Our list of the most anticipated crime, mystery, and thriller books of 2019 includes a mix of titles from perennial favorites as well as some new faces. Crime and mystery books are among the most engaging forms of literature, and there are plenty of hot titles in these categories that are coming to the market next year.
We are cognizant of the fact that we have not covered many great reads. Having said that, what comes next is a hand-picked essential list of some of the best titles of the first half of 2019. From historical mysteries to police procedural titles, and from Scottish authors Denise Mina and Alan Parks to legendary names such as C.J. Box, there is something for every taste.
Iraq war veteran Peter Ash is restless in the home he shares with June Cassidy in Washington State. June knows Peter needs to be on the move, so she sends him to Memphis to help her friend Wanda Wyatt, a photographer and war correspondent who’s been receiving peculiar threats. When Peter arrives in Memphis, however, he finds the situation has gone downhill fast–someone has just driven a dump truck into Wanda’s living room. But neither Wanda nor Peter can figure out why.
At the same time, a young homeless street musician finds himself roped into a plan to rob a jewelry store. The heist doesn’t go as planned, and the young man finds himself holding a sack full of Rolexes and running for his life. When his getaway car breaks down, he steals a new one at gunpoint–Peter’s 1968 green Chevrolet pickup truck.
Peter likes the skinny kid’s smarts and attitude, but he soon discovers that the desperate musician is in far worse trouble than he knows. And Wanda’s troubles are only beginning. Peter finds himself stuck between Memphis gangsters–looking for Rolexes and revenge–and a Mississippi ex-con and his hog-butcher brother looking for a valuable piece of family history that goes all the way back to the Civil War.
For the past two weeks, seventeen-year-old Kate Bennet has lived against her will in an isolated cabin in a remote beach town–brought there by a mysterious man named Bill. Part captor, part benefactor, Bill calls her Evie and tells her he’s hiding her to protect her.
That she did something terrible one night back home in Melbourne–something so unspeakable that he had no choice but to take her away. The trouble is, Kate can’t remember the night in question.
The fragments of Kate’s shattered memories of her old life seem happy: good friends, a big house in the suburbs, a devoted boyfriend. Bill says he’ll help her fill in the blanks–but his story isn’t adding up.
And as she tries to reconcile the girl she thought she’d been with the devastating consequences Bill claims she’s responsible for, Kate will unearth secrets about herself and those closest to her that could change everything.
A riveting debut novel that fearlessly plumbs the darkest recesses of the mind, Call Me Evie explores the fragility of memory and the potential in all of us to hide the truth, even from ourselves.
The good news is that Joe Pickett has his job back, after his last adventure in The Disappeared. The bad news is that he’s come to learn that a drone is killing wildlife–and the drone belongs to a mysterious and wealthy man whose son is dating Joe’s own daughter, Lucy.
When Joe tries to lay down the rules for the drone operator, he’s asked by the FBI and the DOJ to stand down, which only makes him more suspicious. Meanwhile, bodies are piling up in and around Joe’s district in shocking numbers.
He begins to fear that a pack of four vicious killers working on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel known as the Wolf Pack has arrived. Their target seems to be the mystery man and everyone–including Joe, Nate, and others–who is associated with him.
Teaming up with a female game warden (based on a real person, one of the few female game wardens at work in Wyoming today) to confront these assassins, Joe finds himself in the most violent and dangerous predicament he’s ever faced.
Straight arrow FBI Agent Kate O’Hare always plays by the rules. Charming Con Man Nicholas Fox makes them up as he goes along. She thinks he’s nothing but a scoundrel. He thinks she just needs to lighten up. They’re working together to tackle the out-of-bounds cases ordinary FBI agents can’t touch.
And, their relationship? Well, there hasn’t been so much explosive chemistry since Nitro was introduced to Glycerin.
