Best crime thriller novels coming in 2024

Wild Houses by Colin Barrett

Barrett's short stories have been "gathering acclaim for the past decade", and now he has written his first novel, said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times. "Wild Houses" is a "thrillingly moreish novel with some of the sharpest dialogue I've read in any recent debut". 

Set in County Mayo, Ireland, small-time crooks have kidnaped "the younger brother of a local lad who owes them a few grand in drug debts", said Keiran Goddard in The Guardian. Barrett's plotting flashes forward to crisis points then rolls "the clock back to allow the reader to discover how things ended up that way". As a convention usually seen in thrillers, it's "executed here with an impressive lightness of touch".

Barrett is a "literary fiction writer who often writes about criminals", and crime fiction fans "may find the plot of 'Wild Houses' lacking in surprises", said Max Liu on the i news site, but there are "moments of palpable menace".

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Jonathan Cape £16.99; The Week bookshop £13.99

Butter by Asako Yuzuki  

This bestseller is tangentially based on the story of the Japanese woman Kanae Kijima, known as the Konkatsu Killer, who was convicted of murdering three male lovers after swindling them out of money. 

Yuzuki has taken the "bare bones" of Kijima's story and created an "exuberant, indulgent romp of a novel", said The Times. The book follows ambitious journalist Rika Machida, who becomes obsessed with convicted killer Manako Kajii, who lures men into paying for her cookery classes before murdering them, and visits her in prison. The pair's "constantly shifting power dynamic" sees Rita slip under the gastronomical spell of Kajii. 

The sociological analysis is sometimes "wearing", said the paper, but the book moves "seamlessly between an Angry Young Woman narrative and an engrossing detective drama and back again".

Fourth Estate, £14.99

The Best Way to Bury Your Husband by Alexia Casale

Alexia Casale's latest novel tells the "morbid, funny and sadly relevant" stories of four women in abusive relationships who are "pushed over the edge" during the pandemic lockdown and each murder their husbands, wrote The Washington Post. Left with the problem of how to dispose of the bodies, the four women serendipitously meet and help each other "clean up the evidence as well as unpack the baggage" of their respective years of abuse. Though the circumstances are extreme, the book reflects the issues faced by many women during that particular period, and "goes beyond the statistics to tell four very human stories".

Penguin Books 352pp £14.99

The Hunter by Tana French

Also set in the west of Ireland is the sequel to "The Searcher", by Tana French, the writer who "has become her own reliable industry of top-shelf crime thrillers", said The Washington Post. 

French returns to retired Chicago police detective Cal Hooper, who had moved to "the fictional West Irish village of Ardnakelty to rebuild his life", said Time. "The Hunter" is set two years on, when Cal and his girlfriend are acting as parental figures to local teenager Trey, who drew Cal into a missing person's case. Now Trey's "long-absent father" is back with a "scheme to find gold". However, "Trey's not happy to see him – and wants revenge". It is a "taut tale of retribution, sacrifice, and family".

This is sure to suit "anyone who loves dark, atmospheric mysteries", said the BBC.

Viking, £18.99

The Woman on the Ledge by Ruth Mancini

"Absolutely nothing is what it first appears" in this "revenge thriller", said The Guardian. Tate Kinsella, an unemployed actor who's temping in the City of London, was alone on a roof terrace with a woman subsequently found dead. 

The next day she is arrested for the "murder of someone she met for just a few hours", said the Belfast Telegraph. The book "skips back and forth as readers begin to put the pieces together" and the police start finding holes in Tate's story. "A clever idea and an even cleverer plot."

There are "several masterpieces of misdirection", added The Guardian, while Good Housekeeping thought it a "twisty mystery" that's "truly original".

Century, £14.99

To the Dogs by Louise Welsh

"To the Dogs" is a "campus novel" that "revolves around Professor Jim Brennan, an academic flying high at a university in Glasgow", said The Big Issue. As an "eminent criminologist" he has made a "glittering career out of sticking to the straight and narrow", said The Times. 

"Juxtaposing the worlds of academia and criminality", the novel sees Brennan stressed at work, with a son arrested on drugs charges, exposing him to "deeply unpleasant individuals from his own past", said the Financial Times. Welsh demonstrates her "usual unassailable command" of the "gritty Glaswegian setting" as well as a "fatalistic perception of how quickly ordered lives can spin into chaos".

Canongate Books, £16.99

Helle & Death by Oskar Jensen

This "highly diverting debut adult novel", said the FT, comes from children's author Oskar Jensen, who is "British with Scandinavian heritage". A group of old university friends, including "expat Danish art historian Torben Helle", is stranded in a house in Northumberland, "owned by one of their number, who has become a rich recluse", said The Guardian. 

The next morning the host is found dead, and "the group’s suspicions of each other mount as quickly as the snow falling outside", said The Guardian, in what the i news site called this "spine-chilling, Agatha Christie-esque whodunnit".

Profile Books, £16.99