Top Pick
You have to wonder why one would bother to initiate a murder investigation immediately after half the world has gone kablooey in a nuclear holocaust. But I suppose there is not a lot else that takes precedence over a murder investigation in the wake of nuclear war. Some bastion of civility remains in a small boutique hotel in the Swiss Alps, where a young girl has just been killed. It matters not that the lead investigator in Hanna Jameson’s The Last has no investigative experience—the list of possible suspects is quite short, and motives and opportunities are severely limited by the world events of the past 60-odd days. There are security videos, but the power has been turned off to preserve energy for the upcoming winter when it will be needed for heat. And the caretaker who controls access to the power is something of an enigmatic character, not to mention a prime suspect in the murder, so there won’t be a lot of help from that quarter. Meanwhile, all communications are down, bands of predatory looters in search of food plague the countryside, and slowly but surely the aforementioned “bastion of civility” degrades into some distinctly un­civil behavior. This genre-bending novel neatly embraces dystopian fiction and murder mystery, with the Omega Man starkness of the former and the requisite twists and turns of the latter.

There’s a lot of history between characters Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, dating back to 1990’s Savage Season. The two have had each other’s backs through adventure after adventure, and they have solved cases and cemented their unlikely brotherhood (by East Texas standards) of a straight white guy and a gay black guy. In The Elephant of Surprise, Joe R. Lansdale’s dynamic duo doesn’t expend a lot of energy developing their relationship further; there simply isn’t time. There isn’t even a moment available for self-reflection or friendship evaluation from the moment they rescue a young albino Asian woman with a nearly severed tongue until the epic storm in which they pilot a prison bus of innocent survivors through deep flood waters in an attempt to escape a killer posse of bad guys. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single one of the book’s 256 pages sans bullets, blood spatter, murder and mayhem, all of which are overlaid with Hap’s dry Texas wit. The Elephant of Surprise is the read of the year thus far for adrenaline junkies, action-hero aficionados and, as is always the case with Lansdale’s novels, fans of clever and unexpected similes and metaphors. “The windshield wipers slaved back and forth like a mean librarian wagging her finger at a loud child. . . .”

I have to confess to strongly preferring first-person narration for suspense novels, perhaps because I cut my teeth on the laconic voice-overs of film noir. That said, I quite like Anne Perry’s third-person omniscient voice in her Daniel Pitt novels, the second of which is Triple Jeopardy. The London-set narrative is delivered in period-correct Victorian dialect and prose, which gives it the feel of having been written in another era entirely. The case centers on the alleged bad acts of a man hitherto protected by diplomatic immunity and on his defense in the English court by newly minted barrister Daniel Pitt. It is the first case of Pitt’s career in which he is lead barrister, and it is both a heady and decidedly frightening proposition for him. His client is on trial for embezzlement, but there is the very real possibility that further crimes, including assault and jewel theft, figure in as well—and perhaps even murder. Enlisting the help of his friend Miriam fforde Croft, an early practitioner of forensic sciences, Pitt divides his energies between defense and investigation, and just about the time you have your “aha!” moment, things take a sharp turn in another direction altogether. 

When Anne Hillerman took over the series that made her father, Tony, famous, she gave voice to the female characters in the series, bringing them into the mainstream narrative without taking anything away from the male characters upon whom the series was built. Hillerman wisely left the best parts of her father’s beloved characters’ storylines intact while creating compelling new additions. This time, in The Tale Teller, three parallel tales merge with unexpected results for each of the three protagonists. Retired cop Joe Leaphorn is investigating a case that the local museum director would like to have cleared up before her imminent retirement, that of a priceless traditional Navajo dress that has gone missing. Leaphorn’s former colleague Jim Chee is involved in an investigation of jewelry thefts, largely of Native American antiques. And Bernadette “Bernie” Manuelito must, somewhat reluctantly, share the stage with the FBI in the investigation of a murder on a popular running trail in the Arizona desert. As is always the case with Hillerman novels (either Tony or Anne), the supernatural is never far from the reader’s mind. Witchcraft and Native American lore permeate the narrative in a way that has appealed to readers for nigh on 50 years, with no end in sight.

