Death never takes a holiday but you do: 10 best crime books for summer

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

Ambrose Parry, Canongate, £18.99, Canongate, out now
Writers Chris Brookmyre and Dr Marisa Haetzman (Image: Getty Images)
Why has STV or BBC Scotland not given us a small screen version of Parry's Raven and Fisher Victorian murder mysteries? Budget - or the lack of it - is, presumably, the boring answer. But this splendid series, now drawing to a close, is tailor-made for a TV adaptation. Set in Edinburgh's medical community in the mid-1800s, this is the fifth and final volume in a series of wonderfully crafted entertainments by husband-and-wife duo Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, operating under the Ambrose Parry nom de plume. Victorian virtues turn out to be anything but in this gripping story which takes in photography, pornography and people trafficking.
White City
Dominic Nolan, Headline, £10.99, July 3
Out in paperback at the start of July, this is crime fiction as historical epic. Inspired by a real-life event - the Eastcastle Street robbery of a Post Office van in London in 1952 - this sweeping novel takes the temperature of the capital in the post-war years, culminating in the Notting Hill riots at the end of the decade. More James Ellroy than Agatha Christie, it's bleak, brutal and often thrilling. It's about cops and robbers - and how close both those sides can be - as well as postwar housing, Rachmanism (Peter Rachman is one of just a number of real-life people who appear in its pages; see also Lady Docker), racism and politics at the margins. Both vivid and visceral, it's a rewarding reminder of just how ambitious crime fiction can be.
The Good Liar, Denise Mina, Harvill Secker, £16.99, July 31
Oh, this is also very good. Published at the end of July, Denise Mina's new book is a reminder of just how potent a writer the Glasgow author is. The Good Liar is a standalone novel that is embedded in the worlds of forensic science and the law. Doctor Claudia O'Shiel is a blood spatter expert who becomes involved in the investigation of a brutal double murder in an opulent London townhouse. The chief suspect is a Viscount who's never out of the papers. What follows is a novel about grief (O'Shiel has recently lost her husband), the seductive nature of the British establishment and moral compromise. It's sharp, clear-eyed and clever.
Rum Punch, Elmore Leonard, Penguin, £9.99, out now
'Sunday morning, Ordell took Louis to watch the white-power demonstration in downtown Palm Beach.
''Young skinhead Nazis,' Ordell said, 'Look, even little Nazi girls marching down Worth Avenue. You believe it?''
Rum Punch, Elmore Leonard (Image: Penguin)
Ah, I'd forgotten what a joy it was to read Elmore Leonard. Since the author's death in 2013 he has slightly slipped out of the public eye, but Penguin has now added him to its Modern Classics Crime and Espionage series. The first three of 14 books - Rum Punch, The Switch and Swag - are out now and they're essential reading. Rum Punch is the source material for Quentin Tarantino's film Jackie Brown, which is fine and all, but the original is better. Leonard is one of the great prose stylists of the late 20th century. And these handsomely designed reissues are a wonderful excuse to become reacquainted with one of crime fiction's true originals.
The Cut
Richard Armitage, Faber, £18.99, August 28
Richard Armitage (Image: PA)
Actor Richard Armitage (The Hobbit, Captain America) made something of a splash with his debut thriller Geneva in 2023. This follow-up is a tricksy, time-switching story about High School rivalries and a teenage murder, jumping between then (the 1990s) and now. At times the result pushes hard against the border of believability, but you do keep reading to find out what really happened in the past and what's going to happen in the present.
The Man Who Died Seven Times, Yashuhiko Nishizawa, Pushkin Vertigo, £14.99, August 14
More tricksy, time-switching entertainment. On steroids. In fact Yasuhiko Nishizawa's crime novel - translated by Jesse Kirkwood - qualifies for that Doctor Who description, 'wibbly wobbly timey-wimey'. The man in the title is Hisataro's grandfather. He's dead on the first page and then comes back to life a few pages later. That's because for some reason his grandson regularly relives certain days over and over. And so when his grandad is killed - yes, it's murder - he decides to try and change the course of events. But it proves more difficult than he imagines. This is puzzle fiction for want of a better description. It has no other purpose than to entertain. It succeeds at that.
Like a Bullet
Andrew Cartmel, Titan Books,£9.99, July 8
Like a Bullet by Andrew Cartmel (Image: Titan Books)
This year has been a bumper one for Andrew Cartmel fans. There's already been a new Vinyl Detective book - Underscore, the eighth in this hugely entertaining series. And next month sees the third in his Paperback Sleuth series in which our morally ambivalent heroine Cordelia Stanmer tracks down rare paperbacks and somehow becomes embroiled in the odd spot of murder as a result. In her latest adventure she is tasked with finding copies of a pulp wartime series originally published in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In fine condition, it goes without saying. (Not mint condition. That's for coins, stamps, comics and records.) In doing so she meets dodgy brothers, one-armed ex-military men and an author with a taste for Bettie Page and bondage. It's a brisk amuse-bouche of a book, one that wears its learning lightly. Very moreish.
The Diary of Lies, Philip Miller, Polygon, £9.99, August 7
The third Shona Sandison thriller is full of spies, conspiracies, government secrets, the newspaper industry and, inevitably, murder. Plenty, then, for our journalist heroine to get her teeth into. Miller, formerly arts correspondent of this parish, has proven himself a very able crime writer in recent years. Among the many admirers of his last novel, The Hollow Tree, was David Peace, author of the Red Riding Quartet, and The Damned United no less.
Murder Takes a Vacation, Laura Lippman, Faber, £9.99, August 14
Mrs Blossom is, as the title implies, going on holiday. A cruise down the Seine. Quite something given that she has never left the United States before. It's just a pity that there has to be a murder at the start of it.
Veteran crime writer Laura Lippman has taken a minor character from her Tess Monaghan series and placed her front and centre in this cosy crime story. It works perfectly well enough as such, but, really, what makes this essential is that at heart it is a nuanced and clever character study of a flawed, decent woman in her sixties coming to terms with grief and a growing sense of adventure. Mrs Blossom is a delight to spend time with. Oh, and by the way, you may well come away from this with a newfound interest in the abstract artist Joan Mitchell and the ceramics of American industrial designer Russel Wright.
A Particularly Nasty Case, Adam Kay, Orion, £16.99, August 28
Not out until the end of August, former doctor Adam Kay has - as his publisher points out - 'decided to stop writing about saving people's lives and start killing them off instead.' Everyone from Russell T Davies to the aforementioned Chris Brookmyre and Joanna Lumley are raving about this development. Chapter 26 is entitled 'Autopsy-turvy'. How you respond to that may tell you whether you'll like it or not. (It made me smirk.)