Well, while some lockdown restrictions are easing, the virus is clearly still present and many of us remain deprived of normality for the foreseeable future. It’s not been bad news across the board, of course. Apparently, we’ve all done a lot more reading than normal. That certainly applies to me. I mean, I read a lot anyway, but these last few weeks I’ve been motoring through novels and anthologies at a phenomenal rate. I’ve also drawn up a list of those titles due out before the end of this year that I consider must-reads, and today I intend to share them with you.
However, as in one of these cases – ALL FALL DOWN by MJ Arlidge – I was the grateful recipient of a review copy, I’ll be paying that one special attention and giving it my usual detailed review in the Thrillers, Chillers section at the bottom of today’s column.
First off though, let’s look at …
My most anticipated
I read across a broad range of genres, but four in particular are relevant to this particular blog. They are: Crime, Horror, Thriller and Just Plain Dark. Every month I scan the publishers’ ‘forthcoming’ articles online and pick out those that look to be of most interest to me. And this year, for obvious reasons, it’s been even more important to do this.
Thus, below are ten books from each of those categories I mentioned, which are due to be published between (and including) June and December this year, and which I am hugely looking forward to reading. In each case, I’ve posted the cover and the publisher’s official blurb.
Please note that the dates of publication I give mostly refer to paperback releases, which is my preferred method of reading. One or two of these may already have appeared as ebooks or hardbacks, though there are also a couple here that are only due out before the end of this year as hardbacks. I’m still including these if I like the look of them. Hope that makes at least a modicum of sense (whatever, they
One last thing; apologies to anyone who feels their book should be in here but isn’t. There were several I had to leave out because their covers are not available yet, and also because, as always, there just was not room for everything. This is not by any means the entirety of the books still due this year that I am excited about.
Anyway, that’s the waffle done. So, here we go, in no particular order …
CRIME
1. ONE EYE OPEN by Paul Finch
(due for pub on August 20)
(Come on, guys. You didn’t think I was going to leave my own summer release off this list, did you?)
If the lies don’t kill you, the truth will
An electrifying, high-octane thrill ride; the new must-read standalone from a Sunday Times bestseller. You won't be able to tear yourself away! Dark, gritty and always at the edge of your seat, this unforgettable new outing from master-craftsman, Paul Finch, will appeal to fans of Stuart MacBride, Mari Hannah and Alex Cross.
You can run ...
A high-speed crash leaves a man and woman clinging to life. Neither of them carries ID. Their car has fake number plates. In their luggage: a huge amount of cash.
Who are they? What are they hiding? And what were they running from?
You can hide ...
DS Lynda Hagen, once a brilliant detective, gave it all up to raise her family. But something about this case reignites a spark in her...
But you’ll always sleep with ..
What begins as an investigation soon becomes an obsession. And it will lead her to a secret so dangerous that soon there will be nowhere left to hide.
ONE EYE OPEN
2. ALL FALL DOWN by MJ Arlidge
(due for pub on June 11)
(Quick reminder that I offer a detailed review and discussion of this title at the end of today’s blog.)
‘You have one hour to live.’
Those are the only words on the phone call. Then they hang up. Surely, a prank? A mistake? A wrong number? Anything but the chilling truth ... That someone is watching, waiting, working to take your life in one hour.
But why?
Those are the only words on the phone call. Then they hang up. Surely, a prank? A mistake? A wrong number? Anything but the chilling truth ... That someone is watching, waiting, working to take your life in one hour.
But why?
The job of finding out falls to DI Helen Grace: a woman with a track record in hunting killers. However, this is a case where the killer seems to always be one step ahead of the police and the victims.
With no motive, no leads, no clues - nothing but pure fear - an hour can last a lifetime ...
3. THE CURATOR by MW Craven
(due for pub on June 4)
It’s Christmas and a serial killer is leaving displayed body parts all over Cumbria. A strange message
Called in to investigate, the National Crime Agency’s Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw are faced with a case that makes no sense. Why were some victims anaesthetized, while others died in appalling agony? Why is their only suspect denying what they can irrefutably prove but admitting to things they weren’t even aware of? And why did the victims all take the same two weeks off work three years earlier?
And when a disgraced FBI agent gets in touch things take an even darker turn. Because she doesn’t think Poe is dealing with a serial killer at all; she thinks he’s dealing with someone far, far worse: a man who calls himself the Curator.
And nothing will ever be the same again ...
4. A PRIVATE CATHEDRAL by James Lee Burke
(due for pub on December 10)
Detective Dave Robicheaux is caught in the crossfire of Louisiana’s oldest and bloodiest gangland feud ...
From the wreckage of Louisiana’s oldest family rivalry, Detective Dave Robicheaux faces his most sinister enemy yet ...
Isolde and Johnny - the star-crossed teenage heirs to New Iberia’s criminal empires - have run away together, and Robicheaux is tasked with finding them. But when his investigation brings him too close to both Isolde’s mother and her father’s mistress, the venomous mafioso orders a hit on Robicheaux and his partner, Clete Purcel.
In order to rescue the young lovers, and save himself, Robicheaux must face a terrifying time-travelling superhuman hitman capable of inflicting horrifying hallucinations on his victims, and overcome the demons that have tormented him his whole life ...
by Christopher Fowler
(due for pub on July 23)
One Sunday morning, the outspoken Speaker of the House of Commons steps out of his front door
It should be the perfect case for Bryant & May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit, but unfortunately one detective is in hospital, the other is missing and the staff have all been dismissed. It seems the PCU is no more. But events escalate: a series of brutal crimes seemingly linked to an old English folk-song threatens the very foundation of London society and suddenly the PCU is offered a reprieve and are back in (temporary) business!
