Yes, it’s true. Every book in this week’s roundup features a criminal masterminds of one kind or another, and in three of them we’re talking about proper anti-hero types. We’ve got the latest from Gary Phillips, Saima Mir, Paul D Brazill, Maryann Webb, Douglas Jackson and Sally Hepworth.
Take a look and let us know in the comments if any of them catch your eye in particular.
The Haul by Gary Phillips
The Haul by Gary Phillips is a heist novel and like the best of them it’s written in the style of hardboiled noir. O’Conner was once called the ‘Warlord of Willow Ridge’ but these days he is in semi-retirement, filling his time with pickleball and legitimate business deals. He lives in a wealthy suburb where no one has any idea about his past life. That all changes when he’s offered a job he can’t turn down and ends up masterminding a multi-million-dollar raid on a tech billionaire’s secret bunker which is hidden underneath the man’s newly constructed basketball arena. The planning takes up all of O’Conner’s time… and is enough to stir up memories that the career thief would rather leave buried. It’s out on 7 July.
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Deliverance by Saima Mir
Another criminal mastermind takes centre stage in Saima Mir‘s Deliverance, published on 2 July. Jia Khan is a woman who has found overwhelming success in a man’s world, as the head of a criminal empire that spans the globe. But now she wants to step back, become a legitimate businesswoman and leave her past behind. Not so fast – because Jia has powerful enemies who have no intention of letting her walk away scot-free, and when one of her own is murdered, the danger becomes more real than ever. If she’s to fight back against the enemies that surround her, Jia’s only way out is to make uneasy alliances with those she once despised.
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Blink by Paul D Brazill
Indie author Paul D Brazill is a crime fiction mastermind – if not a criminal mastermind. Our old friend has put together a collection of flash fiction in Blink, out now. The book features more than 30 short, sharp tales of crime, horror and sudden demise – all told in 1,000 words or less. Get ready for whispered horrors, haunted memories, strange encounters and unsettling twists in a curated selection of compact, chilling fiction. If you like your crime reading snappy, dark and disturbing then this could be the book of your dreams… or should that be nightmares?.
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The Husband I Buried by Maryann Webb
A grieving wife gives a moving elegy to the man she has lost in The Husband I Buried by Maryann Webb, arriving on 9 July. Luis is gone, but deep in her heart, the woman knows she will never let him go. So it’s quite a surprise when, some time later, she’s standing on a railway station platform and sees Luis – alive and well. They say grief does strange things to a person, but this is beyond all sorrow! It’s definitely the man she married, the man who died in a car crash… Or is it? If is Luis still alive, then what’s behind the huge charade? Is his wife going crazy or is she the victim of a huge and complex deception? A criminal mastermind must be involved, surely…
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Blood Enemy by Douglas Jackson
Set during World War II, in the midst of the Warsaw Uprising, Douglas Jackson‘s historical thriller Blood Enemy is out on 9 July and is the fourth and final book in the series located in the Polish capital. It’s June 1944 when a Wehrmacht war crimes investigator and his escort are killed in an ambush. The attack bears the hallmarks of the Polish Resistance but Jan Kalisz, Warsaw Kripo investigator and Polish double-agent, isn’t so sure and begins an investigation sanctioned by his boss, Hauptsturmführer Hoth. The path to the truth is a dangerous one, taking Kalisz to Berlin – and to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and his former associate, Doctor Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death. (That dude was definitely a criminal mastermind, in real life.) It’s time for Kalisz to decide which side he’s on.
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Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth
Elsie Fitzpatrick is 81, and living a quiet life in the Australian suburbs. Her neighbours think of her as a nosey curmudgeon but the old woman has a shocking secret which is about to come to light when an elderly resident is found dead. Because, more than six decades ago, Elsie hit the headlines as a killer known as Mad Mabel, the youngest Australian in history to be convicted of murder. With a backstory like that, it’s no wonder that the police are asking questions and the media is circling. So has the past finally caught up with Mad Mabel? Or is it time for the old woman to set the record straight, once and for all? It’s out on 9 July from Pan Macmillan.
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