A Lesson in Cruelty, Harriet Tyce
Wildfire, out April 11
Harriet Tyce made her name with her 2019 debut Blood Orange, a #MeToo noir story that found an audience during the Covid lockdowns. Two more thrillers followed and she now returns in 2024 with A Lesson in Cruelty that lives up to its title. The story jumps between three women: Anna, who is about to be released from prison, Lucy who is an Oxford student infatuated with her professor and Marie, a recluse in the Scottish Highlands. Three seemingly separate stories are then woven together over the course of the novel, a mark of Tyce’s technical control.
It is a busy novel - maybe too busy at times - and if I’m honest having invested in Anna in the first part of the book it was something of a lurch to leave her behind when the book shifted its attention for a while. But you can see why Tyce has built up an audience. This is a smart, unsettling psychological thriller that keeps the twists coming.
The Concert Hall Killer, Jonathan Whitelaw
HarperNorth, £8.99, April 11
What is the appeal of the cosy crime genre? Scots-born journalist turned author Jonathan Whitelaw has an idea. “Ironically, for such an escapist subgenre of crime fiction, it’s very realistic,” he told me last year. “It’s rooted in the humdrum of real life. It could be you thrust into this scenario where you find yourself face to face with a horrible murder.”
Whitelaw’s latest cosy crime thriller is a case in point. The Concert Hall Killer sees the return of his Penrith-based mother-in-law and son-in-law duo Amita and Jason who find themselves drawn into a murder mystery when things go wrong during the shooting of a TV crime drama.
The Hollow Tree, Philip Miller
Polygon, £9.99, April 4
Once of this parish, Philip Miller has now established himself as a literary thriller writer in both the UK and the US (he won the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award). His new novel The Hollow Tree sees the return of his investigative journalist heroine Shona Sanderson, last seen in Goldenacre, who is drawn into a new mystery after witnessing a tragic death at a Scottish wedding. It leads her to the rural north-east of England and a deadly secret between a group of school friends that goes back decades. Taking in orgies, assassins, allotments and axes, The Hollow Tree is not short of lurid incident, but the novel’s noise is embedded within a powerful sense of place and time and a real understanding of human psychology. It may be Miller’s best novel yet.
The House of Mirrors, Erin Kelly
Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99, April 4
Erin Kelly’s last novel The Skeleton Key was an impressive Gothic family drama and her new book promises a measure of the same. Jumping between the summer of 1997 and the present day, it’s the story of anonymous messages and family secrets. Kelly is a consummate storyteller and this should be another immersive, addictive journey into the heart of darkness. But I can’t be the only one who is a little distressed to realise that 1997 is now basically ancient history, can I?
A Beginner’s Guide To Breaking And Entering, Andrew Hunter Murray
Hutchison Heinemann, £18.99, April 25
Al (not his real name) has his own way of beating the housing crisis. He breaks into rich people’s second homes and lives in them for a while. It’s a risky business but he’s been doing it for years. And when he does meet an owner he’s usually smart enough to be able to brazen it out. But when he is confronted with a dead body and a potential murder charge, he begins to realise that there are some things you can’t talk your way out of.
What drives Hunter Murray’s chunky crime thriller along is Al’s idiosyncratic, comic narrative voice. As a result, it’s fun to spend time with him, even when it’s clear he’s not necessarily a great human being.
London Particular, Christianna Brand
British Library Publishing, £9.99, April 10
Originally published in 1952, and the latest (number 125, to be exact) in the British Library Crime Classics series, this murder mystery takes place in a “pea-souper” of a fog, and sees our hero, Inspector Cockrill, confronted with seven suspects. Its author, perhaps best known for her Nurse Matilda books (which made it onto the big screen as Nanny McPhee), was a prolific crime writer and this was her own favourite of all her books.
Close to Death, Anthony Horowitz
Century, £22, April 11
Sorry Richard Osman, but easily the most entertaining crime series of recent years has been Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne and Horowitz novels in which the author places himself at the heart of each book’s mystery. Close to Death is the fifth in the series and renews the spiky relationship between Horowitz and former detective Daniel Hawthorne. It’s the story of a noisy neighbour and death by crossbow and sees Horowitz renews his game-playing with his own authorial identity. The result is very moreish.
Cahokia Jazz, Francis Spufford
Faber, £9.99, April 4
Now coming out in paperback, Spufford’s alternative history of the United States of America is a sprawling, knowing take on the hardboiled detective story; one full of shady politicians, femme fatales and policemen with bruised knuckles and hearts. It is 1922 and Americans are drinking in speakeasies and listening to jazz. But in this universe, white, black and First Nation Americans rub alongside each other in rough harmony. A ritual murder, however, threatens to undo the cautious peace. Spufford’s through-the-looking-glass thriller is a sly commentary on American culture, of course. But it doesn’t neglect genre thrills either.
Blessed Water, Margot Douaihy
Pushkin Vertigo, £9.99, April 4
What have we here? A chain-smoking, tattoo-covered former punk musician turned queer nun who doubles as a private detective based in New Orleans, it seems. Douaihy’s second Sister Holiday Mystery contains philandering husbands, a dead priest and a torrential rainstorm. All bases covered, in other words.
The Spy, Ajay Chowdhury
Harvill Secker, £18.99, April 4
The inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker Bloody Scotland crime fiction award, Chowdhury returns with his fourth Kamil Rahman crime novel, based around the adventures of a former Kolkata cop relocated to London. As the title suggests, the latest book sees Rahman go undercover to try to infiltrate a terrorist cell. It’s a mission that will take him halfway around the world to Kashmir.
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