Many of you will be familiar with Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire via television rather than books, but as is often the case, the books have nuance and detail that are difficult to replicate on screen. In Craig Johnson’s latest Longmire novel, Land of Wolves, the stalwart lawman is back in Wyoming after a south-of-the-border hunting expedition. In the nearby Bighorn Mountains, a wolf has apparently killed a sheep, which doesn’t seem especially unusual in the Wild West. However, tensions ratchet up considerably when the shepherd is found hanged, his dangling feet savaged by a wild animal, most likely the aforementioned wolf. Johnson uses this as a jumping-off point for broad-ranging discussions about wolves, the history of sheep ranching, the use of open rangelands and other social and ecological issues of the contemporary West. But there is no hint of a textbook in Johnson’s voice. Instead, it’s rather like hearing a modern Old West story told by a favorite uncle, one who fills in the little details that bring immediacy and life to a suspenseful narrative.

Although Archer Mayor’s latest novel, Bomber’s Moon, is considered part of the Joe Gunther series, Gunther himself plays a comparatively minor role. The serious investigative work is left to two of the Vermont-based cop’s well-regarded acquaintances: private investigator Sally Kravitz and photographer/reporter Rachel Reiling. The crime is most unusual. A thief has been breaking into the homes of people who are away but stealing nothing. Instead, he adds spyware to his victims’ communication devices and then waits to see how he can profit from it. But he is not the first person to pursue such an endeavor in this small Vermont town. Kravitz’s own father followed a similar path back in the day (and perhaps still does). He is well aware of this new interloper into the “family trade” and displays more than a little admiration for his successor’s skills—until the new guy gets murdered. The leads, scant though they are, seem to center on a high-priced private school, and before things resolve, there will be significant financial improprieties, more than a bit of class warfare and an increasing body count. The nicely paced Bomber’s Moon is replete with well-developed characters and relationships, with the unusual bonus of oddly likable villains.

Attica Locke’s atmospheric thriller Heaven, My Home takes place in the northeastern Texas town of Jefferson, a once-prosperous trading center fallen on hard times (“the city square was like a courtesan who’d found Jesus”). Texas Ranger Darren Matthews investigates the disappearance of a 9-year-old boy who didn’t return from a solo boating adventure on nearby Caddo Lake. The missing boy is the son of Aryan Brotherhood leader Bill King, a convicted and incarcerated murderer. Jefferson was one of the first settlements composed primarily of freed slaves, in addition to a band of Native Americans who successfully dodged the wholesale relocation of tribes to Oklahoma during the U.S. westward expansion. The town is now home to their descendants. Add those aforementioned white supremacists into the mix, and the town becomes a veritable powder keg awaiting a spark—such as a black land­owner whose animosity toward his bigoted tenants is well documented, and who is the last person to have seen the missing boy. Few suspense novelists display a better grip of political and racial divides than Attica Locke, and she spins a hell of a good story as well, introducing characters and locales you will want to visit again and again.

Readers yearning for a noir mystery in the vein of Mike Hammer or Sam Spade are in luck. Peter Colt has delivered just such a tale of intrigue with his debut novel, The Off-Islander.

Set in 1982, the book features all the classic tropes of noir: a lonely detective on a missing persons case, shady suspects and red herrings, sultry ladies to entice him, rainy streets and seedy bars, danger lurking at nearly every turn. The detective, Andy Roark, even totes around a copy of The Raymond Chandler Omnibus for when he needs moments of inspiration. What more could you ask for?

Colt, an Army veteran who served in Kosovo and Iraq and now is a police officer in a small New England city, captures his firsthand, on-the-job experience in moody prose. The novel spends nearly as much time exploring Roark’s inner demons from the Vietnam War and life afterward as it does with the case at hand, adding a deeply evocative perspective to events.

Approached by longtime friend and lawyer Danny Sullivan, Roark is tasked with finding the long-missing father of a California woman whose husband is seeking political office. He follows the cold case trail to Cape Cod and Nantucket Island, where the man once lived as part of a hippie commune in the late 1960s and received his VA checks in the mail.

It doesn’t take long before Roark’s probing questions about the island’s reclusive residents begin to uncover some unsavory details, all with dangerous repercussions. In typical gumshoe fashion, Roark is pushed over a bluff, his car is vandalized, and he’s shot at by a lurking sniper. Before long, even his friend Danny, who got him into the mess in the first place, is begging him to let things lie.

Of course, no respectable private dick would ever do such a thing, and neither does Roark. If you’re a fan of such fiction, you’ll want to see things through to the end, too.

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.

