When a creative artist abandons their calling for the world of politics (as did the great British actress Glenda Jackson), it’s hard not to regret the loss to the arts. After all, do we need more politicians? Don Winslow — one of America’s most significant crime writers — appears to be spending as much time on activism as writing his superb novels, his visceral dislike of the Trump administration as powerful an inspiration for him as any literary muse. Fortunately, though, his long-threatened retirement (after the Danny Ryan trilogy inspired by the Aeneid) hasn’t quite happened yet. Now we have The Final Score (Hemlock, £22), as on the nail as his best work. This, though, is not a novel; it is in fact six novellas all located in different parts of the States, covering a panoply of American crime from commission to enforcement, starting with a high-risk casino heist by an out-of-luck career criminal and climaxing with a one-punch fight resulting in a family man being jailed for manslaughter. Winslow aficionados will be hoping that he continues writing along with saving the soul of his country.
Edinburgh-born writer Harriet Tyce has channelled her 10 years as a criminal barrister into producing a series of remarkably adroit crime novels, such as 2024’s A Lesson in Cruelty, which have resulted in her being showered with superlatives. Subsequently, her appearances on the hit UK TV show The Traitors have brought her an even more rarefied level of celebrity, with her strategic thinking winning admirers.
Her new novel, Witch Trial (Wildfire, £18.99), might be her most intriguing read yet. Matthew, a heart surgeon, is on the jury when two girls are accused of causing the death of a fellow pupil in an Edinburgh park. A social media furore leads to talk of dark rituals, witchcraft and destructive teenage pacts. Characterisation (notably of the conflicted Matthew and the accused girls) is nonpareil, as is the impeccable plotting.
With Caller Unknown (Point Blank, £9.99), it’s time for Cinderella to go to the ball. For many years, editor Oliver Johnson has been finessing the work of such ace writers as Lindsey Davis, but now we can encounter him as a novelist in his own right. A group of confused children are discovered at a roadside in northern Maine in 1970, all suffering from some form of amnesia. When the children meet later as adults, one of them, Ed, finds his life in chaos when a line from the Bible forces him into a disastrous Pavlovian reaction. We can forgive this echo of Richard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate, as (unsurprisingly) Johnson proves to be every bit as authoritative and accomplished a writer as those he has shepherded for 40 years as an editor. A late bloomer, he would be well counselled to continue in his new line of endeavour.
There was a time when Nordic noir ruled the roost in terms of both the small screen and the page. Recently, the appeal of the genre seems to have dwindled — but with work as strikingly individual as Swedish criminologist and author Christoffer Carlsson’s The Living and the Dead (Michael Joseph, £18.99, translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles), Scandicrime aficionados won’t be complaining. Carlsson’s psychological thriller, which won the Palle Rosenkrantz prize and Glass Key award, is set in motion in 1999 after a party in the village of Skavböke. Two young men are in the frame for a brutal murder, and matters are not resolved until two decades later. With an epic societal canvas, this is an ambitious literary crime novel.
Finally, a quartet of winners, very disparate in style. The Final Problem by Arturo Pérez-Reverte (Atlantic, £14.99, translated by Francis Riddell) is — as the title suggests — a delicious Sherlockian divertissement. A veteran actor famous for playing the great detective is caught up in a real-life murder mystery on a Greek island.
A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage (Hemlock, £16.99) by Liverpool-born M.K. Oliver is a blackly comic delight. A Muswell Hill housewife is keen to dispose of a corpse while trying to get her daughter into the perfect school and move to a more chic neighbourhood. It’s both sharply sardonic and unputdownable.
Louise Welsh’s The Cut Up (Canongate, £16.99) has her protagonist, the investigator Rilke (who we met in The Cutting Room), set down in a phantasmagorically realised Glasgow and once again in dodgy company. Finally, the duo of Nicci Gerrard and Sean French — who write as Nicci French — do not disappoint with What Happened That Night (Simon & Schuster, £18.99). Tyler Green is released after spending three decades in prison for stabbing a university friend, but then other people begin to die. Is Green seeking the real murderer or exacting bloody revenge?
Barry Forshaw is the author of ‘Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide’
