In Catriona McPherson’s new thriller, Strangers at the Gate, Finn and her husband Paddy Lamb have a helluva week.

Things start out promisingly enough for the couple, who are making multiple life changes all at once. Paddy’s got a new law-partner job, Finn’s going to be a deacon and they’re leaving the city to move into a gatehouse on a sprawling estate owned by Paddy’s employer. Life’s looking up, even though, to Finn, it seems almost too good to be true.

And then, things go horrifically awry: after a lovely dinner with their new benefactors (the fabulously named Lovatt and Tuft Dudgeon), the Lambs discover the Dudgeons’ very, very bloodied bodies—apparent victims of a murder-suicide. Finn and Paddy keep this gruesome discovery to themselves (they’ve got their own reasons for avoiding police scrutiny), and wait . . . and wait . . . and wait . . . for someone else to come upon and report the crime. In the meantime, they strive for nonchalance as they get to know their new colleagues and neighbors, including well-meaning church folk and the beautiful, enigmatic Shannon.

But as Finn struggles to acclimate to her new and creepy surroundings—such a dark and craggy landscape, so many looming trees—her paranoia grows. And it doesn’t really stop, as McPherson ramps up the tension with ever more creative revelations and twists that will have readers eager to see what on earth is coming next. It’s a fascinating study of what can happen when we suppress our instincts or aren’t sure who to trust, and a delightfully torturous day-by-day recounting of the aftermath of a life-changing lie: everyone seems suspicious, using the proper verb tense is suddenly crucial and eccentricity begins to feel a lot more sinister.

Fans of McPherson’s award-winning work (the Dandy Gilver and Lexy Campbell series, plus numerous standalone novels) will relish whipping right through Strangers at the Gate, guessing and gasping all the way.

Nevada Barr, bestselling author of the Anna Pigeon series, pens a superlative standalone chiller with What Rose Forgot. Right from the outset, it appears that Rose has forgotten quite a lot. First, she awakens in a forest, clueless about how she got there. The next time she wakes up, she is in a home for elderly dementia patients, still somewhat clueless although with the nagging suspicion that she does not belong there. So she secretly stops taking her meds. This is not immediately life-changing in and of itself, but it does serve to solidify Rose’s belief that she does not belong in a dementia ward. After making good on her escape, Rose joins forces with her late husband’s 13-year-old granddaughter, who possesses remarkable skills that help cover her step-grandma’s tracks. The longer Rose stays off the medications, the more she becomes convinced that someone (or ones) are out to get her. But is Rose just paranoid? What if she’s not? What Rose Forgot capitalizes on the resourcefulness of a pair of quite clever women and an equally clever pair of teens, all dedicated to stymieing some particularly unpleasant members of the opposing team. When a mystery features a 68-year-old protagonist, one could be forgiven for assuming that said mystery will fall into the cozy subgenre. What Rose Forgot is anything but.

If you take the John Wick and “Sons of Anarchy” series, blend them with the movie Taken and then dial the intensity up to 11, you have Seven Crows. This gritty thriller unapologetically celebrates its violent antihero, ex-con Killian Delaney, as she navigates the criminal underworld in search of her missing niece.

Killian Delaney grew up in a tough world. Before most people were graduating college, she was the “Old Lady” (aka girlfriend) to a member of the Crows motorcycle club, as well as a celebrated MMA fighter. When her boyfriend was gunned down in a hit by another club, Killian found the man responsible, Rank Cirello, and almost killed him, leaving him permanently disabled and in chronic pain. After nearly a decade in prison, Killian is out on parole, but Rank hasn’t forgotten her. His payback? To kidnap Killian’s 15-year-old niece Shannon and traffic her on the illegal sex market. This plot sounds dark, and it is, but it’s also surprisingly satisfying.

Seven Crows opens with a bang and doesn’t slow down. Spanning only a few days, the action is compressed into a breathless timeline. Killian recruits some of her old criminal friends and makes a few new ones as she (sometimes literally) burns through the underworld in search of Shannon. There are plenty of casualities along the way, but Killian never slows down in her pursuit and never flinches away from the trauma she inflicts.

This novel is staggeringly violent, but its violence feels almost cathartic, rather than gratuitous. Killian and Shannon live in a world dominated by dangerous men who commoditize (literally) the women around them. In one scene, Killian and an accomplice tear through a brothel that sells underage girls with brass knuckles and a shot gun, and it’s impossible to feel anything but a sense of justice watching them put these predators out of business. That said, I must add the caveat that, in keeping with its tone, the book references sexual assault in a candid and descriptive way that may be off-putting to some readers.

