American writer Dennis Lehane burst onto the crime scene with his hard-hitting debut A Drink Before the War (1994), the first of his Kenzie and Gennaro novels. That series probably hit its apex with one of Lehane’s best-known books (thanks to the movie version), Gone Baby Gone. These books, along with the standalone Mystic River,…
Christine Keighery comes from a long and successful career writing books for children and young adults into a decidedly adult book. The Half Brother, as the title suggests, sits firmly in the domestic thriller realm. That is, she takes recognisable social and family issues such as family breakdown, open relationships and forced adoption and explores…
Joanna Jenkins exposes men behaving badly in the world of corporate law and business in her debut novel How to Kill a Client. This is one of a number of recent crime books that seeks to explore how far we have come, or not come, in the pursuit of gender equality usually focussing on domestic…
There is a grand tradition of former spies going on to write spy novels – Ian Fleming and John Le Carre are probably two of the best known. But there are also authors like Stella Rimington (most recently – The Devil’s Bargain), Joe Weisberg (An Ordinary Spy and also The Americans TV series) and Jack…
The first book of Spanish author Juan Gómez-Jurado’s crime thriller trilogy, Red Queen (translated by Nick Caistor) demonstrates (if it needed demonstrating again) that English-speaking authors do not have a lock on any genre. That said, while absolutely referencing American serial killer and terrorist thrillers, the book series it seems to draw on most also…
True crime and true crime podcasts are having a moment, not only in the real world but also in fiction. However, in fiction, writers can start to get behind the obsession with true crime, the ethics of these investigations and the consequences, both good and bad, of reopening old cases. Rebecca Makkai’s new novel I…
The Australian western is having a bit of a renaissance and is, at the same time being reinvented. The modern Australian western seeks to question the mythology on which the country was built. It eschews the plucky settler narrative for something darker, particularly exploring the destructive effects of colonisation on Aboriginal Australians. Some recent examples…
Eleanor Catton shot to literary fame by becoming the youngest winner of the Booker Prize in 2013 for her luminous historical novel The Luminaries. Ten years later she returns with Birnam Wood, much more contemporary, no less New Zealand but at the same time just as universal, a deep exploration of humanity that transcends time…
Dominic Smith takes readers to Northern Italy in his sixth novel Return to Valetto and brings with him the richness and descriptive power that characterised his earlier novels. While his last couple of novels revolves around art and artists (The Last Painting of Sara de Vos and The Electric Hotel) they had an interest in…
Award winning Irish author Sebastian Barry deals with the stain on his country’s soul in his latest book Old God’s Time. But he does it in a roundabout way, taking his time to get there and delivering plenty of regret and tragedy along the way. It is the mid-1990s and Tom Kettle is a retired…
