Best new crime books — thrills and mystery from Grisham, Galbraith and more

Do people who have turned on JK Rowling because of her views on gender extend their disapproval to her pseudonymous work in crime? If so, they do both the author and themselves a disservice. The novels of Robert Galbraith — Rowling’s criminous alter ego — are among the most distinctive and authoritative in the field. Even her admirers, however, often have one caveat about the Galbraith books, which we’ll get to later.

The Running Grave (Sphere £25), the seventh in the series, has the unconventional private detective Cormoran Strike approached by a troubled father whose son is in the clutches of a religious cult in the Norfolk countryside. Strike’s business partner (the source of the books’ unresolved sexual tensions), Robin Ellacott, opts to infiltrate the cult incognito. Such tactics often end badly, and Robin is to pay a heavy price.

This is one of the most densely plotted but rigorously organised in the series, with Strike and Robin — already comprehensively developed figures — given rich new levels of characterisation. And the caveat mentioned above? Even Galbraith aficionados sometimes admit to being daunted by the prodigious length of her books. The Running Grave is in the vicinity of 1,000 pages, and the whole sequence now rivals Proust in scale. Can crime justify this prodigious word count, or is concision an immutable requirement? Your view on this topic will help you decide whether or not to shell out the requisite £25.

Might being the market leader in a given field lead to complacency? If so, that’s a danger for John Grisham, who has been capo of the legal thriller for decades. There are, however, signs that the author is prepared to ring the changes in The Exchange (Hodder £22), at least in a sense. How about a law-based drama without a single courtroom scene?

Mitch McDeere, who we met in Grisham’s signature novel The Firm, is now a partner in the world’s largest law practice, but is depressed by the fact that his clients, many on death row, appear to be beyond saving. We are in the early 2000s, the era of Gaddafi’s bizarre scheme to build a bridge over Libya, which Mitch is planning to see — until the daughter of a Turkish client is kidnapped. Is the dictator somehow involved? This is Grisham en pleine forme, delivering the kind of mesmeric narrative that we expect.

A more radical shaking-up of expectations occurs in the new novel by Ray Celestin. His 2014 debut novel The Axeman’s Jazz had trumpeter Louis Armstrong turn sleuth, pursuing an axe murderer in early 20th-century New Orleans. These trappings aside, that book was still in the crime genre, while Palace of Shadows (Mantle £16.99) moves exhilaratingly into Gothic territory in the 1800s. Impecunious artist Samuel Etherstone finds his work too unsettling for London buyers, and is saddened by his friend Oscar Wilde’s exile in France. But when he accepts a commission from the enigmatic Mrs Chesterfield to work on a commission for a house she is building, he finds that the original architect was perhaps driven mad by the house itself. Etherstone’s own encounters are to be fateful; cue musings on Wilde, the aesthetic movement and the deceptive appeal of beauty.

To stay with period-set crime, Scarlet Town (Viper £16.99) by Leonora Nattrass transports the reader to 18th-century Cornwall and corrupt electioneering in a divided town. Foreign Office clerk Laurence Jago and journalist William Philpott have avoided charges of libel in the US, but they find this corner of England equally unrelaxing — particularly as a murderer is cutting a bloody swath through the town. Writing with panache, Nattrass reminds us that rotten boroughs are hardly a new phenomenon.

One of the most consistently accomplished writers on the crime scene is the Scot MR Mackenzie, and with Women Who Kill (Madhouse £11.99), he once again delivers the goods. This fourth entry in a Glasgow-set sequence featuring criminology lecturer Anna Scavolini finds her examining the case of a woman convicted of the slaughter of her own family. It’s superlative stuff, with something of the gritty social observation of Mackenzie’s fellow Caledonian Denise Mina.

To conclude, Icelandic crime queen Lilja Sigurðardóttir goes from strength to strength, as demonstrated by White as Snow (Orenda £9.99, translated by Quentin Bates), her doughty protagonists tackling sub-zero temperatures and baffling crimes. And Shot with Crimson (Faber £16.99) continues Nicola Upson’s reliable series with crime writer Josephine Tey as detective; here the violence occurs in Hollywood, on the set of Hitchcock’s film Rebecca.

Finally, a rave for Nick Triplow’s mesmerising 2006-set Never Walk Away (No Exit £9.99), in which the death of a whistleblowing civil servant exposes a hotbed of political malfeasance.

Barry Forshaw is the author of ‘Simenon: The Man, the Books, the Films’

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