The sixth in Deon Meyer’s Detective Benny Griessel mysteries, The Last Hunt, splits its time—and chapters—between Griessel’s investigation of a murder aboard a luxury train and the recruitment of former revolutionary Daniel Darret to assassinate a corrupt South African president. The result is mystery, intrigue and riveting suspense.

Griessel and his seemingly always cynical (and somewhat humorous) partner Vaughn Cupido, both members of the elite South African Hawks police unit, are tasked with solving the gruesome murder of an ex-cop with the unusual name of Johnson Johnson, only to see their efforts stymied along the way by corruption. Meanwhile, Darret’s retirement as an apprentice furniture maker in France is upended when an old associate is killed by Russian spies who then set their sights on Darret, even as he takes up his friend’s cause.

The complex plot loses a bit of immediacy when Meyer switches from one storyline to the other, but after a few chapters it promptly sweeps you along again. Part of the fun is trying to discern how the two stories will connect and in anticipating the action-packed finale.

A resident of Stellenbosch, South Africa, Meyer handles the intricate plotlines with superb skill, proving why he is an internationally acclaimed, prize-winning author of 12 thrillers. The action alone is enough to keep you reading, but Meyer gives us multifaceted characters who are just as interesting. Griessel and Cupido share a camaraderie clearly built on their previous adventures together, though you don’t have to read the previous stories to appreciate it. When they’re not exclusively focused on the case at hand, their banter about how Griessel should propose to his girlfriend provides welcome relief. Darret, meanwhile, is tormented over leaving a life of calm and relaxation, having been thrust back into his former life.

Whether you’re in it for the mystery or for the action, The Last Hunt delivers on both counts.

Fans of Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Clare Fergusson/Russ van Alstyne mysteries will be delighted to learn the Episcopalian priest and her police chief husband are back in Hid From Our Eyes.

In this ninth installment of the New York Times bestselling and award-winning series, Spencer-Fleming takes a long view of the dark side of human nature via characters who investigate three unsolved murders that span decades and haunt the lives of the residents of Millers Kill, a small town in upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains. Each murder victim was a pretty young woman clad in a pricey party dress, found in the middle of the road with no indications of who or what caused her death.

In the present day, Russ van Alstyne is the police chief tasked with solving the latest murder; in 1972, he found a victim’s body during a motorcycle ride and became a person of interest in the ultimately unresolved case. It’s fascinating to move among the various time periods, meeting Russ when he was an angry just-returned-home Vietnam veteran and then again when he’s a calm and driven policeman. Spencer-Fleming tracks the frustrations of the law enforcement and medical professionals stymied by a lack of clues, witnesses, technology or some combination thereof. Flashbacks and flash-forwards are understandably tricky, especially among multiple eras, but Spencer-Fleming handles them with skill and ease, using secrets and revelations alike to ramp up the suspense and create a chain of investigation and mentorship among the police chiefs of each successive generation.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Julia Spencer-Fleming on exploring questions of faith and mentorship.

She also writes with compassion for those who struggle, whether with PTSD, financial strain or, like Clare, finding a satisfying balance between nervous new motherhood and a demanding job (while maintaining sobriety and pitching in as a dogged amateur sleuth, to boot). Hid From Our Eyes lets readers spend time inside the marriage of two beloved characters and follow along as they race against time to solve a confounding murder case that is threatening Millers Kill’s sense of unity and safety. The author also explores PTSD among returning veterans, small-town politics, class conflict, gender identity, religion and more in this multifaceted exploration of community and crime in a small town.

Hid From Our Eyes is an exciting return to a beloved series, as well as an intriguing entry point for readers new to the world of Russ, Clare and Millers Kill.

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.

The crime scene is the stuff of nightmares: A blood-drenched bed in a posh, pristine home on a family’s private island. Worse yet, the victim is missing. Called to the scene in the midst of a ferocious storm, Senior Investigator Shana Merchant’s partner on the case challenges her assessment of the case and asserts a theory that the victim may be injured but alive. Death in the Family is a dark and stormy mystery that sets doubt and certainty against one another for up-all-night reading.

Author Tessa Wegert’s debut is impressive in its scope. The Sinclair family is packed with suspects, and their confinement in foul weather makes for short tempers and lots of juicy misbehavior. But on top of that classical, Christie-like foundation, there’s the matter of Shana’s personal history. We learn over the course of the novel that she was abducted by a serial killer when she worked for the NYPD, a trauma from which she may not have fully recovered. Her new job in the rural Thousand Islands region is not supposed to include the depravity this case confronts her with. Both Shana’s partner and her fiancé question her judgement, and her behavior at times makes their concerns seem entirely reasonable.

As Death in the Family draws to a close, the Sinclair matter is resolved, but we’ve barely pulled back the curtain on Shana’s past. It’s enormously frustrating to close a book knowing you have to wait for the next installment, but it speaks to how finely this debut is engineered. Death in the Family marks a bold beginning to an addictive new series.

Former police detective Joona Linna is once more on the case in the high-octane novel The Rabbit Hunter by Lars Kepler. Things get off to an explosive start as an escort service worker is witness to the brutal assassination of her client, who is none other than the Swedish foreign minister. Initially believing the hit to be the work of terrorists and a possible prelude to additional violence, the Swedish Security Service, including Joona’s former partner, Saga Bauer, turn to Joona for help. But Joona, as Kepler fans know, is in jail as a result of striking an officer in his last case (recounted in Kepler’s previous novel, Stalker.) After some convincing from the prime minister himself, and promises of a possible commuted sentence, Joona agrees to lend his skills to the case at hand. The resulting investigation turns into an action-packed race against the clock to stop a series of additional killings by a ruthless assassin.

Kepler, a pseudonym for husband-and-wife authors Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril and Alexander Ahndoril, builds suspense with each subsequent murder while planting more clues to tantalize readers. Joona is constantly one step behind the killer, increasing the stakes for the next victim in line. While there are instances of graphic violence and admittedly gratuitous sex, Kepler keeps things grounded with real emotional threads for each of his characters. Joona’s relationship with his former co-workers is especially intriguing as he tries to put his criminal misdeeds behind him while rebuilding the trust of his colleagues.

The sixth book in the Joona Linna series (you don’t have to read the others to follow along), The Rabbit Hunter grips readers from the start and rarely lets up throughout its 500-plus pages. The breakneck pace almost seems custom-built for TV or film—producers of the TV adaptation of Jeffery Deaver’s The Bone Collector, take note! The Rabbit Hunter is a chase you’ll want to get in on.