There are shades of Jeffery Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme in quadriplegic forensics consultant Lucas Page, protagonist of Robert Pobi’s standout thriller City of Windows. Page is not quite as physically challenged as Rhyme, but as a result of a shooting some 10 years ago, he is burdened with the loss of an arm and a leg, as well as the loss of sight in one eye. Once a crack FBI field agent, Page has retreated into an academic life. And then something rattles his peaceful post-FBI existence: the assassination of his former partner by a sniper’s bullet, a seemingly impossible shot fired from a rooftop during a blinding snowstorm. Page reluctantly agrees to come out of retirement to help with the investigation of the shooting. His almost three-dimensional grasp of velocities and trajectories borders on the uncanny, and he is thus uniquely suited to the task at hand. Unfortunately, the shooting is only the first in a series of virtually impossible sniper shots targeting a member of the law enforcement community. The tension ratchets up for the reader just as it does for Page as he and his loved ones find themselves in the crosshairs. Pobi has written five other books, but this is his first thriller. It would seem he has found his calling.

Inspector Konrad Sejer returns in Norwegian author Karin Fossum’s stark and oh-so-dark The Whisperer. The titular whisperer is Ragna Riegel, whose vocal cords were damaged in a botched operation, rendering her unable to speak in anything but the most hushed of tones. The surgery is just one in a series of unhappy life events that have left Ragna something of a recluse, her day-to-day existence repetitive and boring—that is, until she receives an anonymous and succinct death threat: “You are going to die.” At first, the police are somewhat lackadaisical in their response, treating the incident as little more than a prank. But as follow-up messages arrive, Sejer finds sufficient cause to launch an investigation, if not for the reasons Ragna might have preferred—he is suspicious that Ragna is in fact the perpetrator of a crime, and not a victim at all. Sympathetic by nature, Sejer nonetheless chips away at Ragna’s facade in the hope of exposing her crime, all the while finding himself moved by the loneliness and grief of her life. Fossum excels at this sort of psychological suspense, and as such, she is one of the leading lights of the Scandinavian whodunit genre. 

The second book in the Special Agent Sayer Altair series delves deep into the mind of a monster, creating an immersive and chilling experience while following a FBI neuroscientist who studies serial killers.

Following up directly where Caged left off, Buried finds Sayer recovering from a gunshot wound—and facing political fallout from her last case in which she exposed a horrible secret within the FBI. Then the gruesome discovery of a mass gravesite in the Shenandoah National Forest pulls Sayer off desk duty and back into the field, but with extremely limited resources. With only a few park rangers and two FBI agents to assist her, Sayer throws herself into the case as a way to avoid coping with her recent trauma.

The bones, and one recent body, tell a macabre story: A serial killer was active in the area for eight years until 2002, only to begin killing again now. Even more troubling is the report of a missing woman whose description matches the profile of the other victims.

As the case begins to build steam, Sayer is drawn into an increasingly dark and melodramatic gothic nightmare. The landscape of the Shenandoah National Forest, with its hidden mines and cave systems, becomes a character itself, as the villain emerges from the shadows to terrorize Sayer’s team, only to vanish again. Small-town secrets and long-held feuds also threaten to derail the investigation. Cooper’s focus on atmosphere gives the novel the tight pacing of a thriller, while also producing a constant feeling of unease more typically found in the horror genre. This is not the book for a cozy mystery fan.

Sayer stands out in a largely whitewashed genre as a woman of color, and her awareness of how her race affects others’ perceptions of her is present but never overly evangelized to the reader. Resourceful and self-possessed, she triumphs even when the odds are stacked against her. When evidence leads her to theorize that a woman who went missing from the area years ago—and who happens to be the local police chief’s sister—may be involved in the killings, she finds herself frozen out by both the FBI and local law enforcement.

By depriving Sayer of departmental resources and deus ex machina forensic breakthroughs, the narrative focuses on her brilliant profiling and detective skills, making Buried feel like an old fashioned whodunit as the reader pieces the clues together along with Sayer.

Readers looking for fast-paced, page-turning suspense and intrigue need look no farther than The Black Jersey. The new mystery from Mexican journalist Jorge Zepeda Patterson throws readers into the middle of the grueling 23-day, 2,000-mile Tour de France bicycle race through the French countryside.

Considered one of the most intense sporting events in the world, the Tour ends badly for many individuals who succumb to fatigue, bad luck or physical injury. Casualties are par for the course, but what no one can account for is the possibility that some of the contenders are being murdered.

Professional racer Marc Moreau of France, who rides for U.S.-based Team Fonar, provides a firsthand account of the events when he is approached by French Police Commissioner Favre to spy on his fellow cyclists from within in an effort to identify the potential killer. Moreau, who has some military police training but no real detective skills to call upon, doesn’t want to believe the worst of any of his competitors, but when he becomes the apparent target of a gas explosion in his camper, the threat becomes all too real.

It isn’t long before Moreau, who emerges as a contender to win the race, begins speculating about who could have it out for him and his fellow cyclists. Any of them would kill to stand on the podium at the end of the race. Even team managers, mechanics and his best friend and teammate, Tour favorite Steve Panata, are unable to escape suspicion. Every accident, every incident on course, becomes fuel for increasing speculation, testing loyalties, friendships and trust.

Patterson, whose work is aptly translated by award-winning writer Achy Obejas, mixes edge-of-your-seat racing action with dark suspense, all leading up to a surprising finale. Race out to get this one.