And if the two elderly detectives, ‘old men in a woke world’, do manage to set aside their differences and discover why some of London’s most influential figures are under life-threatening attack, they might not just save the unit but also prevent the entire city from descending into chaos ...
‘The most consistently brilliant, entertaining and educational voice in contemporary British crime fiction, the utterly fabulous Christopher Fowler.’
Cathi Unsworth, CRIMESQUAD
(due for pub on June 26)
A hint of gold glistened in the sand. It was a watch, no doubt about it. A watch… attached to a body.
Criminal psychologist Robyn Adams is at breaking point after her last case resulted in an attempt on her own life. But as she sits in the car about to head home, her phone rings. It’s Robyn’s cousin, Vicky Carter, who she hasn’t seen or heard from in years.
Vicky’s voice cracks down the phone. Her husband, Simon, has been found buried on Golden Sands beach. Desperate to help and determined not to let her last case get the better of her, Robyn returns to the coastal village where she spent summers with Vicky as a child.
Robyn knows that she has let Vicky down in the past and is set on making up for lost time. Throwing herself into the case, she combs through evidence, intent on discovering a lead that will help the local police.
But there is clearly someone who wants Robyn gone. She is convinced someone is watching her and when she begins to receive threatening notes, Robyn knows that she could be risking her life…
But Robyn won’t leave again – she owes it to Vicky to stay.
Fans of Helen Phifer, Gregg Dunnett and Robert Dugoni will love Her Husband’s Grave!
7. MOONFLOWER MURDERS by Anthony Horowitz
(due for pub on August 20)
A bestselling crime novel. A labyrinth of clues. A killer with a lot to hide.
Featuring his famous literary detective Atticus Pund and Susan Ryeland, hero of the worldwide bestseller Magpie Murders, a brilliantly intricate and original thriller
Retired publisher Susan Ryeland is running a small hotel on a Greek island with her long-term boyfriend. It should be everything she’s always wanted - but is it?
She’s exhausted with the responsibilities of making everything work on an island where nothing ever does. And she’s beginning to miss her literary life in London.
And then an English couple come to visit, and the story they tell about a murder that took place on the same day and in the same hotel in which their daughter, Cecily, was married is such a strange one that Susan is fascinated by it.
And when they tell her that Cecily has gone missing a few short hours after reading Atticus Pund Takes The Case, a crime-novel Susan edited some years previously, Susan knows she must return to London to find what’s happened.
The clues to the murder and to Cecily’s disappearance must lie within the pages of this novel.
But what Susan cannot know is that very soon her own life will be in mortal danger …
8. CRY BABY by Mark Billingham
(due for pub on July 23)
‘One of the great series of British crime fiction.’
THE TIMES
‘Cry Baby is the perfect prequel to send us back to revel in Tom Thorne’s twenty years. As if we needed reminding how good Mark Billingham is.’
VAL MCDERMID
It's 1996. Detective Sergeant Tom Thorne is a haunted man. Haunted by the moment he ignored his instinct about a suspect, by the horrific crime that followed and by the memories that come day and night, in sunshine and shadow.
So when seven-year-old Kieron Coyne goes missing while playing in the woods with his best friend, Thorne vows he will not make the same mistake again. Cannot.
The solitary witness. The strange neighbour. The friendly teacher. All are in Thorne’s sights.
This case will be the making of him ... or the breaking.
The gripping prequel to Mark Billingham's acclaimed debut, Sleepyhead, Cry Baby is the shocking first case for one of British crime fiction's most iconic detectives.
9. THE HEATWAVE by Katerina Diamond
(due for pub on June 25)
One summer. One stranger. One killer …
Two bad things happened that summer: A stranger arrived. And the first girl disappeared.
In the wake of the crime that rocked her community, Felicity fled, knowing more than she let on.
But sixteen years later, her new life is shattered by the news that a second girl has gone missing in her hometown.
Now Felicity must go back, to face the truth about what happened all those years ago.
Only she holds the answers – and they’re more shocking than anyone could imagine.
The heatwave is back. And so is the killer.
10. FIFTY FIFTY by Steve Cavanagh
(due for pub on September 3)
Two sisters on trial for murder. They accuse each other.
Who do YOU believe?
‘911 what's your emergency?’
‘My dad’s dead. My sister Sofia killed him. She's still in the house. Please send help.’
‘My dad’s dead. My sister Alexandra killed him. She's still in the house. Please send help.’
One of them is a liar and a killer. But which one?
HORROR
From the bestselling author of Netflix’s The Silence comes a brand-new horror eco thriller.
In a time when Earth’s rising oceans contain enormous islands of refuse, the Amazon rainforest is all-but destroyed, and countless species edge towards extinction, the Virgin Zones were established in an attempt to combat the change. Off-limits to humanity and given back to nature, these thirteen vast areas of land were intended to become the lungs of the world.
Dylan leads a clandestine team of adventurers into Eden, the oldest of the Zones. Attracted by the challenges and dangers posed by the primal lands, extreme competitors seek to cross them with a minimum of equipment, depending only on their raw skills and courage. Not all survive.
Also in Dylan’s team is his daughter Jenn, and she carries a secret––Kat, his wife who abandoned them both years ago, has entered Eden ahead of them. Jenn is determined to find her mother, but neither she nor the rest of their tight-knit team are prepared for what confronts them. Nature has returned to Eden in an elemental, primeval way. And here, nature is no longer humanity's friend.
ed by James D Jenkins and Ryan Cagle
(due for pub on December 8)
What if there were a whole world of great horror fiction out there you didn’t know anything about, written by authors in distant lands and in foreign languages, outstanding horror stories you had no access to, written in languages you couldn’t read? For an avid horror fan, what could be more horrifying than that?
