The Rap Sheet

B&N Takes the Lead

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 21:15:00 +0000

Well, it was inevitable that this would happen sometime.

American bookseller Barnes & Noble is first out of the gate with its choices of the “best mystery and thriller books” released in the United States over the last 12 months. Among those 32 works you will find a collection of novellas, modern and historical yarns, one true-crime stunner, and half a dozen titles that aren’t yet available.

• All the Secrets, by May Cobb
(Sourcebooks Landmark)
• Bad Company, by Sara Paretsky (Minotaur)
• Big Little Truths, by Liane Moriarty (Crown)
• The Ending Writes Itself, by Evelyn Clarke (HarperCollins)
• The Final Problem, by Arturo Perez-
Reverte (Little, Brown)
• The Final Score, by Don Winslow (HarperCollins)
• Five, by Ilona Bannister (Crown)
• The French Illusion, by John Grisham (Doubleday)
• God’s Country, by William Kent Krueger (Atria)
• Heart of Glass, by Jennifer Hillier (Minotaur)
• Heather, by Caitlin Mullen (Celadon)
• Helpless, by Jessica Knoll (Scribner)
• How to Cheat Your Own Death, by Kristen Perrin (Dutton)
• It Could Have Been Her, by Lisa Jewell (Atria)
• The Keeper, by Tana French (Viking)
• London Station, by David McCloskey (Norton)
• Look What the Cat Dragged In, by Jason Rekulak (Flatiron)
• Mad Mabel, by Sally Hepworth (St. Martin’s Press)
• Miss Wolcott’s Ghost, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, by Lucy Foley (Morrow)
• The Murder at World’s End, by Ross Montgomery (HarperCollins)
• My Husband’s Wife, by Alice Feeney (Flatiron)
• Revenge Plot, by Stephanie Wrobel (Berkley)
• The Secret Dinner, by Raphael Montes (Celadon)
• This Changes Everything, by Lisa Scottoline (Grand Central)
• The Unknown, by Riley Sager (Dutton)
• Valley of the Moms, by Hannah Selinger (Little, Brown)
• A Violent Masterpiece, by Jordan Harper (Little, Brown)
• We Chase Shadows, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)
• Wolf Point, by Lisa Howells
(Grand Central)
• You’ll Be Sorry, by Lisa Gardner
(Grand Central)
• London Falling, by Patrick Radden
Keefe (Doubleday)

I’ve read only a few of these titles. There aren’t many surprise picks, which is no doubt due to the fact that Barnes & Noble is in the business of selling books, especially those from major publishers with substantial promotional budgets. Still, the works here that I have read stand a real shot at making my own list of 2026 favorites.

(Hat tip to Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine.)

Even More End-of-Year Enticements

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 18:36:00 +0000

I wasn’t in my office at the beginning of October, so failed to draw your attention to The Rap Sheet’s expanded fall-winter books list. More than two dozen additional titles have now found their way onto that roster, including Michael J. Malone’s The Cutting; Libby Fischer Hellmann’s Capital Partners; David Liss’ The Death and Birth of Iliana Marek; Ty Landers’ Baby Queen; Dan Jones’ new James Bond adventure, All In; Neil Albert’s 12th (perhaps final?) Dave Garrett private-eye novel, Last December; and Merry Murders on Bedford Square, a brand-new collection of Christmas-oriented short stories from editor Maxim Jakubowski.

To learn about those and many more works of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction to get you through this last quarter of 2026, click here.

A Life of Victories and Dishonor

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 03:24:00 +0000

First it was Peter May, now it’s Jeffrey Archer. I just returned to my office after a few days away to discover this news. From The Guardian:

Jeffrey Archer, the bestselling author and former MP whose political career ended in disgrace when he was imprisoned for perjury, has died at the age of 86.

Archer, who was a Conservative MP for five years before serving as the party’s deputy chair, died “suddenly and peacefully” at his home “between writing sessions” on Monday, his publisher HarperCollins said.

The newspaper goes on to quote Archer’s editor, Kate Elton, as saying:

“He was the master storyteller and an editor’s dream—phenomenally hard-working, utterly committed to completing draft after draft to get every word as perfect as possible, and a true champion of the team nature of great publishing.”

Archer’s death came just one day before the publication of his new novel, Adam and Eve, on Tuesday 6 October.

His first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, was published in 1976, two years after bankruptcy marked the end of his time as a sitting MP. This marked the beginning of an enviable writing career. Archer spent a total of 14 years and five months on the Sunday Times bestseller lists and over five years on the New York Times bestseller lists, selling 300 million books in 119 countries in 49 languages.

But as noted above, the London-born thriller writer did not live a high life of successes without scandal.

During a run to become mayor of London for the Conservatives in 1999, his political career was in effect ended when it emerged he had lied in court over a decade earlier when a newspaper accused him of paying money to a sex worker. He was convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice and imprisoned for four years.

An Old Bailey jury found that he had lied in a libel action he had brought against the Star newspaper in 1987 in which he had been awarded £500,000 in damages.

He was released early in 2003 and returned to the House of Lords until he retired in 2024.

I admit, I haven’t cracked open a Jeffrey Archer novel in many years. However, he clearly didn’t require my attention to prosper greatly. As The New York Times recalls in its own Archer obituary, the author “described himself as a storyteller, a qualification which he depicted as both unusual and the object of resentment.

“Storytellers are very rare, but they create a lot of envy,” Mr. Archer said in an interview with fellow author Anthony Horowitz for The Sunday Telegraph Magazine in 2011. “The people who survive are storytellers.”

The interview evoked some of the ambiguities and passions surrounding Mr. Archer’s work, which drew on themes such as power, rivalry, ambition and greed.

“I’m painfully aware that of the two writers in the room only one has an original Monet on the wall,” Mr. Horowitz wrote, referring to the location of the interview in his subject’s apartment. He noted that Mr. Archer’s 1979 novel, Kane & Abel, which sold more than 50 million copies since its publication in 1979, helped fund his art collection.

The Guardian adds that Archer’s demise, from causes not yet reported, “came less than 24 hours after [he] had met and signed books for hundreds of fans at a sold-out event with broadcaster Gyles Brandreth at the Leicester Square Theatre in central London on Sunday.”

READ MORE: “My Last Lunch with Jeffrey Archer and How He Changed My Life,” by Fraser Nelson (The Times); “Jeffrey Archer Firmly Believed His Final Novel Was His Best,” by Scott Heller (The New York Times); “Jeffrey Archer Dies: Bestselling Kane & Abel Author & Politician Was 86,” by Jake Kantner (Deadline).

Peter May Is Suddenly No More

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 17:44:16 +0000

I can hardly believe this to be true! Scottish playwright and screenwriter Janice Hally, the wife of award-winning novelist Peter May, posted word this morning on Facebook that May died on September 25 at age 74. She added this tribute from “his long-term [British] publisher and dear friend, Jon Riley”:

Riverrun, an imprint of the John Murray Group, has announced the sad news of the death of the Sunday Times bestselling Scottish crime writer Peter May, on Friday night at his holiday home in the south of France.

Peter May was one of the most popular, and loved writers of crime fiction of his generation, and his books have sold around 15 million copies around the world. The novel which he had announced would be his last, Island of the Dead, is to be published in January 2027.

May began his career as a journalist in Scotland, winning Young Journalist of the Year aged twenty-one, and published his first novel, The Reporter, in 1976, at the age of twenty-six. After it was adapted as a BBC drama series, he quit journalism for television, and in the fifteen years that followed he became a successful scriptwriter and producer on two seminal series, Take the High Road and the Gaelic-language, Isle of Lewis-set Machair. It was while working on location on Machair, that his love for the Hebrides, which informed and influenced so much of his writing, was formed.

He returned to fiction with a series of China-set thrillers, which was followed by the French-set Enzo Files, both of which featured characters who reflected his growing interest in forensic science. However, it was the publication of the Lewis-set thriller The Blackhouse in 2011, that brought international fame, and bestselling success, and resulted in The Lewis Trilogy. He published a bestseller almost every year between The Blackhouse and his last book, The Black Loch, in 2024. His writing will always be associated with the Isle of Lewis, and the Hebrides.

Peter published twenty-six books with Quercus, and his work was hugely successful in his adopted homeland of France, where his work garlanded many prestigious literary awards.

Peter was a talented musician, and in 2025 he released a CD,‘Towards the Light’, which reflected in song many of his interests as a novelist.

Although he had announced his retirement, which he was looking forward to sharing with his beloved wife, the writer Janice Hally, May found there was one more novel in him, and he delivered Island of the Dead in July this year. He was preparing for a farewell tour of Scotland and Lewis to coincide with publication in January 2027.

Peter May was not only one of the best writers of crime fiction we had, but he inspired enormous affection in his readers and in those lucky enough to work with him. His kindness, generosity and largeness of spirit, loyalty, engagement with life, and the world, made him a much-loved, as well as much-admired figure. He is irreplaceable.

I was fortunate enough to share dinner with May and his wife during a couple of his publicity tours to the States. He was delightful—funny, brilliant, and a real wine aficionado—and an evening spent in his company was guaranteed to be memorable. Like so many others, my discovery of Peter May’s novels began with The Blackhouse, and I kept reading them from then on. Between myself and Rap Sheet correspondent Ali Karim, we interviewed him twice, with the results posted here, here, and here. And May contributed a couple of essays to this page, one relating the background of his 2015 novel, Entry Island, and the other telling us about his work on 2016’s Runaway.

Peter May will be sorely missed, indeed.

FOLLOW-UP: May’s cause of death was not immediately reported. But according to Britain’s Daily Express newspaper, he “suffered a heart attack” after taking his dog, Daftie, out for an evening walk.

READ MORE: “‘Irreplaceable’ Crime Author Peter May Dies in South of France,” by Jane Bradley (The Scotsman); “Peter May Obituary,” by Brian Wilson (The Guardian).

