Are we trend-setters? Are we influencers, here on Crime Fiction Lover? Perhaps, perhaps not. However, we do have a tradition of trying to pick out the most interesting upcoming crime novels at the beginning of the year. For 2025, we’re looking forward to the return of two or three old favourites, but equally it’s new and different takes, sometimes with a touch of humour, that’s catching our eye. There’s quite a bit of horror mixed in with this latest selection, which isn’t so surprising when you consider how popular folk horror is at the moment and just how much crime and horror have crossed over in recent years.
Strange Pictures by Uketsu
It was translator Jim Rion who pushed Pushkin Vertigo into signing the mysterious and hugely inventive Japanese author Uketsu. Now, Rion has translated Uketsu’s second book, Strange Pictures, which will be the first by the writer to appear in English. However, it might be fairer to say that Uketsu is more of an online mystery creator than an author per se. He uses many means of storytelling including, well… strange pictures, which is what this one is all about. A child’s drawing. A sketch by a murder victim. And so on. What clues do they hold? What connects them? Strange Pictures will be a very different experience for crime fiction lovers when it arrives on 16 January
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Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito
Victorian Psycho caught the eye as soon as the press release arrived. If an American Psycho were a Wall Street trader, what would a Victorian Psycho have been? A governess, of course. But no ordinary governess. Winifred Notty is one with secrets and a sense of humour, who means well but – perhaps driven to it by the pent-up weirdness of tending to young Andrew and Drusilla Pound – begins to give in to her macabre urges on the Grim Wolds estate. Virginia Feito’s novel of dark humour and horror arrives 4 February in the US, and 14 February in the UK.
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The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer
Though not a prolific crime author, Belinda Bauer’s books have won the CWA Gold Dagger and the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year in the past. After four years away, she returns with The Impossible Thing, which in this case is an extremely rare red egg poached (but not cooked and eaten) from the cliffs of Yorkshire in 1926. Now, 100 years later, at a remote cottage in Wales, a man and woman have been tied up and robbed. The only thing taken: an impossible red egg. The world of egg trafficking is not where we expected to be in 2025, but bring it on, as Belinda Bauer excels in creating intrigue and atmosphere. It’s out on 27 February in the UK and 8 April in the US.
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Son by Johana Gustawsson and Thomas Enger
We understand this is the first time two crime authors from different countries, writing in different languages, have collaborated on a crime novel. Johana Gustawsson is French, with Scandinavian roots, and Thomas Enger is Norwegian and has previously collaborated with Wisting creator Jørn Lier Horst. Here they’ll take us to the town of Son in Norway, where two girls have been murdered and psychologist Kari Voss is called in to assist. Only thing is, she doesn’t agree with the police as they arrest a suspect, so she begins her own investigation. Is no-one in the town of Son who they seem? If you love Nordic noir, then 13 March will be your lucky day.
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The Grapevine by Kate Kemp
Stylist magazine supports women in fiction with the Stylist Prize and in 2021 this went to Australian author Kate Kemp for her manuscript entitled Warrah Place. Four years later, and having gone through the editorial mill at Orion, Warrah Place returns as The Grapevine, a book that opens with a woman cleaning up a murder scene in a suburban Australian bathroom in the year 1979. Soon news of Antonio Marietti’s death is the subject of local gossip, and 12-year-old Tammy decides to use her observational skill so get to the bottom of it. Like two favourites in 2024, The List of Suspicious Things and Deadly Animals, The Grapevine features a girl just reaching puberty as its protagonist and could be one of the big debuts of 2025. It arrives 13 March.
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The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani
There is already incredible interest in this third novel by the Edinburgh-based author Tariq Ashkanani, released 10 April. The story centres on Nathan Cole, a troubled young man, and a book – The Midnight King. In the book is an account of the sickening crimes of a madman, and it’s been found in a box of trinkets taken from the victims. The trouble for Nathan is that the book was written by his father, Lucas Cole, a bestselling author and a serial killer. There is a clue among the trinkets – a ribbon belonging to an eight-year-old girl who went missing just days before Lucas died. Now, Nathan faces a series of dilemmas – find the girl, and keep his own secrets hidden…
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The Ghostwriter by Julie Clark
During 2024, there was plenty of discussion in publishing circles and beyond about whether ghost writers should get more credit for the work they do helping celebrities get their autobiographies, and indeed fiction, to publishable quality. Illustrators too, in the case of children’s books. So The Ghostwriter by Julie Clarke could be one of the hidden gems of 2025. Our protagonist is Olivia Dumont, secretly the daughter of horror author Vincent Taylor, a man whose siblings were murdered when he was young, and whose fame plays a little on the incident. Now, Olivia has been approached to ghostwrite Vincent’s last novel and discovers it’s much more than a horror finale – because Vincent has lots of secrets of his own. Out 3 June.
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King of Ashes by SA Cosby
One of America’s most sought-after crime authors, SA Cosby begins his three-book deal with Flatiron with what looks like an epic family crime story set in rural Virginia. It all starts when Roman Carruthers returns home to help get his brother Dante and sister Neveah out of a pickle following the death of their father. Dante has built up debts with some bad dudes and Roman thinks he knows how to help, but eventually he’s in deep with the criminals too, the family’s crematorium business is creaking, it looks like their father was murdered, and Neveah is obsessed with finding out what really happened to their mother. Already set to become a Netflix series, King of Ashes is out 10 June.
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Clown Town by Mick Herron
Not much is known about Clown Town, the ninth full-length novel in Mick Herron’s Slough House series, pencilled in for release on 30 August. Not yet, anyway. But after a three-year wait, Jackson Lamb and his misfit London spooks return, as a former agent with embarrassing secrets about what really happened in Northern Ireland attempts to blackmail Lamb’s MI5 nemesis, Diana Taverner. But things are never that simple with Taverner and soon she is using the disaffected spy to her own ends…
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Click below to see our most wanted lists for the following years:
2024
2023
2022
2021
2019
2018
2017
2016