For this groundbreaking volume, the first of its kind, the editors of Valancourt Books have scoured the world, reading horror stories from dozens of countries in nearly twenty languages, to find some of the best contemporary international horror stories. All the foreign-language stories in this book appear here in English for the first time, while the English-language entries from countries like the Philippines are appearing in print in the US for the first time.
The book includes stories by some of the world’s preeminent horror authors, many of them not yet known in the English-speaking world.
3. FINAL CUTS ed by Ellen Datlow
(due for pub on June 2)
Legendary genre editor Ellen Datlow brings together eighteen dark and terrifying original stories inspired by cinema and television. A BLUMHOUSE BOOKS HORROR ORIGINAL.
From the secret reels of a notoriously cursed cinematic masterpiece to the debauched livestreams of modern movie junkies who will do anything for clicks, Final Cuts brings together new and terrifying stories inspired by the many screens we can't peel our eyes away from. Inspired by the rich golden age of the film and television industries as well as the new media present, this new anthology reveals what evils hide behind the scenes and between the frames of our favorite medium. With original stories from a diverse list of some of the best-known names in horror, Final Cuts will haunt you long after the credits roll.
NEW STORIES FROM: Josh Malerman, Chris Golden, Stephen Graham Jones, Garth Nix, Laird Barron, Kelley Armstrong, John Langan, Richard Kadrey, Paul Cornell, Lisa Morton, AC Wise, Dale Bailey, Jeffrey Ford, Cassandra Khaw, Nathan Ballingrud, Gemma Files, Usman T. Malik, and Brian Hodge.
4. DEVOLUTION by Max Brooks
(due for pub on June 16, 2020)
As the ash and chaos from Mount Rainier’s eruption swirled and finally settled, the story of the Greenloop massacre has passed unnoticed, unexamined ... until now.
But the journals of resident Kate Holland, recovered from the town’s bloody wreckage, capture a tale too harrowing – and too earth-shattering in its implications – to be forgotten.
In these pages, Max Brooks brings Kate’s extraordinary account to light for the first time, faithfully reproducing her words alongside his own extensive investigations into the massacre and the beasts behind it, once thought legendary but now known to be terrifyingly real.
Kate’s is a tale of unexpected strength and resilience, of humanity’s defiance in the face of a terrible predator’s gaze, and inevitably, of savagery and death.
Yet it is also far more than that.
Because if what Kate Holland saw in those days is real, then we must accept the impossible. We must accept that the creature known as Bigfoot walks among us – and that it is a beast of terrible strength and ferocity.
Part survival narrative, part bloody horror tale, part scientific journey into the boundaries between truth and fiction, this is a Bigfoot story as only Max Brooks could chronicle it – and like none you’ve ever read before.
5. THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS by Stephen Graham Jones
(due for pub on July 21)
Adam Nevill’s The Ritual meets Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies in this atmospheric Gothic literary horror.
Ten years ago, four young men shot some elk then went on with their lives. It happens every year; it’s been happening forever; it’s the way it’s always been. But this time it’s different.
Ten years after that fateful hunt, these men are being stalked themselves. Soaked with a powerful Gothic atmosphere, the endless expanses of the landscape press down on these men - and their children - as the ferocious spirit comes for them one at a time.
The Only Good Indians, charts Nature’s revenge on a lost generation that maybe never had a chance. Cleaved to their heritage, these parents, husbands, sons and Indians, men live on the fringes of a society that has rejected them, refusing to challenge their exile to limbo.
6. WONDERLAND by Zoje Stage
(due for pub on July 16)
One mother’s love may be all that stands between her family, an enigmatic presence - and madness.
After years of city life, Orla and Shaw Bennett are ready for the quiet of New York’s Adirondack mountains - or at least, they think they are. Settling into the perfect farmhouse with their two children, they are both charmed and unsettled by the expanse of their land, the privacy of their individual bedrooms, and the isolation of life a mile from any neighbour.
But none of the Bennetts could expect what lies waiting in the woods, where secrets run dark and deep. When something begins to call to the family - from under the earth, beneath the trees, and within their minds - Orla realises she might be the only one who can save them ... if she can find out what this force wants before it’s too late.
With an ending inescapable and deeply satisfying, Wonderland brilliantly blends horror and suspense to probe the boundaries of family, loyalty, love, and the natural world.
7. THE RESIDENCE by Andrew Pyper
(due for pub on September 1)
In this gripping and terrifying horror story based on true events, the President’s late son haunts the White House, breaking the spirit of what remains of the First Family and the divided America beyond the residence’s walls.
The year is 1853. President-elect Franklin Pierce is traveling with his family to Washington, DC, when tragedy strikes. In an instant, their train runs off the rails, violently flinging passengers about the cabin. But when the great iron machine finally comes to rest, the only casualty is the President-elect’s beloved son, Bennie, which casts Franklin’s presidency in a pall of sorrow and grief.
As Franklin moves into the White House, he begins to notice that something bizarre is happening. Strange sounds coming from the walls and ceiling, creepy voices that seem to echo out of time itself, and visions of spirits crushed under the weight of American history.
But when First Lady Jane Pierce brings in the most noted Spiritualists of the day, the Fox sisters, for a séance, the barrier between this world and the next is torn asunder. Something horrible comes through and takes up residence alongside Franklin and Jane in the walls of the very mansion itself.
Only by overcoming their grief and confronting their darkest secrets can Jane and Franklin hope to rid themselves - and America - from the entity that seeks to make the White House its permanent home.
8. BONE HARVEST by James Brogden
(due for pub on November 17)
From the critically acclaimed author of Hekla’s Children comes a dark and haunting tale of an ancient cult wreaking bloody havoc on the modern world.
