Thriller and Crime

Billy Summers

If you've never read King before, this might be the worst place to start (or the very best, who knows?). I realize that sounds like an introduction to a disappointed 1-star-review, but it's actually quite the opposite. Because what's so great about "Billy Summers" is that it defies every single expectation that you might have of a stereotypical action plot, of a crime story, of a "Stephen King novel". The danger as well as the appeal of coincidence in the life of an assassin serves as a big theme throughout. There are multiple occasions in which King toys with the directions Billy's story might take if it were to follow typical fictional structures, but then, just like that, he drops them. And the best thing about all that is: it still works. You're on the edge of your seat the entire time, waiting for it to finally go downhill. And it all comes together in the end - even if the place you'll find yourself in won't be the one where you expected the path to take you.

The Cuckoo's Calling

This is my favorite modern crime series. It combines complex characters who you want to be friends with and gripping plots in each and every volume - none have disappointed me in the slightest. Each time a new one comes out I'm glued to the couch and spend all my free time reading.
The Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling (Galbraith is a pseudonym) really knows her stuff!

Penance

Reading this book feels like going down a rabbit hole of internet research and ending up in deep, dark corners. "Penance" is an ingeniously multi-layered fictional true crime novel following the murder of a 17-year-old girl comitted by three fellow female students. In an account both fascinating and disturbing, a fictional journalist chronicles the events leading up to the murder in several parts, each focusing on one of the perpetrators. Interviews, local history, Tumblr posts and prose chapters create a rich portrait of the setting, people and relationships involved. It is a very difficult but engaging read. And here lies the crux of this novel which, at it's core, is a critique of true crime. Eliza Clark masterfully illuminates its harmful, exploitative sides and asks the question: how much of it is actually true?

The Hunting Party

The Hunting Party is an old-fashioned crime novel with a modern twist: a group of university friends get together in an isolated Scottish cottage for their annual New Year?s Eve party. All seems to be going well, until they?re snowed in and one of the guest goes missing...
Foley switches between narrators, gradually peeling back the curtain on the supposedly tight group of friends and opening up dark secrets. The diverse cast and their individual demons make all for excellent suspects and turn this wintry crime novel into a chilling treat.

Faithful Place

Regular readers of the English Bookshop's recommendations here will know there is little that binds us together better than a shared appreciation for Tana French's crime novels.

Faithful Place represents French at her very best. As always in her novels, she is every bit as (if not quite a lot more) interested in her characters than in wasting too much time on police procedure. Frank Mackey, the unconventional cop at the heart of this novel, crops up in other French books and is a well-balanced blend of the headstrong but human.
Recommending thrillers with mini-articles is always hard. I don't want to give away even the smallest spoilette so I will end this essay (perhaps mercifully) early by simply saying. If you don't know Tana French, you should and this is a great place to start!

The Thursday Murder Club

A lot of people seem to think that Agatha Christie is still the undefeated queen of crime fiction and to those people I always want to say: but where is the humour?! If you write cosy crime, surely the point is to be able to include a couple of jokes?
Since that is my point of view, I can't help but think, that Osman has possibly beaten her at her own game. This unlikely crew of sleuthing octogenerians trying to solve a string of murders in their posh retirement home made me cackle repeatedly. Of course it would be easier to solve crimes when your that age, just think how impertinent you can be! I'm taking one star off, just because the solution to the murders involved one soppy love story too many. Apart from that though, this is as delightful as cosy crime gets.

Agent Running in the Field

One probably shouldn't 'just' review books because their authors have died but John Le Carre's death at the end of 2020 seemed somehow to be one of those literary events that it is hard not to pitch in on.

I am no Le Carre obsessive - I have probably read around 10 of his novels, not more - but I would still describe myself as a fan. Why? Well I don't necessarily belong to those who think him a great writer to be immediately incorporated into the canon (if we believe in the canon at all). But I do think he is a spy novelist of rare skill, who for half a century was able to handle geopolitical trends in his books without the feeling that they saturate the human experience. ARITF was his last novel (published in his lifetime - you can bet your house an unfinished one will be found) and it is perhaps his angriest. A vicious attack on Trump, Brexit and modern nationalism, done with humour, humanity and more than a pinch of great plotting. RIP John Le Carre!

4.50 from Paddington

As children, my sister and I were absolutely obsessed with Agatha Christie books. Between us I am sure that we read (or listened to - many of the BBC adaptations are so good it is worth pushing them) everything she ever wrote, and to this day I often revisit them for comfort reading.
I have quite a few favourites and as an adult have come to reappraise my list quite extensively. There is however one book which always remains front and centre for me as one of the best, '4.50 from Paddington'. It is absolutely peak Marple and all the better for it. A friend of the spinster sleuth sees a woman being strangled in a compartment as her train passes another. Marple first has to work out where this could have happened before infiltrating a posh family to crack the case.
Marple books tend to less well known than Poirot ones, which I find deeply unfair as they are often better observed and frankly more fun. This is one of the best and well worth picking up to fend off the January blues!

The God of the Woods

There are certain novels that I come across rarely but think of as the holy grail of fiction: intelligently written but nonetheless absolutely gripping and readable. I manage to find one on average once a year so hats off to Liz Moore for earning that particular unofficial award this year! The story of the disappearance of two siblings fifteen years apart had me hooked from the very first chapter: multiple narrative strands, several narrators and an evocative setting all come together to make this a highly satisfying read. I can honestly recommend this without any reservations to just about anyone. Obama got it right once again.

Our Wives Under The Sea

There should probably be an argument made here that the journey is not about the destination, if Armfield's novel wasn't set up in a way that seems to suggest otherwise until the very last few pages. Switching between the perspectives of Miri, who recently got her wife back and is trying to find out why she came back different, and Leah, who is telling the story of her deep-sea mission gone awry, the crux of the story is the slow unravelling of the source of that trauma. So while I thoroughly enjoyed reading this high-tension study about loss and transformation, with a very interesting, "shape-of-water" -esque approach to the correlation between queerness and the sea, I couldn't help but be baffled by an ending that neither leaves things intentionally vague, nor manages to fully resolve anything. Nonetheless, this is a good book - but it had the potential to be great.

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