While away on duty, Army Ranger Van Shaw receives a chilling note from his grandfather: “Come home, if you can.” The last time the two talked was 10 years ago—a conversation that resulted in a bloody brawl. Pride and stubbornness run strong in this family, so for the old man to reach out means there’s something big happening back home.

Van had prepared himself for the estranged exchange waiting for him, but not for what he finds: his grandfather with a gunshot wound to the head, bleeding out on the floor. As the first person on the scene and in light of their complicated relationship, Van knows he’s suspect number one. To clear his name and obtain retribution, Van must return to his illicit past as a kid criminal and exploit his grandfather’s exceptional career as a professional thief. With the cops questioning his every move, Van takes to the streets to seek answers from his grandfather’s cronies. But this is not without a price—Van has worked his way up the army ranks, and one wrong move could cost him his status or his life.

Glen Erik Hamilton’s impressive debut novel fuses procedural plotting, vigilantism and noir. The seedy setting and one man’s hunt for justice create an emotionally stirring and morally ambiguous read. Past Crimes keeps readers on edge and second-guessing every character, and when that last page is turned, one question remains: Will Van return to the life he labored so hard to forget? It will have to be answered in the much-anticipated second installment in this clever, intoxicating series.

Ten years ago, Ian Caldwell and his co-author, Dustin Thomason, struck gold with The Rule of Four, a page-turning academic mystery with emotional depth. Now, after a decade of research, writing and rewriting, Caldwell is back with a solo effort, a new novel that promises to live up to The Rule of Four. And The Fifth Gospel delivers, with compelling characters, impeccable pacing and a central enigma that is as intellectually satisfying as it is emotionally harrowing.

The year is 2004, and Pope John Paul II is nearing the end of his time leading the Roman Catholic Church while still working to fulfill a few final wishes. The Vatican is rocked, though, when a curator turns up murdered in Rome just a week before he was set to unveil a powerful new exhibit in the Vatican Museums. When police can’t find a suspect, Greek Catholic priest Alex Andreou—a friend of the curator and expert on the Gospels—takes it upon himself to unravel the mystery, one that concerns a mysterious fifth Gospel manuscript, a legendary relic and a secret that could shake the church to its core.

Caldwell constructs the novel’s central puzzle masterfully, weaving between past and present, danger and intrigue, codes and obfuscations at a blistering pace that makes the more than 400-page novel breeze by. But the key to The Fifth Gospel’s effectiveness is Alex’s emotional, intense point of view. Caldwell has woven a tale that’s as much about brotherhood, faith, the sins of the past and what it means to atone as it is about the central mystery and its faith-shattering secrets. The Fifth Gospel is rooted in a powerful, very human emotional core.

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s no easy feat to cast a German who admits to cheering Hitler’s election as the lead detective in a murder mystery. But readers quickly discover that little is as it seems in this dark historical thriller based on an actual gruesome crime spree that shook Nazi Germany in the months before the U.S. entered World War II.

Georg Heuser, a talented, young detective who emphasizes to the reader that he never technically joined the Nazi party, is teamed up with a grizzled veteran to find the so-called S-Bahn murderer, who not only violently kills women but also seems to get a sexual thrill out of doing so. Ostland alternates between Heuser’s investigation and that of Paula Siebert, who is sent to Europe more than a decade after WWII’s end to look into Nazi war crimes, including Heuser’s. How did the ambitious Heuser—who went to great lengths to distinguish himself from the thuggish Nazis he loathed—become yet another war criminal? That is the question that propels this insightful novel, which makes strong use of historical events and figures to create two compelling narratives.

Author David Thomas occasionally relies too heavily on telling rather than showing (Heuser superfluously describes himself as “filled with ambition and determination”), and the dialogue at times falls flat. But Heuser is an undoubtedly disturbing and fascinating character, while the (fictional) Siebert stands in for the horrified reader as we learn of the inhuman depths to which Heuser, and so many like him, sank in the name of some grotesque program of racial purity. The S-Bahn killings, Thomas makes painfully clear, foreshadowed the more widespread horrors that Heuser and his comrades inflicted on the civilized world.