Next on the docket: The mysterious disappearance of the Silicon Valley billionaire, known as the Big Kahuna. Kate’s been assigned to find him but no one seems particularly keen on helping. His twenty-six year old adult actress wife-turned Instagram model wife and his shady Czech business partner are more interested in gaining control of his company.
For that they need a dead body not a living Kahuna. The only lead they have is the Kahuna’s drop-out son, who’s living the dream in Hawaii – if your dream is starting your day with the perfect wave and ending it with a big bowl of weed. To get close to the Kahuna’s son, Kate and Nick go undercover as a married couple in the big wave, bohemian, surfer community of Paia, Maui.
Living a laid back, hippy-dippy lifestyle isn’t exactly in Kate’s wheelhouse, but the only thing more horrifying is setting up house with Nick Fox, even if he does look pretty gnarly on a longboard. If they don’t catch a break soon, waves aren’t the only thing she’s going to be shredding (or bedding).
Allie Garvey is heading home to the funeral of a childhood friend. Allie is not only grief-stricken, she’s full of dread. Because going home means seeing the other two people with whom she shares an unbearable secret.
Twenty years earlier, a horrific incident shattered the lives of five teenagers, including Allie. Drinking and partying in the woods, they played a dangerous prank that went tragically wrong, turning deadly. The teenagers kept what happened a secret, believing that getting caught would be the worst thing that could happen. But time has taught Allie otherwise. Not getting caught was far worse.
Allie has been haunted for two decades by what she and the others did, and by the fact that she never told a soul. The dark secret has eaten away at her, distancing her from everyone she loves, including her husband. Because she wasn’t punished by the law, Allie has punished herself, and it’s a life sentence.
Now, Allie stands on the precipice of losing everything. She’s ready for a reckoning, determined to learn how the prank went so horribly wrong. She digs to unearth the truth, but reaches a shocking conclusion that she never saw coming–and neither will the reader.
A deeply emotional examination of family, marriage, and the true nature of justice, Someone Knows is Lisa Scottoline’s most powerful novel to date. Startling, page-turning, and with an ending that’s impossible to forget, this is a tour de force by a beloved author at the top of her game.
A portrait of Bernie Gunther in his twenties: He’s young, but he’s seen four bloody years of trench warfare. And he’s not stupid. So when he receives a promotion and a ticket out of Vice squad, he knows he’s not really leaving behind the criminal gangs, the perverse sex clubs, and the laundry list of human corruption.
It’s 1928 and Berlin is a city on the edge of chaos, where nothing is truly verboten. But soon a new wave of shockingly violent murders sweeps up society’s most vulnerable, prostitutes and wounded ex-soldiers begging on the streets.
As Bernie Gunther sets out to make sense of multiple murders with different MOs in a city that knows no limits, he must face the fact that his own police HQ is not immune. The Nazi party has begun to inflitrate the Alex, Berlin’s central office, just as the shakey Weimar government makes a last, desperate attempt to control a nation edging toward to the Third Reich.
It seems like the only escape for most Berliners is the theater and Bernie’s no exception. As he gets deeper into the city’s sordid underground network, he seeks comfort with a make-up artist who is every bit a match for his quick wit and increasingly sardonic view of the world.
But even this space can’t remain untouched, not with this pervasive feeling that everything is for sale in Berlin if you’re man enough to kill for it. (Note: Sadly, Kerr died of cancer on 23 March 2018).
Colter Shaw is an itinerate “reward-seeker,” traveling the country to help police solve crimes and private citizens locate missing persons. When he learns of a reward for a missing college student in Silicon Valley, he takes the job.
The investigation quickly thrusts him into the dark heart of Silicon Valley and the cutthroat billion-dollar video gaming industry–and then a second kidnapping happens…and this victim turns up dead.
The clues soon point to one video game, The Never Game, in which the player has to survive after being left abandoned. Is a madman bringing that game to life? If so, Shaw has to stop him before he strikes again…and before he figures out that Shaw is on his trail.
