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Times
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The best thrillers of 2025 so far — our critics' top books
Welcome to our rolling guide to some of the most notable thrillers of the year. Whatever your tastes — high octane chase stories, murky machinations in anonymous HQs, wartime drama, tense domestic psychological terror — our expert critics will aim to cover it. John Dugdale has been reviewing thrillers for a quarter of a century for The Sunday Times and the historian and author James Owen has been covering this beat for The Times since 2020. We'll be updating this article twice a month throughout the year, so do bookmark it. And tell us in the comments below which thrillers you've enjoyed. Book of the month Our Last Wild Days by Anna Bailey Loyal May reluctantly returns to the Louisiana town of Jacknife to care for her mother. Soon afterwards her only friend from school, Cutter Labasque, is found drowned. The police think it's an accident. Despite their complex relationship — the two hadn't spoken since an alligator on the Labasque farm took Loyal's hand — Loyal, a reporter, feels compelled to dig deeper. With the help of a gay friend, Sasha (all defiant pink hair and rhinestones), she uncovers drug-fuelled corruption involving a neo-Nazi biker gang. Yet again men are violent and there are strange things lurking in the woods. What lifts Anna Bailey's marvellous second novel above the southern gothic clichés is the hothouse lyricism of her writing, which is as lush as the setting. 'That's how Loyal's mother seems to her now — like a house on fire in the night that Loyal can only watch from a distance. No way of knowing how it started. No way of saving anyone, either.' It'll make you give a damn. James Owen Doubleday £16.99 pp320 The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie There isn't much nobility to the life of Babs Dionne, but plenty that is savage. As a teenager in 1968 she killed the cop who raped her. Since then she has reigned over Little Canada, a Maine enclave populated by the descendants of Québécois. It's poor and, like her family, she loves it too hard and too much. But that hasn't stopped her from controlling its drugs trade. This draws the attention of a much bigger mobster, who in 2016 sends an impassive enforcer — the Man — to bring about a takeover. Babs's hard-won community is coming apart in other ways too since her younger daughter, Sis, a meth addict, has disappeared. Her sister, Lori, a traumatised, equally addicted Afghanistan veteran, looks for her, accompanied by the shades of the dead, with whom she speaks. It's this streak of the fantastic, along with his characteristic dark humour and screwball dialogue, that brightens Ron Currie's bloody yet surprisingly warm-hearted spin on The Godfather. Great stuff, and the first in a promised trilogy. JO Atlantic £17.99 pp368 The Cure by Eve Smith Not too far in the future, a genetic cure for ageing is found. However, it has unforeseen consequences. The population soars, causing environmental havoc while the young have no jobs and no money. A life limit of 120 years is imposed, Logan's Run -style, but naturally the rich try to get round that. They also have access to fancier jabs, which can make them virtually immortal. Unfortunately such 'Supers' tend to develop psychotic tendencies, one example being the Russian president who unleashed nuclear devastation on Ukraine. Like most speculative fiction, Eve Smith's novel is a commentary on the contemporary. That element is perhaps inevitably more original than the plot, in which a crack 'Omnicide' investigator, Mara Black, and the sidelined inventor of the vaccine, Ruth Hammond, hunt down the rogue scientist who hijacked her discovery and is cooking up sinister new schemes. Even so, this a thought-provoking thriller with much to say about our obsession with looking youthful. JO Orenda £9.99 pp300 The Castle by John Sutherland In the third in John Sutherland's well-drawn series about Alex Lewis, the Metropolitan Police hostage negotiator heads to a remote Scottish estate with his partner, Pip, for a badly needed rest. The idyll sours when a bogus hunting party tries to capture the playboy Earl of Islay and shoots his friend dead. With Pip wounded, Lewis and the deeply unlikeable earl take sanctuary in Blane Castle's cellar. On the other side of the stout door, an American, Andrew Winters, claims Islay raped his daughter and no harm will come to anyone else if he is handed over. Lewis is torn between his duty to see the law is followed and his compassion for Islay's victim. With few cards to play, can he use his skills and gift for empathy to keep them all alive until help arrives? Drawing on his own experiences with the Met, Sutherland reminds us that, beneath the uniform, police officers are as human as the rest of us. JO Orion £10.99 pp352 The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani Lucas Cole, a successful author of trashy thrillers, leaves behind an unpublished manuscript when he takes his own life. The Midnight King is billed as fiction, but his son, Nathan, realises it is a confession; his father was a serial killer who murdered more than a dozen children in the Nashville area. The damaged Nathan, who has always known the truth about Lucas, resolves to try to find a girl who has gone missing and may be the last victim. Isaac Holloway, a cop-turned-private investigator, is also on the case. The closer he gets to the truth the nearer he is to stumbling on the secrets kept by his childhood friend Nathan. Tariq Ashkanani's often grim tale takes some abrupt turns, and the use of Cole's novel-within-a-novel to muddy the waters doesn't really land. Rather stronger is the undertow of guilt, redemption and the legacy left by parents. JO Viper £16.99 pp352 Lovers of Franz K by Burhan Sonmez, translated by Sami Hezil Burhan Sonmez's unashamedly stagey thriller is a homage to Franz Kafka, framed as the trial (of course) of Ferdy Kaplan. He is accused of trying to shoot Max Brod, the executor who ignored Kafka's wishes and published his works posthumously. Sonmez, a Kurdish novelist who is president of PEN, which campaigns for freedom of expression, queries how far one should go in the pursuit of what is important to us. JO Open Borders £12.99 pp112 The Death of Us by Abigail Dean Isabel, who co-narrates Abigail Dean's mesmerising blend of crime and romance, is tortured and raped in 2001 by Nigel Wood, a serial rapist and, later, killer. Wood (a police officer, like the real-life serial rapist David Carrick) is eventually caught, and in the present-day sections Isabel and her ex-husband, Edward, attend his trial in their fifties as victims giving 'impact statements'. Interwoven with these chapters is a chronicle of their relationship from both points of view, from meeting as teenagers