“When you stopped trying to be one perfect person, you could be many.” A small-town Tennessee girl flourishes into a classic, yet never cliché, femme fatale in Rebecca Scherm’s provocative coming-of-age debut, Unbecoming.

Grace had her siren song down to the perfect ringing notes: prim cardigans, sweet smiles and a melodic laugh capable of enticing anyone. This pristine exterior did well to hide her poor and neglected upbringing, and she fooled even herself—but throughout life and love Grace realized her hands have been too often taunted to touch and possess what is not hers. Perhaps some of us are just born bad, despite all efforts to dispel the wicked. When an art heist goes awry, Grace embraces her darker side and transforms to protect herself. At every new job and in every new city, she’s someone new, her identity stunningly ambiguous. She can never again be “Grace.”

With a well-researched plot and illuminating prose, Unbecoming delivers a character that does and does not evoke sympathy. Grace is slippery, cunning and complex as she evolves into a highbrow jewel bandit living off the grid. Just as she does for herself, Grace remakes the jewelry into something unrecognizable, taking stones from this one and replacing them from that one.

From the high-end art world of New York to the dusty basement of an antiques dealer in France, Unbecoming is an atmospheric adventure from start to finish.

We’ve all been there, wondering late at night: Is that tap-tap-tap sound we’re hearing coming from the radiator pipes, or are those footsteps on the stairs? For Evie Jones, the cub reporter and amateur sleuth at the center of Elisabeth de Mariaffi’s chilling psychological thriller, anxious moments like these have become a way of life. The Devil You Know takes readers on a rollercoaster ride through Evie’s desperate efforts to rid herself of the childhood horrors that have followed her into adulthood.

Evie is 22, living alone for the first time in a Toronto apartment and working the crime beat for the local paper. Any young adult starting out this way might feel anxious from time to time. Evie, however, carries some traumatic baggage from childhood: Her best friend, Lianne Gagnon, was raped and murdered when the girls were 11 years old, and the murderer has never been found. Now Evie’s boss has assigned her to research Lianne’s case and the cold cases of several other murdered children, bringing the long-ago nightmare into the present in a very real way.

Writing in an intense stream-of-consciousness style, de Mariaffi takes us tumbling through Evie’s growing obsession with the murderer and her mounting suspicion that he’s not only still alive, but very close by. Evie’s fears seem reasonable, except that she sometimes sees shadows that aren’t really there and remembers things that never really happened. Confabulations, her therapist calls these false memories; her traumatized mind fills in the blanks so convincingly that she doesn’t always know reality from fantasy.

Evie is the ultimate unreliable narrator, yet de Mariaffi puts us right in her head, where we can’t help but sympathize. Most of all, we feel the overwhelming need Evie has to solve this thing, even if it means risking relationships and maybe her own life. By turns panicky and plucky, Evie’s determination eventually wins out, and the pieces of her past come together in a startling but satisfying conclusion.

The Devil You Know is de Mariaffi’s first novel, but she masters the art of pacing and ratchets up the tension page by page throughout Evie’s journey. Fans of psychological thrillers like Gone Girl will root for Evie’s version of the truth right to the end.

Of the dramatic plot twists that routinely occur in suspense fiction, one character in Harriet Lane’s Her complains that they are “unsatisfying . . . nothing like life, which—it seems to me—turns less on shocks or theatrics than on the small quiet moments, misunderstandings or disappointments, the things that it’s easy to overlook.” Lane’s novel, in which a vengeful woman infiltrates the life of an old acquaintance, features many potential shocks. But Her eschews cheap drama, instead building suspense by shedding light on two women’s inner worlds.

The story is set in motion when Nina Bremner, a 30-something artist, spots Emma Nash pushing a stroller down a busy London street. As a teen, Emma wreaked havoc on Nina’s life with a single thoughtless act. Now Emma doesn’t even remember her—but Nina is obsessed. Using a series of staged coincidences to win her trust, Nina finds the once-carefree blonde stressed and exhausted by the demands of new motherhood. Emma is dazzled by her new friend’s air of freedom and effortless glamour. But Nina’s friendship comes at a cost. She’s actually the ultimate underminer, rifling through Emma’s possessions, ruining her dinner parties and even staging the disappearance of her child.