YOU SHALL REAP WHAT YOU SOW
Struggling with the effects of early-onset Alzheimer’s, Dennie Keeling leads a quiet life. Her husband is dead, her children are grown, and her best friend, Sarah, was convicted of murdering her abusive husband. All Dennie wants now is to be left to work her allotment in peace.
But when three strangers take the allotment next to hers, Dennie starts to notice strange things. Plants are flowering well before their time, shadowy figures prowl at night, and she hears strange noises coming from the newcomers’ shed. Dennie soon realises that she is face to face with an ancient evil - but with her Alzheimer’s steadily getting worse, who is going to believe her?
9. SURVIVOR SONG by Paul Tremblay
(due for pub on July 7)
A riveting novel of suspense and terror from the Bram
Stoker award-winning author of The Cabin at the End of the World and A Head
Full of Ghosts.
When it happens, it happens quickly.
New England is locked down, a strict curfew the only way
to stem the wildfire spread of a rabies-like virus. The hospitals cannot cope
with the infected, as the pathogen’s ferociously quick incubation period
overwhelms the state. The veneer of civilisation is breaking down as people
live in fear of everyone around them. Staying inside is the only way to keep
safe.
But paediatrician Ramola Sherman can’t stay safe, when
her friend Natalie calls her husband is dead, she’s eight months pregnant, and
she’s been bitten. She is thrust into a desperate race to bring Natalie and her
unborn child to a hospital, to try and save both their lives.
Their once familiar home has becoming a violent and
strange place, twisted into a barely recognisable landscape. What should have
been a simple, joyous journey becomes a brutal trial.
10. THE HOLLOW ONES
by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan
(due for pub on August 4)
From the Oscar-winning director of Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water and Hellboy, and the authors of The Strain comes a new paranormal thriller, X-Files meets Ben Aaronovitch
A horrific crime that defies ordinary explanation.
A rookie FBI agent in dangerous, uncharted territory.
An extraordinary hero for the ages.
Odessa’s life is derailed when she’s forced to turn her gun on her partner, who turns suddenly, inexplicably violent while apprehending a rampaging murderer. The shooting, justified by self-defence, shakes Odessa to her core and she is placed on desk leave pending a full investigation.
But what most troubles her isn’t the tragedy itself – it’s the shadowy presence she thought she saw fleeing the deceased agent’s body after his death.
Questioning her future with the FBI and her sanity, Odessa accepts a low-level assignment to clear out the belongings of a retired agent in the New York office. What she finds there will put her on the trail of a mysterious figure named John Blackwood, a man of enormous means who claims to have been alive for centuries. What he tells her could mean he’s an unhinged lunatic. That, or he’s humanity’s best and only defence against an unspeakable evil that could corrupt even the best of us ...
THRILLER
1. KILL A STRANGER by Simon Kernick
(due for pub on November 26)
TO SAVE A LIFE ... COULD YOU TAKE ANOTHER?
‘Great plots, great characters, great action’ LEE CHILD
‘Simon Kernick writes with his foot pressed hard on the pedal’ HARLAN COBEN
You come home to find your wife missing - and the body of a woman you’ve never seen in her place.
A phone in her hand starts to ring. A voice says you have 24 hours to clear your name. 24 hours to save your wife.
But there’s only one way to do it. You must kill someone for them. Someone you’ve never heard of. A complete stranger.
And the clock is ticking ...
Relentless, gripping and full of twists, this is a masterclass in page-turning suspense where nothing is what it seems and no-one is to be trusted.
2. I FOLLOW YOU – Peter James
(due for pub on October 1)
From the number one bestselling author, Peter James, comes I Follow You, a nerve-shredding standalone thriller.
To the outside world, suave, charming and confident doctor Marcus Valentine has it all. A loving wife, three kids, a great job. But there’s something missing, there always has been ... or rather, someone ...
Driving to work one morning, his mind elsewhere and not on the road, he almost mows down a female jogger on a crossing. As she runs on, Marcus is transfixed. Infatuated. She is the spitting image of a girl he was crazy about in his teens. A girl he has never been able to get out of his mind.
Lynette had dumped him harshly. For years he has fantasized about seeing her again and rekindling their flame. Might that jogger possibly be her all these years later? Could this be the most incredible coincidence?
Despite all his attempts to resist, he is consumed by cravings for this woman. And when events take a tragically unexpected turn, his obsession threatens to destroy both their worlds. But still he won’t stop. Can’t stop.
3. THE DIRTY SOUTH by John Connolly
(due for pub on August 20)
It is 1997, and someone is slaughtering young black women in Burdon County, Arkansas.
But no one wants to admit it, not in the Dirty South.
In an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. He is mourning the death of his wife and child, and searching in vain for their killer. He cares only for his own lost family.
But that is about to change ...
Witness the becoming of Charlie Parker.
4. WORSE ANGELS by Laird Barron
(due for pub on June 11)
Ex-mob enforcer-turned-private investigator Isaiah Coleridge pits himself against a rich and powerful foe when he digs into a possible murder and a sketchy real-estate deal worth billions.
Ex-majordomo and bodyguard to an industrial tycoon-cum-US senator, Badja Adeyemi is in hiding and shortly on his way to either a jail cell or a grave, depending on who finds him first. In his final days as a free man, he hires Isaiah Coleridge to tie up a loose end: the suspicious death of his nephew four years earlier. At the time police declared it an accident, and Adeyemi isn’t sure it wasn’t, but one final look may bring his sister peace.
So it is that Coleridge and his investigative partner, Lionel Robard, find themselves in the upper reaches of New York State, in a tiny town that is home to outsized secrets and an unnerving cabal of locals who are protecting them.
At the epicentre of it all is the site of a stalled supercollider project, an immense subterranean construction that may have an even deeper, more insidious purpose ...
