Dead Connection – Alafair Burke
Internet dating and the hidden perils thereof; a rookie cop from Wichita, Kansas, thrown in at the deep end in a murder case assigned to a headline-grabbing detective; a blood-thirsty serial killer prowling the New York city pavements and the internet highways; the ominous shadows of the Russian mafia and of FBI agents who may ...
The ABC Murders – Agatha Christie
‘The ABC Murders’, first published in 1936, was the 17th crime novel written by Agatha Christie and the 10th to feature the London-based Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot, arguably Christie’s most popular fictional sleuth. I was browsing through my parents’ library when I found a small treasure trove of Christie novels. ‘The ABC Murders’ attracted ...
The Lynchpin – Jeffrey B. Burton
‘The Lynchpin’ is the second novel by Jeffrey B. Burton featuring FBI Special Agent Drew Cady. Yes, an FBI sleuth is the hero and protagonist of a crime novel. Why the surprise? I have read about FBI agents in crime fiction countless times before. M. Connelly has written novels centred around Special Agent Rachel Walling, ...
Dry Bones in the Valley – Tom Bouman
Reading ‘Dry Bones in the Valley’ by Tom Bouman is like taking a breath of fresh country air after too much time spent in the city. Nothing wrong with a good urban crime story of course, but I simply love the way Bouman has woven the Pennsylvania countryside into the plot: its woods and valleys ...
The Kind Worth Killing – Peter Swanson
Prepare yourselves for some sleight-of-hand shocks in ‘The Kind Worth Killing’ by Peter Swanson. He cleverly, almost slyly keeps some facts up his narrative sleeve early on, managing to be secretive in plain sight and then springing several stunning surprises. Swanson gets away with his own brand of ‘unreliable narration’ because he does it well, ...
The Missing File – Dror A. Mishani
‘Do you know why there are no detective novels in Hebrew?’ The question is asked by Police Inspector Avraham Avraham to Hannah Sharabi, who shows up one evening at the station in Holon, a small town close to Tel Aviv (Israel), to report the disappearance of Ofer, her sixteen years old son: he had left ...
Talking to Ghosts – Hervé Le Corre
This is an ambitious novel, as dark, bloody and harrowing as classic French noirs can get. I enjoyed ‘Talking to Ghosts’ on several levels, beginning with Hervé Le Corre’s daring in trying to add new twists to the traditional police procedural mix, without losing focus and still keeping the narrative pace up. This is his ...
Barcelona Shadows – Marc Pastor
Don’t look for the familiar features of police procedurals in this highly original novel, the fourth by Catalonian author Marc Pastor and his first published in English. No killing in the first 250 words – though a dead body appears soon enough – no mystery as to who the culprit is, no fancy crime-scene technology, ...