Narrated in turns by the two women, the book subtly conveys the psychological currents that attract them to each other. Emma longs for a break from the endless small stressors of parenting a difficult toddler—“the headlong conscientious dawn-to-dusk rush to feed and entertain and bathe.” Meanwhile, Nina, whose own life isn’t as perfect as it appears, feels a queasy sense of triumph at seeing a former teen queen reduced to wiping up snot. As the two women grow closer, readers wait to discover the true reason for Nina’s hatred—and how far her revenge will go.

Tim Johnston’s latest novel has an unusual take on the parent’s-worst-nightmare scenario of child abduction. He doesn’t focus so much on the abductee, Caitlin Courtland, but instead on what Caitlin’s disappearance does to the men in her life.

Caitlin is snatched while the family is on vacation in the Rockies; they’re there partially because it’s a great place for Caitlin, a champion high school runner, to train. The disaster shatters the family almost at once, but things were shaky for the Courtlands even before the kidnapping. Dad Grant was unfaithful to his wife, Angela. Dudley adored his older sister, even though she teased him for being fat and unambitious. Still, both he and Grant are guilt-ridden for not being able to protect her.

Johnston’s women are tangential, but not because he’s one of those male writers who can’t write credible women. With the exception of Angela, who falls to pieces and stays that way for pretty much the whole book, the women are fairly strong, intelligent and well-rounded. Caitlin, during the brief time we see her, is a powerhouse. But it’s the men who demand answers; Caitlin’s abduction is an affront to their manhood, even if they never knew her. They speak in bursts of terse but beautifully rendered dialogue and their thoughts are just as circumspect. Johnston’s equally spare, alluring descriptions of the landscape, the weather, geriatric cars and trucks, farm equipment and firearms recall Annie Proulx.

Both suspenseful and sorrowful, Descent explores what it means to be a man—a husband, a father, a brother, a son, an officer of the law—in an uncertain time.

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Mr. Heming, the narrator of A Pleasure and a Calling, is more than an uninvited guest: He’s the guest you never knew you had. Channeling the socially detached and unnerving personality of Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, Phil Hogan creates a character that will inspire intrigue as well as ire.

Heming owns the premiere real estate agency in his small English town, which provides him a steady flow of money—and keys to most of its residents’ houses, which he uses to indulge his penchant for snooping. He takes his obsession to sociopathic levels, noting the routines and habits of every house he violates and taking home mementos of his conquests. Heming hides his fetish well, until the day he is caught sneaking through a house after a lovers’ quarrel. Readers will begin to question their own morality as they watch the protagonist go to extreme lengths to cover his tracks.

A Pleasure and a Calling takes readers into the mind of a truly disturbed man and follows the development of his psychosis. Jumping from the present day to Heming’s past, from childhood curiosity and tragedy to the inability to maintain conventional relationships as an adult, the creation of a monster is unveiled.

Hogan’s writing style echoes the creepiness of his main character. The lack of emotional adjectives and use of idiocentric phrases further solidify the darkness of our complicated narrator. This perfectly paced psychological suspense story is a roller-coaster ride through paranoia and manipulation.

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The Killer Next Door is the second thriller by Alex Marwood (aka Brit novelist Serena Mackesy), whose first novel, The Wicked Girls (2013), won an Edgar for Best Paperback Original.

Marwood’s descriptions of 23 Beulah Grove, a seedy apartment building in South London, make you want to turn your head away and run somewhere else—fast. Who could live in this moldy, dirty, depressing place, where closed doors and secrets are the norm—especially considering the equally moldy, dirty, lecherous landlord, who raises the rent at will?

Fact is, the six people who live here don’t want their names on any lease that could trace them, so they’re stuck. They’re all running from something, all enclosed in their individual bubbles of solitude as they try to hold onto their hard-won anonymity. We get to know each one: Cher, the abused runaway; Gerard, a divorced former teacher; Thomas, a loner with a hidden core of take-charge authority; Collette, a runaway hiding from a dangerous man who wants her dead; Hossein, a refugee from Iran; and Vesta, a prisoner in her own claustrophobic life.