The ending of Seven Crows hints at the beginning of a series and I hope that comes to fruition. In the era of #MeToo, vicariously experiencing Killian’s brutal form of justice feels just right, rather than too much.

The title of T. Jefferson Parker’s The Last Good Guy refers to its protagonist, private investigator Roland Ford, who is indeed a good guy, albeit one beset by troubles. But his latest case seems pretty straightforward, at least at the outset. A teenage girl has run away, an action not inconsistent with her wild nature, and her elder sister is anxious for her safety, especially since the young girl has a 20-year-old boyfriend who is a decidedly unsavory character. But rest assured, an author the caliber of Parker will not spin a simple tale of a runaway. Instead, there is nuance upon nuance, misdirection upon misdirection, including a celebrity evangelist, the aforementioned unsavory boyfriend, an enclave of neo-Nazis and a client whose motive for finding her sister may not be exactly as she represented it. As is typical for Parker’s novels, the stage upon which the story unfolds is a microcosm of today’s America, with racism and intolerance, the escalating struggle between conservatives and liberals and the pervasive influence of megachurches and the politics espoused therein. As is also typical of Parker’s novels, it is a mighty fine read.

C.J. Box’s latest thriller, The Bitterroots, follows a family that redefines the word dysfunctional: the Kleinsassers, longtime ranchers and influential denizens of remote Lochsa County, Montana. Private investigator Cassie Dewell, on retainer with a local law office, has been tasked with the defense investigation of family black sheep Blake Kleinsasser, who has been credibly accused of the rape of his 15-year-old niece. It’s pretty much inevitable that this investigation will not end well, as there is quite a bit of enmity among the family members, and no resolution to the case will be satisfying to all the players. The evidence is compelling, with a positive ID from a DNA sample and Blake’s statement that he cannot remember any of the events of the night in question. Yet when Cassie ramps up the investigation, she is stymied at every turn by the Kleinsasser family, to the point of being jailed on trumped-up charges. Clearly someone is invested in derailing the investigation and seeing Blake put away for a very long time, irrespective of his guilt. Box is in top form here, gilding his reputation for finely crafted suspense novels of the New West—a place you wouldn’t necessarily want to live but that is endlessly intriguing to read about.

Meet Heidi Kick: former beauty queen, current interim sheriff and her rural Wisconsin county’s best hope for a future not completely marred by crime, misogyny and general horribleness.

In the opening pages of John Galligan’s dark mystery thriller Bad Axe County, we learn that back in 2004, 18-year-old Heidi was crowned Miss Wisconsin Dairy Queen and, later that night, learned that her parents had died. The police called it murder-suicide, but she knew in her gut it wasn’t true.

Fast-forward to 2016, and Heidi’s still determined to find out the truth, this time from a better vantage point. She’s an excellent investigator and law-enforcer who’s been named interim sheriff of Bad Axe after the death of her corrupt predecessor. The late sheriff was an enthusiastic participant in the remote county’s good ol’ boy network, the members of which secured their power via nepotism, fraud and far more sinister endeavors—and will do seemingly anything to keep Heidi from being elected sheriff. Heidi soon finds herself embroiled in a search for a missing girl, Pepper Greengrass, while a major ice storm threatens to catastrophically flood the rough, wild landscape at the edge of the mighty Mississippi River.

As the action ratchets up and danger seems to loom at every turn, Galligan deftly alternates between Heidi’s and Pepper’s points of view, plus that of Angus Beavers, a former local baseball star who’s returned home to right deadly wrongs. Readers will find themselves eager to see how the various storylines will converge and wary of what shocks the next pages might reveal.

Bad Axe County is quite a ride, with its unapologetic acceptance of the presence of evil among us and its occasional sharp shots of humor and hope amid the devastation. It’s also a layered exploration of the ways that long-held secrets and shame can reach far into the future—with a suspenseful, likely gasp-inducing final act that will leave readers hoping they haven’t seen the last of Heidi, and of Bad Axe County.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with John Galligan about Bad Axe County.

Imagine waking to realize that you can’t move, you can’t speak or even blink, yet you’re fully aware of everything and everyone around you. Then imagine there is a crazed killer who will stop at nothing to extract a secret from you. For Hammel College senior Tara Beckley, she doesn’t have to imagine it. It’s real. And it’s terrifying. That’s the frightening premise of If She Wakes, the newest novel from thriller master Michael Koryta.

