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.

Sunshine Vicram is one of those characters who is destined to win a cult following. Irreverent, intrepid and harboring secrets of her own, she won’t disappoint fans of Darynda Jones’ previous heroine, Charley Davidson. Jones shifts away from the paranormal in A Bad Day for Sunshine, which begins a new series—but her signature humor and suspense remain.

The town of Del Sol, New Mexico, is an idiosyncratic blend of quirky, lovable characters and well-kept secrets. Sunshine returns to her hometown after being elected sheriff, only to have a teenage girl vanish on her very first day. Eerily, Sybil St. Aubin had premonitions of her own kidnapping and mailed Sunshine a letter detailing her abduction prior to her disappearance. But that’s not the only twist: Sunshine herself was kidnapped as a teenager, a secret she and her family have been keeping to this day.

As the search for Sybil brings Sunshine’s repressed memories to the surface, it also introduces the reader to the diverse cast of characters populating Del Sol—from rooster thieves to former Dixie Mafia members to a mayor who wants Sunshine gone. We also meet Sunshine’s teenage daughter, Auri, who is an aspiring detective herself. As Sunshine investigates the disappearance, Auri canvasses her high school for information on the missing girl, giving us two detectives instead of just one.

Jones has a real talent for balancing suspense with laugh-out-loud humor, never losing the tension from either. Sunshine’s past is grim, as is the truth about Auri’s father, yet the book never feels bleak. The humor, sometimes absurd (like a basket of cursed muffins), never detracts from the gravity of the case Sunshine is investigating. It’s a delicate balancing act, and it’s pulled off with aplomb.

Jones opens the door for future romantic subplots as well, from Sunshine’s former crush turned distillery owner, to a U.S. Marshal on a manhunt of his own, to an FBI Agent assigned to assist in the case. With its wit and suspense, A Bad Day for Sunshine is a one-night read that left me craving the next installment in the series, especially after its truly surprising final reveal.

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.

It begins with a femur. When a couple detour off their hiking trail in the Georgia hills and find the weathered leg bone, and then more female remains, it seems likely to be the work of a known predator. But an ever-growing group of investigators discovers there’s more to this laid-back community than just one notorious monster. When You See Me is most frightening when it shows us the boogeymen we meet and interact with every day.

Lisa Gardner’s latest novel once again unites Sergeant D.D. Warren and Flora Dane, the survivor of a brutal abduction who has repaid some of that abuse in the years since. They make a good team, especially since only one is bound to obey laws. Flora and Keith, her maybe-boyfriend who adds tech skills to the team, investigate the small town near the burial site with Warren and FBI Speical Agent Kimberly Quincy. Chapter narration alternates between Warren, Flora, Quincy and a young, mysterious figure who is unable to speak; for her, this is anything but a cold case. When her story intersects with the investigation, the stakes and tension ratchet up quickly.

When You See Me is most frightening when it shows us the boogeymen we meet and interact with every day.

Warren, Dane and Quincy struggle to square the folksy demeanor of people they interview with what appears to be a fairly long, dark history of criminal behavior. It’s hard to know who to trust when talking to people well-trained in the art of people-pleasing to ensure repeat business. Meanwhile, the one person desperate to tell the truth and exact justice has lost her voice entirely. The twists and turns keep peeling veils off an evil nobody wants to look at head-on, and it all culminates in a breakneck final act. The forensic analysis of shallow graves can unearth a lot of clues, but When You See Me also looks at the ways evil is handed down from one generation to the next. It’s a mystery that will keep you up late at night, haunted by the events within its pages.

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.

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.

In Dr. Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell’s First Cut, medical examiner Dr. Jessie Teska works on the victims of “sudden, violent, and unexpected deaths,” from accidents to suicide to murder. And in Jessie’s first week at her new job, a homicide case launches her life into chaos: A young woman has died from a drug overdose and, it turns out, used to work for one of Jessie’s mercurial new bosses. His reaction makes Jessie wonder if it’s an innocent connection or something darker—but how will she balance a proper investigation with complicated, unfamiliar office politics?