in the 1990s to their marriage gradually unravelling after Isabel's ordeal. This flashback strand shows the real, unsimplified narrative of the incident's impact — Isabel's chapters are addressed to Wood, as if in court — which is profound and lasting, but nuanced and not entirely negative. As a long-running, on-off love story, it also takes Dean into Sally Rooney territory (mercifully not Colleen Hoover territory, despite a title that looks designed to mimic Hoover's). She seems very much at home there: the novel — her third — is remarkably psychologically rich, the couple's dialogue (a kind of English screwball) is a joy, and the secondary characters, such as their quasi-daughter Nina or the detective Etta, are sharply drawn. John Dugdale Hemlock £16.99 pp357 Sleeper Beach by Nick Harkaway After winning acclaim for Karla's Choice, his homage to his father, John le Carré, Nick Harkaway follows it with a homage to the hard-boiled detective novel. Cal Sounder, his series sleuth, is hired to investigate a woman's murder on the beach at a rundown American resort, with suspects ranging from a super-rich brat to leftist terrorists. Cal is not your average PI, though: in this nifty fusion of crime and sci-fi, he belongs to an elite of Titans, who are bigger and live longer thanks to injections. In a novel teeming with memorable characters, Harkaway handles the blend of genres with skill and pizzazz — and whenever the Dashiell Hammett-like mystery plot verges on the formulaic, sci-fi freshens it up. The gumshoe working for the head of a powerful family is a cliché, for example, but (as a Titan) Cal's client Martha is enormous, aged 400 and spends all her time in water. JD Corsair £20 pp312 The Liar by Louise Jensen The cover of Louise Jensen's tenth psychological thriller strongly implies that its titular liar is Luke, the new lodger in the home shared by Mel, a social worker, and her daughters, Jen, 26, and Amy, 13. After Mel unaccountably goes missing and soapy revelations follow, however, pretty much every adult character — including Jen's friend Camilla and Mel's brother, Don, a (ahem) don — is guilty of falsehoods. The book touches on hot-button issues from revenge porn to various forms of abuse, but none is allowed to impede its advance to a well-handled headlong denouement in which one of the women on the verge of a nervous breakdown finally cracks up spectacularly. JD HQ £9.99 pp331 • The best books of 2025 so far — our critics' picks Strangers in Time by David Baldacci In London in 1944 — the so-called Baby Blitz — three strangers come together. They all have missing people in their lives. Charlie is a poor orphan, surviving by thieving. Molly is a middle-class teenager whose parents have disappeared. Ignatius is a widowed bookshop owner. Clearly indebted to Oliver Twist, Baldacci's first historical novel ably incorporates pro-Nazi traitors, rapist soldiers, sinister shrinks and other evils flourishing amid the fog of war, but he seems keener on showing how his youngsters emerge from the ruins of their childhoods and look towards their postwar future. In fact, it's arguably a children's thriller, although not marketed as one. JD Macmillan £22 pp433 A Spy at War by Charles Beaumont Thrillers are often quickly written and in a changing world that can make them the nimblest form of fiction. Charles Beaumont's impressive first novel, A Spy Alone (2023), focused on a ring of Russian assets recruited at Oxford and how Britain's professional class had been corrupted by oligarchs' wealth. This sequel shifts the scene to Kyiv in 2022, just as Ukraine is invaded. There Beaumont's protagonist, the ex-MI6 officer Simon Sharman, is searching for the Chechen hit man who killed his partner in Prague. But Beaumont widens his lens to capture the battle for influence being fought in Whitehall between Sharman's allies and those pushing Moscow's interests. Drawing on his experience as a former MI6 officer, Beaumont scores top marks for prescience. The plot turns in part on the possibility that a Maga-diehard US president might leave Europe to defend Ukraine by itself. Beaumont's portrait of Sharman, a paladin out of his depth in this new world where money trumps loyalty, may be less original, but a bloody climax among the ruins of Bakhmut has the requisite tang of authenticity. Mission accomplished. JO Canelo Action £9.99 pp368 Someone is Lying by Heidi Perks To celebrate her 18th birthday, Issie flies to Lisbon with her older boyfriend, Dylan. When she doesn't answer messages on the big day, her mother, Jess, becomes ever more worried. The police won't help because Issie is now an adult and there's no evidence that she's missing. Yet Jess has seen how her daughter has changed in the past few months. She flunked her exams, dropped out of her art degree and fell out with her friends. Jess thinks Dylan is controlling Issie, but is she just growing up? When a body is found in Portugal, however, Jess fears the worst. There has recently been a crop of thrillers that play on parents' worries about adolescence. Neatly, Heidi Perks's novel is as much about the mistakes this leads the grown-ups to make as their children asserting independence. Some sly twists, sharp observations about class and an awareness of the subjective nature of truth lift this well above the common run. JO Penguin £9.99 pp384 White King by Juan Gómez-Jurado, translated by Nicholas Caistor White King smartly wraps up the preposterous fun that is Juan Gómez-Jurado's bestselling Spanish trilogy about the savant Antonia Scott, part of the crime-fighting, Red Queen secret project. Someone has been targeting Europe's other Red Queens, chemically enhanced geniuses who solve unusually complex misdeeds. Lo! Here comes Antonia's nefarious nemesis, Mr White, who sets her not one but three final problems. Fail to solve them in ever-shorter time and it'll be bye-bye to her loyal protector, Jon Gutierrez, who has a bomb implanted inside him. It's lucky that while haring around Madrid Antonia can think faster than a computer since White is tag-teaming with another warped prodigy bent on revenge. There are also disconcerting revelations to be confronted about the ethics of the Red Queen project. As agile as a matador, Gómez-Jurado skilfully balances exhilarating thrills with the melancholy that is the price of Antonia's gifts. Strongly recommended too is the TV adaptation of the series, Reina Roja. ¡Ole! JO Macmillan £20 pp352 Saint of the Narrows Street by William Boyle It's 1986 in Brooklyn and Sav, an abusive husband about to abandon his family, points a gun at his baby son, Fab, and long-suffering wife, Risa. Nobody could blame her for clouting him with the cutlet pan. But now there's a body to bury and she's worried that Fab will be brought up in an orphanage if she admits to the killing. Sav needs to stay gone. William Boyle's novel charts