Happy Halloween, and welcome to our final crime fiction news column for October. If you’re hankering for some slightly scary crime fiction in ghostly hour, see our Six criminally spooky cosy reads for Halloween. Meanwhile, in our news you’ll have a whale of a time with the latest from John Straley, some gritty pulp action in Hamburg with Peter Sarda, and further crime solving in San Francisco, Tokyo and Oslo, which all end in ‘O’. Woooooo! Isn’t that spooky? 👻
Nominations for the Crime Fiction Lover Awards 2024 close at noon on 6 November. If you haven’t nominated yet, head to our online form.
Big Breath In by John Straley
The author of the wonderfully eclectic Cold Storage series is back, but this time the former Writer Laureate of Alaska brings us a standalone. Widowed marine biologist Delphine is retired and has terminal cancer, maybe time to check out for the final time? But when she gets embroiled in the case of a missing woman and child, Delphine finds a new lease of life and is soon on a rescue mission across the Pacific Northwest, where she encounters the best and the worst of what society has to offer. Big Breath In arrives on 12 November.
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Edda Green by Peter Sarda
Edda Green is a woman walking a knife edge. Three years ago, she lost a hand to an IED outside Kandahar and gained a taste for oxycodone and extreme violence. Just out of prison, Edda has been tasked by BKA with infiltrating the revolutionary cell behind the May Day riots in Hamburg – but she doesn’t take well to being ordered about and instead sets off on a hunt for the people who killed her blood brother. Then Edda falls in love, and she and hacker Indigo begin to make some very dangerous enemies. Edda Green by Peter Sarda is out on 28 November.
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No Special Hurry by Colman Conroy
Sometimes, life is the pits – and that’s where we find Seamus Shea at the start of Colman Conroy’s No Special Hurry, published on 12 November. Shea is a drunk, who has lost his job as a San Francisco Chronicle columnist, his wife has left him and he’s still mourning the death of his brother, who was a SFPD narcotics agent. What else could go wrong? Well plenty, when Shea’s best mate, a beloved teacher, admits to killing one of his students. Time for our hero to leave the doldrums behind and try to save his friend. But is he prepared for where the journey may take him?
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Tokyo Swindlers by Ko Shinjo
Written by Ko Shinjo and translated by Charles De Wolf, Tokyo Swindlers is a slice of contemporary Japanese crime, inspired by recent land fraud scandals that have rocked the country. The novel has been turned into a crime series on Netflix. In the depths of grief, Takumi is lured into a real-estate swindle by fabled land scammer Harrison Yamanaka. The target is a $70-million property, and it’s up to Detective Tatsu to cut through the deceit and get to the truth. He may be close to retirement, but this strait-laced police officer is soon making inroads into the case. This one’s out on Kindle on 12 November.
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Victim by Jørn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger
Two of Nordic Noir’s finest writers are back with book five in their Blix and Ramm series. Alexander Blix was the lead investigator in a missing person’s case two years ago where a young mother, Elisabeth Eie, was kidnapped. The case was never solved. Things have changed since then and Blix is no longer with the police – but the kidnapper is back, taunting him about Elisabeth’s fate and hinting at other victims. Things get even trickier when a current case that Ramm is working on begins to intertwine with the past… and someone is watching. Victim by Jørn Lier Horst and Thomas Enger is published on 7 November.
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