Elyse Discher

The Less Dead by Denise Mina opens with a personal crisis that explodes into a compelling thriller. Glasgow-based physician Margot Dunlop is facing down the chaos in her life: her adopted mother has recently passed, she’s broken up with her boyfriend, her best friend is being stalked and she has just found out she’s pregnant. Trying to make sense of her world, Margot reaches out to the agency that facilitated her adoption to get in touch with her birth mother, only to learn that she was murdered shortly after Margot’s birth.

From here we descend into the dark underbelly of Glasgow. Margot’s mother was a sex worker and heroin addict, her murder left unsolved by a police force that considered her subhuman. Margot meets her aunt Nikki, also a former sex worker and addict, and learns that her mother’s case was far more complex than a trick gone wrong. Nikki believes that her sister was killed by a corrupt cop, and has received threatening letters that provide details only the killer could know. Margot isn’t sure she wants to be involved in the case, but she isn’t given a choice when the killer begins stalking and harassing her as well.

Mina’s novel stands out in a genre that commodifies the dead bodies of women. Her characters are nuanced, complicated and never stereotypes, and her portrayal of the world of sex work isn’t lurid or voyeuristic. Furthermore, Margot is not the middle-class savior some would mistakenly believe that these women need. And although Margot’s mother was a victim of a violent crime, Mina juxtaposes her murder with the stalking of Margot’s best friend, Lilah, showing that women are the subjected to violence by the men in their life at every socioeconomic level.

As Margot seeks justice for her late mother, she’s introduced to a community of women, some still addicts, some still sex workers, who protect and care for one another, even as they are shamed and shunned by society at large. The Less Dead is at once a gripping thriller and an examination, and vindication, of a group of women who are often faceless, unsympathetic victims.

Gytha Lodge’s sophomore thriller delivers an opening worthy of Hitchcock: Aidan is Skyping his girlfriend, Zoe, late at night when he sees someone enter her apartment. Helpless, he listens to the struggle that ends Zoe’s life, but Aidan isn’t willing to reveal himself to the police.

Like Lodge’s first novel She Lies in Wait, Watching From the Dark untangles the victim's complex personal relationships by alternating between the months before the murder and the investigation afterward. Zoe is a dynamic and compassionate woman, the glue that holds her dysfunctional friend group together. Struggling with everything from PTSD to narcissism, Zoe’s friends are occasionally manipulative and controlling. She is their support system and caretaker, and so when she becomes embroiled in a love affair that leaves her with less time for her friends, she begins to see the cracks in their one-sided relationships. Even her romance is fraught, though, as Aiden is secretive and dishonest with Zoe.

Lodge balances out all of this drama with the calm, steadfast demeanor of her series lead, DCI Jonah Sheens. Even as Zoe’s life unravels, Sheens’ constancy keeps the procedural aspect of the novel moving along smoothly, assuring the reader that the villain will eventually be revealed from among the ensemble cast.

The beauty of Lodge’s writing is her ability to juxtapose the careful sleuthing of a police procedural against an emotional deep dive into the lives of her characters.  Zoe is not just a body and a point of focus for Lodge’s male detective; rather, she is granted a complex identity. In a genre that often commodifies the bodies of dead women, the care given to Zoe’s character feels especially important.

As the novel wraps up, secrets are revealed and characters exposed for who they really are, the reader can fall back on Sheens’ reliability in an atmosphere where no one is trustworthy. Lodge’s autopsy of complicated friendships and love affairs feels occasionally tragic, but the justice that Sheens and his team deliver is eminently satisfying.

It’s almost impossible to properly summarize The Tenant; the careful plotting ensures that the mystery unfolds deliberately, with surprises regularly woven into the narrative. Reading it feels like watching a puzzle slowly come together before your eyes.

Set in Copenhagen, The Tenant follows detectives Jeppe Kørner and Anette Werner as they investigate the brutal murder of a young woman, Julie Stender. Adding a grisly twist to the case, Julie’s face was mutilated before her killing, a fact that chills both detectives. But it’s Julie’s relationship with her landlady, budding crime novelist Esther de Laurenti, which makes her murder truly bizarre—the young woman was killed in the same manner as the victim in Esther’s unpublished manuscript.

The Tenant operates with two ensemble casts: the tenants of Esther’s building and the detectives on the Copenhagen police force. While Kørner and Werner lead the charge to bring a killer to justice, it takes a plethora of characters to get the novel to its thrilling conclusion. The intensity of the relationships between characters realistically reflects the irritations and idiosyncrasies of people who live and work together. Unlike many other crime-solving duos, Kørner and Werner occasionally grate on each other’s nerves, never quite settling into anything other than a bristly professional relationship. Similarly, the people moving in and out of Esther’s orbit have their own secrets and agendas, giving the impression that no one can be trusted.

Despite its darker elements, The Tenant is a police procedural, not a thriller, and readers should prepare for a mystery that takes its time unfolding. This a positive thing; the easy pace lets the horror of Julie’s murder sink in. Author Katrine Engberg’s English-language debut is the first in a gritty, unflinching procedural series that has received multiple awards in her native Denmark. Readers will be left craving the translation of Kørner and Werner’s next adventure.

It’s evident from the first page of Clear My Name that Paula Daly’s heroine, investigator Tess Gilroy, is as adept at keeping secrets as she is at uncovering them. Between Tess and Carrie, the woman she’s trying to prove innocent of murder, we’re left with two narrators who are simultaneously sympathetic and also inherently unreliable. Add exquisite pacing and a plot with some real twists, and you have a recipe for a book bound to keep you up all night.

A former probation officer, Tess is now the chief investigator for a group called Innocence UK that works to free the wrongfully convicted. Her latest case brings her back home to the small town she fled. She’s investigating the murder conviction of Carrie Kamara, a woman serving a 15-year sentence for killing her husband’s mistress. Many of the details surrounding Carrie’s case seem weak and the police work potentially shoddy, but Carrie was never able to account for how her blood was found in the victim’s home. That forensic detail was enough to see her incarcerated.

Even as Tess digs into Carrie’s deeply troubled marriage and her complicated relationship with her daughter, we can sense her unease at being back home. Tess thinks she’s being followed, and she’s avoiding contact with someone from her past. The competing mysteries of Tess’ past and Carrie’s true involvement in the murder make Clear My Name feel tightly wound, with threads of paranoia woven throughout. Tess is used to false claims of innocence, and even as she is reluctant to believe Carrie, we know we also cannot trust Tess.

Eventually Tess’ and Carrie’s narratives collide in a way that is genuinely shocking. The last quarter of this mystery doesn’t so much as unfold as it explodes; the tension is at a fever pitch and the final revelations are genuinely surprising.

With a wonderfully executed mystery and two unreliable narrators, Clear My Name straddles the line between psychological thriller and good old-fashioned whodunit.