the consequences of the choices made in the aftermath of that moment. In the years that follow, Risa's sister Giulia gives up her dreams to help to bring up Fab, while Sav's friend Chooch, who holds a candle for Risa, does likewise. But one day will someone learn the truth? Perhaps even Fab? Blood, after all, will out. Boyle's leading character, however, is the Italian-American neighbourhood of his youth, where bars have names like the Wrong Number, its denizens include Jane the Stain and Religious Pete, and violence simmers like a pot of pasta e ceci. Boyle has a poet's eye for the instants that elevate daily life, and a dramatist's one for its tragedies. Love is a battlefield. JO No Exit £9.99 pp320 A Duty of Care by Gerald Seymour Over the past few years, Gerald Seymour has created the most memorable (if improbable) hero of his long career, the veteran intelligence analyst, Jonas Merrick. Now a good decade past retirement age — two in fact if he really worked for MI5 — Merrick is still doggedly pursuing his hunches. In A Duty of Care, these centre on the evasion of sanctions by Moscow's elite, who use a family of Albanian gangsters to carry messages to financiers in Geneva. As ever, it is not the outwardly conventional Merrick, with his caravan and coffee flask, who compels the attention, but the well-shaped spokes to his hub. There is the former ghillie, Croppy, spying on the Albanians from the hills above and the MI6 traitor-with-a-conscience, Frank, rotting in a Russian prison. Merrick has, however, to shoulder the burden of worry, and when things go awry, he does not hesitate to put himself in the firing line. Saga's answer to Slow Horses perhaps, but plenty of life in it yet. JO Hodder & Stoughton £22 pp400 Killer Potential by Hannah Deitch As Paula Hawkins says on the jacket, Hannah Deitch's captivating debut is 'a Thelma and Louise for our times'. What it chiefly adds to the 1991 film is to ask: what if the fugitives became lovers? Evie, its smart young narrator, is a private tutor in Los Angeles. One morning she finds her rich employers murdered and a woman tied up under the stairs. Fearing she will be seen as the murderer, she frees the woman, Jae, and they go on the run. Although there are fight scenes, chases and escapes, this remains primarily a twisted love story — a Hitchcockian cocktail of romance, suspicion and suspense in which each woman may be a killer and liar and each may turn her lover in. Much of its impact derives from the voice of Evie, who beguilingly mixes brainy musings such as, 'We appeared to each other as sphinxes,' with accounts of mayhem and life as an outlaw. JD Weidenfeld & Nicolson £16.99 pp320 The Inalienable Right by Adam Macqueen His previous political thrillers were set in 1975 and 1984 and now Adam Macqueen has moved on to 1987. As a gay teacher, Tommy Wildeblood is directly affected by Section 28, a clause in a bill banning local authorities from promoting homosexuality. He takes part in protests, but also finds a more potent way of attacking Margaret Thatcher's government: with his ex-police boyfriend and a reporter he investigates his friend Lee's disappearance and connects it to a sexual scandal involving one of Thatcher's aides. Macqueen confidently combines a might-have-been version of history in which Section 28 brings down Thatcher, rather than the later poll tax, with an It's a Sin -style evocation of the era. JD Lightning £9.99 pp418 Everyone in the Group Chat Dies by LM Chilton Four bumbling flatmates, including the narrator, Clare 'Kirby' Cornell, are at the centre of this ingenious mixture of comic-psychological thriller and serial killer mystery. When Esme, a roving social media sleuth, joins them, Kirby, a frustrated journalist, gets caught up in her investigation of a 1990s killing spree in their rural Sussex town — a probe that leads to Esme's death, witnessed by the quartet. Yet a year later Esme, apparently alive, posts the titular threat to the now dispersed misfits on their 'Deadbeats' group chat. LM Chilton manages the shift to a less larky mood without any crashing of gears and niftily blends crime elements with satire (TikTok Sherlocks, small-town tedium and folk horror) and the sitcom-like comedy of the Deadbeats. JD Head of Zeus £9.99 pp368 The New Neighbours by Claire Douglas Claire Douglas, who had a big hit last year with The Wrong Sister, follows it up with a tale of motherhood and murder in Bristol. Lena, a nosy single parent, helps her son with a project by recording sounds in the garden. By chance the microphone picks up her neighbours, apparently discussing a crime. While Lena tries to find out what they are up to, interwoven storylines trace the couple's dark past and show Lena years ago as a trainee midwife. This elaborate backstory, however, is creaky, pace-impeding and sometimes implausible, and the book lacks its predecessor's power to grip. In fact, the family scenes are better value than those involving crime. JD Michael Joseph £16.99 pp400 Say Nothing by Erin Kinsley Crime is often a catalyst. So, when four-year-old Adam is found dead, folk in the Derbyshire village of Risedale must make choices they would rather have avoided. The boy's distraught father, Tommy Henthorn, who inhabits the fringes of the underworld, can't divulge where he was that day. Others won't say what they know about his estranged wife, Gail, or don't tell the truth, such as the parents of an autistic teenager whose behaviour can be worrying. Ryan Canfield, the detective leading the investigation, is promoted after Henthorn is convicted of his son's murder. Yet, ten years on, fresh evidence exonerates him and initiates a new cycle of consequences. Henthorn wants revenge on those who put him away. Canfield is suspended but needs the chance to put matters right. That may let him reconnect with Laura Winrow, a lawyer with whom he had an affair then — and who now represents Henthorn. Encompassing, as it does, so much that ripples out from a crime, Erin Kinsley's novel is not short of ambition. It is at its best, however, in its understanding of how complex even seemingly ordinary people are, and clear-eyed about how we let emotion cloud our judgment. JO Headline £9.99 pp416 The Best Enemy by Sergio Olguin, translated by Miranda France In this fourth assignment for the Argentinian investigative journalist, Verónica Rosenthal is juggling personal and professional conundrums. Her former editor at Nuestro Tiempo has been shot dead, and soon afterwards so is his wife, but the magazine's owners want to downplay the deaths. Verónica and her colleagues hunt for a missing tablet that may link their bosses to corruption involving Israel. Her terrifyingly direct manner is still an asset, but she is unsure how to react to finding herself pregnant. Moreover, her partner, Federico, a lawyer who works for her father and is handling the divorce