Thank you for tuning in once again! This week we’ve got five new crime novels for you – thrillers, mysteries, historical crime fiction and classic capers. But we’ll get things going with something dark and dangerous as veteran noir author Domenic Stansberry returns to delight pulp fiction lovers.
The Lizard by Domenic Stansberry
It’s nearly a decade since Edgar and Hammett award winning novelist Domenic Stansberry graced the crime world with a novel, so 15 May is a date for the diary. That’s the day when The Lizard is released, a noir-ish political thriller laced with the author’s trademark black humour. SE Reynolds, a former investigative reporter now working as a political ghostwriter, finds himself at the heart of a conspiracy investigation after an illicit romance goes fatally awry. The more he fights to distance himself from the drama, the more SE is dragged in. He’s a man of many contradictions – but does he have the chutzpah to get out of this alive?
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Be Mine by Lizzy Barber
New mother Beth is struggling with the pressures of parenthood, until she attends a mother and baby class in London with her infant daughter Etta and makes a new friend, Mia. Suddenly her world opens up again but soon memories of the past send Beth to the very edge. From the off, it’s clear that Beth has problems – and that they stem from her days in California. But what really happened back then, and what can Beth be hiding? Find out when Lizzy Barber’s psychological thriller, Be Mine, is published on 13 May.
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Smoke and Embers by John Lawton
Smoke and Embers by John Lawton, is out on 15 May, and at its heart is a story about swapped identities in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. We’re in London in 1950, where Chief Inspector Troy is shocked to learn that his sergeant has been having an affair with the mistress of notorious London racketeer Otto Ohnherz. The revelation leads Troy to take a closer look at Ohnherz and his cronies – and what he learns about the gangster’s second-in-command, Jay Fabian, sets the alarm bells ringing. Is Fabian who he claims to be?
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The Language of the Birds by KA Merson
A cryptic test accompanying the ransom note for her kidnapped mother sends 17-year-old Arizona on a quest in KA Merson’s The Language of the Birds, out on 13 May. Arizona is no ordinary teenager. Rather than makeup and TikTok, she loves cryptography, geocaching, the writings of Jules Verne and exploring the Sierra Nevadas on her Russian Ural motorcycle, with her dog Mojo riding shotgun in his sidecar. As she sets off to find her mother, little does Arizona realise that the clues she is following could unlock a centuries-old occult secret her father supposedly took to his grave.
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Death on the Island by Eliza Reid
Agatha Christie meets Nordic noir in Eliza Reid’s debut novel, Death on the Island, released on 13 May. A group of international players gather in a tiny village off the coast of Iceland for a diplomatic dinner, including ambassador Graeme and his wife Jane. Nine people sit down to eat but, as a storm rages, one of them is about to die. It’s up to Jane to find out how they met their demise, and why. But strangers trapped together due to circumstances they can’t control are prone to unpredictability. Just who can she trust? As the clock ticks, Jane has her work cut out to uncover the killer.
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