Interview: Christopher Huang
If you subscribe to The Rap Sheet, our weekly email newsletter, you’ll have received the first chapter of Christopher Huang’s debut novel, A Gentleman’s Murder, a few weeks ago. What a great taster to the book it was. The Montreal-based author is with an innovative…
A Willing Executioner
Written by Connell Nisbet — A Nordic-inspired police procedural set in remote Australia; a debut written by an established magazine writer; an ambitious and unsettling work containing a couple of the most uniquely gruesome murders you’ll encounter in fiction this year. A Willing Executioner is a…
Something in the Water
Written by Catherine Steadman — She’s best known as Mabel Lane Fox in the Downton Abbey TV series, but Catherine Steadman’s debut novel couldn’t be further from the life and times of Lord Grantham’s fictional Yorkshire estate. It opens slap bang in the present, in…
The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder
Sarah J Harris’s debut is unique and hugely engaging, featuring the story of 13-year-old Jasper who views the world in a way that’s different to the rest of us. He has synaesthesia and instead of hearing sounds, Jasper sees vivid colours that wouldn’t look out…
Bearskin
Written by James A McLaughlin — For his debut, James A McLaughlin provides an interesting spin on rural noir, itself an increasingly popular genre. Rather than focusing on the drama arising from conflict within poor rural communities, McLaughlin makes his protagonist an outsider. Rice is a…
Where the Missing Go
Written by Emma Rowley — Cheshire schoolgirl Sophie Harlow went missing on 17 February 2017. The 16-year-old walked out of Amberton Grammar School during a revision period, and her family and friends haven’t seen her since. She left a note for her parents explaining she needed some…
Blood Standard by Laird Barron
Alaskan ex-patriate Laird Barron now lives in New York State, where this debut crime novel is set. Barron, by the way, is no ingénue; Blood Standard may be his first straight-up crime effort, but the hardboiled school of writing has been an obvious influence on…