of one of the owners of Nuestro Tiempo, has complicated his life through a fling with a colleague. One of the pleasures of Sergio Olguin's slow-burning series, well realised by Miranda France's translation, is the way it uses Verónica's inner life to show why she acts as she does — here reuniting with childhood friends one moment, fending off hitmen the next. And as ever in Buenos Aires, those who send the triggermen are rarely those who pay the price. JO Bitter Lemon £9.99 pp400 I Dreamed of Falling by Julia Dahl Ashley and Roman have been together since high school. He's a reporter on the local paper in the Hudson Valley, north of New York, she's starting to make some money from online yoga classes. They have a young son, Mason, but also an open relationship. Despite that, they keep secrets from one another and when Roman returns home from a guilt-ridden night in the city, he finds Ashley's body halfway down a steep drop. Did she fall, perhaps under the growing influence of her drug use, or was she pushed? The thriller elements of Julia Dahl's story animate a skilfully observed portrait of small-town life and vanishing dreams. Roman is reluctant to give up his hopes of working on bigger stories. To the ire of his once-unreliable mother, Tara, an increasingly independent Ashley may have had plans of her own. A late, unsignalled twist is rather out of keeping with a story otherwise handled with deft confidence. JO No Exit £9.99 pp256 You Are Fatally Invited by Ande Pliego The famed thriller writer JR Alastor, who has remained anonymous for years, invites half a dozen fellow authors to his private island off the Maine coast. Naturally, they can't stand each other but will soon have bigger problems. Mila del Angél, ostensibly the event co-ordinator hired by Alastor (who fails to show), has her own agenda. She wants to get back at the writer who stole her idea, and the house, with its hidden stairways and concealed cameras, offers her the opportunity to do so. Yet someone else is also at work. One by one the guests start turning up dead, killed in gruesome ways taken from their own books. The telephone lines are down, and no one is coming to the rescue. Ande Pliego plays smartly with the often-implausible tropes of the suspense genre. You Are Fatally Invited works most effectively as a homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. JO Bantam £16.99 pp384 Whiteout by RS Burnett RS Burnett was once a reporter for Penguin News in his native Falkland Islands, and he puts his Antarctic knowledge to good use in this gripping debut. It tracks Rachael Beckett, a glaciologist persuaded by alarming signs of warming in the Ross ice shelf to make a perilous journey there in winter to collect more data. Alone and 80 miles from help, a fire in her hut forces her to strike out on foot for the research base. Yet when she tries to raise them on the radio, all she gets is a BBC announcement that nuclear war has broken out. She may be the last survivor on Earth, but her supplies are dwindling and in deadly conditions even small mistakes can be fatal. Whiteout is perhaps sustained more by narrative momentum than by characterisation, but Rachael's resilience is convincing and her love for the young daughter she has left in London undoubted. Burnett also neatly brings into play one of the great unresolved polar mysteries. Cracking. JO HarperCollins £9.99 pp288 Presumed Guilty by Scott Turow In 1987, two years before John Grisham's debut A Time to Kill, Scott Turow pioneered the modern legal thriller with Presumed Innocent. It was narrated by Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor (played by Harrison Ford in the 1990 film and Jake Gyllenhaal in last year's TV series) accused of killing a female colleague. In Turow's sequel, Rusty is again our guide as he comes out of retirement to defend Aaron, his stepson-to-be. Aaron — the black, adopted son of Bea, Rusty's fiancée — is charged with killing his on-off girlfriend, Mae, while on a camping trip. In a masterly performance, the qualities that differentiate Turow's books from Grisham's are evident again: as well as being sexier, they are better written and tend to revel in courtroom process. What's clever about the set-up is that the closer Rusty comes to clearing Aaron, the more he agonises that a not-guilty verdict will have disastrous repercussions. JD Swift £20 pp544 Old Soul by Susan Barker A chance meeting at Osaka airport leads Jake and Mariko to discover they have something in common: they know people who suffered grotesque deaths caused by a body-altering force, or being, called 'the Tyrant' after encountering the same nomadic woman. Jake, who lost his childhood friend Lena, embarks on a retracing of the mysterious serial killer's trail, across countries and decades. His interviews with those grieving for her victims — the Testimony chapters — alternate with the Badlands chapters in which the latest avatar takes a teenager into the desert near the town of Taos in New Mexico to photograph her backdropped by the planet Venus. Barker's finely written novel is super-sophisticated horror, as indebted to literary fiction (David Mitchell, perhaps?) as it is to gothic gore. If the Booker prize judges are open to genre titles, it wouldn't be too surprising to see it on their longlist. JD Fig Tree £16.99 pp304 Nemesis by Gregg Hurwitz Evan Smoak, aka Orphan X, is a former government black ops hitman who is now a Robin Hood figure 'devoted to helping the powerless and terrorised'. His weapons are normally supplied by his friend Tommy Stojack, but in this tenth Orphan X novel the pair are at loggerheads. Initially, the reader seems set for a pure action-thriller in which the feuding gunman and the gunsmith launch tit-for-tat attacks on each other. And the combat scenes throughout are first-rate and deftly varied. But thanks to their respective associates — Evan's teenage tech aide, who's a feminist, and a murderous but hapless gang Tommy is involved with — Nemesis also touches on 'meme wars', identity politics and far-right racism, so that, rewardingly, it'smore plugged into the mood and issues of the present than, say, a Lee Child slugathon. JD Michael Joseph, £16.99 pp512 The Inheritance by Trisha Sakhlecha With echoes of the TV dramas Succession and The White Lotus, but also of Agatha Christie and The Traitors, Trisha Sakhlecha's third novel centres on a wealthy Indian family, the Agarwals, who gather on a Scottish island to celebrate Papa and Mama's wedding anniversary — oh, and to hear about the sale of their £300 million business empire and each child's cut. After a prologue signalling that someone will be bumped off, Sakhlecha uses as narrators the eldest daughter Myra, the weekend's hostess with plans for Kilbryde as a luxury retreat, and Zoe, a British influencer and the wife of the eldest son, Aseem. As the family crisis unfolds, Sakhlecha displays a Christie-like knack for misdirection, framing everyone on the island as at once a potential victim and a potential killer. JD Century £16.99 pp432 The Collaborators by Michael Idov When, in 2021, the exfiltration of an anti-regime Russian blogger goes wrong, the CIA agent Ari Falk barely survives. Then his colleagues in Riga, Latvia, are targeted, Three Days of the Condor -style. As he strives to discover who is behind the threat, Falk seeks the help in London of a Bellingcat-type open-source investigator. