Mortmain Hall by Martin Edwards
Right from the title, you know the stately Yorkshire family home Mortmain Hall will play a pivotal role in this classic mystery. The legal doctrine of mortmain, after all, refers to owners’ attempts to control the fate of their property after their death. As you…
Oranges and Lemons by Christopher Fowler
Nursery rhymes, as we all know, often have disturbing and violent messages. The old London rhyme Oranges and Lemons is no exception. When the speaker of the House of Commons Michael Claremont is badly injured under a delivery of citrus fruit near St Clement’s Church,…
An Accidental Corpse by Helen A Harrison
On the night of 11 August 1956, less than a mile from his home in East Hampton, artist Jackson Pollock crashed his green, convertible Oldsmobile 88 into a tree. The 44-year-old Pollock and a female passenger were killed instantly. Ruth Kligman, Pollock’s mistress, survived the…
One Eye Open by Paul Finch
Paul Finch’s latest novel is a standalone thriller, but like his bestselling Heck series, One Eye Open is a police procedural. On the face of it, the traffic police might not seem the most promising division to write a thriller in, but Finch has once…
The Big Chill by Doug Johnstone
We first met the Edinburgh-based Skelf family at the start of this year, in the highly memorable and original A Dark Matter. Now they’re back, and the dramas of that series opener are still reverberating. Matriarch Dorothy misses her late husband terribly, and as she…
When These Mountains Burn by David Joy
When These Mountains Burn is a rural noir crime novel set in the Appalachian Mountain communities that have been forgotten and left behind by urban America. The area has been ravaged by heroin, synthetic opioids and crystal meth. It’s a brutal, pitiless story, told in…
The Night of Shooting Stars by Ben Pastor
Ben Pastor’s political thrillers take you inside the Third Reich with her protagonist, Wehrmacht colonel Baron Martin von Bora. Bora served in the Abwehr (German military intelligence) until that unit was disbanded in favour of the SS, Gestapo and other agencies. The Abwehr connection taints…