The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup
Author of the Dublin Murder Squad series Tana French has described her second standalone, The Searcher (Viking, £14.99), as her take on a western, and the lone stranger who rides into town to right wrongs and generally disrupt the place is a classic Frontier-era theme. American Cal Hooper, formerly of the Chicago PD, has bought himself a fixer-upper in a remote village in the west of Ireland with the intention of settling down to a quiet life. His days are largely taken up with renovations, trying to understand the local customs and responding cautiously to inquiries about his marital status, when a scruffy local kid who has taken to hanging around his property asks for help in finding a vanished older sibling. Divorced, and missing his now grown-up daughter, Cal finds himself drawn to Trey and gets involved even though, without the necessary authority and tools of the trade, he is out on a limb. The local police don’t regard 19-year-old Brendan’s disappearance as suspicious, and the villagers are tight-lipped on the subject … The pace of Cal’s investigation takes a while to pick up, and most of the action is in the final third of the book, but as well as containing strong characters, beautiful descriptions and some genuinely eerie moments, The Searcher poses uncomfortable questions about morality, retribution and masculinity.
The shift in focus away from serial killers and on to their victims is a welcome trend in both true crime and crime fiction. In These Women (Faber, £8.99), Ivy Pochoda casts the net wider still, focusing on individuals whose lives are affected by the actions of a single criminal. In 2014, in a sleazy part of South Central LA, sex workers are being murdered, and pint-sized Latina cop Essie Perry believes that the deaths are the work of an unknown serial killer who murdered 13 women in 1999. Perry is used to being ignored, and on this occasion, too, her male colleagues aren’t listening, any more than they listened to former sex worker Feelia, the survivor of an attack the first time around; Dorian, whose daughter Leica was killed; Leica’s former babysitter Julianna; or the woman who leaves messages saying she has important information about the killer, but is never called back. The perpetrator’s identity isn’t much of a revelation, but that isn’t the point: this is an immersive and immensely powerful novel, challenging and angry, about what happens when women’s voices go unheard.
In Alex Reeve’s third novel, The Butcher of Berner Street (Raven, £14.99), women are variously dismissed, made use of, or monstered. Set in London in 1881, transgender investigator Leo Stanhope’s latest adventure takes place against the background of the debate about the landmark Married Women’s Property Act, passed the following year. When coroner’s assistant turned journalist Stanhope is lured to a “penny gaff” in the East End by an anonymous letter claiming that a murder will take place, he witnesses a female wrestler beating all comers and a publicity stunt involving the fake hanging of Oswald Drake, the owner of the place. Two days later, however, Drake is killed for real. When Leo looks into it, he discovers that not only was the dead man an exploiter of children, but that the most likely suspect is leading an extraordinary double life. Intriguing and vivid, with an original and very likable protagonist, this is an excellent addition to a wonderful series.
Sadly, The Package (Head of Zeus, £16.99) by German bestseller Sebastian Fitzek, translated by Jamie Bulloch, fails to live up to its initial promise. Traumatised by rape, a subsequent miscarriage, and not being believed by the police, Dr Emma Stein trusts no one and hasn’t left her house in months – until she is asked to take in the eponymous package for a neighbour whose name she does not recognise. Fitzek is a past master at ramping up the paranoia, but unfortunately the ensuing plot is lacking in both credibility and coherence.
Distract yourself from lockdown with some splendid escapism from Ruth Ware, whose latest novel, One By One (Harvill Secker, £12.99), is a variant on the bad-things-happen-to-rich-people-in-remote-places subgenre, with nods to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. A group of elegant, moneyed colleagues from a successful music-streaming service gather in an exclusive ski chalet in the French Alps to discuss a possible buyout; the company’s founders are at loggerheads, and odd woman out Liz, whose 2% stake gives her the deciding vote, comes under intolerable pressure from both sides. After what appears to be a fatal accident on a black ski run, an avalanche hits the building, leaving the party without water or electricity – and, as more people are picked off, the survivors must split up and seek help. Greed, ambition, manipulation, secrets, nifty plotting and a cracking denouement add up to a suspenseful and spine-tingling page-turner.