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, the wannabe actress Maya Chou, fresh out of rehab, is dealing with the suicide of her billionaire father and the vanishing of his vast investment fund. They had not been on good terms — 'It was just that kind of funeral: no body, no coffin, no daughter' — but a mysterious note he left lures her to Tangier. There, she and Falk hook up, in every sense, needing to use their complementary skills to escape the assassins on their trail. Her father had emigrated from Russia as a teenager and the answers they need lie in the country's brief period of hope before Putin took power. Michael Idov, who penned episodes of the TV series Deutschland 89, gathers stories from the headlines — novichok, Ponzi schemes, Wagner Group mercenaries — and blends them smartly into a hipster spy smoothie. Fun to write, and it really shows. JO Simon & Schuster £18.99 pp272 Notes on a Drowning by Anna Sharpe Something's not right about the inquest into the death of a teenage Moldovan girl found in the Thames, thinks the solicitor handling the case, Alex Moreno. No one wants to dig very hard into the flimsy evidence. It's all too like the unsolved disappearance 12 years ago in Tokyo of Moreno's sister, Elisa. Elisa's friend Kat Ishida, who was with her in Japan, is now an adviser to the home secretary in a boosterish government. She has come to suspect, however, that his red box might reveal who is bringing vulnerable girls to London. Yet there's more than a big coincidence at the heart of this pointed politico-legal thriller by Anna Sharpe (a pen name of the author Anna Mazzola). As Moreno and Ishida reluctantly join forces and find themselves in mortal danger, Sharpe deftly charts the changing nature of a relationship mired in guilt and fury. Her characters actually speak like real people — a rarity in thrillers — and her depiction of the men who do as they please in the corridors of power and behind the shutters of Mayfair has the tang of righteous anger. Moreno's reaction to hearing a politician say that 'a rising tide lifts all boats'? 'Drowns those who can't keep up with it, more like.' JO Orion £18.99 pp304 Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister Luke, a ghostwriter acting completely out of character, takes three people hostage and shoots two of them dead before escaping. Seven years on, the police have not found him nor identified the men he killed. His wife, Camilla, a literary agent who is caring for their young daughter, is still trying to move on when out of the blue she receives a text that might be from Luke. The Met still has her under surveillance, however, and others are also watching from the shadows. Someone else who can't let go is Niall, the hostage negotiator during Luke's siege, who is perplexed that his colleagues see crimes as problems to manage, not truths to bring to light. He and Camilla start to do just that, but Gillian McAllister's novel is more compelling as a testament to enduring love than a tale of mystery. JO Michael Joseph £16.99 pp416 Gone to Earth by Jane Jesmond In this sequel to the excellent Cut Adrift, Jen Shaw is processing the fallout of her run-in with people smugglers. Not the least of that is the violent death of Nick, the undercover police officer for whom she had feelings. The traffickers have not gone away, however, and threaten the two refugee girls that she and her mother are looking after. Shaw is not one to give up easily, but she soon finds herself fleeing from the police in Glasgow when suspected of murder. Disguised as an addict, she starts to uncover a dark web that embraces corruption, jihadism and child abuse. Half-help, half-nuisance, Shaw remains an intriguingly flawed and well-realised protagonist, while Jane Jesmond's grasp of the gritty intersection of crime and geopolitics makes the stakes refreshingly real-world. That said, Gone to Earth takes its time to get going, and is at its most sure-footed when Shaw uses her skills as a climber to get away from pursuers over the rooftops and during a claustrophobic climax set in pitch-black tunnels beneath Glasgow. JO Verve £10.99 pp320 The Troubled Deep by Rob Parker Cameron Killick has retired from the SBS to the Norfolk Broads with a bag of gallantry medals and PTSD. A specialist diver, he finds the submerged wreck of a Jaguar that has been missing since the 1980s. But there is no trace of the Jilly Cooper-ish rich family presumed to have been inside. Soon others are all too interested in his discovery, and a beating to warn him off brings all his anxieties to the fore; Killick can only sleep soundly underwater, in his bath (breathing through a snorkel, before you ask). If he is to unravel the skeins of a plot involving the Black Monday financial crash and blackmail, he must learn to trust potential allies such as the detective sergeant told to drop the case. Pleasingly, Killick is no superman, and Rob Parker's novel scores with his descriptions of its watery settings and late revelations about the bonds of love and trauma. JO Raven £16.99 pp368 An Ethical Guide to Murder by Jenny Morris Like Harry Potter, Thea is an orphan with a superpower. Or rather, two or three magical talents. When she touches a person she can tell how long they have left to live. But she can also extract years of life from evildoers and kill them. Jenny Morris's remarkable debut novel resembles Naomi Alderman's The Power, but she limits the ability to harm and sets the story in the present, not the future. Thea becomes a serial killer with a conscience, carrying out a killing spree with her boyfriend, Sam, with each murder framed as an ethical dilemma: what if, for instance, the target is vile but does more good than bad? What if you find out they are not as evil as you first thought, but someone else's survival depends on their death? This doesn't mean that this clever, beguiling novel is schematic or abstract — each potential victim is a believable character and each scenario is fully realised. JD Simon & Schuster £16.99 pp416 Havoc by Christopher Bollen Maggie Burkhardt, 81, is a widow from Wisconsin who has become a hotel hopper: sampling five-star hotels across Europe before her stay in Luxor. A nosy observer, she has fun by 'liberating' chosen fellow guests (framing a husband as a cheat, for example) through petty