At the epicentre of it all is the site of a stalled supercollider project, an immense subterranean construction that may have an even deeper, more insidious purpose ...
5. VIRTUALLY DEAD by Peter May
(due for pub on November 20)
His first life is a disaster ...
2010, South California. Scottish-American crime scene photographer Michael Kapinsky is a mess, six months on from the death of his wife.
His second life is a distraction ...
As a means of coping, he is persuaded to enter the online virtual world of Second Life, to participate in a new kind of group therapy.
Now both are in deadly danger ...
Once there, he discovers a chilling connection between crime scenes he has attended in real life, and scenes depicted in the virtual world.
And when he then uncovers a series of killings, and links them to a lucrative financial scam, Michael finds himself a marked man in both worlds.
The gripping new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of Richard & Judy Book Club pick, The Whisper Man.
The victim was his friend. So was the murderer.
Twenty-five years ago, troubled teenager Charlie Crabtree committed a shocking and unprovoked murder.
For Paul Adams, it’s a day he’ll never forget. He’s never forgiven himself for his part in what happened to his friend and classmate. He’s never gone back home.
But when his elderly mother has a fall, it’s finally time to stop running.
It’s not long before things start to go wrong. A copycat killer has struck, bringing back painful memories. Paul’s mother insists there’s something in the house. And someone is following him . . .
Which reminds him of the most unsettling thing about that awful day twenty-five years ago.
It wasn’t just the murder.
It was the fact that afterwards, Charlie Crabtree was never seen again ...
7. THE ENGLISHMAN by David Gilman
(due for pub on July 9)
Penal Colony No. 74, AKA White Eagle, lies some 600 kilometres north of Yekaterinburg in Russia’s Sverdlovskaya Oblast. Imprisoning the country’s most brutal criminals, it is a winter-ravaged hellhole of death and retribution.And that’s exactly why the Englishman is there.
Six years ago, Raglan was a soldier in the French Foreign Legion engaged in a hard-fought war on the desert border of Mali and Algeria. Amid black ops teams and competing intelligence agencies, his strike squad was compromised and Raglan himself severely injured.
His war was over, but the deadly aftermath of that day has echoed around the world ever since: the assassination of four Moscow CID officers; kidnap and murder on the suburban streets of West London; the fatal compromise of a long-running MI6 operation.
Raglan can’t avoid the shockwaves. This is personal. It is up to him to finish it – and it ends in Russia’s most notorious penal colony.
But how do you break into a high security prison in the middle of nowhere?
More importantly, how do you get out?
8. THE GAME by Luca Veste
(due for pub on November 12)
An edge-of-your-seat
thriller that merges the twists of a psychological-mystery with the
investigative layers of a procedural . . .
You receive a call, an email, a text – it’s from a
person who knows your secret, someone who wants to ruin you.
If you don’t do what they say, they’ll tell everyone what you’ve been hiding. They will come after you, destroy you, and they aren’t afraid to kill.
If you don’t do what they say, they’ll tell everyone what you’ve been hiding. They will come after you, destroy you, and they aren’t afraid to kill.
It’s time to play The Game.
9. THE HOUSE GUEST by Mark Edwards
(due for pub on June 3)
A perfect summer. A
perfect stranger. A perfect nightmare.
When British twenty-somethings Ruth and Adam are
offered the chance to spend the summer housesitting in New York, they can’t say
no. Young, in love and on the cusp of professional success, they feel as if
luck is finally on their side.
So the moment that Eden turns up on the doorstep,
drenched from a summer storm, it seems only right to share a bit of that good
fortune. Beautiful and charismatic, Eden claims to be a friend of the
homeowners, who told her she could stay whenever she was in New York.
They know you’re not supposed to talk to
strangers—let alone invite them into your home—but after all, Eden’s only a
stranger until they get to know her.
As suspicions creep in that Eden may not be who she
claims to be, they begin to wonder if they’ve made a terrible mistake…
The House Guest is the chilling new psychological
thriller from the three million copy bestselling author of Here to Stay and
Follow You Home.
10. DEAD TO HER by Sarah Pinborough
(due for pub on June 10)
Something old …
When Marcie met Jason Maddox, she couldn’t believe
her luck. Becoming Jason’s second wife catapulted her into the elite world of
high society. But underneath the polite, old money manners, she knows she’ll
always be an outsider, and her hard-won life hangs by a thread.
Something new …
Then Jason’s widowed boss brings back a new wife from
his trip to London. Young, beautiful, reckless – nobody can take their eyes off
Keisha. Including Jason.
Something you can
never, ever undo …
Marcie refuses to be replaced so easily. People
would kill for her life of luxury. What will Marcie do to keep it?
JUST PLAIN DARK
Chuck Palahniuk
returns with the chilling tale, in classic Palahniuk tradition, of a father in
search of his daughter, a young woman witha secret, and a malicious recording
that can make ‘the whole world scream at the exact same time.
Private detective Foster Gates is a father is in
search of his missing daughter, and sound engineer Mitzi harbours a secret that
may help him solve the case. It’s Mitzi’s job to create the dubbed screams used
in horror films and action movies. She’s the best at what she does.
But what no one in Hollywood knows is the screams
Mitzi produces are harvested from the real, horror-filled, blood-chilling
screams of people in their death throes. This is a technique first employed by Mitzi’s
father and one she continues on in his memory, a deeply conflicted serial
killer compelled beyond her understanding to honour her father’s chilling
legacy.
Soon Foster finds himself on Mitzi’s trail. And in
pursuit of her dark art, Mitzi realizes she’s created the perfect scream, one
that compels anyone who hears it to mirror the sound as long as they listen to
it, a highly contagious seismic event with the potential to bring the country
to its knees.