Paring Down the Petronas

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 19:51:01 +0000

Just shy of a month since announcing their longlist of nominees for the 2026 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year, organizers have released a shortlist of only seven contenders:

• One True Word, by Snæbjörn Arngrímsson,
translated by Larissa Kyzer (Pushkin Vertigo, Iceland)
• Murder Tide, by Stella Blómkvist,
translated by Quentin Bates (Corylus, Iceland)
• Broken, by Jón Atli Jónasson,
translated by Quentin Bates (Corylus, Iceland)
• Into Thin Air, by Ørjan N Karlsson,
translated by Ian Giles (Orenda, Norway)
• The Writing in the Water, by John Ajvide Lindqvist,
translated by Michael Meigs (Amazon Crossing, Sweden)
• The Grave in the Ice, by Satu Rämö,
translated by Kristian London (Zaffre, Finland)
• The Winter Job, by Antti Tuomainen,
translated by David Hackston (Orenda, Finland)

The winning work is set to be revealed on October 22.

Revue of Reviewers: 9-22-26

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 22:03:00 +0000

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

“We All Have a Dark Side”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 20:48:00 +0000

Yeah, I’d pay good money to see this. From Mashable:

Helen Mirren stars as legendary novelist Patricia Highsmith in A Talent for Murder, and we’re dangerously seduced by the trailer ... Directed by Anton Corbijn and written by Joanna Murray-Smith, the film sees Alden Ehrenreich (Weapons, Solo) as Edward Ridgeway, a man sent by his New York publisher to Switzerland to convince the Talented Mr. Ripley author to pen one last masterpiece in her all-important Ripley series. The thing is, someone from the publisher has already been sent on the mission and nobody’s heard from him since. And there are an awful lot of guns and knives around Highsmith's home ...

But Highsmith intends to give Ridgeway one night to show her he can “inhabit the mind of a killer,” before she puts anything down in print. And so, the pair play Highsmith-style crime writing 101. First up? They’ll need to find their mark, a dazzling female lead with a dazzling female name—Clementine Harriet Balfour (House of the Dragon’s Olivia Cooke)—who’s “destined for money” from her great aunt.

But the longer Ridgeway plays the Ripley game with Highsmith, the darkness of her literature threatens to get very real.

A Talent for Murder is set to debut in U.S. theaters on Friday, October 23. Mashable has the trailer here.

A Master of Small-Town Procedurals

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 14:19:00 +0000

Steven F. Havill, best known for his long-running series of mysteries set in fictional Posadas County, New Mexico, died on August 27 “after a bout with bone cancer.” He was 81 years old.

An online obituary—colorful and detailed enough that some suspect he wrote it himself—recounts his growing up in New York, his education and early employment, his marriage and move to New Mexico, his career as a teacher of biology and English, his step into writing fiction (both westerns and police procedurals), and his willingness to be bribed with chocolate-chip cookies. It says that Havill enjoyed “a life defined by curiosity, ‘people watching,’ hard work paid and volunteered, with a deep commitment to helping young people.”

I wasn’t aware of Havill’s passing until yesterday, when critic and blogger Lesa Holstine alerted me via e-mail. Her fine blog, Lesa’s Book Critiques, features many reviews of his work over the years. She added in her note, “I know I’m going to miss those books.”

Crawford’s on a Winning Streak

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 00:32:00 +0000

Two awards were presented this evening during the 2026 Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival, but there was only a single recipient. That’s because A Bad, Bad Place (Bantam), Glasgow first-novelist Frances Crawford’s “gritty and poignant” story of a 12-year-old working-class girl who stumbles across the corpse of a murdered woman, picked up not only the 2026 Bloody Scotland Debut Prize, but also the latest McIlvanney Prize for “best Scottish Crime book of the year.” Crawford thereby becomes the first double winner in the history of these annual commendations.

The Scotsman quotes author Denise Mina, who served as this year’s Bloody Scotland guest programmer, as calling A Bad, Bad Place “a novel of profound depth and scope. Insightful, harrowing and very funny, it deals with the reality of violent crime and its impact on many victims. This is a spectacular debut from a wonderful new voice.”

In addition to Crawford’s novel, four others were shortlisted for the 2026 McIlvanney Prize, which honors Scottish fictionist William McIlvanney: The Hollow Boys, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper); 138 Main Street, by Gavin Bell (Simon & Schuster UK); The Diary of Lies, by Philip Miller (Polygon); and The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin (Viper).

Meanwhile, A Bad, Bad Place competed for the Debut Prize with a quartet of works, all of them also penned by women: Original Sins, by Linda Duncan McLaughlin (Into Books); We Know What You Did, by Kirsty Lockwood (Orion); The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin (Viper); and Liar Thief, by May Rinaldi (Black Spring Crime).

I could kick myself for not having yet read Crawford’s novel, especially as it previously captured the McDermid Debut Award at July’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, England. Well, time to go dig up the book post haste ...

Criminal Comforts for the Closing Months

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 16:21:00 +0000

Christmas arrives awfully early in the world of books. It’s only September, with Halloween and Thanksgiving still far off; yet for this latest list of seasonal crime and mystery releases, I have already collected the titles of numerous holiday-related works due out over the final four months of 2026. Those include offerings such as Elly Griffiths’ new novella, The Case of the Christmas Card, Andreina Cordani’s The Murders of Christmas Past (her second Ebenezer Scrooge mystery), Denzil Meyrick and Ian Moore’s The Mistletoe Wedding Murders (completed by Moore after Meyrick’s demise in early 2025), Alexandra Benedict’s The Advent of Death, and Otto Penzler’s Christmas Mysteries at The Mysterious Bookshop, together with reprinted older novels on the order of Susan Gilruth’s Death in Ambush, Jonathan Stagge’s Call a Hearse, and Mavis Doriel Hay’s The Santa Klaus Murder.

You might not be surprised to learn that all this looking ahead has had one benefit: It’s made me begin my holiday gift-buying early!

Of course, most of the crime fiction expected to reach the market between now and New Year’s Day isn’t directly associated with end-of-the-year celebrations. Among the roughly 400 selections to be discovered below are fresh works by the late James Sallis, Clare Mackintosh, S.A. Cosby, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir, Chris Hammer, Lyndsay Faye, Walter Mosley, Laura Joh Rowland, Richard Osman, Sara Paretsky, Jørn Lier Horst, Simon Kernick, Tara Laskowski, and Peter Swanson (whose Do You See What I See? novella actually boasts a Yuletide peg, too). Michael Koryta has a historical gangster thriller rolling out later this month titled Die Famous. Ann Cleeves’ fourth Matthew Venn outing, Dying Light, goes on sale in the States a week after that (with a UK edition slated for publication in early October). Japanese author Keigo Higashino may have perished from colorectal cancer in July, but his fans can anticipate seeing two new books from his pen over the next couple of months: a science-fiction mystery titled Laplace’s Witch, and a standalone puzzler, The Dark Magician. Joe R. Lansdale will make yet another Hap and Leonard tale, Petrified Dreams, available, while his daughter, Kasey, debuts with the gripping First Chance. Fall From Grace launches a London-set private-eye series from Nigerian-born fictionist Leye Adenle (Easy Motion Tourist). And Mariah Fredericks follows up 2025’s The Girl in the Green Dress with another delightful whodunit set in early 20th-century New York, Murder on 34th Street (which, now that I think about it, also uses Christmas as a backdrop!).

Keep your eyes peeled for the forthcoming appearance of Michael Connelly’s The Hollow, the latest of his Harry Bosch novels, due out in late October (or early November, if you live in Great Britain). Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, Lucy Foley’s opening installment in her continuation of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple mysteries, should reach shops on both sides of “the pond” about a week after that—around the same time Charlie Higson’s second James Bond adventure for adults, King Zero, hits shops. Ian Rankin has his first standalone thriller in 20 years, The Heights, set to reach British readers in October (and American fans a month later). Donna Freitas follows up last year’s feminist thriller, Her One Regret, with the traumatic tale of a missing girl, Wolves of Summer. Edward Marston, most recently renowned for his stories about Victorian-era “Railway Detective” Robert Colbeck, brings that line to a halt with the 25th, The Corpse on the Bristol Train. This is the season, as well, to welcome the late Australian author Kerry Underwood’s 23rd and final Phryne Fisher historical mystery, Murder in the Cathedral. Max Allan Collins celebrates 50 years (!) of producing yarns about Quarry, his mononymous killer-for-hire, with Quarry’s Reunion. From Amanda Flower comes The First Ladies’ Guide to Murder, the opening chapter in a succession of investigations starring White House wives, this one at least featuring Frances Folsom Cleveland and Julia Dent Grant. The Odessa Assassin, a second addition to Frederick Forsyth’s Odessa series—published more than a year after his passing—was completed by criminal barrister-turned-writer Tony Kent. And speaking of posthumous releases, Canadian Alan Bradley (who perished in May) tees up a 12th case for Flavia de Luce in Numb Were the Beadsman’s Fingers.

Beyond such new novels, we can look forward to original short-story collections (Sherlock, for instance, which comprises 10 Holmes cases by Anthony Horowitz, Kate Mosse, Abir Mukherjee, Sarah Perry, and others), plus crime-related works of non-fiction. Among those are three memoirs: one by the daughter of The Avengers siren Diana Rigg; another by prolific actor James Hong (familiar for his roles in The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, Jigsaw John, and Chinatown); and the third from the desk of ex-Twin Peaks G-man Kyle MacLachlan. Soon to be obtainable, too, are Sleuth-Hound, a biography of surgeon Joseph Bell, Arthur Conan Doyle’s model for Sherlock Holmes; and Spies on Screen, Paul Burke’s guide to espionage films of the modern era.

Despite the following selection of fall-winter debuts running to more than 400 titles, there are doubtless others I have neglected to highlight. Certainly the December categories are lacking. But don’t worry, I shall add to and update this catalogue over the next three and a half months. Non-fiction works are identified here with asterisks (*); the rest are novels or short-story compilations.