crime. However, Maggie is spotted by Otto, who is eight, planting a stolen scarf. That precipitates a conflict between them and somebody ends up dead. Christopher Bollen thus combines two Agatha Christie settings, a hotel and the Middle East, installs a monstrous caricature of Miss Marple and adds touches from horror such as hints of still-active Egyptian gods. However, Havoc 's finest feature is Bollen's crafting of Maggie's first-person voice, which tracks her mental disintegration. JD Borough £16.99 pp256 A Serial Killer's Guide to Marriage by Asia Mackay After the birth of their daughter, Bibi, Hazel (an artist) and Fox (a banker from New York) have settled down in Berkshire. That has meant giving up their weekends of slaying 'scumbags' around Europe, which was fuelled by her feminist rage and his hatred of his own class. Boredom gives way to mutual suspicion as they keep secrets from each other — Hazel about her killing of an attacker in a park, and Fox about his parents' pressure to return to America. Although it's a pity that (like Morris) she's plumped for the 'guide to' title formula that's becoming a cliché, Asia Mackay deftly exploits her outlandish set-up to view marriage, motherhood, middle-age and suburbia through a satirical lens. JD Wildfire £16.99 pp400 The Stranger in the Room by Luca Veste Ben, a teenager, is stabbed to death after hanging out with friends. Mia, his ex-girlfriend, is aware she will be under suspicion, not least because two other recent deaths (of a teacher and of a school enemy) were connected to her. Ben's grieving mother, Alison, accuses Mia of being a murderer and lambasts the police for not arresting her. Suspense is skilfully maintained — is Mia guilty, or partly guilty, or a victim of coincidence and hatred? — up to a climax in which the two women come face to face. JD Hodder & Stoughton £9.99 pp368 To order a copy of these books go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
Chicago Tribune
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Biblioracle: Ron Currie Jr.'s latest novel is the dark but inviting ‘Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne'
Ron Currie Jr. wrote a novel that is one of my favorite reading experiences of all time. That novel is 'Everything Matters!' which tells the story of Junior Thibodeau, who is born with access to a telepathic omniscient presence that has informed him of the exact moment of planetary death, 36 years and 168 days after his birth. The novel is about the challenge of figuring out what kind of life is worth living, a challenge we all face, only without the knowledge of a definitive end date. The novel is passionate, funny, and emotionally moving with a gripping and surprising plot. Currie's new novel, 'The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne' is simultaneously completely different and exactly the same as 'Everything Matters!' which seems impossible, but to me, is the hallmark of a writer who knows what he's about and delivers the goods to the reader. 'Everything Matters!' is essentially a domestic drama with a supernatural tinge, while 'The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne' is written as a kind of noir, featuring the head of a crime family (Babs), amidst a backdrop of drug addiction, war, violence and with a paid killer named only The Man, who is as terrifying as Anton Chigurh from Cormac McCarthy's 'No Country for Old Men,' while also being strangely charming and with an amazing backstory. Babs is the de facto head of Waterville, Maine, a place known as 'Little Canada' where Francophone culture traced to the initial migration of Quebecois people is treasured by the people of Babs' generation. Babs deals in opioids, her power derived from a fearsome and legendary act she committed as a teenager. She embraces the drug trade because she sees it as her way to provide for a community that has been disadvantaged and overlooked by the powers that be. She is a kind of heroine, but we also see that her daughters — the older Lori who is experiencing PTSD from her time serving in Afghanistan, and the young Sis, who is addicted to crystal meth — are clearly being ruined by this world Babs has overseen. An external threat of a bigger operator coming to take over Babs' drug trade has created a future flashpoint in the novel that all events are heading toward. This creates significant page-turning suspense, but Currie is up to more than just a propulsive crime novel, even though that would be more than satisfactory. The deftness of Currie's portrayal of these characters allows them to defy easy categorization. Babs loves her family fiercely, including her grandson, Sis' child (Jason), but this love is killing them. Lori is haunted (literally) by what she witnessed in Afghanistan as the dead routinely show up in her visions. She is as tough as Babs, but also desperately wants out of this world and has the promise and potential of an old boyfriend temporarily returned to Waterville to take her away. At one point a meth-dealing serial killer is temporarily a source of goodwill. Even The Man, a killing machine, is portrayed as someone capable of the same kind of fierce love and connection as Babs. The result is a novel that is both dark and warm, similar to 'Everything Matters!' where the end of the world becomes a vehicle for appreciating the wonders of humanity and the specific strength of the ties that bind those who are closest to us. Babs Dionne's world is much smaller than the planet, but to her it's everything, and her death is truly a combination of savage and noble, a perfect description of the novel itself. John Warner is the author of books including 'More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.' You can find him at Book recommendations from the Biblioracle John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you've read. 1. 'I Hope This Finds You Well' by Natalie Sue 2. 'How to Read a Book' by Monica Wood 3. 'Everything Matters' by Ron Currie Jr 4. 'Tom Lake' by Ann Patchett 5. 'The Searcher' by Tana French — Molly S., Chicago I think Molly will enjoy the story of a 'prep-school gender war' at the center of Lisa Lutz's 'The Swallows.' 1. 'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald 2. 'French Milk' by Lucy Knisley 3. 'Blue Sisters' by Coco Mellors 4. 'Relish: My Life in the Kitchen' by Lucy Knisley 5. 'Maus' by Art Spiegelman — London on behalf of his daughter, Charlotte, Skokie For Charlotte, I'm recommending a novel by one of our great graphic novelists, 'Cruddy' by Lynda Barry. 1. 'Killing Patton' by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard 2. 'Dead Wake' by Erik Larson 3. 'Invisible Girl' by Lisa Jewell 4. 'Oath and Honor' by Liz Cheney 5. 'The Nightingale' by Kristin Hannah — Janet W., Lisle I think Janet will enjoy a truly original work of historical fiction, 'Life After Life' by Kate Atkinson.
