One of the great traditions that has become a part of New Talent November is giving airtime to self-published crime authors. We do try to review as many self-published books as we can throughout the year, ever searching for those diamonds in the rough that we can pick up and polish for our readers, but the sheer volume of them makes it a difficult scene to cover. However, during New Talent November we bring you Ten to Taste. Here’s part one, with 10 self-published crime novels that might just blow your mind. In a couple of weeks we’ll bring you 10 more…

Dirty Deeds 2 by Armand Rosamilia
Normally writing about horror, Florida-based author Armand Rosamilia here turns his attention to crime – with a twist of humour. Our first-person narrator is James Gaffney, a man who’ll use his abilities to remove problems from your life, like magic but more brutal. In his second outing, the tables have turned on him and someone close to him has disappeared. Will he get help solving this case from the FBI, or even the mob, and if he does where will that leave him?
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Swarm Theory by EW Sullivan
It’s a 24-year-old question – did Dr Thelonious Zones’ father kill his mother? The man is serving a life sentence for it but criminal profiler Zones might be ideally placed to solve the case. What gets in the way is the murder of an Arab college student as well as a series of bombings in the Deep South. Zones comes up with a profile of the culprit but the authorities don’t believe him, and then Zones’ family background starts to worm its way into the mystery.
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Cristina by Jake Parent
Author Jake Parent takes us to small-town California where single mother Cristina Rodriguez is trying desperately to escape her past. She moves into a new house, and everything seems perfect. But she’s living at the location where a young girl was taken and murdered four years ago. Soon, Cristina and her daughter find that the past they left behind is closer to them than they think in this psychological thriller.
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Boomtown by Baer Charlton
Ah, it’s the fourth book in the Southside Hooker series, and it sees main characters Hooker and Squirt rolling around early-70s San Jose. Their car needs repairs, there are explosions going off around the city and their lives are in danger. Meanwhile, there’s a small-time thug called Felix on the loose who’s trying to build up a big reputation. Author Baer Charlton professes to being a laid-back cat person, and writes about dragons as well as gritty retro crime stories with a touch of humour.
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Dead Lemons by Finn Bell
Here’s the flip-side for Nordic noir fans, because it takes place in the far south of New Zealand – an area as wild and rugged as any Scandinavian location. Years ago, a young girl went missing in this isolated community, and a year later her father disappeared too. Then Finn, a paraplegic and former heavy drinker, moves into a cottage in Riverton. As he tries to rebuild his own life, he becomes suspicious about how the locals are acting. As Finn unravels his own problems, he finds they’re entwined with the history of this place. Nobody knows why the main character has the same name as the author, except the author himself, but this crime thriller comes with a disabled main character and a touch of Maori culture too.
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Honesto Valdez: Angel of Death by Eugene Carey
Expect the unexpected in Eugene Carey’s novel, which takes a very alternative look at the War on Drugs. Honesto Valdez is a cop on the run from the Sinaloan narcos. He’s a marked man and is sent to Liverpool to lie low. But the narcos have an expanding business, they want a piece of the world’s biggest cocaine market and, get this, they’re buying into the port of Liverpool. The blurb even hints that the city will become like some sort of Aztec mecca complete with human sacrifice, but you’ll have to read it to find out how Honesto gets on. A mix of British grime and Mexican chilli, indeed.
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Call Me Harry by Randy Cade
Californian author Randy Cade is another self-published writer whose aim is to bring a sense of humour to the crime fiction genre. The protagonist here is Harry Parnes who has been languishing in a Texan prison for 14 years thinking about his life. What better way to turn things around than to rob a bank, on impulse, the very day of his release? The author references the likes of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, and has a background in music, publishing and computing. Also, he has an eye patch.
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Roses in the Rainbow by Mawuena Addo
Like his protagonist, Pierre Archer, author Mawuena Addo served in the Marine Corps. But while the author has settled in Sweden, Archer has set up as a private detective in Cape Town, South Africa, where he takes a case from a woman called Ronelle. The police claim her mother has committed suicide, but she’s not so sure. Meanwhile, Archer is trying to begin again after the loss of his fiancée. Roses in the Rainbow is the first in a trilogy.
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The Killing Game by The Black Rose
More roses here, but this time it’s the author’s pseudonym that’s smelling sweetly. No idea who The Black Rose is, but she has produced a novel in which FBI man Ives Andrich is on the trail of a woman who has written a book that reveals she knows far too much about an Italian mobster. She obviously isn’t someone on the outside. Ives has infiltrated the mafia, but the woman has slipped through the FBI’s fingers and is now entangled with America’s most notorious criminal. Tired of working with the bungling Bureau, Ives decides to go rogue to catch his quarry.
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Fast Women and Neon Lights: Eighties-Inspired Neon Noir
From the publisher of Crime Syndicate Magazine, a collection of 17 short stories by up-and-coming crime authors, all inspired by 1980 styles and ‘neon noir’. Big hair, loud colour schemes, a Chevy Camero, TV detectives, and even pro wrestler Ric Flair’s infamous figure-four leg lock all feature. The contributors include some we’ve heard of – like CS DeWildt and Greg Barth – and plenty that we haven’t. It concludes with editor Mike Pool’s own story, Night Thief.
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