India, 1921. Haunted by his memories of World War I, Captain Sam Wyndham is battling a serious addiction to opium that he must keep secret from his superiors in the Calcutta police force.
When Sam is summoned to investigate a grisly murder, he is stunned at the sight of the body: he’s seen this before. Last night, in a drug addled haze, he stumbled across a corpse with the same ritualistic injuries.
It seems like there’s a deranged killer on the loose. Unfortunately for Sam, the corpse was in an opium den—and revealing his presence there could cost him his career.
With the aid of his quick-witted Indian Sergeant, Surrender-Not Banerjee, Sam must try to solve the two murders, all the while keeping his personal demons secret, before somebody else turns up dead.
After Brooklyn mob widow Rena Ruggiero hits her eighty-year-old neighbor Enzio in the head with an ashtray when he makes an unwanted move on her, she embarks on a bizarre adventure. Taking off in Enzio’s ’62 Impala, she retreats to the Bronx home of her estranged daughter, Adrienne, and her granddaughter, Lucia, only to be turned away by Adrienne at the door.
Their neighbor, Lacey “Wolfie” Wolfstein, a one-time Golden Age porn star and retired Florida Suncoast grifter, takes Rena in and befriends her.
When Lucia discovers that Adrienne is planning to hit the road with her ex-boyfriend Richie, she figures Rena’s her only way out of a life on the run with a mother she can’t stand. But Richie has massacred a few members of the Brancaccio crime family for a big payday, and he drags even more trouble into the mix in the form of an unhinged enforcer named Crea.
The stage is set for an explosion that will propel Rena, Wolfie, and Lucia down a strange path, each woman running from something and unsure what comes next.
A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself is a screwball noir about finding friendship and family where you least expect it, in which William Boyle again draws readers into the familiar—and sometimes frightening—world in the shadows at the edges of New York’s neighborhoods.
Venice, 1586. William Shakespeare is disguised as a steward to the English Ambassador. He and his friends Oldcastle and Hemminges possess a deadly secret: the names of the catholic spies in England who seek to destroy Queen Elizabeth. Before long the Pope’s agents will begin to close in on them and fleeing the city will be the players’ only option.
In Verona, Aemelia, the daughter of a Duke, is struggling to conceal her passionate affair with her cousin Valentine. But darker times lie ahead with the arrival of the sinister Father Thornhill who is determined to seek out any who don’t conform to the Pope’s ruthless agenda . . .
Events will converge in the forests around Verona as a multitude of plots are hatched and discovered, players fall in and out of love and disguises are adopted and then discarded. Will Shakespeare and his friends escape with their secrets – and their lives?
The Most Southern Place on Earth: that’s what they call the Mississippi Delta. It’s not a place Lydia Chin, an American-born Chinese private detective from Chinatown, NYC, ever thought she’d have reason to go.
But when her mother tells her a cousin Lydia didn’t know she had is in jail in Clarksdale, Mississippi―and that Lydia has to rush down south and get him out―Lydia finds herself rolling down Highway 61 with Bill Smith, her partner, behind the wheel.
From the river levees to the refinement of Oxford, from old cotton gins to new computer scams, Lydia soon finds that nothing in Mississippi is as she expected it to be. Including her cousin’s legal troubles―or possibly even his innocence. Can she uncover the truth in a place more foreign to her than any she’s ever seen?
February 1816: A race through the icy, twisting cobblestone streets of London ends inside an abandoned church―and a horrific discovery. Bow Street Runner Sam Kelly is called to investigate the grisly murder of Sir Giles Holbrooke, who was left naked and garroted, with his tongue cut out.
Yet as perplexing as that crime is, it becomes even stranger when symbols that resemble crosses mysteriously begin to appear across the dead man’s flesh during autopsy. Is it a message from the killer?
Sam turns to the one person in the kingdom who he believes can answer that question and solve the bizarre murder―the Duke of Aldridge’s odd but brilliant ward, Kendra Donovan.