2. THE HOUSE OF WHISPERS by Laura Purcell
(due for pub on June 9)
A new Gothic
Victorian tale from Laura Purcell, set on the atmospheric Cornish coast in a
rambling house by the sea in which a maid cares for a mute old woman with a
mysterious past, alongside her superstitious staff.
Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft’s family,
leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken. But Dr Pinecroft has plans
for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the
cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners
suffering from the disease in the caves beneath his new Cornish home. While he
devotes himself to his controversial medical trials, Louise finds herself
increasingly discomfited by the strange tales her new maid tells of the fairies
that hunt the land, searching for those they can steal away to their realm.
Forty years later, Hester arrives at Morvoren House
to take up a position as nurse to the now partially paralyzed and mute Miss
Pinecroft. Hester has fled to Cornwall to try to escape her past, but
surrounded by superstitious staff enacting bizarre rituals, she soon discovers
her new home may be just as dangerous as her last.
3. THE ANTHILL by Julianne Pachico
(due for pub on June 16)
Linda returns to Colombia after twenty years away.
Sent to England after her mother’s death when she was eight, she’s searching
for the person who can tell her what’s happened in the time that has passed.
Matty - Linda’s childhood confidant, her best friend - now runs a refuge called
The Anthill for the street kids of Medellin. But her long-anticipated reunion
with him is struck by tension. Memory is fallible, and Linda discovers that
everyone has a version of the past that is very, very different.
‘International in scope, profoundly human in its
concerns, it feels like just the kind of novel we need in unsettling times.’
Laird Hunt
4. MEXICAN GOTHIC by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
(due for pub on June 30)
The acclaimed author
of Gods of Jade and Shadow returns with a mesmerising feminist re-imagining of
Gothic fantasy, in which a young socialite discovers the haunting secrets of a
beautiful old mansion in 1950s Mexico.
He is trying to
poison me. You must come for me, NoemÃ. You have to save me.
When glamorous socialite Noemà Taboada receives a
frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging to be rescued from a
mysterious doom, it’s clear something is desperately amiss. Catalina has always
had a flair for the dramatic, but her claims that her husband is poisoning her
and her visions of restless ghosts seem remarkable, even for her.
NoemÃ’s chic gowns and perfect lipstick are more
suited to cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing, but she immediately heads to
High Place, a remote mansion in the Mexican countryside, determined to discover
what is so affecting her cousin.
Tough and smart, she possesses an indomitable will,
and she is not afraid: not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing
and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be
fascinated by NoemÃ; and not of the house itself, which begins to invade
Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.
Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the
family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help, but might also
be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets
behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded
mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemà digs deeper she unearths
stories of violence and madness.
And NoemÃ,
mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find
it impossible to leave this enigmatic house behind ...
5.
(due for pub on August 20)
An infamous seance.
A house burdened by grief. A secret that can no longer stay buried.
England, 1925. Louisa Drew lost her husband in the First World
War and her six-year-old twin sons in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Newly
re-married and seven months pregnant, Louisa is asked by her employer to travel
to Clewer Hall in Sussex to photograph the contents of the house for auction.
Desperate for money after falling on hard times, she accepts the commission.
On arrival, she learns Clewer Hall was host to an
infamous séance in 1896, the consequences of which still haunt the family.
Before the Clewers leave England for good, the lady of the house has asked
those who attended the original séance to recreate the evening. Louisa soon
becomes embroiled in the strange happenings of the house, unravelling the
long-held secrets of what happened that night thirty years before ... and
discovers that her own fate is entwined with Clewer Hall’s.
An exquisitely
crafted mystery that invites the reader into the crumbling Clewer Hall to help
unlock its secrets alongside the unforgettable Louisa Drew.
6. THESE WOMEN by Ivy Pochoda
(due for pub on November 5)
‘These Women is full
of resilient and undaunted characters that society often doesn’t give a second
look to. But Ivy Pochoda does and in these pages she gives us the small story
that grows so large in meaning and emotion as to transcend genre. It tells us
how to look at ourselves and at what is important.’
Michael Connelly
The dancer. The
mother. The cop. The artist. The wife.
These women live by countless unspoken rules. How
to dress; who to trust; which streets are safe and which are not. The rules
grow out of a kaleidoscope of fear, anguish, power, loss and hope. Maybe it is
only these rules which keep them alive.
When their neighbourhood is rocked by two murders,
the careful existence these women have built for themselves begins to crumble.
‘Pochoda turns
grief, suffering and loss into art, crafting a literary thriller that is no
less compelling for its deep emotional resonance.’
Vogue
(due for pub on December 31)
Kensington Ave,
Philadelphia:
The first place you go for drugs or sex.
The last place you want to look for your sister.
Mickey Fitzpatrick has been patrolling the 24th
District for years. She knows most of the working women by name. She knows what
desperation looks like and what people will do when they need a fix. She’s
become used to finding overdose victims: their numbers are growing every year.
But every time she sees someone sprawled out, slumped over, cold to the touch,
she has to pray it’s not her sister, Kacey.
When the bodies of murdered sex workers start
turning up on the Ave, the Chief of Police is keen to bury the news. They’re
not the kind of victims that generate a whole lot of press anyway. But Mickey
is obsessed, dangerously so, with finding the perpetrator - before Kacey
becomes the next victim.
8. THIRTEEN STOREYS by Jonathan Sims
(due for pub on November 26)
A chilling thriller
that’s perfect for fans of Get Out and The Haunting of Hill House.
A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a
multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers - even to their
host, the billionaire owner of the building.
None of them know why they were selected to receive
his invitation. Besides a postcode, they share only one thing in common -
they’ve all experienced an unsettling occurrence within the building’s walls.