SEPTEMBER (U.S.):
• Against the Tide, by G.D. Wright (Avon)
• The Alchemist of All Hallows Eve, by Gigi Pandian (Gargoyle Girl)
• Angel, by LJ Ross (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Backwater, by James Sallis (Soho Crime)
• A Beautiful Lie, by Tanya Grant (Berkley)
• Before You Were Anne, by Emiko Jean (Simon & Schuster)
• The Bestseller, by Jenny Knightsby (Mountain Leopard Press)
• Beyond Honor, by K.B. Brodsky (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• The Big Cats Dance Party, by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon)
• Blood on the Wind, by Peter Tremayne (Severn House)
• Buried in the Woods Below, by Daniel G. Miller (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Christmas at the Convent, by A.M. Stuart (Oportet)
• A Christmas Guide to Family and Murder, by Dianne Freeman (Kensington)
• Christmas Mysteries at The Mysterious Bookshop, edited by Otto Penzler (Mysterious Press)
• Children of the Wolf, by Abby
Geni (Ballantine)
• The Confession at Friday Harbor, by D.D. Black (Darkness and Light)
• The Crime Machine: The Jack Ritchie Stories from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (1957-61), edited by
Jeff Vorzimmer (Stark House Press)
• Dance in a Madhouse, by Jess Wright (Montague)
• Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe, by Emily Ogden (Viking)*
• The Dating Game, by Ally Zetterberg (Berkley)
• A Deadly Entanglement, by Cathy Pegau (Minotaur)
• Deadly Secrets, by Peter O’Mahoney (Thomas & Mercer)
• Death on a Lively Sea, by Katy Watson (Constable)
• Deception, by Alan Parks (Pegasus Crime)
• Detective Duff Unravels It, by Harvey O’Higgins (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Die Famous, by Michael Koryta (Little, Brown)
• A Double Life: The Anatomy of a Premeditated Murder, by Mikita Brottman (Citadel)*
• Driven, by Mason Coile (Putnam)
• The Dying Light, by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur)
• Exit Party, by Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf)
• The Eye of Goliath, by Diego Muzzio (Pushkin Press)
• Faculty of Liars, by R.L. Heber (Point Blank)
• The Fallen Angel, by Andy Maslen (Thomas & Mercer)
• Fast Company, by Marco Page (Penzler/American Mystery Classics)
• Fictional Selves: A Memoir, by Kyle MacLachlan (Crown)*
• A Field Guide to Death and Deceit, by Michelle L. Cullen
(Crooked Lane)
• Fighting Edge, by Margaret Mizushima (Crooked Lane)
• First Chance, by Kasey Lansdale (Blackstone)
• The French Illusion, by John Grisham (Doubleday)
• The Garden of Sin, by M.G. Phillips (Pulp Thrills Press)
• The Getaway, by Kieran Scott (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Ghost and the Dead Librarian, by Cleo Coyle (Kensington Cozies)
• Ghost Barn, by John Verdon (Counterpoint)
• The Girl With Seven Lives, by Vikas Swarup (Pegasus)
• The Grand Canyon Black Widower, by Vincent Manileve (Crime Ink)*
• Guns Across the River, by Sam Wiebe (Harbour)
• Hidden Currents, by Claire Booth (Severn House)
• How to Write a Murder, by Jessica Brody (Bantam)
• I’ll Be Watching You, by Allison Brennan (Hanover Square Press)
• I Should Have Stayed Home, by Horace McCoy (Stark House Press)
• I Think We Should Kill Other People, by L.M. Chilton (Gallery/
Scout Press)
• It’s Not What You Think, by Clare Mackintosh (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• The Judas Window, by Carter Dickson (Poisoned Pen Press)
• A Killer for Christmas, by Kim Harrington (Crooked Lane)
• The Killing Yards, by Jason Allison (Crooked Lane)
• The Lady Was a Tramp: The Pat Raffigan Stories, by Harry Whittington (Stark House Press)
• Laplace’s Witch, by Keigo Higashino (Avocado House)
• Last December, by Neil Albert (Independently published)
• Laws of Solomon, by Eriq La Salle (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Lie to Me, by D.S. Butler (Thomas & Mercer)
• London Station, by David McCloskey (Norton)
• Main Street Fringe, by Matthew Lavoie (Level Best)
• A Map to Murder, by Michelle Chouinard (Minotaur)
• The Midnight Guests, by Alex Hay (Hanover Square Press)
• The Most Dangerous Games, by MrBeast and James Patterson (Morrow)
• Mother Daughter Sister Stranger, by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Minotaur)
• Mother May I, by Harry Hunsicker (Oceanview)
• The Munich Affair, by James Patterson and David Ellis (Little, Brown)
• Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, by Lucy Foley (Morrow)
• Murder in St. James’s Park, by Vanessa Riley (Severn House)
• Murder in Surety, by Anne Cleeland (Anne Cleeland)
• Murder on the Cornish Train, by J.M. Hall (Hodder Paperbacks)
• Murder on the Sacred River, by Tasha Alexander (Minotaur)
• Murder on the Upper East Side, by Gigi Waldorf (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Murder on Threadneedle Street, by Andrea Penrose (Kensington)
• A Murmuration of Starlings, by Steve Burrows (Dundurn Press)
• The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2026, edited by Tess Gerritsen (Mysterious Press)
• The Mystic and the Missing Girl, by Vikki VanSickle (Minotaur)
• Nancy Drew Collection, by Carolyn Keene (Canterbury Classics)
• Night Calls, by Joe Hart (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Ninth Circle, by James R. Benn (Soho Crime)
• No Song for the Dead, by Jussi Adler-Olsen, Stine Bolther, and Line Holm (Dutton)
• One Split Second, by Robert Dugoni (Thomas & Mercer)
• Only the River Knows, by Linda Norlander (Severn River)
• An Ordinary House, by Rae Starling (Hera)
• Our Noble Selves, by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday)
• The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies, by Kate Westbury (Minotaur)
• A Past Without Pictures, by Jonathan Ames (Mysterious Press)
• Peg and Rose Deck the Halls, by Laurien Berenson (Kensington Cozies)
• Plot Twist: Life, Craft, and the Messy First Draft: A Memoir on Writing, by Harlan Coben (Grand Central)*
• Pound Foolish, by Christopher Harris (Cumulative Press)
• Promised Land, by Henry Wise (Atlantic Crime)
• Quant, by Anthony Bidulka (Bon Vivant)
• Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War’s Most Extraordinary Spy, by Ben Macintyre (Crown)*
• The Refuge, by Carly Hillman (Crooked Lane)
• Sanctuary, by Garry Disher (Mysterious Press)
• Second Nature, by Joyce Carol Oates (Hard Case Crime)
• She’ll Be Dead by Morning / The Blonde Died First, by Dana Chambers (Stark House Press)
• Siblings, Love, & Murder, by David E. Feldman (EFace Media)
• Sideshow, by Dana King (Independently published)
• The Silent Appeal, by Janice Hallett (Atria)
• Songs of Saigon, by Ed Teja (Float Street Press)
• Stop Dead, by Katrin Júlíusdóttir (Orenda)
• Target Down, by Ryan Steck (Tyndale Fiction)
• Tear the City Down, by Andre Hardy (Grand Central)
• Tell Two Friends, by Ann Garvin (Lake Union)
• The Tembusu Tree Mystery, by Ovidia Yu (Constable & Robinson)
• Ten Perfect Guests, by Jonathan Santlofer (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• Those Who Are Gone, by Laurie R. King (Bantam)
• Three Days Gone, by Charly Cox (Hera)
• Threefold Death, by Victoria Dowd (Datura)
• Untamed Coast, by Kevin C. Morris (Ballantine)
• Until She Dies, by Kendra Elliot (Montlake)
• The Vanished Sister, by Sherry Thomas (Berkley)
• We Chase Shadows, by Richard Osman (Pamela Dorman)
• Where the Truth Lies, by Rupert Holmes (Avid Reader Press)
• You Let Me In, by Lucy Clarke (Atlantic Crime)
• You’ve Seen Me Before: Over 700 roles and 70 Years in Hollywood (And Counting), by James Hong and Jeff Yang (Atria)*

SEPTEMBER (UK):
• Afternoon Hours of a Hermit, by Patrick Cottrel (And Other Stories)
• The Agatha Christie Cure: What Reading the Queen of Crime Taught Me About Life, by Cathy Rentzenbrink (Canongate)*
• All About My Mother, by Rachael Stirling (John Murray)*
• Bad Intentions, by Iliana Xander (Penguin)
• The Boy, by Mark Gyves (No Exit Press)
• The Chase, by Felix Francis (Zaffre)
• The Classic Crime Companion, by Martin Edwards (British Library)*
• Code Brown: Police Custody, Medicine and Violent Outbursts, by R.J. Emery (Pegasus)*
• A Cold Harbour, by Lynne McEwan
(Canelo Crime)
• Cold Sunset, by William Boyd (Viking)
• The Cornish Halloween Murder, by Fiona Leitch (One More Chapter)
• Crash and Burn, by Alison Bruce (Constable)
• A Curious Ending, by Sally Page (HarperFiction)
• The Cutting, by Michael J. Malone (Orenda)
• Deadly Vintage, by Lyle Nicholson (Vinci)
• Eat, Drink and Be Murdered: A Feast of Fatal Fare, edited by Martin Edwards (British Library Crime Classics)
• The Enforcer, by Carol Hellier (Boldwood)
• Fall From Grace, by Leye Adenle (Simon & Schuster UK)
• Full Circle, by Chris Hammer (Wildfire)
• Galway’s Edge, by Ken Bruen (Head of Zeus/Aries)
• A Game of Cat and Killer, by Jiro Akagawa (MacLehose Press)
• Hail Mary, by Elizabeth Urso (Rising Action)
• The House Swap, by Keri Beevis (Boldwood)
• The Jealous Girl, by Alex Stone (Boldwood)
• King Zero, by Charlie Higson (Michael Joseph)
• The Langdale Legacy, by Rebecca Tope (Allison & Busby)
• The Last Gifts to the Dead, by Allan Gaw (Polygon)
• The Last Tenant, by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir (Orenda)
• Listen to Me, by Alison Stockham (Boldwood)
• The Liverpool Killings, by Simon McCleave (Canelo Crime)
• Music to Die For at the Seaview Hotel, by Glenda Young (Headline)
• No One Is Safe, by Simon Kernick (Headline)
• No Place Left, by Sean Watkin (Canelo Crime)
• Officer Shimada and the Disappearing Girl, by Will Ferguson
(Goose Lane Editions)
• One Berlin Day, by Chris Humphreys (Allison & Busby)
• Pride, Prejudice and Peril, by Jessica Bull (Michael Joseph)
• The Restless Bones, by Kerry Watts (Embla)
• The Riptide, by Gareth Rubin (Simon & Schuster UK)
• Robert B. Parker’s Booked, by Alison Gaylin (No Exit Press)
• Seething Lane, by Jack Jewers (Moonflower)
• Serenity Falls, by C.J. Tudor (Michael Joseph)
• Skin and Bones, by Tom Bale (Boldwood)
• Someone Just Followed You, by Liane Child (HQ Digital)
• Surface, by Olivier Norek (Open Borders Press)
• Tell Me Something True, by Michael Robotham (Sphere)
• The Vineyard Murder, by Greg Mosse (Hodder Paperbacks)
• The Wellness Retreat, by Dawn Kurtagich (Hanover Square Press)