While Kendra has been trying to adapt to her new life in the early nineteenth century, she is eager to use her skills as a twenty-first century FBI agent again. And she will need all her investigative prowess, because Sir Giles was not an average citizen. He was one of England’s most clever spymasters, whose life had been filled with intrigue and subterfuge.
Kendra’s return to the gritty streets and glittering ballrooms of London takes her down increasingly dangerous paths. When more bodies are discovered, murdered in the same apparently ritualistic manner as Sir Giles, the American begins to realize that they are dealing with a killer with an agenda, whose mind has been twisted by rage and bitterness so that the price of a perceived betrayal is death.
Killing with Confetti By Peter Lovesey: On a fateful July morning in 2015, a riot takes hold of Her Majesty’s Prison in Bream, Gloucestershire, with fatal consequences. The staff is caught completely off-guard—their supervising warden, Governor Magda Lyle, hasn’t shown up for work, and the prisoners are able to start a fire that nearly results in a mass escape.
Three years later and forty miles south, a most controversial wedding is about to take place in Bath’s gorgeous Abbey, with a reception to follow in the famous Roman Baths. The daughter of career criminal mastermind Joe Irving—only just released from a long stint in prison—is getting hitched to the son of Deputy Chief Constable George Brace, one of the highest-ranking cops in all of Avon & Somerset.
A more uncomfortable group of in-laws would be hard to imagine, but worse, charismatic and incorrigible Joe Irving has many enemies on “the outside,” including more than one hard man hell-bent on settling accounts for the role the father of the bride played in the fateful Bream prison riot.
There have been credible threats on Joe Irving’s life since his release, and the wedding presents a high-profile opportunity for a hit attempt.
The distressed DCC Brace retains detective Peter Diamond and his team to run security on the big day, hoping they can avert catastrophe. Joe Irving may be the arch enemy of every cop in southwest England, but they can’t let him be killed at his daughter’s wedding.
Diamond is infuriated by the assignment, which becomes more and more impossible with every new fact he learns about the players and the logistics. Can Diamond pull off a miracle and keep the entire party alive until the couple is safely on their honeymoon?
The young detectives think Alan Auhl is washed up, but that doesn’t faze him. He does things his own way—and gets results.
He still lives with his ex-wife, off and on, in a big house full of random boarders and hard-luck stories. And he’s still a cop, even though he retired from Homicide some years ago.
He works cold cases now. Like the death of John Elphick—his daughters are still convinced he was murdered; the coroner is not so sure. Or the skeleton that’s just been found under a concrete slab. Or the doctor who killed two wives and a girlfriend, and left no evidence at all. Auhl will stick with these cases until justice is done. One way or another.
Twenty-eight-year-old Embla Nyström has been plagued by chronic nightmares and racing thoughts ever since she can remember. She has learned to channel most of her anxious energy into her position as Detective Inspector in the mobile unit in Gothenburg, Sweden, and into sports.
A talented hunter and prize-winning Nordic welterweight, she is glad to be taking a vacation from her high-stress job to attend the annual moose hunt with her family and friends.
But when Embla arrives at her uncle’s cabin in rural Dalsland, she sees an unfamiliar face has joined the group: Peter, enigmatic, attractive, and newly divorced. And she isn’t the only one to notice. One longtime member of the hunt doesn’t welcome the presence of an outsider and is quick to point out that with Peter, the group’s number reaches thirteen, a bad omen for the week.
Sure enough, a string of unsettling incidents follow, culminating in the disappearance of two hunters. Embla takes charge of the search, and they soon find one of the missing men floating facedown in the nearby lake. With the help of local reinforcements, Embla delves into the dark pasts of her fellow hunters in search of a killer.