By the end of the night, their host is dead, and
none of the guests will say what happened.
His death remains one of the biggest unsolved
mysteries - until now.
9. SISTERS by Daisy Johnson
(due for pub on August 13)
Something unspeakable has happened to sisters July
and September.
Desperate for a fresh start, their mother Sheela
moves them across the country to an old family house that has a troubled life
of its own. Noises come from behind the walls. Lights flicker of their own
accord. Sleep feels impossible, dreams are endless.
In their new, unsettling surroundings, July finds
that the fierce bond she’s always had with September – forged with a blood
promise when they were children – is beginning to change in ways she cannot
understand.
Taut, transfixing and profoundly moving, Sisters
explodes with the fury and joy of adolescence. It is a story of sibling love
and sibling envy to rival Shirley Jackson and Stephen King. With Sisters, Daisy
Johnson confirms her standing among the most inventive and exciting young
writers at work today.
10. THE RETURN by Rachel Harrison
(due for pub on September 10)
Her best friend disappeared. A stranger came back.
Julie is missing, and no one believes she will ever
return-except Elise. Elise knows Julie better than anyone. She feels it in her
bones that her best friend is out there and that one day Julie will come back.
She’s right. Two years to the day that Julie went
missing, she reappears with no memory of where she’s been or what happened to
her.
Along with Molly and Mae, their two close friends
from college, the women decide to reunite at a remote inn. But the second Elise
sees Julie, she knows something is wrong: she’s emaciated, with sallow skin and
odd appetites. And as the weekend unfurls, it becomes impossible to deny that
the Julie who vanished two years ago is not the same Julie who came back. But
then who - or what - is she?
An eerie storm of a debut that fuses thriller and
horror into a brilliant depiction of women’s friendships - the rivalries,
jealousies, anxieties and love.
THRILLERS, CHILLERS, SHOCKERS AND KILLERS …
An ongoing series of reviews of dark fiction (crime,
thriller, horror and sci-fi) – both old and new – that I have recently read and
enjoyed. I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly
be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the
definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these books in
more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly
enjoyed (I’ll outline the plot first, and follow it with my opinions) … so I
guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in
advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your
thing.
by MJ Arlidge (2019)
Outline
It’s an ordinary day in the life of Justin Lanning, a
successful South Coast businessman. Until, out of the blue, he receives a phone
call telling him that he has one hour to live. Unnerved, but treating it as a
cruel joke, Lanning goes about his business … and the next morning is found
strangled.
Detective Inspector Helen Grace, the Southampton Major
Incident Team’s on-call SIO, cops for the assignment, and immediately takes
charge with her usual efficiency.
All Fall Down is the ninth novel to date in MJ Arlidge’s
popular detective series, but almost immediately in this tale, the
motorbike-riding heroine finds that things aren’t running quite as smoothly as
they normally would.
To start with, her best friend and very able deputy, DS
Charlene ‘Charlie’ Brooks, is heavily pregnant and not quite the force of
nature she normally is. At the same time, Grace, though famous for forging her
own somewhat bull-headed path in life (despite suffering occasional bouts of
depression) has recently entered a relationship with another of her underlings,
tough guy DS Joe Hudson, whom not everyone else on the team trusts, and which
puts a slight distance between herself and the others.
As if that isn’t problem enough, the case quickly becomes
more complex and disturbing than she anticipated. To start with, this isn’t the
first time Lanning has been attacked. Eight years earlier, he was one of a
group of five teenagers abducted and tortured by a weird, sadistic loner called
Alan King, who, even though it all happened in King’s bleak moorland cottage, has
never been brought to book for the crime.
The incident, which saw the youngsters get lost while
orienteering for the Duke of Edinburgh Award, and then be imprisoned and brutally mistreated in the reclusive nutcase’s filthy cellar, one of them dying in the
process, was a major story at the time, and yet never resolved. King is still
believed to be at liberty somewhere, and, when other members of the group are
also murdered, once again after having been informed beforehand that they have
only one hour to live, the obvious assumption is that the madman has returned from
his self-imposed anonymity to finish off the rest. This horrifying possibility
attracts wholesale media attention, one journalist in particular, Emilia
Garanita, determined to find a big scoop and constantly dogging Helen Grace’s
heels.
Grace herself, a hard-headed realist, might not be inclined to believe the sensationalist theory, except that another of the survivors, Maxine Pryce, has since become a writer and is soon to publish her own literary account of the original atrocity.
Grace herself, a hard-headed realist, might not be inclined to believe the sensationalist theory, except that another of the survivors, Maxine Pryce, has since become a writer and is soon to publish her own literary account of the original atrocity.
The increasingly stressed DI doesn’t want to admit it,
and continues to keep an open mind (when she isn’t being distracted by the
progressively more troubling changes in her private life – there are certainly
things about Hudson that are starting to bother her!) but it seems increasingly
possible that Pryce’s forthcoming book might well have provoked a response from King and that he has indeed re-emerged, firstly to torment his
chosen group of victims by telephone, and then to kill each one of them at
their appointed time …
Review
On reflection, there were three specific things about All
Fall Down that I found most satisfying.
The lead character, Helen Grace, is very far from being a
cliché. As a motorbike-riding female cop, who has attained dominant status in
what is still largely a man’s world, it would be too easy to portray her as a
kind of non-superpowered Jessica Jones, leather-clad, effing and jeffing with
the best of them, crime-fighting as an escape from a car crash lovelife and, of
course, kicking ass everywhere she goes.
But MJ Arlidge’s police heroine, for whom, as already
mentioned, this is the ninth outing, has always been far more grounded in
reality. Yes, she’s had to tough her way to DI, and it has cost her. She’s long
been a loner, especially when it comes to romance, but she’s where she is
because she’s a skilled and thorough investigator, not because she fights like
a man, takes terrifying risks that no police force in real life would reward,
or because she has endless public spats with the boss despite the pair of them
being secret best buddies.
