The intensity and violence never let up in this virtuoso performance from one of crime fiction’s most searing writers. Roman Carruthers is a successful Atlanta money manager who returns to his drug-gang-infested hometown to tend to his comatose father. His subsequent entanglement with the terrifying Black Baron Boys, ostensibly to save his screwup of a younger brother, is an ironic tragedy worthy of Shakespeare.
Ron Currie serves up a big batch of sticky issues in this vivid chronicle of a drug business run by a Franco-American grandmother named Babs Dionne in the depressed town of Waterville, Maine. When her control of her empire is threatened, Babs unleashes hell as only she can, channeling her fury into retribution as part of a left-behind minority, assisted by her crew of sozzled neighborhood ladies. An ambitious, exhilarating accomplishment by Currie.
Both of these books are centered around pub-related murders. Chris Chibnall’s is classically constructed and depicts its complex relationships as sensitively as you’d expect from the creator of the crime television series Broadchurch, while Janice Hallett deploys text and WhatsApp messages to shape a confounding mystery around trivia nights that is by turns amusing and wickedly clever. Neither will make you want to run a pub—maybe run to one, though.
Philip Miller hears England screaming. His version of post-Brexit, post-pandemic Great Britain, viewed through the investigative journalism of his heroine, Shona Sandison, is dark and apocalyptic. When she follows up on a tip about an entity code-named “Grendel,” she’s challenged at every turn. It will take characters out of a modern fairy tale to help her uncover the truth before the monstrous Grendel makes its move.
A Bonfire of the Vanities for the age of Trump. Chris Pavone’s sharp-eyed social satire of contemporary New York City is also a nervy thriller that flips the script; its hero is not a Master of the Universe but a stalwart doorman who perfectly embodies the reasons why Zohran Mamdani is now the city’s mayor-elect.
Louise Penny somehow anticipated the tension between Canada and the United States in her 20th novel in the Armand Gamache series. There’s no Trump or Trump surrogate here, but Gamache—of the Sûreté du Québec, the province’s national police force—is forced to deal with secret enmity between the neighboring countries due to unfinished business from a previous case. The “Black Wolf” he wrongly thought he’d put away for life is still out there, planning the unthinkable. A deeply thoughtful, high-stakes thriller, if that’s not an oxymoron.
There’s plenty going on in Leo—not one heist but two, a couple of murders, political corruption, and a detective’s imminent wedding—but don’t worry, Deon Meyer’s got it under control. The master South African storyteller shows his aptitude for weaving multiple plotlines together and making them all equally engaging in this smart, exciting geopolitical thriller. Leo is a book to get lost in and to learn from.
A forensic scientist who’s gotten an M.B.E. for her definitive work on bloodstain-pattern analysis realizes that her theory is flawed and could result in wrongful verdicts. Should she admit to her error or keep quiet? Her dilemma is spun by Denise Mina into a spellbinding novel about murders and cover-ups at the highest, most rotten levels of English society.
Because sometimes a little levity is in order. Irascible archivist Agatha Dorn discovers a lost manuscript by a golden-age mystery writer and revels in her moment of literary fame—until her copy turns out to be a fake. Canceled, disgraced, and never far from her next glass of gin, Agatha puts on her detective hat to find out how the death of her ex-girlfriend might be connected with her phony find. Agatha is a hilariously misanthropic creation—I hope she comes back soon.
Lisa Henricksson reviews mysteries for Air Mail. She lives in New York City
