cold case is on the horizon. A case with no body and no answers is what these four eat for breakfast!

The Butcher and the Wren by Alaina Urquhart

Readers of this column will surely recognise the name Alaina Urquhart– an autopsy technician – from her podcast Morbid. But that’s not all she can do. It turns out she’s a pretty good novelist too. Her debut novel, featuring forensic pathologist Dr Wren Muller, is a chilling read. The taut writing focuses the central action on a battle of wits between Muller and a calculating serial killer bent on revisiting past crimes with new victims. Good grief! Waiting for her second book is going to be utterly agonising. I can already feel myself turning into the blackboard from Mr. Squiggle: ‘hurry up!’

Sweet Dreams by Anders Roslund

Books do a great job reflecting and illuminating all facets of humanity. This is especially true of the crime genre, where inhumanity is writ large. The grey areas and moral vacuums are where writers such as Anders Roslund excel. For the burnt-out detective Ewert Grens, his unwavering pursuit of two young girls who have seemingly vanished into thin air draws him deep into the darkest, most disturbing reaches of criminal enterprise. In reality, the kind of justice Roslund weaves is not always achieved, nor is it swift, but it can be immensely satisfying reading about it.

The Liars by Petronella McGovern

Last year Petronella McGovern gave us an excellent missing-child thriller in Six Minutes, but in this new book, the tension feels, well, a whole lot more tense. While Kintore may be known for its whale tourism, this fictional town is a veritable Pandora’s Box of deeply held secrets and generational trauma that threaten to tear apart the community. When one skeleton is found, and then another, the past and present converge to force a reckoning. A great, tense book for fans of Jane Harper, Katherine Firkin and Peter Papathanasiou.

The Paris Mystery by Kirsty Manning

Astute, and chic, is how I’d described Charlie James, the protagonist of a fun new crime series from local author Kirsty Manning. We’re in interwar Paris, and Charlie has arrived from Sydney to take up a coveted position as correspondent for The Times newspaper. Her first feature, a profile of green-haired socialite Lady Ashworth, sees Charlie uniquely placed to cover a high-society murder – a much better scoop than her original story! This book is brimming with shifty characters, couture outfits, and positively overflowing with Krug. One for lovers of Phryne Fisher!

The Invisible by Peter Papathanasiou

Far from the antipodean setting of Peter Papathanasiou’s The Stoning, his second novel catapults readers to the sun-drenched, mountainous northwest border region of Greece, where burnt-out detective George Manolis is having some much-needed R and R. I know, sounds horrible, right? But Manolis’ arrival is soured by the mysterious disappearance of Lefty, an old friend and a bit of a character. Unfortunately for Manolis, this landscape and its people will not readily relinquish their secrets, leaving more questions than answers. Sumptuously written, with a setting that will surely inspire readers to travel, this book left me with a solid craving for moussaka – and sunshine!

The Lost Man of Bombay (Malabar House, Book 3) by Vaseem Khan

Big confession: I’m ashamed that I haven’t read the first two Malabar House books. Like Sulari Gentill with Rowland Sinclair, Vaseem Khan has an impressive and highly capable investigator in Persis Wadia, Bombay’s first female police officer. In this book, we’re back in post-partition India, and a body is found in a Himalayan mountain cave after an avalanche. While all the injuries point to the unfortunate individual perishing from frostbite or rock-fall, homicide remains a distinct possibility. But when two more bodies turn up with similar injuries, Persis knows something more sinister is afoot …

1989 (Allie Burns, Book 2) by Val McDermid

Almost exactly 12 months ago, I was writing about Val McDermid’s 1979. Guess what? Here’s book two! A decade later and Allie Burns, together with partner Rona, are living in Manchester, happy among friends and the local club scene. The Lockerbie, Kegworth and Hillsborough disasters command the news, but so, as Allie firmly believes, should the growing AIDS epidemic. Except that it’s not. As media moguls vie for newsprint dominance, Allie’s dogged pursuit of the truth brings an unlikely new job. This is another solid book from McDermid, who adeptly brings to life this era and these characters.

London in Black by Jack Lutz

In 2029, two years after a deadly airborne nerve agent was released by terrorists, certain members of the population (called Vulnerables) must rely on ‘Boosts’ (not the juice) to stave off its devastating effects. One such Vulnerable, the angry and grief-stricken DI Lucy Stone, is offered a second chance at her job when a shocking murder occurs, and this chance could be the release she needs from a past that haunts her. It’s been ages since we’ve had a great crime novel set in the future, and this one won’t disappoint fans of 28 Days Later – that’s everyone, right?

Also available this month:

The Axe Woman by Håkan Nesser and translated by Sarah Death and The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith.