Barry Forshaw selects his must-read titles (Urtext on Crime Time)
A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin
Orion, £22
An encomium for a new Ian Rankin novel — redundant, surely? He is a lodestone of the crime genre for his diamond-hard novels featuring battle-weary Detective Inspector John Rebus (now retired), here in the crosshairs of attacks on the controversial police culture that he has until recently been a reluctant part of.
Blue Water by Leonora Nattras
Viper, £12.99
Historical crime writing of a vigorous order, with Foreign Office clerk Laurence Jago on a mail ship to Philadelphia in 1794, transporting a crucial document relating to the American Revolutionary War. No isolated country house ever had the kind of cloistered mayhem that Nattras sets loose on an eventful voyage.
The Lost Man of Bombay by Vaseem Khan
Hodder, £16.99
In 1950s Mumbai, the frozen body of an Anglo-Saxon man is found in the Himalayan foothills, swiftly named ‘The Ice Man’. Persis Wadia, India’s first female police inspector, is tasked with unravelling a lethal conspiracy. Vivid, bracing crime writing married to a picture of a country seeking its post-Raj identity.
The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett
Profile, £8.99
A ‘cancelled’ book is at the heart of Hallett’s much-acclaimed, complex novel. As a child, ex-con Steven was fascinated with a children’s book, but it has been banned. Was the book a repository of codes for secret agents? Elegant, puzzling metafictional writing that pleasurably tasks readers with extricating the truth.
The Dark Flood by Deon Meyer (trans. K.L, Seegers)
Hodder, £18.99
Meyer is the Monarch of South African crime novelists. Detectives Benny Griessel and Vaughn Cupido, demoted after an ill-advised sortie in Cape Town, are investigating the disappearance of a computer wizard and beset by their own problems (such as Benny’s alcoholism). No stinting on the usual critique of South African politics.
The Accomplice by Steve Cavanagh
Orion, £12.99
Cavanagh has cornered the market in British iterations of the Grisham/Turow-style legal thriller, with razor-sharp dialogue a particular speciality. When the wife of a serial killer is arraigned for multiple homicides, Eddie Flynn decides to defend her – what he doesn’t need is the killer’s own ruthless intervention, targeting witnesses.
Queen High by C.J. Carey
Quercus, £16.99
A sequel to the remarkable alternative history novel Widowland, Queen High has Wallis Simpson as puppet queen in a Nazi-ruled Britain, with conflicted literary censor Rose Ransom encountering sinister forces on every side. It’s both a trenchant thriller and a disquisition on the limits of freedom under a tyrannical regime.