OCTOBER (U.S.):
• Adam & Eve, by Jeffrey Archer (HarperCollins)
• Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery, edited by Lucy Rowland and Martin Edwards (Rizzoli Electa)*
• Antiques Web, by Barbara Allan (Severn House)
• Bark Humbug, by David Rosenfelt (Minotaur)
• The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2026, edited by Megan Abbott (Mariner)
• The Best True Crime Stories of the Year 2026, edited by Jim Clemente (Crime Ink)*
• The Betrayal of Cora Wexford, by Bethany Joy Lenz (Simon & Schuster)
• Blood on the Snow, by Alex Pine (Avon)
• The Bone Woman, by Paige Shelton (Crooked Lane)
• Bury the Wren, by Carlene O’Connor (Kensington)
• Capital Partners, by Libby Fischer Hellmann (Elizabeth F. Hellmann)
• The Case of the Constant Suicides, by John Dickson Carr (Penzler/American
Mystery Classics)
• Chain Reaction, by Lee Child and Andrew Child (Bantam)
• The Chapel of Bones, by Kate Ellis (Piatkus)
• The Christmas Stocking Murders, by Denzil Meyrick
(Poisoned Pen Press)
• The Claus Conspiracy, by Tamara Berry (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Dark Country, by Adam Plantinga (Grand Central)
• Dead Before Tea Time, by M.C. Beaton with R.W. Green (Minotaur)
• The Death and Birth of Iliana Marek, by David Liss (Tachyon)
• Death by Misadventure, by Jane Bitomsky (Lake Union)
• Death Down the Aisle, by Colleen Cambridge (Kensington)
• Death in Ambush: A Lost Christmas Murder Mystery, by Susan Gilruth (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Death on the Pearl River, by A.E Goldin (Pushkin Vertigo)
• D: Heavy Water, by Neal Stephenson (Morrow)
• Do You See What I See? by Peter Swanson (Morrow)
• Dramatic Murder: A Lost Christmas Murder Mystery, by Elizabeth Anthony (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Ebenezer Scrooge: Ghost Hunter, by J.S. Barnes (Titan)
• The Family Cross, by James Patterson (Little, Brown)
• The Ferryman’s Daughter, by Yasmin Angoe (Thomas & Mercer)
• Final Copy, by Robert Douglas Friedman (Stark House Press)
• Find Me Nowhere, by Andrew Klavan (Mysterious Press)
• The Foreign Correspondent’s Wife, by Jenna Helwig (Crooked Lane)
• Framing the Clue-Puzzle: The Paratextual Voice in Golden Age Detective Fiction, by Zi-Ling Yan (Anthem Press)*
• A Girl from Ohio, by Peter Golden (Lake Union)
• The Girl in the Lake, by James Patterson and Brian Sitts
(Little, Brown)
• A Good, Hard Slap, by Catherine Bator (BookBaby)
• Hanging and Burning, by Walter Mosley (Little, Brown)
• The Hollow, by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
• Holmes Away From Home, by Samantha Larsen (Severn House)
• Home for the Homicides, by Elle Cosimano and Hannah Morrissey (Minotaur)
• Jay to the World, by Donna Andrews (Minotaur)
• Joy to the Bones, by Carolyn Haines (Minotaur)
• The Key to a Killer, by Olivia Blacke (Minotaur)
• Knit One, Heist One, by Donna Moore (No Exit Press)
• Last Looks, by Cate Holahan (Thomas & Mercer)
• Look What the Cat Dragged In, by Jason Rekulak (Flatiron)
• Loose Arrows, by Lynn Horton (GFB)
• Miss Wolcott’s Ghost, by Louise Penny (Minotaur)
• Murder at Pellhurst Pond, by Clara McKenna (Kensington)
• Murder on 34th Street, by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur)
• Murdle Heist: 56 Clever Capers to Crack with Logic, by G.T. Karber (St. Martin’s Griffin)
• My Darling Girls, by Marina Scott (Lake Union)
• The Nurse at Baker Hospital, by Jocelyn Cullity (Regal House)
• The Occidental Book of the Dead, by T. Geronimo Johnson (Morrow)
• The Paris Files, by Eva Jurczyk (Pamela Dorman)
• Petrified Dreams, by Joe R. Lansdale (Little, Brown)
• The Phantom: The Untold Story of the American Marine the Nazis Could Not Kill, by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin (St. Martin’s Press)*
• Please Enjoy Your Stay, by Tara Goedjen (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• The Pope’s Hitman, by J.M. Berger (Crooked Lane)
• Queen of Lombard Street, by Lisa Kleypas (Avon)
• Raven, by Lyndsay Faye (Mysterious Press)
• A Reunion to Die For, by KJ Whittle (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• Resurrection Kill, by Laura Joh Rowland (Crooked Lane)
• Return to Breakneck Island, by Tom Ryan (Atlantic Crime)
• The River Runs Black, by Tessa Wegert (Severn House)
• The Secret Garden Murders, by J.R. Ellis (Thomas & Mercer)
• Serial Killer Wanted, by Nika Grace (Crooked Lane)
• A Serving of Hope, by Hisashi Kashiwai (Putnam)
• A Shadow of Jaguars, by D.C. Frost (Canis Major)
• She Dies in the End, by Elle Marr (Thomas & Mercer)
• Sleepers in the Snow, by Joanne Harris (Pegasus Crime)
• Sleuth-Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes, by Lindsey Fitzharris (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)*
• The Spiral, by Rosanne Limoncelli (Crooked Lane)
• Split Screen, by Lee Goldberg (Thomas & Mercer)
• Taxi Dancer, by Marivi Soliven (Red Hen Press)
• The 10:12, by Anna Maloney (Harper Perennial)
• This Wild Desire / The Sex Pros, by Orrie Hitt (Stark House Press)
• Trust No One, by Mary Burton (Montlake)
• Truth to Power, by S.A. Cosby (Hyperion Avenue)
• ’Twas the Night, by Kevin Johnson (Morrow)
• Twenty Plus Two, by Frank Gruber (Stark House Press)
• An Unlikely Visitor, by Joanna Cannon (Scribner)
• Walking on White, by Jennifer Graeser Dornbush (Blackstone)
• Where the Road Ends, by Brian Freeman (Blackstone)
• Where There’s Smoke, by Rachel Louise Adams (Minotaur)
• The Witch, by Freida McFadden (Poisoned Pen Press)
• Wolf Season, by Wesley King (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• You Let Me In, by Lucy Clarke (Atlantic Crime)

OCTOBER (UK):
• The ABC of Murders: An A-Z of Death in Agatha Christie, by Tom Racine (HarperCollins)*
• Call a Hearse: A Lost Christmas Murder Mystery, by Jonathan Stagge (British Library Crime Classics)
• A Carol and a Killing, by Reverend Richard Coles (W&N)
• The Case of the Christmas Card, by Elly Griffiths (Quercus)
• The Christmas Carol Killer, by Chris Frost (HarperNorth)
• The Cold Shore, by Rachel Amphlett (Saxon)
• The Corpse on the Bristol Train, by Edward Marston (Allison & Busby)
• A Dartmoor Christmas Card Murder, by Stephanie Austin
(Allison & Busby)
• Dead in Three Two One, by Peter James (Macmillan)
• The Deadly Inheritance of Everest Macdonald, by A.J. West (Orenda)
• Death at the Elephant House, by Paul Waters (No Exit Press)
• Death on Holly Island, by F.L. Everett (Penguin)
• Death on the Royal Yacht, by Sophia Bennett (Zaffre)
• Dublin Rebel, by Stephanie Harte (Boldwood)
• The Fifteenth Man, by William Cook (Viper)
• The First Mistake, by Sarah Ward (Canelo Crime)
• The Frozen Carriage, by Rachel McLean (Ackroyd)
• The Glowing Man, by Andrew Raymond (Vinci)
• The Golden Age of Classic Crime Quiz Book: Over 500 Questions, Puzzles and Mysteries Inspired by the Best of Detective Fiction, by Kate Jackson (British Library)
• Gravity Let Me Go, by Trent Dalton (Borough Press)
• The Heights, by Ian Rankin (Orion)
• Honour, by Heather Atkinson (Boldwood)
• Keep No Secrets, by J.M. Dalgliesh (Penguin)
• Leicester Square, by Louisa Scarr (Canelo Crime)
• The Lightning Girl, by Sam Ripley (Simon & Schuster UK)
• The Man with the Golden Compass, by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre)
• Mayhem, by Keith Moray (Boldwood)
• Merry Murders on Bedford Square, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Bedford Square)
• The Midmorning Murders, by Julian Clary (Orion)
• The Murders of Christmas Past, by Andreina Cordani (Zaffre)
• Murder on the Haunted Express, by Emma Mason (Bantam)
• The Murder Planner, by L.C. Tyler
(Allison & Busby)
• The Museum Detectives’ Christmas Mystery, by Jim Eldridge (Allison & Busby)
• The Nancys and the Secret of Tulip Farm, by R.W.R McDonald (Orenda)
• Operation Vienna, by Michael Ridpath (Boldwood)
• The Reckoning, by Vikki Petraitis (Simon & Schuster UK)
• Rogue Agency, by L.D. Sharpe (Constable)
• The Santa Klaus Murder: A Christmas Crime Story, by Mavis Doriel Hay (British Library Crime Classics)
• The Secret Thread, by Eve Chase (Penguin)
• The Shadows of Kensington Gore, by Ross Montgomery (Viking)
• Silent Embers, by John Carson (Boldwood)
• Spies on Screen: From Silent to Streaming, by Paul Burke (Oldcastle)*
• The Stretch, by Martina Cole (Headline)
• Suffer in Silence, by Graham Masterton (Head of Zeus/Aries)
• There Are No Happy Endings, by Bryan J. Mason (Black Comedy
Crime Press)
• The Thicket, by Noelle W. Ihli (Pan)
• The Thief and the Labyrinth, by Alys Clare (Severn House)
• Watch the Quiet Snow, by Mick Herron (Baskerville)
• You Are Mine, by Alex Lake (HarperCollins)

