Genre round-up — the best new crime fiction

In dispiriting times, we all have a keen thirst for escapism — but there’s no reason why it has to be of the brain-dead variety. The current batch of crime novels all tackle serious issues along with their pulse-racing qualities.

Take, for instance, Razorblade Tears by SA Cosby (Headline, £18.99): a vivid, tense thriller set in the American South that manages to fold issues of bigotry, class and sexuality into a narrative reminiscent of another superlative black American writer, Attica Locke.

Two fathers in rural Virginia, both ex-cons (one black, one white), have struggled with the same-sex choices of their sons, who married each other. But when the younger men are murdered, a blood-drenched odyssey of revenge begins for their fathers, encountering hostility from Hells Angels, the LGBTQ+ community and even formidable political forces. Cosby bagged a Crime Writers’ Association Dagger award for his first book, Blacktop Wasteland, and the new novel is every bit as ferociously gripping.

Moving from clammy to colder climes, Girls Who Lie by Eva Bjorg Ægisdottir (Orenda, £8.99, translated by Victoria Cribb), is a confrontational piece of Icelandic noir that freights issues of parenting and child neglect into its scenario. Marianna, a single mother, leaves a note that suggests she died by suicide — but then her murdered body is found.

In this second book in the “Forbidden Iceland” series (after The Creak on the Stairs), police officer Elma finds that Marianna’s tangled past holds the solution to her death. There is a strikingly idiomatic authorial voice here, perfectly rendered in Cribb’s nuanced translation.

Mark Billingham has already shaken up the overfamiliar police procedural format with such unorthodox entries as In the Dark. With Rabbit Hole (Little, Brown, £20), he addresses society’s indifference towards the inappropriate treatment of mental illness and gives the genre another shot of adrenalin.

DC Alice Armitage is suffering from a breakdown and recovering in a London psych ward. When a patient is killed, Alice becomes a suspect herself and must emerge from her unbidden retirement. At times reminiscent of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, this is Billingham with all the stops out.

Another recovering female copper appears in Olivia Kiernan’s latest, The Murder Box (riverrun, £14.99). Here, detective Frankie Sheehan is suffering anxiety attacks after a violent encounter when she receives a murder mystery game as a birthday gift. It turns out to be a clue to a missing 22-year-old, and the real-life game with a pitiless killer moves into gruesome territory.

Uneasy may lie the head that wears the crown, but crime queen Val McDermid maintains her regal position by a readiness to innovate, as 1979 (Little, Brown, £20) proves. Unlike her earlier England-set Tony Hill/Carol Jordan series, the new book is the fruit of the expat author’s return to her native Scotland, keenly drawn here.

In 1979’s Winter of Discontent, journalist Allie Burns is trying to nail a scoop that will establish her in the sexist male newsroom. Along with fellow hack Danny Sullivan, Allie uncovers a homegrown terrorist cell. But is it a good idea to infiltrate the group? This is the start of a new series; Allie is a gratifyingly multi-faceted character, and the sociopolitical elements here add a frisson. Readers — and not just Nicola Sturgeon — will lap this up.

One of the glories of the modern crime fiction field? The deliriously eccentric books by Christopher Fowler detailing the curious cases of his coppers Bryant and May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit; the latest is Bryant & May: London Bridge Is Falling Down (Doubleday, £18.99). Collectors of this cherishable series bow to no one in their admiration for Fowler’s sprucing up of the tropes of the golden age of British crime fiction, set down in a vaguely surreal modern setting.

Those collectors, however, will be devastated to hear that this 20th entry in the series is a valedictory one. But with the mismatched duo investigating the death of a government security expert (and finding that she — and other potential victims — all own models of London Bridge), this exuberantly written entry is as entertaining as any of its predecessors.

Finally, an encomium for The Therapist by Helene Flood (MacLehose Press, £12.99, translated by Alison McCullough), in which the author — a Norwegian psychologist — utilises her specialities, including trauma-related shame and guilt. The failing marriage between an architect, Sigurd, and a psychologist, Sara, moves into murky territory after an incident in a cabin in secluded woods. Flood takes her time but manipulates audience expectations with considerable aplomb.

Barry Forshaw is the author of ‘Crime Fiction: A Reader’s Guide’

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