TOP PICK
It’s Christmastime in the U.K., and all the cops are hoping that maybe this will be the year they’ll get to spend the holidays with their families. It is not to be. “Everything is slack, unurgent. It all smacks of too late,” one of the detectives muses as they pull up to the crime scene. Someone at the scene comments, “She’s been more than killed. She’s more than dead.” And it was then, a scant 17 pages in, when I realized that I would not be putting this book down until I had reached the end. The detectives at the center of Patrick McGuinness’ Throw Me to the Wolves, narrator Ander and his partner Gary, could scarcely be more unalike. Ander is sensitive and introspective, while Gary is a throwback to an earlier time, when beating a suspect or drinking on the job, while not publicly condoned, was not privately condemned either. The suspect is a retired boarding school teacher, someone Ander knew from his school days a lifetime ago, a man seemingly incapable of such a heinous killing. Thus, two parallel narratives emerge, one about the investigation of the murder and a second about events of times long past. McGuinness delves into current events (Brexit, et al.) and lobs numerous digs at the tabloid media, all while delivering a first-rate whodunit. It’s only May, but Throw Me to the Wolves looks like a strong candidate for mystery of the year. Or any year.

Jeffery Deaver already has two major suspense series to his credit, and now he’s starting another with The Never Game, which features arguably the most unusual protagonist of his career thus far: itinerant reward seeker Colter Shaw. An expert tracker thanks to his survivalist father, Shaw travels the U.S. in a Winnebago in search of missing persons. In Berkeley, California, he undertakes an investigation into the disappearance of a teenage girl, a case the local authorities are treating as a simple runaway. It turns out to be anything but. The search leads Shaw to team up with a young female gamer, and it begins to dawn on them that the disappearance bears a striking resemblance to level one of a popular internet survival game called “The Whispering Man.” When a second disappearance occurs, their suspicions seem to be confirmed, except now the unidentified perpetrator has ramped up the difficulty level with an altogether more dangerous and potentially lethal set of outcomes. I would characterize Deaver’s previous novels as mysteries, but The Never Game occupies thriller territory, and it has film adaptation written all over it.

Young Carline Darcy appeared to have it all. Presumptive heir to Darcy Therapeutics, the largest pharmaceutical company in Ireland, by all rights she should have lived a charmed life. But early on, it all went sideways. First, there was her parents’ vitriolic divorce, fueled largely by her selfish and vindictive mother. Then her father was killed in a skiing accident, forcing her to live out her teen years with the unfeeling mother she had rarely seen over the course of her childhood. This personal history comprises the first chapter of Dervla McTiernan’s The Scholar, setting the stage for what’s to come. Fast-forward eight years, and Carline is a university student and researcher. One evening when Darcy Therapeutics medical researcher Emma Sweeney is returning home, she comes upon the dead body of a young woman, the apparent victim of a hit-and-run. Emma summons her boyfriend, Detective Cormac Reilly, to the scene. They are shocked to discover that the ID card carried by the corpse identifies her as Carline Darcy. And if they are shocked, it doesn’t hold a candle to the media frenzy about to be set loose. As the evidence mounts, it becomes increasingly clear that there is involvement on the part of Darcy Therapeutics and perhaps even Emma, whose “discovery” of the body is entirely too convenient for some people to swallow. Cormac must walk the fine line between loyalty to his lover and loyalty to the force, a path liberally strewn with land mines by the fiendishly clever McTiernan.

“Stone mothers” was a Victorian epithet for mental institutions, implying that within their stone walls help and nurturing could be found for those in need. In reality, of course, the opposite was often true. Stone Mothers is also the title of Erin Kelly’s latest thriller, set in and around a now-closed mental institution in the remote fictional town of Nusstead, England. Marianne Thackeray is no stranger to mental illness–her mother suffers from dementia, and her daughter hovers on the brink of mental instability as well. Marianne grew up in the shadow of Nazareth Mental Hospital, but she left some 30 years ago and made a good life for herself and her family. Now she is being dragged back to the town she escaped, first to assist her mother, then (rather more ominously) as a blackmail victim for a long-ago act that she thought would never again see the light of day. Before long, a former lover will become an enemy, a former enemy will become an unlikely ally, and the reader will be exposed to institutional horrors that make One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest look as inviting as Disneyland. It’s disturbing to the max, but hey, that’s what we read thrillers for, right?