NOVEMBER (U.S.):
• All In, by David Baldacci (Grand Central)
• All the Little Secrets, by May Cobb (Sourcebooks Landmark)
• Baby Queen, by Ty Landers (Harper Perennial)
• Bad Company, by Sara Paretsky (Minotaur)
• Bear Brawl, by Jon Finkel (Blackstone)
• The Body in the Bath, by Ragnar Jónasson (Minotaur)
• The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito, by Erle Stanley Gardner (Penzler/American Mystery Classics)
• Cold Blade, by Matt Goldman (Severn House)
• The Cold Read, by Tara Laskowski (Park Row)
• Cold Sunset, by William Boyd (Atlantic Crime)
• The Collateral Heart, by Jeffery Deaver (Putnam)
• Conspiracy Theory, by Phillip Margolin (Minotaur)
• The Dark Magician, by Keigo Higashino (Tuttle)
• The Favorite Girl, by Monica Arya (Simon Maverick)
• The First Ladies’ Guide to Murder, by Amanda Flower (Kensington)
• Gideon’s Ring, by Carin Gerhardsen (Mysterious Press)
• The Gift, by Freida McFadden (Poisoned Pen Press)
• A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Living Twice, by Maxie Dara (Berkley)
• Have Courage: Longmire Stories, by Craig Johnson (Viking)
• The Heist Before Christmas, by Lucy Score (Bloom)
• Home Truths, by Paul Gitsham (Straw Hat Crime)
• Killer Abyss, by Sara Driscoll (Kensington)
• The Killing Time, by Elly Griffiths (Pamela Dorman)
• King Zero, by Charlie Higson (Blackstone)
• The Lost Souls of Saint Oda’s, by Jess Armstrong (Minotaur)
• The Marked Son, by Simon Gervais and Ryan Steck (Thomas & Mercer)
• The Mark of Moriarty, by Jack Anderson (Crooked Lane)
• Midnight in the House of Commons, by Charles Finch (Minotaur)
• Mirror Image, by Lauren E. Rico (Thomas & Mercer)
• Murder in the Cathedral, by Kerry Greenwood (Poisoned Pen Press)
• A Murder in Belgravia, by Irina
Shapiro (Storm)
• The Murder Trial, by James Patterson and Nancy Allen (Little, Brown)
• Numb Were the Beadsman’s Fingers, by Alan Bradley (Bantam)
• On the Killer’s Trail, by Alice Openshaw (Crooked Lane)
• The Party in the Woods, by Fiona McPhillips (Flatiron/Pine & Cedar)
• Quarry’s Reunion, by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime)
• Revenge Plot, by Stephanie Wrobel (Berkley)
• The Riddle Maker, by Bruce Borgos (Minotaur)
• Robert B. Parker’s Framed, by Mike Lupica (Putnam)
• The Runner, by Scarlett Thomas (Simon & Schuster)
• A Scrooge Mystery, by Andreina Cordani (Pegasus Crime)
• The Session, by Andrew Mayne (Thomas & Mercer)
• Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Murders, by Stuart
Douglas (Titan)
• Some Day I’ll Kill You / Too Like the Lightning, by Dana Chambers (Stark House Press)
• Split Second: Thirty-Two Switcheroo, by Janet Evanovich (Atria)
• The Sunday Woman, by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini
(NYRB Classics)
• The Taken Ones, by J.A. Jance (Morrow)
• The Taper Man, by Nick Harkaway (Viking)
• Thunderbird Ranch, by Laura Griffin (Berkley)
• To Crown It All, by Rhys Bowen (Berkley)
• The Trusted, by Marisa de los Santos (Blackstone)
• The Voices of the Dead, by Nicola Upson (Crooked Lane)
• A Warning to the Curious, by John Shen Yen Nee and S.J. Rozan
(Soho Crime)
• Wolves of Summer, by Donna Freitas (Soho Crime)

NOVEMBER (UK):
• The Advent of Death, by Alexandra Benedict (Simon & Schuster UK)
• Alfa, by Lilja Sigurðardóttir (Orenda)
• All In, by Dan Jones (Ian Fleming Publications)
• The Bells of Fortune, by Leonora Nattrass (Viper)
• Blood on the Thames: Murder, Money and the Making of the Modern Detective, by Thomas Morris (Harvill Secker)*
• Brut, by Sam Tallent (White Rabbit)
• Burning Season, by Martin Griffin (Sphere)
• The Burry Port Murders, by Stephen Puleston (Independently published)
• The Christmas Tree Murders, by Katie Lumsden (Michael Joseph)
• CrimeBits 3: 100 Opening Gambits for Great Thrillers & Linked Mystery Puzzles, edited by by Mick Herron and Luca Veste (Eyewear)
• Death of a Renegade, by John Pilkington (Boldwood)
• Faithful, by Roberta Kray (Sphere)
• First One to Die, by Michael Wood (Cliffhanger)
• The Forest, by Mark Dawson (Unputdownable)
• Ian Fleming: The Notes (Ian Fleming Publications)*
• Kill List, by Quintin Jardine (Headline)
• Kill Shot, Jo Nesbø (Harvill)
• A Knock at the Door, by Louise Candlish (HQ)
• The Last Holiday, by Valerie Keogh (Boldwood)
• Last Whisper, by Angela Marsons (Bookouture)
• The Late Lord Thorpe, by Peter Grainger (Penguin)
• The Last Case, by Jørn Lier Horst (Michael Joseph)
• The Lying Dead, by Nick Louth (Canelo Crime)
• The Madman, by Henning Mankell (Mountain Leopard Press)
• The Midwinter Martyr, by S.J. Parris (Hemlock Press)
• The Mistletoe Wedding Murders, by Denzil Meyrick and Ian Moore (Bantam)
• The Mortician, by Sharon Bolton (Orion)
• The Murdered Husband Returns, by Mina Sakurai (Zaffre)
• Murder on the Mistletoe Express, by Katy Watson (Constable)
• No Good Deed, by Tom Wood (Sphere)
• No One Is Safe, by Simon Kernick (Headline)
• The Odessa Assassin, by Frederick Forsyth and Tony Kent (Bantam)
• The Patriot, by Ajay Chowdhury (Harvill)
• The Sands of Atlantis, by Lex Faulkner (Boldwood)
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John le Carré
(Penguin Classics)
• The Stranger from the Mountains, by Satu Rämö (Zaffre)
• Sudden Death, by Lynda La Plante (Zaffre)
• Sweet Revenge, by Susan Gilruth (British Library Crime Classics)
• The Traitor’s Code, by Stephen Ronson (Hodder Paperbacks)
• The Wives, by Alex Khan (Hera)
• Wrap Party, by J.A. Wallace (Zaffre)

DECEMBER (U.S.):
• The Fly on the Wall, by Tony Hillerman (Harper Perennial)
• Golden Age Masters of Mystery, edited by Otto Penzler (Penzler/American Mystery Classics)
• The Invisible Host, by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning
(Poisoned Pen Press)
• The Longest Death, by Kevin Jagernauth (Soho Crime)
• Murder on the Graf Zeppelin, by Samir Machado de Machado (Pushkin Vertigo)
• Murder Returns to Gravigna, by Camilla Trinchieri (Soho Crime)
• Murder Unabridged, by P.J. Nelson (Minotaur)
• Murder Under the Mistletoe, by C.J. Archer (C.J. Archer)
• No Good Deed, by Nekesa Afia (Berkley)
• The Parkwood Murders, by Chris Chibnall (Pamela Dorman)
• Pressure Point, by A.J. Landau (Minotaur)
• The Rust Forest, by Anders de la Motte (Atria/Emily Bestler)
• Sherlock, edited by the Conan Doyle Estate (Atria)
• The Sinner Saint, by Brian Shea (Severn River)
• The Statuary Gardens, by Jacques Abeille (NYRB Classics)
• The Swiss Agent, by Anna Pitoniak (Simon & Schuster)
• When the Birds Don’t Sing, by Imran Mahmood (Bantam)
• Wolf Point, by Lisa Howells (Grand Central)

DECEMBER (UK):
• The Lazarus Protocol, by Rob Sinclair (Boldwood)
• Obsession, by LJ Ross (Penguin)
• Until Death, by Alex Smith (Canelo)
• When the Devil Was Sick, by Carol Carnac (British Library
Crime Classics)

Remember, this is one critic’s deliberately diverse selection of promising new works in the crime, mystery, and thriller field (with a few horror yarns thrown in), not a comprehensive compilation of what to expect on shelves between now and the start of 2027. For more information, note that both CrimeReads and Crime Fiction Lover post weekly updates of books from this genre entering the market.

Not Your Average Joes

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 12:57:00 +0000

Crime Fiction Lover reminds us that Season 6 of Slow Horses is set to premiere today on Apple TV+. Here’s its plot synopsis:

The Slough House team have seemingly been cut from MI5’s database, no longer on the payroll or system. Is it a glitch in the mainframe or something more sinister? Of course, this being the world of Mick Herron there is hijinks afoot. This comes as former members of Slough House meet a series of sticky ends—are these accidents or is a bad actor out for revenge? The first episode largely sees the Slow Horses trying to piece together what’s happened to their pay and why they’ve been airbrushed from existence. [Supervisor Jackson] Lamb also plays detective trying to piece together what’s happened to his ex Joes, as always one step ahead of the supposedly smarter members of MI5, the ‘dogs’ from Regent’s Park.

These latest six episodes are adapted, with some noticeable changes, from author Herron’s novels Joe Country (2019) and Slough House (2020). They’ll be presented on Wednesdays through October 21.

