The crime novels of Scottish writer Denise Mina always have “cooler characters, more pitch-perfect dialogue,” and sharper insights about women’s place in society than most novels with loftier literary ambitions, said Jeff Giles in Entertainment Weekly. Field of Blood is still Mina’s best, but this new one introduces a “great, gloomy new” detective heroine and brings to life a working-class Muslim family whose Glasgow home is mistakenly targeted by two slow-witted kidnappers.
The Devil’s Star
by Jo Nesbø
(Harper, $26)
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole series “ranks with today’s best American crime fiction,” said Patrick Anderson in The Washington Post. The third Hole novel to make it to these shores resorts to some hoary plot conventions as Nesbø’s alcoholic Oslo detective hunts a theatrical serial killer. But you read the so-called bad boy of Scandinavian crime fiction for the quality of his writing, for the “wealth of detail,” and, mostly, for his wonderful sense of character. The Devil’s Star is “wildly readable.”
Elegy for April
by Benjamin Black
(Holt, $25)
A young female doctor goes missing in 1950s Dublin, and only her friend Phoebe and Phoebe’s pathologist dad seem to care, said Jonathan Messinger in Time Out Chicago. Though Irish novelist John Banville is working under his crime-genre pen name in this “slow-burning” mystery, the story’s concerns are “Banville through and through.” What he really cares about are how families endure crisis and how individuals respond to the pressures created by midcentury Ireland’s religious hang-ups.
“Imagine a young, cute Columbo” running around Rome and you’ll be able to picture police inspector Alec Blume, said Tina Jordan in Entertainment Weekly. Like his creator, Blume is a British expat living in the Eternal City. “When an animal-rights activist—and husband of a prominent Italian politician—is murdered,” the case falls to Blume, and readers are plunged into a mystery “that deftly weaves together corrupt politicians, organized crime, and centuries-old tradition.” A striking debut.