Los Angeles Times
17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
4 best mystery books to read right now
My ever-growing tower of crime novels is proof of the reader's lament: 'So many books, so little time.' This spring's TBR list includes headline grabbers like former FBI Director James Comey's 'FDR Drive,' Elle Cosimano's funny fifth entry in the Finlay Donovan franchise and Brendan Slocumb's 'The Dark Maestro,' the third in his classical music-centered crime series. But I was most drawn to a quartet of less heralded but equally engaging novels that turned out to have some serendipitous connections. The Savage, Noble Death of Babs DionneBy Ron CurriePutnam: 368 pages, $29March 25 A master of witty, thoughtful fiction who does not retreat from tackling big concepts, Ron Currie explores new physical and emotional territory in 'The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne.' The novel's action centers on Barbara Levesque, the once-and-future matriarch of Waterville, Maine's, Franco American community. In 1968, 14-year-old Babs is stewing with the history of Little Canada, including a variety of soul-crushing injustices perpetrated against it by the larger Protestant community. A brutal attack by a Franco American cop trying to whitewash his heritage and its aftermath teaches Babs a hard-learned lesson that colors her adult life: 'In all the years to come, with all the enemies you were to know,' Currie's narrator observes, 'you would never again assume one was beaten until they were dead.' After going on the lam with the help of the local parish priest, Babs returns some five years later to find her exploits have made her a hero in Little Canada and the community's putative matriarch and protector. Married and widowed some 50 years later, Babs' realm includes settling disputes between community residents and the local police and, more significantly, running an opioid ring in the region with her girlfriends, all gray-haired pillars of the Little Canada community. But by 2016, Babs' world is imploding. First, Sis, her youngest daughter and a drug addict, goes missing. Then, her shady business ventures draw the attention of a Canadian mob, which sends an ice-cold fixer, known only as the Man, to find out who's running the operation and either take it over, remove the competition or both. Can Babs' eldest daughter, Lori, a wounded Afghanistan war veteran with addictions of her own, find Sis before it's too late? Can Babs, now in her 60s, keep the encroaching mob from destroying the community she loves? While the novel's title and early chapters foreshadow certain answers, readers will still find themselves tearing through pages and rooting for this little-known community and the families that lead it. This is the first time I've read about Maine's Franco American community. Why was it appealing for you and how does it relate to your own family's history? It is my family's history, and you're certainly not alone in having never heard anything about the Franco American experience. I think most Americans have a vague sense that there's something French-ish going on in Louisiana, but they've got no idea why or how. Before those people were 'Cajuns' they were Acadians, burned out of their homes in Canada and northern Maine after the British took over just before the Revolutionary War. What inspired such a complicated antihero as Babs Dionne? My grandmother and her friends, old Canuck widows with sharp tongues and a taste for drink, were the inspiration for Babs and her crew. To understand why Babs had to be a criminal is to understand, first, that being Franco in Maine was literally a crime. There was a law on the books in Maine until the 1960s that forbade speaking French in public schools. When my grandmother was a girl, the Klan held rallies in the woods outside Waterville. All of which is to say that in the world of the novel there is no way to remain thoroughly Franco and thrive financially without being a criminal. Will you write more novels set in Little Canada? I already have! The second installment in the Dionne family saga, which is a kind of origin story in which we see how Babs came to run Little Canada's underworld, is done. So, with any luck, the wait won't be long. The Trouble Up NorthBy Travis MulhauserGrand Central: 288 pages; $29March 11 Early in 'The Trouble Up North,' Travis Mulhauser's second novel, the Sawbrook family lineage in Michigan's Upper Peninsula is traced back to a 19th century fur trapper who, with his Native American wife, amassed a vast tract of land along the Crow River as a hedge against rival woodsmen. Over the next two centuries, the family's land holdings are augmented by bootlegging, cigarette trafficking and other felonies. By the early 2000s, that legacy is in the hands of Rhoda Sawbrook, who's desperately trying to preserve the family's way of life against encroaching developers and vacationers who have overrun the land and raised property taxes to unsustainable levels: 'Take that away from me,' Rhoda says of the Sawbrook land, 'and I can't tell you who I am. I wouldn't even know my name.' But, like Babs Dionne's, Rhoda's family is hanging by a thread. Husband Edward is dying of cancer; her only son, Buckner, is a feckless alcoholic; and her youngest daughter, Jewell, is a bartender who hustles vacationers in home garage poker games while dreaming of a big win in Vegas. But eldest daughter Lucy, a park ranger, has committed for Rhoda the worst transgression of all by putting her share of Sawbrook property into a conservation trust. When the vacationer who hosts Jewell's poker games entices her to torch his boat for $10,000 so he can collect the insurance money, the stage is set for a tragedy that forces Jewell and her siblings deep into the Sawbrook woodlands to hide out from police. Mulhauser's beautiful descriptions of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and astute take on social and economic forces roiling the community is a dynamic backdrop for a story of a family coming to terms with its checkered past and uncertain future. Together, they make 'The Trouble Up North' a compelling, satisfying read that, like Currie's Babs Dionne saga, uses crime novel conventions to tell a bigger, more universal story. What moved you to create the fictional Cutler County, Mich.? Cutler County is based on Emmet County, Mich., and my hometown of Petoskey, which is situated on Lake Michigan and is startlingly beautiful. It's a tourist economy and the tensions between the locals, the different vacationing classes and the land itself is something that I've never gotten tired of exploring. Any role models for your fierce matriarch, Rhoda Sawbrook? Rhoda's character was inspired by my mom. Her maternal parents immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Detroit after suffering brutal experiences in World War II: Siberian prison camps, bombing raids, combat and a home invasion by Russian troops. Their tenacity — and the way their stories and values were passed down through the years to breathe life (and death) into the generations that follow — are the biggest influences in my writing about the Sawbrooks. What big ideas are you grappling with in the novel? One of the big topics for me is generational family struggles and class conflicts involving land. I wanted to reveal the lengths that families are willing to go for each other, and how those bonds can both harness us to dysfunction and be our ultimate strength. I also wanted to explore how a place's natural beauty can become the greatest threat to its survival. As a Michigander, I am reluctant to approach such heady subjects, but what I think books about crime can do — say from a Charles