A new COVID lockdown has begun in the UK, but to keep your mind nimble we’ve got five new crime novels – each with its own distinctive flavour of crime fiction. This week, we start things off with a fast-moving thriller about a magazine editor who targets rapists – Predator by Zoe Caldwell. But we also add to the mix some historical crime fiction, some hardboiled x supernatural and an old school classic from the 1940s which has been reprinted.
Enjoy. And, if you’re blue about being locked down, hang in there. We can get through this.
Predator by Zoe Caldwell
A magazine editor who’s also a serial killer? Well that’s a new plot twist – tell us more! This psychological thriller by Zoe Caldwell is out on now and it stars Camille, whose glamorous career and stylish persona disguises the fact that she is a multiple murderer. Her targets are all bad men, abusers who Camille feels deserve their comeuppance. But when she murders rapist Julian Taylor things begin to go wrong for Camille. There’s a new detective on the block, and they have her slap-bang in their sights… Has her #MeToo vigilante luck finally run out?
Buy now on Amazon
Hayden Jon Marshall by Travis Myers and Natasha Myers Marsiguera
The second book in the series by brother and sister writing team Travis Myers and Natasha Myers Marsiguera sees New York police detective Tommy Keane working a tough and disturbing case. A three-year-old boy vanishes within sight of home and is later found murdered nearby. The death affects everyone working the investigation, and as the clock ticks on with no sign of finding the perpetrator, Tommy makes a decision that could bring about the end of his career. What will this by-the-book cop discover when he takes a trip into the Dark Web? Out on 19 November. We’ve previously reviewed Sister Margaret, by the same authors.
Pre-order now on Amazon
Cesare by Jarome Charyn
Released as a hard cover in January, on 19 November Cesare by Jarome Charyn arrives in Kindle and paperback formats. It’s a novel that will transport you back to Germany in 1937, where a young naval cadet rescues and becomes the protege of Wilhelm Canaris, a leading German intelligence officer who has a secret – he’s helping protect Jews from the Nazis. Together they will try and rescue the woman the young man loves from almost certain death in a concentration camp. She is, after all, a member of the Jewish resistance. This is literary crime fiction worth looking out for.
Buy now on Amazon
Angel’s Inferno by William Hjortsberg
If you’ve never come across William Hjortsberg before, you might still have seen his work. He wrote the screenplay for Legend, and the film Angel Heart was based on his novel Falling Angel, written in 1978. Now, 42 years later, Hjortsberg has written a sequel. Angel’s Inferno is a hardboiled detective novel that you won’t want to miss if you enjoy books where supernatural evil has a hand in the game. Set in the mid-1950s, it sees private detective Harry Angel on the trail of Satan himself, from New York all the way to… the Vatican. Yup. The Vatican!
Buy now on Amazon
Death Goes on Skis by Nancy Spain
Out today, and rather seasonal as we head into winter, Death Goes on Skis is a cosy mystery novel, with a touch of humour, that was first published in 1949. It’s been republished as part of the Virago’s modern classics range, and is about the accidental sleuths Miriam Birdseye and Natasha Nevkorina, who are away at a ski resort when two of their fellow guests are murdered. Natasha is a former ballerina, and Miriam is a revue artist, and with a twisted web of intrigue involving a nightclub owner, a playboy, his wife, their obnoxious children, their nanny and somebody’s mistress, plus two murders, it could be down hill all the way for our heroine’s unless they can solve the case.
Buy now on Amazon