Jacob, a middle-aged architect living in Copenhagen, is in the alcohol-soaked throes of a bitter divorce when he receives an unexpected call from his great-uncle Anton, who is in his nineties and still lives with his brother Anders on their rural Jutland farm—a place Jacob hasn’t visited since the summer of 1978.
Anton asks Jacob to answer the question that has haunted them both for decades: What happened to Ellen?
To find out, Jacob must revisit the farm and confront what took place that summer—one defined by his teenage obsession with Ellen, a beautiful young hippie from the local commune who came to stay with Anton and Anders, and the unsolved disappearance of Jacob’s classmate’s sister.
In revisiting old friends and rivals, Jacob discovers that the tragedies that have haunted him for over forty years were not what they seemed.
What do you do when there are no borders? When the lines you thought existed simply vanish? How do you plant your feet to make a stand when you no longer know what side you’re on?
The war has come home. For over forty years, Art Keller has been on the front lines of America’s longest conflict: The War on Drugs. His obsession to defeat the world’s most powerful, wealthy, and lethal kingpin―the godfather of the Sinaloa Cartel, Adán Barrera―has left him bloody and scarred, cost him the people he loves, even taken a piece of his soul.
Now Keller is elevated to the highest ranks of the DEA, only to find that in destroying one monster he has created thirty more that are wreaking even more chaos and suffering in his beloved Mexico. But not just there.
Barrera’s final legacy is the heroin epidemic scourging America. Throwing himself into the gap to stem the deadly flow, Keller finds himself surrounded by enemies―men who want to kill him, politicians who want to destroy him, and worse, the unimaginable―an incoming administration that’s in bed with the very drug traffickers that Keller is trying to bring down.
Art Keller is at war with not only the cartels, but with his own government. And the long fight has taught him more than he ever imagined. Now, he learns the final lesson―there are no borders.
In a story that moves from deserts south of the border to Wall Street, from the slums of Guatemala to the marbled corridors of Washington, D.C., Winslow follows a new generation of narcos, the cops who fight them, the street traffickers, the addicts, the politicians, money-launderers, real-estate moguls, and mere children fleeing the violence for the chance of a life in a new country.
A shattering tale of vengeance, violence, corruption and justice, this last novel in Don Winslow’s magnificent, award-winning, internationally bestselling trilogy is packed with unforgettable, drawn-from-the-headlines scenes. Shocking in its brutality, raw in its humanity, The Border is an unflinching portrait of modern America, a story of—and for—our time.
Kellen Adams suffers from a yearlong gap in her memory. A bullet to the brain will cause that. But she’s discovering the truth, and what she learns changes her life, her confidence, her very self.
She finds herself in the wilderness, on the run, unprepared, her enemies unknown–and she is carrying a priceless burden she must protect at all costs. The consequences of failure would break her. And Kellen Adams does not break.
Never Look Back by Alison Gaylin: Reminiscent of the bestsellers of Laura Lippman and Harlan Coben—with a Serial-esque podcast twist—an absorbing, addictive tale of psychological suspense from the author of the highly acclaimed and Edgar Award-nominated What Remains of Me and the USA Today bestselling and Shamus Award-winning Brenna Spector series.
The Last Widow by Karin Slaughter: Investigator Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton must stop a mysterious group of domestic terrorists planning to unleash a deadly epidemic in this electrifying and all too plausible thriller.
On a serene summer Sunday, a routine admission for a run-of-the-mill surgery at Atlanta’s Emory Hospital goes tragically wrong, setting off a catastrophic wave of destruction that sends the facility and the surrounding area into lockdown.
One of the city’s largest and most prestigious institutions, Emory is situated near the Centers for Disease Control, the FBI counter-terrorism headquarters, and a large children’s hospital. Anything that happens there has repercussions for the entire city, the state of Georgia, and possibly the entire nation.
A few miles away, medical examiner Sara Linton is enduring an awkward lunch with her mother, her aunt, and her boyfriend Will Trent, an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But the sudden wail of sirens blaring in the distance cuts the uncomfortable get-together short, drawing her and Will to the scene.
