The Burning Grounds by Abir Mukherjee
Harvill Secker/Pegasus Crime
Aficionados of historical crime fiction know that Mukherjee’s series featuring detective Sam Wyndham and his colleague Surendranath Banerjee is nonpareil. The duo are investigating the murder of a millionaire in 1920s Calcutta and the disappearance of Banerjee’s sister. The days of the Raj are conjured with the customary exuberant detail.
by Denise Mina
Harvill Secker UK/Mulholland Books US
Denise Mina at full throttle. Forensic examiner Claudia is concealing a secret that will destroy her reputation – and, as a native Glaswegian struggling with the mores of the English upper crust, out of her comfort zone. Mina judiciously orchestrates suspense and atomises issues of class and the nature of truth.
by Peter Swanson
Faber UK/William Morrow US
Massachusetts resident Peter Swanson customarily revels in unusual plotting – here, an aspiring killer and an attempted murder at a dinner party. Swanson is an aficionado of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and this novel exerts the same merciless grip, with a reverse chronology that keeps the reader on their toes.
by S. A. Cosby
Headline UK/Flatiron Books US
The current miniboom in socially committed Black American crime fiction continues with the ambitious S. A. Cosby’s excoriating Southern family drama, with a financial wizard and his eldest son confronting impossible compromises. King of Ashes – vintage Cosby – carries skilfully interwoven echoes of The Godfather, with loyalties tested to breaking point.
by Cara Hunter
Hemlock UK & US
Few books demand to be read in two or three sessions, but the reliable Cara Hunter’s riff on epistolary 19th-century novels is such a treat, grabbing the reader by the throat with its mesmerising crime narrative, incrementally presented via newspaper clippings and transcripts with intuitive detective Adam Fawley on hand.
Hodder UK/Atlantic US
Hard-bitten coppers Griessel and Cupido are demoted and in disgrace until tackling a multibillion-dollar heist offers a chance at redemption. Meyer is not just the finest crime writer in South Africa but one of the best anywhere; gritty characterisation and sharp sociopolitical commentary energise one of his most trenchant novels