Events start innocently enough as Tara chauffeurs professor Amandi Oltamu across town to deliver the keynote address at her Maine liberal arts school’s conference. When Oltamu asks her to stop, she figures he simply has the jitters about his speech. But he follows up with an odd request to take a picture of her on his cellphone and then to lock the phone in the glovebox of her car. Again, she obliges. But before they can get underway again, the pair are struck by an apparently out of control driver. Oltamu is instantly killed in the collision while Tara is knocked senseless, only to “wake” in the hospital surrounded by doctors and family.

Koryta puts the reader in Tara’s shoes for some truly claustrophobic chapters in which her predicament is made all too clear. She can’t move, she can’t communicate, but she can hear everyone as they discuss her fate.

While staying in Tara’s tortured mind is harrowing enough, Koryta throws in a few other characters and a half dozen plot twists to ratchet up the tension even further. Insurance investigator Abby Kaplan discovers Oltamu’s phone, while Dax Blackwell, a young hitman out to prove himself worthy of his father’s legacy, strives to take it from her. But it won’t do either of them any good unless Tara can unlock its secrets.

Koryta keeps the action fast and furious, tempered with his characters’ determination to persevere against all odds.

The title: A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself. The author: William Boyle: The place: Brooklyn. The cast of characters includes Wolfie, an erstwhile porn star and quite the pneumatic bad girl in her day; Lucia, a precocious teenage girl with a larcenous hit-man boyfriend; Rena, the 60-ish widow of an infamous mob boss; and perhaps best of all, a lovingly cared-for 1962 Chevy Impala, an ideal chariot for making one’s getaway from the scene of the crime. Especially when the crime is clocking (with a heavy glass ashtray) a geriatric neighbor making unwanted advances, and then leaving him for dead on his living room floor. The perpetrator, Rena, is in full-on panic mode, and the ’62 Impala is her ticket out. But this is only the initial crime, with a bag full of purloined mob money and a coalition of women inadvertently on the run with their ill-gotten gains. This all sounds a little bit loopy, along the lines of Carl Hiaasen or Tim Dorsey, and there is indeed a surreal element to this caper. But there is also more than a little Thelma & Louise in Boyle’s terrific tale, which has some of the most stylish noir prose to grace the page in some time.

T.J. Martinson’s The Reign of the Kingfisher is a bit outside my wheelhouse, but I didn’t let that get in my way, and you shouldn’t either. This genre-bending book has plenty for suspense fiction aficionados to revel in. Thirty years back, a superhero known as the Kingfisher performed heroic deeds in the mean streets of Chicago. Revered by some, reviled by others, he was by any measure a Windy City legend. And then he died, or so the official story goes—conspiracy theories and rumors of a high-level cover-up abound. And now, a person or persons unknown have taken a room full of hostages, threatening serial execution unless the police confirm the true fate of the Kingfisher. For retired journalist Marcus Waters, the Kingfisher story was a career maker. And now, three decades later, the revived legend could put him back on top, if he can be the one to break the story. So with a ragtag support staff consisting of a talented hacker and a police officer who has fallen from grace, Waters reopens the investigation into the life (and maybe death?) of the Kingfisher. Meanwhile, the lives of the hostages hang in the balance.

When you read as many suspense novels in the run of a month as I do, you naturally gravitate toward characters that it would please you to count as friends in real life. For me, that list would include (among others) Martin Walker’s Périgord protagonist, Bruno, Chief of Police; James R. Benn’s wartime hero Billy Boyle; and this month’s entrant, Donna Leon’s Venice Police Inspector Guido Brunetti. His 29th adventure, Unto Us a Son Is Given, starts when a wealthy, elderly man adopts a younger man as his son, causing some consternation among the rich man’s intimates, as the adopted son now stands to inherit the entire estate. Naturally, the old man dies shortly thereafter, and tongues start wagging. Then, when one of his closest confidantes is found strangled to death in her hotel room, the plot begins to thicken like roux over a blue flame. Leon is a multifaceted, effortlessly assured writer. Her plots are innovative and layered, her characters have developed and matured over the course of a lengthy series, and her prose is imbued with wit and compassion on virtually every page. If you are a fan of Louise Penny (and who isn’t?), Leon should be on your short list.