Both Sara and Will are seasoned public servants trained to help in an emergency. Dedicated and courageous, they run towards a crisis while others are running away. But on this warm summer day, that instinct will lead them into lethal danger. Within an hour the situation at Emory has spiraled out of control—Sara has been taken prisoner and Will forced undercover, on a case in which thousands of lives are at stake.
That “routine admission” at Emory was the opening maneuver in a perilous game of hunter and prey that leads him out of Atlanta into the Appalachians, to a remote compound where a radical group has hatched a diabolical plan for murder on a massive scale that will rock the nation if it isn’t stopped.
The Sentence Is Death by Anthony Horowitz: Death, deception, and a detective with quite a lot to hide stalk the pages of Anthony Horowitz’s brilliant murder mystery, the second in the bestselling series starring Private Investigator Daniel Hawthorne.
Timothy Blake, a former consultant for the FBI, now moonlights in body disposal for a local crime lord. One night he stumbles across a body he wasn’t supposed to find. When the FBI calls Blake back in to investigate the man’s disappearance, Blake is the only one who knows the man is dead and in his freezer.
Then another man goes missing. And another. And another. There’s a serial killer in Houston, and Blake is the only one who knows it for sure. As they hunt the killer together, his handler, FBI agent Reese Thistle, starts to warm to Blake—but she also gets closer and closer to discovering his own gruesome secret.
This is cause for anxiety for the criminal kingpin who employs Blake. It would be better to murder Blake than to risk exposure. Can Blake uncover the killer, without exposing himself?
Taken from a group home at age twelve, Evan Smoak was raised and trained as part of the Orphan Program, an off-the-books operation designed to create deniable intelligence assets—i.e. assassins. Evan was Orphan X.
He broke with the Program, using everything he learned to disappear and reinvent himself as the Nowhere Man, a man who helps the truly desperate when no one else can. But now Evan’s past is catching up to him.
Someone at the very highest level of government has been trying to eliminate every trace of the Orphan Program by killing all the remaining Orphans and their trainers. After Evan’s mentor and the only father he ever knew was killed, he decided to strike back. His target is the man who started the Program and who is now the most heavily guarded person in the world: the President of the United States.
But President Bennett knows that Orphan X is after him and, using weapons of his own, he’s decided to counter-attack. Bennett activates the one man who has the skills and experience to track down and take out Orphan X—the first recruit of the Program, Orphan A.
With Evan devoting all his skills, resources, and intelligence to find a way through the layers of security that surround the President, suddenly he also has to protect himself against the deadliest of opponents. It’s Orphan vs. Orphan with the future of the country—even the world—on the line.
Vaka sits, regretting her choice of coat, on the cold steps of her new school. Her father appears to have forgotten to pick her up, her mother has forgotten to give her this week’s pocket money, and the school is already locked for the day. Grownups, she decides, are useless.
With no way to call home, she resigns herself to waiting on the steps until her father remembers her. When a girl approaches, Vaka recognizes her immediately from class, and from her unusual appearance: two of her fingers are missing.
The girl lives at the back of the school, on the other side of a high fence, and Vaka asks to call her father from the girl’s house. That afternoon is the last time anyone sees Vaka.
Detective Huldar and child psychologist Freyja are called in. Soon, they find themselves at the heart of another shocking case.
A deadly race for the Vatican’s oldest secret fuels New York Times bestseller Steve Berry’s latest international Cotton Malone thriller.
The pope is dead. A conclave to select his replacement is about to begin. Cardinals are beginning to arrive at the Vatican, but one has fled Rome for Malta in search of a document that dates back to the 4th century and Constantine the Great.
Former Justice Department operative, Cotton Malone, is at Lake Como, Italy, on the trail of legendary letters between Winston Churchill and Benito Mussolini that disappeared in 1945 and could re-write history. But someone else seems to be after the same letters and, when Malone obtains then loses them, he’s plunged into a hunt that draws the attention of the legendary Knights of Malta.
