The best recent crime and thrillers

The Guardian

18-07-2025

Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson (Michael Joseph, £20)The bestselling YA author's first novel for adults has an intriguing premise: thanks to the combination of a blow to the head by an unseen assailant and a pre-existing medical condition, Jet Mason has a week to solve her own murder before a fatal aneurysm rupture. Jet, who comes across as rather younger than her 27 years, has retreated back to the dysfunctional bosom of her wealthy Vermont family after dropping out of law school; she disagrees with the police department's choice of culprit and conducts her own investigation with the aid of childhood friend Billy. As Jet's neighbours, family and the construction business from which the Masons derive their money come under the microscope, secrets and cover-ups are revealed, and it starts to look as if the killer may be very close to home … A propulsive plot, where the pathos is fuel for real suspense, makes this perfect holiday fare – a genuine page-turner for YA and adult readers alike.
Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson (Faber, £18.99)Set in Massachusetts, this is a mystery told in reverse order. We know from the first sentence that Wendy is planning to kill her husband Thom, after discovering that he is writing a novel that threatens to expose their darkest secret. It's the last straw: Thom, who is not only sexually incontinent but increasingly prone to getting blackout drunk, has become not only a disappointment but a liability. The narrative, which forms a kind of moral balance sheet, switches between his point of view and Wendy's as it takes us back through almost three decades of marriage, and finally to 1982, when they first met as teenagers on a school trip to Washington DC. It's cleverly done, with seemingly insignificant details emerging in a consequential light once we have knowledge of what happened earlier in the chronology of the pair's lives. Swanson fills in all the puzzle parts meticulously, for a complete picture.
The Good Liar by Denise Mina (Harvill Secker, £16.99)Professor Claudia Atkins O'Sheil, MBE, creator of the revolutionary Blood Spatter Probability Scale, is preparing to give a speech at the Royal College of Forensic Scientists, in the full knowledge that she is about to trash her reputation and that of her boss, Sir Philip Ardmore. We then wind back a year to a similar gathering, when the pair are called away to a crime scene: Ardmore's old friend, aristocrat Jonty Stewart, and his fiancee have been found murdered in their smart Regent's Park home. Jonty's ne'er-do-well son is arrested, but Claudia isn't sure that he's guilty, and, as the action moves forward, she begins to have serious doubts about several other things, including the veracity of her creation. Her social trajectory having been as spectacular as her professional one, Claudia is both drawn to and resentful of the privileged world in which she moves, and her attempts to decode its mores as she wrestles with her conscience make this compelling and suspenseful study of complicity and culpability a stand-out read.
The Hole by Hye-Young Pyun, translated by Sora Kim-Russell (Doubleday, £14.99)The Shirley Jackson award winner's novel centres on Korean cartography professor Oghi, who wakes up in hospital after the car accident that killed his wife, unable to move or speak. Released into the care of his mother-in-law, he returns to his marital home, where, confined in bed, he desperately tries to communicate by blinking. The details of the crash are initially unspecified, but as clues emerge as to the state of Oghi's marriage and his conduct at work, it gradually becomes clear that he is not an entirely reliable narrator of his own life, and that his mother-in-law, who may have begun reading her daughter's diaries, is deliberately tormenting him. As well as the literal and sinister hole that Oghi's mother-in-law is busy digging in the garden, metaphorical holes abound in this superbly insidious and atmospheric chiller about caring and cruelty: grief, isolation, helplessness and existential fear.
Gunner by Alan Parks (Baskerville, £16.99)Alan Parks's latest novel, the first in a projected series, opens in March 1941, during the Clydebank Blitz. German bombs are also raining down on neighbouring Glasgow when former police officer Joseph Gunner returns after being wounded in action in France. His initial concerns – a bed for the night and how to eke out his precious supply of morphine – are multiplied when the body of a German, mutilated to disguise his identity, turns up in the rubble and Gunner's erstwhile boss asks him for help. When he reluctantly agrees, he soon finds himself embroiled in a high-level conspiracy. There's also the matter of a turf war between rival gangsters and the fact that his brother, a conscientious objector, has absconded from a work camp… The similarities with Parks's 1970s-set Harry McCoy series will certainly please existing fans, but this well-researched historical thriller, which perfectly captures the chaos, danger and moral mess of a world turned upside down by conflict, is sure to attract new ones too.