On the Radar — Here on Crime Fiction Lover we are actually a pretty law abiding bunch. Our biggest infraction lately was a parking ticket outside a blinds shop in Bristol, but the blinds were half price anyway which cancelled it out. Anyway, our naivety extends to the Dark Web and we don’t know much about it other than that it contains legal highs, Bitcoins and maybe Lisbeth Salander hangs out there. So this month’s lead book is looking both interesting and informative, and we think it might be big too given that it’s a crime novel written by a tech expert rather than a tech novel written by a crime author, if you get our meaning. Plenty more for you this week, though, even if you don’t like the Dark Web…
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This is Gomorrah by Tom Chatfield
Digital culture journalist and TED tech speaker Tom Chatfield hits us into the Dark Web with his first fictional work, the thriller This is Gomorrah. Out there on the Dark Web guns, drugs, porn, identities, democracy and just about anything else you can think of is for sale… except for justice. Chatfield’s hero Azi Bello is a hacker supreme, and from a shed in East Croydon it is he who stands against this Gomorrah – but, as he discovers, if you go out to fight evil, digitally or otherwise, it might just come looking for you. On 11 July, specifically.
Pre-order now on Amazon
Blood Song by Johana Gustawsson
True crime author Alexis Castells teams up once again with psychological profiler Emily Roy, this time to help Swedish detective Aliénor Lindbergh who faces a two pronged case. The first is a brutal massacre that has happened in her home town in Sweden, where a killer is on the loose and the murders are linked to a fertility clinic. Secondly, tendrils of dark secrets from the past reach out into the present day and as the three investigate they find that their mystery might have its roots in Franco’s Spain, where a young woman’s baby was ripped from her arms. We’ve previously reviewed Keeper by the same author. Out for Kindle on 19 July.
Pre-order now on Amazon
Girls Like Us by Cristina Alger
New York author Cristina Alger’s fourth novel is out on 11 July, and it puts a new spin on family dysfunction. After the death of her homicide detective father, FBI agent Nell Flynn travels back home to put his affairs in order. But there’s an unexpected hitch – Nell’s dad was investigating the murders of two young women, and now his partner wants her help. As Nell begins her own investigation into the deaths she soon realises her father is a prime suspect and his friends in the force are covering for him. The more she digs, the more long-buried childhood memories come back to haunt her. Could the answers lie in her past? Read our review of Cristina Alger’s The Banker’s Wife here.
Pre-order now on Amazon
Death in a Desert Land by Andrew Wilson
Andrew Wilson’s line of novels set in the 1920s and featuring the queen of crime Agatha Christie as its main character continues with a trip to Baghdad. It is 1928 and her aim is to investigate the death of Gertrude Bell two years earlier of an overdose. A letter suggests to Christie that foul play was involved. In fact, Bell feared for her life and her letter points to Ur, where an archaeological dig has found the Great Pit of Death. It’s released on 11 July and we have previously reviewed A Different Kind of Evil and A Talent for Murder.
Pre-order now on Amazon
Come Back for Me by Heidi Perks
Her debut novel Now You See Her was a huge hit last year and has been optioned for TV. Now Heidi Perks is back with another standalone, out 11 July. The little community of Evergreen Island is shocked to the core when a long-buried body is uncovered. The discovery is especially shocking for Stella Harvey as the victim is found in the garden of her family home – the home her family fled from, without explanation, 25 years ago… As she returns to the Dorset island to uncover the truth, Stella finds herself shunned by a community seemingly intent on keeping its secrets. For more island mystery, try Douglas Skelton’s Thunder Bay.
Pre-order now on Amazon
The Last Stage by Louise Voss
Already out digitally, the paperback of Louise Voss’s latest standalone thriller is published on 11 July by our friends at Orenda Books, and it sounds like a doozy. Once, Meredith Vincent was a huge star, the legendary singer of a 1980s indie band. Then a horrific accident sent her into the shadows and she now lives a quiet, unassuming existence in a cottage in the grounds of an old stately home, making ends meet by working in the gift shop. She loves her anonymous new life but when a series of unsettling incidents happen and a body is found in the Minstead House gardens, Meredith is suddenly back in the limelight again. Someone is watching her, knows who she is and wants to do her harm… Read our review of Voss’s last standalone, The Old You.
Pre-order now on Amazon
