Why shouldn’t crime novels tackle such contentious issues as race, religion and online radicalisation head-on? After all, cogent points about society can be made in a popular medium that will reach a greater number of readers than most literary novels. A real-life violent incident in Quebec gave Ausma Zehanat Khan the basis of her new novel, A Deadly Divide (No Exit Press, £8.99). In Khan’s narrative, a mass shooting in a mosque near Ottawa becomes a very pressing matter for Pakistani/Canadian Detective Esa Khattak and his partner, Sgt Rachel Getty, particularly with the influence of a right-wing shock jock and an incendiary nationalist group stirring up hatred – not to mention the racist local police. Khattak first appeared in Khan’s powerful novel The Unquiet Dead, and the author’s background in international human rights law provides strong underpinnings. But this is not a social document — it is a page-turner. Khan’s acutely realised protagonists are never idealised but always deeply human.
James Oswald demonstrated his command of the contemporary crime novel with the first entry in his Edinburgh-set series featuring tough copper Tony McLean, Natural Causes. Dalliances with the macabre and the occult have marked Oswald’s subsequent work, as in Bury Them Deep (Wildfire, £16.99). McLean has been shunted into an unfulfilling managerial role when a colleague, Anya Renfrew, disappears. Anya was, it transpires, a woman with a tangled private life. And when her burnt-out car is discovered in an area rife with sinister folklore (dating back to the cannibalistic Sawney Bean clan), we’re soon in typically scarifying Oswald territory.
If the perceived inequities of the male sex are to be the focus of many modern crime novels, then at least it’s good to know that writers as nuanced and complex as Eva Dolan are tackling ‘toxic masculinity’. In the weighty Between Two Evils (Raven, £12.99), a doctor has been beaten to death with a table leg. The dead man worked at a controversial female immigrant removal centre in Cambridgeshire, but it is unclear whether he was uncovering abuse of the women or was himself part of a corrupt establishment. Detectives Mel Ferreira and Dushan Zigic have been cut loose from the Hate Crimes Unit, but the case falls into their remit. They also have to confront a psychopathic serial rapist who has been released on a legal technicality, and the law may have to be twisted to bring about a semblance of justice. With a variety of other issues on board, this is a real state-of-the-nation novel, with taxing social problems treated with the rigour we have come to expect from Dolan.
The American writer Gregg Hurwitz is nothing if not eclectic. A fiercely articulate defender of intellectual freedoms in an era of no-platforming, he is a successful screenwriter in Los Angeles and a writer of comics who has had Batman listening to the piano music of Ravel. But it is in his eventful novels that he truly shines, bringing intelligence and complexity to his mayhem-filled sagas. Into the Fire (Michael Joseph, £12.99) is the fifth novel featuring Evan Smoak (also known as ‘Orphan X’), who is caught up in an LA money-laundering racket after an accountant and a reporter are murdered. A flash drive containing incriminating spreadsheets is delivered into Max Merriweather’s care by his dead cousin, who involves a reluctant Evan – placing them both in mortal danger. Not, perhaps, Hurwitz’s best work, but the set pieces here — and they are plentiful – bristle with the cinematic panache one might expect from a writer of film scenarios. Jacket encomiums from the likes of Lee Child and James Patterson are ten a penny these days, but they are justified here — not least for the (literally) explosive finale.
In The Lantern Men by Elly Griffiths (Quercus, £18.99) Ruth Galloway has abandoned her role as Norfolk’s resident forensic archaeologist. Adjusting to a new job, she finds her name invoked by a convicted murderer who offers to show where his various victims are buried — provided Galloway does the exhumation. The hidden graves are near a village famous for the ‘Lantern Men’, sinister apparitions who lure hapless visitors to their destruction. The novel is a reminder of just how skilful Griffiths’ writing is — and how her Galloway books always deliver the goods.
Now — what happens when you put two of the most distinguished writers of Nordic noir in tandem? Death Deserved by Thomas Enger and Jørn Lier Horst (Orenda, £8.99, translated by Anne Bruce) suggests it was a propitious publishing move; a ruthless killer is pursued by a tenacious celebrity blogger and a damaged detective. Similarly Scandinavian is Black River (Point Blank, £14.99), though the writer, Will Dean is British, despite living in Sweden. His uncompromising reporter Tuva Moodyson is searching for her missing best friend Tammy. A stygian pine forest and the shortest night of the year are ingredients in a peerless exercise in suspense.
Finally, Sarah Pinborough’s edgy Dead to Her (HarperCollins, £12.99) has her heroine – in a relationship with a wealthy man — using extreme measures when a rival threatens her security. The ‘woman scorned’ theme is delivered with considerable élan.
Barry Forshaw’s latest book is Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide
