On the Radar — This week we bring you ten books you’ll find hard to choose between, because they all look so intriguing. We kick things off with two great Scots, Aberdeen author Stuart MacBride and Edinburgh counterpart Chris Brookmyre. The former’s new standalone is strictly down to earth, while Brookmyre’s latest is a mystery set in the future, on a grand old space station. Jack Reacher is back, and so is Josephine Tey, and we’ve got Nordic noir, Southern Gothic and more for you below…
Sign up for the CFL newsletter here.
Now We Are Dead by Stuart MacBride
Detective Chief Inspector Roberta Steel has been bounced down to Detective Sergeant after planting evidence to send down Jack Wallace. And, worse, his sentence has been quashed and he is back on the streets. Women are being attacked again. DS Steel has no doubt – she knows it is Wallace. With DC Stuart Quirrel trailing in her wake she tries to nail the predator in a police force that has plenty of routine work and little patience for her crusade. MacBride has crafted a standalone that’s a spinoff from his popular Logan McRae series set in Aberdeen. Released 2 November.
Pre-order now on Amazon
Places in the Darkness by Chris Brookmyre
Investigator Alice Blake is the new police Chief on Ciudad de Cielo, the city in the sky. In its orbit around Earth it is home to the scientists and engineers working to build a colony ship that will reach for the stars. When the station’s first ever murder leaves a mutilated body on her hands, Alice has to work with Nikki Freeman, a corrupt cop not averse to bribes and hookers. Brookmyre has put together some strong female leads as he crosses into sci-fi for his next outing, which could begin a new series. Our review is coming soon and the book is out 9 November. Read our interview with the author here.
Pre-order now on Amazon
Easy Errors by Steven F Havill
The Posadas County Mysteries continue with book 22 in the series, and New Mexico Undersheriff Bill Gastner is up late one night so he is able to hear the horrendous crash on the nearby interstate. He rushes to the scene only to find that the victims are the younger brother and sister of Deputy Robert Torrez. The driver, also deceased, is the assistant DA’s son. The procedural investigation kicks in and Torrez learns that there might have been another teen in the vehicle, and that maybe they were being chased down that midnight road. Out 7 November.
Pre-order now on Amazon
The Midnight Line by Lee Child
We’ve hit number 22 in the Jack Reacher series as well, and we find our hero in a little Midwestern town, where a ring in a pawn shop window grabs his attention. It’s a woman’s West Point class ring from 2005 and something about it calls to Reacher. He’s not usually a man prone to whimsy, but as a West Pointer too, he knows what she went through to get it – and what it must have cost her to let it go. On an impulse, Reacher determines to find the ring’s owner. What could possibly go wrong? Out 7 November, and watch for our review.
Pre-order now on Amazon
Nine Lessons by Nicola Upson
The cover yells golden age and Nicola Upson’s books featuring doyenne of that era Josephine Tey have all the ingredients for a cracking good classic crime novel. This is the seventh in the series, and Josephine is in Cambridge where a serial killer is spreading fear and panic among residents. DCI Archie Penrose is floundering in the face of the most horrific and audacious murders of his career and Josephine is only too eager to help her friend – but have the duo finally bitten off more than they can chew? It’s out 2 November and we interviewed the author here.
Pre-order now on Amazon
Heaven’s Crooked Finger by Hank Early
Earl Marcus is a middle-aged private detective running routine work in North Carolina. He endured a rough upbringing in Coulee County in the Georgia mountains where his fundamentalist father ran the Church of the Holy Flame. It cast a long shadow over Marcus’ life. He is dragged back when the woman who brought him up, Granny, is dying of cancer. An intriguing photo of a man, apparently his father, also appears but it is dated long after his father’s burial. Marcus starts digging into the secretive community in this Southern Gothic detective story. Released 7 November – review soon.
Pre-order now on Amazon
Shadow Man by Margaret Kirk
Say hello to a new addition to the Scottish crime fiction gang. Inverness-based author Margaret Kirk won the Good Housekeeping Novel Writing competition in 2016 and this is her debut, out 2 November and featuring ex-Met Detective Inspector Lukas Mahler. He’s up north on family business and when a TV personality and a police informant are both found dead, Mahler is drawn into the investigation. The question is, should the police be looking for two separate murderers, or one serial killer?
Pre-order now on Amazon
The Wrong Child by Barry Gornell
The Healing of Luther Grove came out five years ago, and now Barry Gornell returns with a dark thriller. If it’s anything like his debut, it will have been worth the wait. Landing on 2 November on Kindle, the book begins with the collapse of a village school building leaving only one survivor, Dog Evans. Gornell dives deep into the psychological fallout from such a tragedy. It is a miracle that the child survived, but he and his family live with the guilt while to the rest of the village he represents great loss and sorrow. What is life like for him seven years later, abandoned by his parents?
Buy now on Amazon
When Time Runs out by Elina Hirvonen
First published in the author’s native Finland in 2015, this novel was chosen as most important book of that year by the Finnish Broadcasting Company and an English translation is out on 2 November. A young man is shooting people from a Helsinki rooftop but he is not alone; the action is part of a group’s orchestrated attempt to halt an environmental disaster by killing those they hold responsible. But what of the young man’s family? As his mother looks on helplessly, it becomes clear that some disasters begin much closer to home…
Pre-order now on Amazon
Nantucket Red Tickets by Steven Axelrod
The Rhode Island Red is a chicken, the Boston Red Sox play baseball, and Nantucket Red Tickets are for the $5000 Christmas raffle that is going on as a backdrop to Police Chief Henry Kennis’s latest case. Ted Coddlington’s body has been dug up and in his skull is a bullet from former partner Jackson Blum’s gun. In the fourth in the series, author Steven Axelrod plays it like A Christmas Carol and for that reason alone the Amazon blurb for this one is worth reading. Out 7 November.
Pre-order now on Amazon