Questions mount and danger rises as Jessie strives to juggle a heavy caseload, leave past hurts behind and figure out whom she can (and cannot) trust. Drug dealers, detectives, lawyers and bitcoin brokers figure into this atmospheric, San Francisco-set tale, which is peppered with humor thanks to Jessie’s wit, as well as Bea the high-spirited beagle and Sparkle the whip-smart bail-bonds lady. Jessie’s forays into dating and romance add sexy fun, and her musings on our collective corporeal vulnerability are by turns humbling (“The cops could drag their feet and stonewall . . . all they want. The body never lies.”) and alarming (à la lists of cases like “jaywalker hit by a bus, a gunshot suicide, a skateboard versus a hydrant, and a stabbing homicide”).

The married authors—whose first book was the bestselling 2014 memoir Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner—expertly employ their know-how, maintaining blood-and-guts vérité while empathetically exploring what it’s like to do a job with actual life-and-death stakes. First Cut is a fascinating, entertaining series kickoff, with a particularly kickass heroine.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell.

A title like Thin Ice immediately connotes danger, and New York Times bestselling author Paige Shelton delivers in every way. A sense of dread persists from the opening page to the novel’s surprising conclusion, with an overall tense mood and an all-too-real terror felt by the book’s protagonist, Beth Rivers.

Beth is also known as Elizabeth Fairchild, the famous penname under which she writes popular thrillers. When we first meet her, Beth is on the run from a violent encounter—a kidnapping by an obsessed fan and a dramatic escape. Her flight takes her to the remote village of Benedict, Alaska, where she hopes to elude her assailant, who is still at large.

Beth’s scars, both internal and external, are real. Internally, she suffers from an overriding fear that even though she has put hundreds of miles between her former and new lives, she may still be in danger. Externally, there is a ragged scar on her head incurred during her escape, serving as a constant reminder of her close brush with death.

Shelton methodically introduces Beth to a wide-ranging cast while swiftly ramping up the tension. It’s not yet winter, but Beth’s Alaskan environment is already harsh, cold and remote. While most of the people she encounters in the village appear to be supportive and caring, she can never quite let go of her suspicions that any one of them could mean her harm—or worse, expose her real identity.

With more memories of her ordeal threatening to return, Beth takes on a new role as the community newspaper’s only reporter and thrusts herself into an ongoing investigation of a local death. New secrets and questions abound, leaving Beth to wonder if she has escaped one threat only to have fallen into another.

Thin Ice is the first in a series from Shelton, who is best known for her Scottish Bookshop Mystery cozy series. But there is nothing cozy here, only danger.

Set in a small town obsessed with the occult, Trace of Evil by Alice Blanchard launches a promising new series and delivers an airtight police procedural with deeply macabre elements. This is a read-in-one-sitting book that will refresh readers who are potentially burned out on the genre.

With a Salem-esque history of killing suspected witches, the spooky little town of Burning Lake, New York, has turned its link to the dark arts into a tourist attraction. When a high school teacher is stabbed to death, homicide detective Natalie Lockhart turns her attention to a disaffected student who might have ties to a coven of teen witches. As if that’s not enough to keep her busy, Natalie is also working on a cold case of nine Burning Lake residents who went missing over the years, with only strange graffiti and creepy fetishes made of dead birds left behind.

While Trace of Evil utilizes paranormal themes like witchcraft, it remains firmly grounded in reality, never crossing the line into a supernatural thriller. What we get instead is a procedural that expertly balances three mysteries at one time with tight plotting and enough clues and red herrings to keep the most experienced of mystery readers conjuring up theory after theory. And truly, Blanchard doesn’t need to utilize the supernatural to make her novel chilling. From the deeply disturbing aspects of the nine disappearances to the teenage obsession with witchcraft (I remember my own love of The Craft at a similar age), the terror here is tied to people who feel so detached from the world around them that they normalize horrifying violence.

Adding to the perfectly executed mysteries and the real-world terror is Blanchard’s careful world building. This is the first book starring Natalie Lockhart, but she appears on the page like a friend readers have known forever. She is the lens through which we view her small town, and she adds an element of empathy to characters who might otherwise feel unsympathetic to the reader. Then there’s the frisson of forbidden sexual tension between Natalie and her boss, a subplot that promises to unwind later in the series. It may seem like a lot to balance within one novel, but Trace of Evil delivers all of these elements without a single misstep.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Alice Blanchard about Trace of Evil.