Making the McIlvanney Grade

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 19:05:00 +0000

If you were wondering when organizers of the annual Bloody Scotland international crime-writing festival would release their shortlist of nominees for the 2026 McIlvanney Prize, well, the answer was apparently yesterday. Here are the five fortunate finalists:

• The Hollow Boys, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper)
• 138 Main Street, by Gavin Bell (Simon & Schuster UK)
• A Bad, Bad Place, by Frances Crawford (Bantam)
• The Diary of Lies, by Philip Miller (Polygon)
• The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin (Viper)

The winner of this award, as well as the 2026 Bloody Scotland Debut Prize, are set to be revealed at the festival on Friday, September 18.

READ MORE: “What I’m Looking Forward to at Bloody Scotland 2026—Murder, Mayhem & Impossible Choices!” by Noelle Holten (CrimeBookJunkie).

“And These Days, Everyone Is a Detective”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:16:00 +0000

I mentioned previously on this page that Agatha Christie’s amateur detectives Tommy and Tuppence, introduced in 1922’s The Secret Adversary, are to be revived in a six-part, modern-day mystery drama set to begin airing on BritBox come Tuesday, September 15. But now we have a new, slightly longer trailer for the series—embedded above—which stars Antonia Thomas as “spirited actress” Tuppence, with Josh Dylan playing crime writer Tommy Beresford. The seemingly ubiquitous Imelda Staunton (The Crown) has been cast as Aunt Ada, “a wry, retired private detective and mentor.”

Put Forward for the Petrona

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 22:44:00 +0000

Twelve crime novels from Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden are longlisted candidates for the 2026 Petrona Award for the Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year:

• One True Word, by Snæbjörn Arngrímsson,
translated by Larissa Kyzer (Pushkin Vertigo, Iceland)
• Murder Tide, by Stella Blómkvist,
translated by Quentin Bates (Corylus, Iceland)
• Broken, by Jón Atli Jónasson,
translated by Quentin Bates (Corylus, Iceland)
• Into Thin Air, by Ørjan N. Karlsson,
translated by Ian Giles (Orenda, Norway)
• The Writing in the Water, by John Ajvide Lindqvist,
translated by Michael Meigs (Amazon Crossing, Sweden)
• Wolf Hour, by Jo Nesbø,
translated by Robert Ferguson (Harvill Secker, Norway)
• The Heirs of the Arctic, by Aslak Nore,
translated by Sean Kinsella (MacLehose Press, Norway)
• The Grave in the Ice, by Satu Rämö,
translated by Kristian London (Zaffre, Finland)
• Black as Death, by Lilja Sigurðardóttir,
translated by Lorenza Garcia (Orenda, Iceland)
• The Wake, by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir,
translated by Victoria Cribb (Hodder & Stoughton, Iceland)
• The Girl with Ice in Her Veins, by Karin Smirnoff,
translated by Sarah Death (MacLehose Press, Sweden)
• The Winter Job, by Antti Tuomainen,
translated by David Hackston (Orenda, Finland)

A press release notes that “The Petrona Award was established to celebrate the work of Maxine Clarke, one of the first online crime fiction reviewers and bloggers, who died in December 2012. Maxine, whose online persona and blog was called Petrona, was passionate about translated crime fiction but in particular that from the Scandinavian countries.

“The award is open to crime fiction in translation, either written by a Scandinavian author or set in Scandinavia and published in the UK in the previous calendar year.”

This year’s winner will be announced on September 24.

* * *

In other awards news, the winner and runner-up in this year’s Glencairn Glass Crime Short Story Competition have been revealed.

Kathy Schilbach, a retired teacher in West Sussex, who writes as Kate Finnemore, has been named as the overall victor for “Making Friends,” a “disturbing tale about a mysterious and anxious woman who has a dark secret to keep.” She will receive the £1,000 first prize along with a guest appearance at the Bloody Scotland Festival, scheduled to take place from September 18 to 20 in Stirling. Ross Alexander, a Scottish author based in East Lothian, was chosen as the runner-up “Life Wasted,” described as “a gripping confession from an unlikely vigilante who took justice into his own hands to free a woman from her abusive, alcoholic husband.” He will receive £500 in prize money.

Both of their stories are to be published on the Bloody Scotland and Glencairn Glass (whiskyglass.com) Web sites.

Clearing the Backlog

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 15:30:00 +0000

• The Australian Crime Writers Association has announced its shortlists of nominees for four 2026 Ned Kelly Awards. Here are the contenders in its Best Crime Fiction category:

— Liar’s Game, by Jack Beaumont (Allen & Unwin)
— Lyrebird, by Jane Caro (Allen & Unwin)
— The Other Child, by Susi Fox (Penguin Australia)
— Mad Mabel, by Sally Hepworth (Pan Macmillan Australia)
— The Ghost Walk, by Karen Herbert (Fremantle Press)
— Fire in the Head, by Daniel Oakman (Black Inc)
— The White Crow, by Michael Robotham (Hachette Australia)
— The Casino, by Iain Ryan (Ultimo Press)

Also released are candidate lists for the Best International, Best Debut Crime Fiction, and Best True Crime prizes. The winners are to be revealed sometime in September.

• After 30 years in print, Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine is suddenly a free, digital-only publication. Editor George Easter explains in the new, Summer 2026 issue that “I’m doing away with subscriptions. … I’ve been handling subscriptions for 45 years (30 with my wife Michele’s consumer magazine and 34 years with DP, with some overlap) and I’m burned out. I want to simplify my life. It doesn’t cost much to get each issue out and I can handle that just fine. Also, no more filing a tax return for DP. Hooray! Those of you who still have current subscriptions with future issues paid for will still get those issues and just think, you’ll get free ones from that point on.” Access the latest PDF mag here, and digital back issues here.

• Incidentally, note that on page 23 of the brand-new Deadly Pleasures you will find four categories of nominees for the 2026 Barry Awards, sponsored as ever by the magazine. All readers are invited to cast their votes for favorite works, one title per division, by sending Easter an e-mail message at george@deadlypleasures.com. The deadline for expressing opinions is Tuesday, September 15.

• In Reference to Murder points us to a first photo of “Edward Bluemel as Agatha Christie’s iconic Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, in BritBox’s upcoming six-part drama series Hercule. The origin series, which is currently shooting in Liverpool, is an intimate study of legendary Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in Britain between the wars. Hercule will center around three of Agatha Christie’s early stories, while also introducing Hercule Poirot to future friends and allies and one particular nemesis.” Deadline adds that “the series will premiere on the BBC and BritBox in North America in 2027,” and it is said to enjoy a three-season production commitment.

• Below is a 90-second trailer for Marble Hall Murders, the six-part TV adaptation of of Anthony Horowitz’s third Susan Ryeland mystery, set to begin airing in the States on PBS come Sunday, September 6.

• The Rap Sheet’s UK correspondent, Ali Karim, had the chance recently to address some questions to Jack Jewers, author of The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys (2023) and its sequel, Seething Lane, due out on the other side of the pond early next month. Ali describes Seething Lane as “a dark swashbuckling adventure-cum-detective whodunit-cum-historical thriller.” His interview can be relished here.

• The Disney-oriented Web site Inside the Magic quotes Amy Pascal, one of a pair of veteran producers working on a new, MGM Amazon iteration of Ian Fleming’s James Bond, as saying it’s “a good bet” that we’ll know who will next portray British Agent 007 on screen “by the end of this year.” In addition, the site offers tidbits of information regarding the forthcoming children’s adventure novel James Bond and the Secret Agent Academy, penned by Gold Dagger award-winning author M.W. Craven and set to reach stores in April 2027. It’s apparently the first entry in a projected series.

• Frank Gregorsky is back with a fresh (August 2026) edition of the quarterly PDF periodical Detective Drama Gems, which revisits episodes of classic TV crime and mystery shows. Under consideration this time are stories from Dragnet, The Felony Squad, and the Canada/USA hybrid series Night Heat. You can read all about them here.

International Salutes to Crime

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 02:23:00 +0000

I’ve been away from Rap Sheet headquarters for the last few days, so I was delayed in reporting two morsels of crime-fiction awards news.

First off, organizers of New Zealand’s annual Ngaio Marsh Awards have released their longlist of works vying for 2026 Best Novel honors:

• Lucky Thing, by Tom Baragwanath (Text)
• Carved in Blood, by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster)
• Softly Calls the Devil, by Christopher Blake (Bonnier Echo)
• The Birds Began to Sing, by Jeffrey Buchanan (Text)
• Black Silk and Buried Secrets, by Deborah Challinor (HarperCollins)
• The Deadly Dispute, by Amanda Hampson (Penguin)
• Bella Donna, by Jill Johnson (Black & White/Bonnier)
• The Good Father, by Liam McIlvanney (Bonnier)
• When the Deep, Dark Bush Swallows You Whole, by Geoff
Parkes (Penguin)
• The Vanishing Place, by Zoë Rankin (Moa Press)
• Hooked Up, by Fiona Sussman (Bateman)
• A Beautiful Family, by Jennifer Trevelyan (Allen & Unwin)

The finalists for this year’s best Novel, Best First Novel, and Best Kids/YA prizes are to be announced within the next couple of months.

* * *

Meanwhile, the International Association of Crime Writers, North American Branch, declared earlier this week that Ron Currie’s The Savage Noble Death of Babs Dionne (Putnam) is the winner of the 2026 Hammett Prize for “literary excellence in crime writing.” Also in contention for that accolade were El Dorado Drive, by Megan Abbott (Putnam); Party of Liars, by Kelsey Cox (Minotaur); The Big Empty, by Robert Crais (Putnam); and The Lizard, by Domenic Stansberry (Molotov Editions).

Congratulations to all of the nominees!

Revue of Reviewers: 8-16-26

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 14:58:00 +0000

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.

Fab Four

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 21:09:00 +0000

• Julie Hennrikus, the executive director of Sisters in Crime, has been chosen to receive the 2026 David Thompson Special Service Award. This prize, named in honor of a Texas bookstore owner and crime-fiction publisher who passed away back in 2010, recognizes Hennrikus for her “extraordinary efforts to develop and promote the crime-fiction field.” In addition to her work for SinC, Hennrikus is the author of mysteries published under the noms de plume Julie Hennrikus, Julia Henry, and Julianne Holmes. She will be given her Special Service Award during this year’s Bouchercon opening ceremonies in Calgary, Alberta, on October 22.

