Archives de catégorie : Crime & Thrillers

LUMINOUS de Silvia Park

Set in a unified Korea where robots have integrated seamlessly into society, LUMINIOUS is a poignant debut novel for readers of Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.

LUMINOUS
by Silvia Park
‎ Simon & Schuster, March 2025
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Adult siblings Jun and Morgan Cho haven’t seen or spoken to each other in several years. Both, in their dysfunctional way, are still processing grief over the sudden loss of their brother Yoyo years prior. Yoyo, designed by their famous father, was the earliest prototype for what the humanoid robots have now become—nearly indistinguishable from the real thing, with profound sensitivity and depth. But while he was a true brother to Jun and Morgan, Yoyo was always bound for a darker purpose, and his absence has left a chasm in the siblings’ lives.
When a neighbor’s missing robot thrusts Morgan back into Jun’s life, neither of them realizes that the investigation will not only force them to confront their fractured family’s past, but it will also see old grudges clash with new revelations, as the three siblings circle each other, their lonely worlds finally collide.

Silvia Park is a Korean/American writer and Visiting Assistant Professor of Fiction at Oberlin College. A graduate of Columbia, NYU, and the 2018 Clarion Workshop, their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Joyland, Tor.com, and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, among others.

DON’T TURN AROUND de Harry Dolan

The police call him Merkury. He’s a killer who seems to choose his victims at random. He leaves no evidence behind, and no witnesses. Except for one. But what did she really see?

DON’T TURN AROUND
by Harry Dolan
Atlantic Monthly Press, April 2024
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan)

When Kate Summerlin was eleven years old, she climbed out her bedroom window on a spring night, looking for a taste of freedom in the small college town where she was living with her parents. But what she found as she wandered in the woods near her house was something else: the body of a beautiful young woman, the first of Merkury’s victims. And before she could come to grips with what she was seeing, she heard a voice behind her—the killer’s voice—saying: “Don’t turn around.”

Now, at the age of twenty-nine, Kate is a successful true crime writer, but she has never told anyone the truth about what happened on that long-ago night. When Merkury claims yet another victim—a college student named Bryan Cayhill—Kate finds herself drawn back to the town where everything started. She sets out to make sense of this latest crime, but the deeper she gets into the story, the more she comes to realize that it’s far from over. Her search for the truth about Merkury is leading her down into a dark labyrinth, and if she hopes to escape, she’ll have to meet him once again—this time face to face.

Harry Dolan is the author of the mystery/suspense novels Bad Things Happen (2009), Very Bad Men (2011), The Last Dead Girl (2014), and The Man in the Crooked Hat (2017). He graduated from Colgate University, where he majored in philosophy and studied fiction-writing with the novelist Frederick Busch. A native of Rome, New York, he now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

THE INFLUENCERS d’Anna-Marie McLemore

When May “Mother May I” Iverson’s mansion burns down with her newlywed husband inside, friends, neighbors, media, and the Iversons’ fans and enemies alike begin speculating and investigating faster than detectives.

THE INFLUENCERS
by Anna-Marie McLemore
Dial Press, March 2025
(via Dystel, Goderich & Bourret)

May is a social media sensation, glamorous-yet-relatable, but the key to her enduring fame is her daughters, who featured in videos from their births through adorable childhoods, difficult adolescences, and terrible teens. But the girls are all grown up now, and their lingering anger and resentment from childhoods stolen by the camera have started to spill over into public view. April is a businesswoman feuding with her mother over IP; June and July are influencers themselves, possibly threatening May’s dominance; January is a theater tech who steers clear of her mother and the limelight; and March…well, March has somehow completely disappeared.

Could it be one of the girls who murdered May’s less-than-charming new groom? Or could online sweetheart Mother May I have killed the man she’d just recently married and then burned down her dream home to cover it up? Or could it be one of us, the fawning yet fickle mob of media consumers?

THE INFLUENCERS is award-winning (including recently Printz-winning) YA author Anna-Marie McLemore’s first novel for adults, told in multiple points of view, reminiscent of The Virgin Suicides, and in the vein of other compulsively readable family dramas, like The Family Fang and Dava Shastri’s Last Day.

Anna-Marie McLemore (they/them) writes magical realism and fairy tales that are as queer, Latine, and nonbinary as they are. Their books include The Weight of Feathers, a 2016 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist; 2017 Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature and was the winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award; Wild Beauty, a Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Booklist best book of 2017; Blanca & Roja, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; Miss Meteor (co-authored with Tehlor Kay Mejia); Dark And Deepest Red, a Winter 2020 Indie Next List selection; The Mirror Season, which has recently received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Booklist and School Library Journal; Lakelore, which has received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Shelf Awareness; Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature; and Venom & Vow, co-authored with Elliott McLemore. Most recently, they contributed to the 2023 Printz-winning anthology The Collectors: Stories, edited by A.S. King.

A CURTAIN TWITCHER’S BOOK OF MURDER

Set in London in 1968, follows the lives of the inhabitants of a suburban London street. But this is no ordinary street.

A CURTAIN TWITCHER’S BOOK OF MURDER
by Gay Marris
Bedford Square (Ed. Carolyn Mays), June 2024
(via Randle Editorial & Literary Consultancy)

Ask anyone on Atbara Avenue how well they know their neighbours, and they’ll answer ‘well’.

After all, they see each other across the vast distance afforded by close proximity, and that is probably for the best…

For the best, because Atbara Avenue is a street where, all too often, murder feels like the solution.

With a delicious cast of characters, dazzling plotting, and an utterly unique voice, Gay Marris’ first book is remarkably accomplished. If you’ve been longing for a fresh and compelling new voice in the world of crime fiction, your wait is over.

Gay Marris is a retired research scientist. Her career focused on insect ecology, parasites and honey bee health. A CURTAIN TWITCHER’S BOOK OF MURDER is her first novel, set in the suburbs of the deceptively dangerous suburbs of 1960s London, where she grew up. Gay now lives in York with her husband, a cat and a tortoise.

FALLS THE SHADOW de Mike Nicol

An edgy new detective series from master of noir Mike Nicol.

FALLS THE SHADOW
by Mike Nicol
TBD
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

A cop in a quiet rural town kills his family and then turns the gun on himself. In his shed is a cache of weapons: Russian automatics, handguns, 9mils, .38s. You don’t need forensics to work out what’s going on. This is a cop with a side racket. Which gets the attention of Captain Zara Dewane of the Internal Crime Unit. A single mom, known among cops as the Jackal, what she uncovers about the family murder puts her in the firing line. There are cops running guns stolen from the police armoury. There are cops selling guns to gangsters. Thing is, the money chain goes deep into the police hierarchy. Even fingers the political bosses. Close her down, comes the order from on high. Kill her, in other words. Making Zara and her family targets. With only one way out.

Mike Nicol is the author of twenty-four books. He has written novels, works of non-fiction and poetry. His thrillers are published in the UK and the USA, and have been translated into Afrikaans, Dutch, French and German. His long list of accolades starts in 1979, with his debut poetry collection receiving the Ingrid Jonker Prize. His Revenge Trilogy featured in the KrimiZeit Top 10 list in Germany, as did Of Coprs and Robberts and Power Play, while Payback was shortlisted for the VN Thriller of the Year award in Holland and the Prix SCNF Du Polar 2016 in France. He lives in Cape Town.