The knights have existed for over nine hundred years, the only warrior-monks to survive into modern times. Now they are a global humanitarian organization, but within their ranks lurks trouble — the Secreti — an ancient sect intent on affecting the coming papal conclave.
With the help of Magellan Billet agent Luke Daniels, Malone races the rogue cardinal, the knights, the Secreti, and the clock to find what has been lost for centuries. The final confrontation culminates behind the walls of the Vatican where the election of the next pope hangs in the balance.
A man hangs himself in a neighborhood chapel. Bodies of young girls are being found in canals and rivers across the city with high levels of Mandrax in their bloodstream. McCoy is asked to watch over a colleague’s niece, who has left home young and is running with a bad crowd in Glasgow. DS Wattie is attempting to become a sergeant. Drugs in Glasgow have got darker and more dangerous.
Glasgow, its music and its inhabitants all have rough edges in this hard city fought over by gangs, organized crime, the forces of law and order, and ordinary people trying to get by.
Run Away by Harlan Coben: A perfect family is shattered in this new thriller from the master of domestic suspense, Harlan Coben. She’s addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she’s made it clear that she doesn’t want to be found.
Then, by chance, you see her playing guitar in Central Park. But she’s not the girl you remember. This woman is living on the edge, frightened, and clearly in trouble.
After suddenly inheriting a funeral home from her father–who she hadn’t heard from in decades–Ilka Jensen has impulsively abandoned her quiet life in Denmark to visit the small town in rural Wisconsin where her father lived.
There, she’s devastated to discover her father’s second family: a stepmother and two half sisters she never knew existed. And who aren’t the least bit welcoming, despite Ilka’s efforts to reach out.
Then a local woman is killed, seemingly the unfortunate victim of a home invasion turned violent. But when Ilka learns that the woman knew her father, it becomes increasingly clear that she may not have been a completely random victim after all.
The more Ilka digs into her father’s past, the more deeply entangled she becomes in a family drama that has spanned decades and claimed more than one life–and she may be the next victim.
The New Thomas Harris Thriller: The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silence of the Lambs and the creator of Hannibal Lecter, Thomas Harris, returns with his first standalone thriller since Black Sunday.
Anna McLean loves to revel in life’s unsavory details. When she’s keeping up appearances as an upper-class Edinburgh housewife, there’s no better escape than other people’s sordid stories retold in true-crime podcasts. Until the day it all falls apart.
A new podcast turns out to have a connection to Anna’s own dark past–the secret history she’s taken great pains to conceal. Hours later, her husband announces he’s leaving her–for her own best friend.
And when the best friend’s husband–who happens to be former rock star Fin Cohen–shows up on Anna’s front stoop, a nosy neighbor plasters their photo all over the internet. Her cover well and truly blown, Anna’s only choice is to run–and take Fin along for his own protection.
Reigning queen of Scottish crime fiction Denise Mina deftly weaves the classic thriller elements of a woman with a secret past, an average citizen thrust into a high-stakes international chase, and a cheating spouse, with online life–internet sleuthing, true-crime podcasts, insta-celebrities, and Twitter–to craft a modern, propulsive page-turner like nothing you’ve read before.
John Rebus is not as young as he was, but his detective instincts have never left him. And after the daughter of a murder victim turns up outside his flat, he’s going to need them at their sharpest.
Enlisting the help of his old friend DI Siobhan Clarke, Rebus is determined to solve this cold case once and for all. But Clarke has problems of her own, problems that will put her at odds with her long-time mentor and push him into seeking help from his age-old adversary: ‘Big Ger’ Cafferty.
This haunting story takes Rebus to places he has never been before, sets him and his long-time foe on a collision course and takes us deeper into one of the most satisfying conflicts in modern fiction.