There are horrific crimes being committed under the roof of 23 Beulah, but only the perpetrator knows about them. These terrible deeds might have remained secret, if not for a series of “accidents” that finally, if reluctantly, bring the tenants together in a slowly developing alliance of trust that begins to open their doors to one another. The criminal and the crimes will certainly garner readers’ attention, but the real story lies between each of the six tenants and their fat, secretive landlord. Marwood realistically portrays the series of seemingly random events that slowly bring the main characters out of their shells and into a shared world.

Each character’s plight is woven into that of his or her fellow travelers, and the storyline succeeds as readers get to know the foibles and strengths of each one, depicted in a natural and unforced way, without the fake dramatic flourishes that often diminish a story of this kind.

The author heaps on a lot of unnecessary gruesome detail in several chapters describing the criminal’s mad, demonic and deadly labors. The story would have fared better with fewer of these scenes, which seem inserted just to titillate our horror taste buds.

The Killer Next Door is more than a horror fest and stands on its own as a drama of people struggling with their very real inner demons.

This fast-paced and gripping novel is part thriller, part crime story, part mystery. It tells the story of Bobby Drake, a deputy sheriff in a small Pacific Northwest town trying to outlive the sins of his larger-than-life father, Patrick. He is doing a good job of it, until his father is let out of prison and the cycle of crime and violence begins again—threatening the peaceful existence Bobby has created.

The appearance of a wolf in the mountains, the first sighted in many decades, provides a metaphoric subplot to the main story. Bobby is tasked with tracking and protecting the wolf—one of the more benign of the many predators in the story, a category that includes Bobby’s father.

The story is told smoothly, blending sweet domestic scenes with fast action, violence, kidnapping and murder, all against the backdrop of the Cascade Mountains, which are lovingly described by author Urban Waite. The characters are realistically drawn— the good guys (especially the DEA agent and the sheriff) heavily flawed, and the bad guys very bad. But what makes Sometimes the Wolf tick is the strained but loving relationship between father and son. The plot is tight, and the action fast. It is easy to read, but hard to put down. You just might lose some sleep over this one.

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If ever a book were tailor-made for a David Fincher movie adaptation (Se7en, Zodiac, etc.), it’s Lauren Beukes’ latest dark, genre-bending mystery.

On a cool November night in Detroit, Detective Gabriella Versado comes across the strangest crime scene of her career: a dead 11-year-old boy whose lower half has been replaced by that of a deer. Their bodies have been fused together into a macabre human-animal hybrid straight out of “True Detective” or NBC’s “Hannibal,” and Versado believes the killer will strike again.

Meanwhile, a diverse array of Detroit grifters—the unemployed writer, Jonno Haim, desperate for a story that will save his career; the homeless squatter known as TK, wracked by seizures; and the tortured artist, Clayton Broom, whose refrigerator is stuffed with secrets—begins to encounter strange things in the city at night, “when the borders are the most porous the between the worlds, and unnatural things leak out of people’s heads.” From faces carved into stone cairns at the city’s secret beach to perfect circles of upturned chairs in church basements, something is happening in Detroit beyond the city’s usual death and decay.

This is a police procedural that’s anything but procedural, a deft combination of otherworldly genre intrigue and the true-to-life details of a front-page homicide investigation. In short chapters that are brisk but never rushed, Beukes’ prose is a masterful display of James Wood’s free indirect style, embodying five distinct personalities touched by obsession, desperation and madness. Striking details—like “Detroit diamonds,” what locals call the blue glass left behind from broken car windows—lend an extraordinary sense of place to a story set in one of America’s darkest and most iconic cities. For many writers, reading Beukes is a sobering encounter with our own limitations, awed as we are by her immense talent and unwavering authority with words. To call Broken Monsters her masterpiece would be a disservice to both her previous and future work, but to count it among the very best books of its kind seems perfectly reasonable.