• The Netflix true-crime anthology series Monster returns on Thursday, September 17, with an eight-episode look back at the notorious 1892 ax murders attributed to Lizzie Borden. The official description of this season reads: “When the repressed daughter of a wealthy New England family and her rebellious maid find themselves trapped in a house built on humiliation and cruelty, they escape into a fantasy of sex, power, and revenge. The gruesome unsolved murders that follow don’t just shock the world—they give birth to an icon who refuses to live imprisoned in a cage, choosing instead to forge her own legend: shocking, monstrous, and gloriously free.” Ella Beatty (the daughter of film stars Annette Bening and Warren Beatty) will portray Lizzie, with Vicky Krieps playing the Bordens’ live-in maid, Bridget Sullivan. As series creator Ryan Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter, this show will also find Krieps playing Elizabeth Báthory (1560-1614), a Hungarian noblewoman and alleged serial murderer. “It is an interesting season,” he observed, “because it is the Lizzie Borden story, but there are also other female ‘killers’ who I was always interested in exploring. I always wanted to do something about Aileen Wuornos [a Florida prostitute convicted of slaying some of her male clients in 1989 and 1990]. I’ve always wanted to do something about the Countess Elizabeth Báthory, who Dracula was modeled after. So we are kind of doing this fantasia of women vs. the system, and it’s not what they did, it’s the question of: What made them do it? Why did they do it, if they did it?” A rather horrific trailer for Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story can be found here.

• Swedish journalist-author David Lagercrantz, who continued Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series after Larsson’s demise, and who has a new novel of his own about crime-solving professor Hans Rekke (Post Mortem) due out later this month, recently contributed a list of his 10 favorite Scandi Noir novels to Forbes magazine. Of course Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo made the cut, but so did stories by Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, and Arnaldur Indriðason.

• Meanwhile, fictionist Anthony Horowitz (A Deadly Episode) picks six of his favorite books for the British news magazine The Week.

Plenteous Peepers

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 18:11:00 +0000

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over these last three weeks spent posting tributes to fictional private detectives in Killer Covers, it’s that I cannot keep two blogs cruising along simultaneously at a lively clip. While I have produced two dozen posts in Killer Covers during this period, my work on The Rap Sheet has slowed to a crawl.

Nonetheless, I am pleased with my efforts on that sister site. The “Slice of P.I.” series, as I could not resist calling it, has offered readers book fronts from works by Max Allan Collins, George Harmon Coxe, G.G. Fickling, Lawrence Block, Agatha Christie, Bill S. Ballinger, Stephen Greenleaf, Sara Paretsky, and numerous others. At the same time, it’s showcased artists—familiar and not—ranging from Joe DeVito, David Plourde, and Gerald Powell to Mara McAfee, Robert K. Abbett, James Meese, and Robert McGinnis.

But today I’ll close out that series with a quirky, mostly forgotten novel by a quirky, definitely not forgotten author. While anticipating said post’s arrival, check out previous “Slice of P.I.” entries here.

Bullet Points: Bursting at the Seams Edition

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 19:42:00 +0000

It’s been a good long while since I put together one of these news bits columns, so I have some serious catching-up to do!

• The finalists for 2026’s Hammett Prize have been announced by the International Association of Crime Writers, North American Branch. This commendation is presented annually to a work, published in the previous year, that judges say demonstrates “literary excellence in crime writing.” Here are the five latest candidates:

— El Dorado Drive, by Megan Abbott (Putnam)
— Party of Liars, by Kelsey Cox (Minotaur)
— The Big Empty, by Robert Crais (Putnam)
— The Savage Noble Death of Babs Dionne, by Ron Currie (Putnam)
— The Lizard, by Domenic Stansberry (Molotov Editions)

Expect to hear news of the winner later this summer. Lists of previous Hammett Prize nominees and recipients are available here.

• Believe it or not, among the 13 novels on this year’s longlist of Booker Prize nominees is one plucked straight from the crime/thriller category: All Them Dogs (Riverhead), by Irish fictionist Djamel White. The award’s Web site calls it “by turns savage, thrilling and unexpectedly tender, ... a gripping story of violence, lust, and greed that explores one man's struggles to find his place in an unsparing world.” Whether All Them Dogs will find a place on the Booker shortlist, slated to be revealed on September 22, is anybody’s guess.

• Following this year’s release of A River Red with Blood, the 23rd outing for cop-turned-P.I. Charlie Parker, John Connolly explains in his latest newsletter that his next novel—due out in May 2027—will be The Castle, “a standalone thriller with political overtones, set in a Connecticut suburb in 1973.” He goes on to say:

The Castle is a safe haven, a gated community in a U.S. nation troubled by the war in Vietnam, political assassinations, and the growing shadow of Watergate. For the disillusioned publisher Hamer, it is an escape from a world that has disappointed him.

But something is very wrong in the Castle. A teenage boy has gone missing. There are thefts, threats, shootings. Hamer has begun to fear the Castle may not be so safe after all, and he and his neighbors are the targets of a conspiracy with a single purpose: to destroy five families and punish them for the sins of their children. And one of those families could be his own.

Connolly calls this “a book about secrets: the secrets of the state, the secrets of families, and perhaps the secrets we hide even from ourselves. I’ve been working on it for three years now, and I think—I hope—that it’s about as good a thriller as I can write.”

• If you haven’t yet noticed, my Killer Covers blog is currently rolling out a succession of posts celebrating private eyes.

• I’m a huge fan of stories that illuminate small, seemingly insignificant aspects of crime-fiction storytelling. So Olivia Rutigliano’s new CrimeReads piece, “The 8 Best Fake Crime Novels in Film and TV, Ranked,” is right up my alley.

• The debut of Amazon Prime’s Reacher, Season 4, is teed up for Wednesday, August 12. This latest run of eight episodes will be based on Lee Child’s 2009 novel, Gone Tomorrow. It finds Reacher (played by Alan Ritchson) having “a chance encounter with a distraught stranger on a train [that] goes horribly wrong,” only to see our hero “drawn into a complex and deadly game that pits him against ruthless foes from the highest echelons of power.” A trailer for Reacher is below.

• The program is already looking ahead to its next season. “Amanda Ip, Jay Baruchel, Ciara Bravo and Kevin Durand will star opposite Alan Ritchson,” says The Hollywood Reporter, “as Reacher in the fifth season ... will be based on Lee Child’s novel Make Me. The series ... will catch up with Ritchson’s title character after his train stops in the mysterious town of Mother’s Rest where he teams with a private investigator in the search for a missing person.”

• Meanwhile, watch for the premiere of Prime’s Reacher spin-off series, Neagley, starring Danish actress Maria Sten as the most dangerous operative among Jack Reacher’s Special Investigators, on Wednesday, September 16. (It has its own trailer here.) And Kill Zone, the third entry in Dan Ames’ Frances Neagley novel series, is due out on August 17, with another, Blow Back, coming in November.

• In other television news, The Chelsea Detective, with Adrian Scarborough and Vanessa Emme, will return to Acorn TV for a fourth season on Monday, August 10. A trailer and brief synopses of the four new 90-minute episodes can be found here.

• Max Allan Collins reports that Death by Fruitcake, his 90-minute indie film that brings to life main characters from the Trash ’n’ Treasures mystery series he’s been penning for almost two decades with his wife, Barbara (under their joint pseudonym, Barbara Allan) recently debuted on the streaming TV service Tubi.

• Deadline brings word that “Cooper & Fry are heading to the U.S. after streamer BritBox snapped up the British crime drama. The show has performed well on Paramount-owned broadcast network 5 in the UK and now has a U.S. home. BritBox has snagged Season 1 of the show for U.S. and Canada, while Netflix has taken second window UK rights. Adapted from Stephen Booth’s bestselling detective novels, Cooper & Fry follows unlikely detective duo Ben Cooper and Diane Fry, played by Robert James-Collier (Downton Abbey) and Mandip Gill (Doctor Who). Set in and around England’s picturesque Peak District, the series follows Cooper, who is struggling to emerge from the shadow of his late father, while Fry is an outsider fleeing tragedies in her past. Together, they tackle grisly crimes in the remote countryside.” All eight episodes of Season 1 will drop on Monday, August 17; look for a one-minute trailer here. A second season has already been commissioned, with episodes adapted from Booth’s novels The Devil’s Edge, Fall Down Dead, One Last Breath, and The Murder Road.

• Maigret, based on Georges Simenon’s many mysteries, will return to PBS-TV’s Masterpiece rotation for a sophomore season beginning on Sunday, October 18. Benjamin Wainwright (Belgravia: The Next Chapter, Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim) reprises his lead role as French police detective Jules Maigret, with Stephanie Martini (The Gold, Last Kingdom) playing his wife, Louise. What can we expect from the half-dozen new episodes? PBS offers this plot brief:

An epic power struggle is happening in La Brigade Criminelle in Maigret Season 2. Maigret’s boss, Director of Police Xavier Guichard, has become suspicious of Maigret’s methods and decides to ‘take him down a peg.’ One of Maigret’s colleagues leaves, another is transferred by Guichard and replaced by George Bonfils, who is immediately unpopular with Les Maigrets. As Maigret investigates new crimes, the line between guilt and innocence is blurred. The unconventional detective will have to work out his own unique form of justice for victims and perpetrators alike.

These stories are adapted from Simenon’s The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien, Maigret’s Revolver, and The Yellow Dog.

• Agatha Christie created the characters Thomas Beresford and his wife, Prudence (née Cowley), for her 1922 novel, The Secret Adversary. They carried on their detecting escapades through four more books, into the early 1970s. Their debut on television came in the 10-part, 1983-1984 series Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime, starring Francesca Annis and James Warwick. A terrific six-episode show, Partners in Crime, resurrected the pair in 2015, this time portrayed by David Walliams and Call the Midwife’s Jessica Raine in a drama set during the 1950s. Now, Britbox has scheduled a six-part reboot, Agatha Christie’s Tommy & Tuppence, to commence airing on Tuesday, September 15. The action in this new TV serial takes place in the present day, with the private detective protagonists reimagined as on-and-off romantic partners. Antonia Thomas (The Good Doctor, Still Up) will play “spirited actress” Tuppence, while Josh Dylan (The Buccaneers, Mamma Mia 2) portrays Tommy, “a meticulous and charming crime writer.” Mystery Fanfare furnishes a video preview.