And the realism goes even further than that. Grace’s
lonely lifestyle is not a tale of drunken self-pity in some grotty flat that no
one in the right mind would ever want to visit, eating hotdogs for breakfast,
lunch and tea, with a phone that never rings unless it’s work. There are one or
two slight abnormalities, granted, but these are rather personal and don’t
really manifest in All Fall Down. Otherwise, it’s a normal, lower-middle class
existence, Grace still working lots of hours, but taking time for herself and
getting on well enough with her team to socialise when they’re off duty.
What’s more, Grace’s ‘ordinary person’ persona works
particularly well in the context of this book. She’s facing an unknown
psychopath, who is organised and efficient and, within a couple of pages of the
narrative commencing, looks highly likely to become the English South Coast’s
next serial killer.
This is a superior kind of enemy – what you might call
‘serious opposition’ – though in the world of Helen Grace, he/she must still be
tackled the proper way. So, you know you’re not going to get exhausting and
implausible action sequences. You know that this case, no matter how hellish it
becomes, no matter how desirous of revenge our protagonists feel, will be
investigated steadily and methodically and always within the confines of the
law, because that’s the way it would happen in real life. But that doesn’t mean
that this procedure-based response won’t be stretched to its ultimate extremes
by the horrific nature of the killer, not to mention the mystery that surrounds
him or her, which makes it all the more compelling a story.
This brings me to the second thing that I really liked
about All Fall Down: the nature of the foe.
MJ Arlidge’s tenth book is a crime novel through and through,
but the premise at its heart skates along the edge of horror. The main story
here is dark enough: the idea that your killer will call to warn you exactly
one hour before he/she strikes, and still manage to pull it off. But the
back-story is darker still.
The kidnapping of a gang of children while alone on a
wintry moorland, while striving for the Duke of Edinburgh Award, strikes a
nightmarish note. If it were to happen in real life, it would be the headline
of the month in most countries. The fact that one of the kids is then mercilessly killed, the abductor seemingly intent on doing the same to all the others as
well, makes it even more chilling.
Grace, as a realist, doesn’t automatically leap to the
conclusion that the terrible events of today are an encore to this savage
melodrama of the past, but as the evidence leans increasingly towards that, the full
potential of what this would actually mean
becomes evident. Namely, that a deranged murderer – a vicious ambush-predator who up until a
decade ago had somehow managed to hide his dark light under a bushel – launched
a murderous attack on a bunch of the most vulnerable without any provocation, and then evaded
justice and was able to lie low for years, watching those who got away (maybe
from a distance, maybe from close up, who knows?), just waiting for the spark
that would reignite his mania all over again.
And yet, all the way through, we are reminded that this is only one of several possibilities. Suppose the killer is someone else? Even then, surely it must be connected to the events of the past? But what if it isn’t? What if the twisted motivations here are something else entirely?
And yet, all the way through, we are reminded that this is only one of several possibilities. Suppose the killer is someone else? Even then, surely it must be connected to the events of the past? But what if it isn’t? What if the twisted motivations here are something else entirely?
This is way more than a routine mystery, the grim back-story as good a nail on which to hang a taut police thriller as any I’ve come
across. It’s high concept from start to finish, Arlidge working it for everything he can, but at the same time cleverly making it
appear that something which surely could only occur in a movie is genuinely
happening in this very authentic world.
This is wonderful stuff,
edge-of-the-seat scariness abutting constantly with the frustrations and uncertainties that bedevil real life major investigations, and
all the while, of course, with the ticking clock factor in the background.
Whoever our antagonist is, they are determined to work their way through
the entire gang of survivors, and yet remain confident enough to warn them all
in advance. I’ve certainly never seen that done before in a thriller.
The thought alone makes your skin crawl and adds a whole new level of horror to
the proceedings.
The third thing that really won me over to All Fall Down
was the presence in Helen Grace’s life of Joseph Hudson, a rugged, handsome DS,
not necessarily an old-school brawler, but an impulsive door-kicker all the
same, and an energised, athletic guy who you can imagine would make the perfect
foil for our heroine in matters of love as well as work.
Has she at last found the ideal partner? It would seem
so. Except that something isn’t quite right about this relationship, and it
takes close friends to start picking up on this before Grace does. Isn’t this
bloke a bit too good to be true? Why doesn’t he talk much about his past? He
likes taking the lead and yet it doesn’t always pan out. Are his instincts
good, or totally awry?
Again, Arlidge uses subtlety to introduce these doubts,
gradually but steadily creating a whole new battlefront for Grace to engage on,
which in a case like this is the last thing she needs.
All Fall Down is another great piece of work from MJ
Arlidge, proper cop stuff alternating with an unfolding nightmare of ruthless
and ingenious criminality. The gripping plot, clean and concise writing style,
and very short chapters only help make this one of those perfect poolside
page-flippers (here’s hoping we all manage to get to a pool some time this
summer).
As always now, in my own inimitable and ridiculous
fashion, I’m going to try and cast All Fall Down in the event it attracts TV
attention. Just a bit of fun, of course. Were we to be fortunate enough to see
Helen Grace hit the screen, any series would most likely start with the first
book in the series, Eeny Meeny, instead. But hell, let’s give it a go anyway.
DI Helen Grace – Michelle Dockery
DS Joseph Hudson – Brian Gleeson
DS Charlie Brooks – Lashana Lynch
Emilia Garanita – Romola Garai
Maxine Pryce – Elizabeth Debicki
DSU Grace Simmons – Amanda Ryan
Fran Ward – Emma Rigby