Portis, best known for 'True Grit' — is give writers the space to explore 'bigger' ideas through characters that are accessible to them and to the reader. That's what I truly love about crime writing. Kaua'i StormBy Tori EldridgeThomas & Mercer: 445 pages, $17May 20 After writing four novels in the Lily Wong series, which features a modern-day Chinese Norwegian ninja, Tori Eldridge plumbs other aspects of her heritage to create a new series about a park ranger in 'Kaua'i Storm.' Makalani Pahukula is a multiethnic Native Hawaiian who left her home on Kaua'i 10 years ago for a job as a park ranger in Oregon. Home now to celebrate her grandmother's 80th birthday and reconnect with her family, Makalani learns two of her cousins are missing. When a body is found in the Keālia Forest Reserve, Makalani strikes out on her own to investigate, traveling deep into the forest and beyond. Eldridge writes so beautifully about the land, or āina, you can almost smell the flora and fauna, while her evocative description of a hula performed during the birthday party is transporting: 'She extended her field-tanned arms to the 'ukulele player's vamp, undulating one hand at a time like a graceful wing while the other hand poised on her hip.' Anchored by a strong, capable park ranger reminiscent of Nevada Barr's iconic Anna Pigeon, this thought-provoking, engaging debut immerses readers in Native Hawaiian culture, language, complex genealogy and social issues while delivering a solid mystery with more than a few surprises. After Lily Wong, what motivated you to write such a different protagonist? What did you personally bring to her character and family background? Having paid homage to the Chinese and Norwegian sides of my heritage, I wanted to dive into my Hawaiian roots with a relatable protagonist and a multiethnic, multigenerational family. Since I've moved to Portland, where many Hawaiian diaspora live, and I wanted to give Makalani Pahukula serious wilderness skills, making her an Oregon national park ranger felt ideal. So did the universal theme of coming home. Your writing about the Hawaiian landscape reminded me of Nevada Barr's descriptions in her national parks-set mystery series. Are there writers who set their books in national parks or other Hawaiian writers you admire? Thank you for saying so! Caring for the land (mālama 'āina) is intrinsic to the Hawaiian way of life. I'm inspired by authors with the talent to evoke visceral emotions with their descriptions beyond explaining what can be seen. But the 'āina in Hawai'i is also layered with deeper meaning and cultural history that Hawaiian authors like Kiana Davenport and Jasmin Iolani Hakes understand. What went into your decision to take such a deep dive into Native Hawaiian culture? As a Native Hawaiian, the only way I could write a novel set in Hawai'i was to dive deeply into our culture, history and ongoing issues like poverty, struggles leasing land designated for us by the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 and the 50% blood quantum the U.S. government still uses to determine eligibility, i.e., whether Native Hawaiians are Hawaiian enough. I wove Native Hawaiian words into my text as naturally as they weave into daily Hawaiian life. My editor appreciated the authenticity right from the start, including the nuanced Hawaiian Pidgin English some of my characters speak, and the value-added glossary I provided at the end. What's next for Makalani? Her next adventure will take her to the Big Island of Hawai'i, where she's enticed into another mystery and the paniolo (Hawaiian cowboy) way of life. Cold BurnBy A.J. LandauMinotaur Books: 336 pages, $28April 29 In 'Cold Burn,' collaborators Jon Land and Jeff Ayers (writing as A.J. Landau) reunite Michael Walker — a park ranger turned special agent for the National Park Service — and FBI special investigator Gina Delgado (after 'Leave No Trace') for a complex, high-stakes investigation. What starts as seemingly unrelated deaths in Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park and Elfin Cove and Florida's Everglades National Park grows into a conspiracy that threatens life on the planet. Early on readers learn that central to the action is Axel Cole, a naturalized American citizen whose goal is to become 'the world's first trillionaire, his collective list of companies growing more influential and powerful than all but the world's greatest powers, his worth greater than the GDP of France's and Italy's combined.' Cole's ruthless methods are a challenge to the ingenuity and tenacity of Walker and Delgado, but the breakneck pace that builds in the novel's later pages results in a showdown that's believable but also feels like the sweetest revenge on a villain we know all too well. Landau has a winning recipe with this series, marrying action with extensive research into everything from avalanches to submarines, plus a generous sprinkling of details on our national parks that will hopefully spur readers to visit America's living national treasures. And while one can admire the sensitive exploration of the Tlingit, an Alaskan Native community that figures prominently in the plot, sometimes the research in 'Cold Burn' slows the action, as does the constant toggling between the two characters' investigations in the novel's initial chapters. But once they come together, Walker and Delgado are a sure-fire dynamic duo readers will want to revisit. How do you balance that vast knowledge base in the novel with the demands of a fast-paced thriller? Jon Land: Jeff had this amazing concept for a thriller series centered around his incredible knowledge of the national parks, using the parks as a backdrop that would define the series. However, his initial draft of what became 'Leave No Trace' wasn't working, and he needed help to make the idea come to life. I suggested we blow up the Statue of Liberty on page one. He reminded me that the Statue of Liberty wasn't in the book. 'It is now,' I told him. I'm curious how you settled on ISB special agent Michael Walker and what were the advantages in pairing him with special agent Gina Delgado of the FBI. Jeff Ayers: I told Jon about the Investigative Services Branch of the National Park Service, which would allow our hero to work out of any of the over 430 sites they oversee. Jon especially embraced the fact that the ISB had never been utilized in a thriller before, making this a fresh take in the genre. Gina grew out of wanting to pair Michael with an FBI agent who was also an expert in explosives. Their skill sets match perfectly. Share a bit about your research into Alaska Native cultures and why the Tlingit people became a compelling element in the novel. Ayers: Alaska's beauty is unprecedented, and spending time in Glacier Bay National Park and the surrounding communities gives you a taste of the Tlingit and their culture. When visiting a museum in Sitka, the guide called all of the Alaskan Native artifacts 'materials from curiosity collectors.' I knew that Jon would agree that Michael would need to investigate stolen artifacts and get past the locals' animosity toward National Park staff. Talking to rangers and locals also helped with the flavor of the area. Any takeaway messages for readers in your character Axel Cole? Land: We looked at Axel Cole as emblematic of the excess driving contemporary tech, which is the modern-day version of the military-industrial complex. Cole is a projection of a selfish, conceited worldview that barrels ahead without any concern over the wreckage left in its wake. So, at heart, he's a prototypical Sean Connery-era James Bond villain. The difference is that he isn't out to dominate the world so much as to own it.