• According to In Reference to Murder, “Morgan Spector is in talks to headline Netflix’s series adaptation of Dan Brown‘s latest novel, The Secret of Secrets, tackling the role of Professor Robert Landgon played by Tom Hanks in the film versions. Rebecca Hall (The Town) is also in talks for the female lead opposite Morgan. Spector already stars in HBO’s The Gilded Age as railroad tycoon George Russell, but sources say he would be able to do both series with proper scheduling should Gilded Age get renewed for a fifth season. In The Secret of Secrets, symbologist Robert Langdon (Spector) races against ancient forces and time to rescue his girlfriend, missing scientist Katherine Solomon (Hall), and her groundbreaking manuscript whose discoveries have the power to forever change humanity’s understanding of the mind. If the deals come to fruition, it will mark the first TV series acting collaboration for real-life couple Spector and Hall, who have starred together in a handful of plays and movies, including the Broadway revival of Machinal, Christine, and Permission.”

• And Icelandic author Lilja Sigurðardóttir has reached a deal with Germany’s ZDF Studios and Iceland producer Glassriver to translate her five “Áróra Investigation” novels for the small screen. Variety delivers this synopsis of Sigurðardóttir’s popular yarns: “Set across Iceland and London, the series follows Áróra, a tough fraud investigator with Icelandic roots who returns home to search for her missing sister. What begins as a family mission soon expands into a wider criminal investigation as she teams with Daniel, an Icelandic police detective and potential love interest, exposing corruption, betrayal and violence beneath Iceland’s rugged landscape.”

• It seems every time I think about how many free hours I might gain by signing off from Facebook, that social-networking site dispenses some fresh nugget of information I didn’t know I needed. Case in point: A post from somebody named Donald Bishop, who writes:

If you ever wondered who that beautiful young woman was who was running down the beach combing her hair and then turning to face the camera in the opening of [the original] Hawaii Five-O, now you know, her name is Elizabeth Logue. She is a native Hawaiian, apparently still alive. Her full name is Elizabeth Louise Malamalamaokalani White Logue. Apart from that iconic shot in the intro, she has only 2 other screen credits to her name. In 1961, she had a role in a low-budget Italian exploitation film shot in Tahiti called Nude Odyssey. Her only other part was in the Julie Andrews/Max Von Sydow film Hawaii, based on James Michener’s novel of the same name. She also did a short promotional film for the state of Hawaii to lure tourists to the island paradise.

Below is a compilation of opening sequences from Hawaii Five-O’s 12 seasons as part of CBS’s prime-time line-up (1968-1970).

• Speaking of Facebook, Frederick, Maryland-based publisher Level Best Books declared there weeks ago that it has formed Level Best Books UK, “a wholly owned subsidiary based in London that will serve as the publisher's official presence in the United Kingdom and represent the company's interests throughout Great Britain.” The venture “will be led by Shawn Reilly Simmons, publisher and CEO of Level Best Books, and internationally acclaimed mystery author Martin Edwards, who will serve together as co-directors.”

• This “collaborative mystery” from Britain’s Detection Club should be fun. Sadly, we must wait until 2028 for its appearance.

• I’m quite behind in drawing reader attention to Frank Gregorsky’s fine Detective Drama Gems. Issue 18 marks the start of that publication’s sixth year, and contains background on the 1961-1962 ABC-TV series The New Breed, as well as the Canadian cop drama Night Heat (1985-1989) and “Fade in to Murder,” a memorable 1976 episode of Columbo that pitted Peter Falk’s shabby but clever Los Angeles police lieutenant against former Star Trek captain William Shatner, who played the self-obsessed star of a TV detective show. Issue 19 celebrates the radio version of Dragnet, the 1966-1969 ABC program Felony Squad, and another episode of Night Heat. The next edition of Gems is expected in November.

• Published and unpublished works alike have achieved wins in this year’s contest for the Daphne du Maurier Awards for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, sponsored by the Kiss of Death Chapter of Romance Writers of America. Click here to see the full results.

• A new crime-fiction periodical is to be launched soon! Beginning in October (so, in time for it to be heavily promoted at Bouchercon in Calgary), SMFS Mystery Magazine will appear three times a year featuring content from some familiar members of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. In addition to short stories, the mag is expected to incorporate interviews by Kevin Tipple and M.E. Proctor, and reviews by June Lorraine Roberts and Mat Coward. I’m guessing we will hear more about buying subscriptions once we get closer to the publication date. The cover of Issue 1 is embedded on the left.

• Hot off the presses (or at least still warm) is the Summer 2026 “Mysteries Set in France” edition of Mystery Readers Journal. Grab a copy for yourself here. And note that this follows a similarly themed number of the magazine from the spring of 2012, which looks to be available now only in PDF format.

• The next issue of MRJ will address the topic of “Cross-Genre Mysteries.” Submissions of articles, reviews, and author essays are due by August 20. Guidelines can be accessed here.

• This is good news, indeed! Scottish novelist Peter May wrote recently on Facebook (yeah, damn Facebook again!): “I know that I indicated strongly that The Black Loch [2024] would be my last book. But I also said, never say never. So there’s going to be just one more.” His post also drops “some visual clues” to a location he suggests is “very similar” to an imaginary one featured in Island of the Dead, set to go on sale from Riverrun next January.

• Sometime Rap Sheet contributor Peter Handel hatched his own blog almost a year ago. It’s called Carnivorous: A Steady Diet of Crime Fiction and has of late brought forth a couple of interviews destined to reward your scrutiny. The first is with Amy Bloom and focuses around Blunt Instrument (Mysterious Press), which marks her entry into the mystery-fiction world. The second finds Handel talking with Greg Shepard, the director of vintage publisher Stark House Press. Bookmark Carnivorous, if you have not already done so.

• Finally, we must say good-bye to some people who greatly impacted this field of fiction. Gail Bowen, the Canadian author of more than 20 novels starring Joanne Kilbourn, a political science professor in Saskatchewan with a sideline in solving crimes, passed away on June 25 at age 83, “following a brief battle with cancer.” Japanese writer Keigo Higashino, who reportedly produced 106 books during his lifetime, but may be remembered best for his Detective Galileo mysteries (The Devotion of Suspect X, etc.), perished on July 23 as a result of colorectal cancer; he was 68 years old. And Joanna Pettet may have been a London-born actress, rather than a wordsmith, but her contributions to crime and mystery fiction were still important. She guested on such boob-tube series as The Fugitive, Mannix, The Delphi Bureau, Banacek, Harry O, and Murder, She Wrote, and played “the scantily clad Mata Bond,” daughter of David Niven’s James Bond, in the 1967 spy parody Casino Royale. Pettet was 83 when she died in Temecula, California, on July 7.

Aussie Women Show Their Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 03:17:00 +0000

Sisters in Crime Australia has announced its shortlists of books being considered for the 2026 Davitt Awards. The winners will be revealed on Friday, September 12, during a special ceremony in Melbourne.

Adult Fiction:
• At Café 64, by Shaeden Barry (Echo)
• Learned Behaviours, by Zeyneb Gamieldien (Ultimo Press)
• Unbury the Dead, by Fiona Hardy (Affirm Press)
• Mad Mabel, by Sally Hepworth (Macmillan Australia)
• The Bluff, by Joanna Jenkins (Allen & Unwin)
• Melaleuca, by Angie Faye Martin (HQ Fiction)

Non-fiction:
• Groomed, by Sonia Orchard (Simon & Schuster)
• Outrageous Fortunes: The Adventures of Mary Fortune, Crime-writer, and Her Criminal Son, by Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex (Black Inc.)
• The Red House, by Kate Wild (Allen & Unwin)

Young Adult:
• What Have They Done to Liza McLean? by Amy Doak (Penguin
Random House Australia)
• A Murder Is Going Down, by Kate Emery (Allen & Unwin)
• We Saw What You Started, by Carla Salmon (Pan Macmillan Australia)

Children’s Books:
• Run, by Sarah Armstrong (Hardie Grant Children’s)
• The Girl and the Ghost, by Jacqueline Harvey (Penguin Random
House Australia)
• Oceanforged: The Wicked Ship, by Amelia Mellor (Simon &
Schuster Australia)
• True South, by Gisela Ervin-Ward (Midnight Sun)

PaperBack: “Keep Cool, Mr. Jones”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 17:35:00 +0000

Part of a series honoring the late author and blogger Bill Crider.

Keep Cool, Mr. Jones, by Timothy Fuller (Dell, 1952), with a front cover painted by Robert Stanley.

Author Fuller was still a student at Harvard University when he published his first mystery novel, Harvard Has a Homicide (1936). It introduced Edmund “Jupiter” Jones, described as a cocky, “eccentric grad student in the fine arts at Harvard who wins a valet in a craps game.” There was more than a modicum of Ellery Queen in Jones, and at least one latter-day reviewer has criticized the character for treating his Black servant, Sylvester, “in a ‘status quo’ racist way.” Yet Fuller proved to be a “sly and witty writer,” and his whodunits were deemed sinuous and entertaining enough that he was invited to produce another three over the next seven years—Reunion with Murder (1941), Three Thirds of a Ghost (1941), and This Is Murder, Mr. Jones (1943)—all following his gentleman sleuth as he graduated college then remained at Harvard as an assistant professor of fine arts.

Seven more years passed after the release of This Is Murder, Mr. Jones, with readers presuming the series had ended, before Fuller finally delivered his fifth and final puzzler with the same lead, Keep Cool, Mr. Jones. As the blog Beneath the Stains of Time explains, this “compact, breezy story” imagines “an older Jones living in the suburban Boston village of Saxon with a wife and three young children. Jupiter had hung up his deerstalker nearly six years ago, however, ‘much as the banker must bank or the preacher preach,’ Jupiter ‘had been grotesquely conditioned to deduce amateurishly.’” Two incidents get his investigative juices flowing again: the trapping of four people in a walk-in freezer, which he surmises was a failed murder attempt; and the subsequent slaying of Saxon’s chief of police. Might those events be connected in some manner?

Following the Scribes and Claymores

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 16:26:00 +0000

These days, there are so many prizes given in the field of crime, mystery, and thriller fiction, that it’s easy to fall behind in reporting them all. So consider this essentially a catch-up post.

Yesterday, the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers announced the winners of its 2026 Scribe Awards for “excellence in the field of writing tie-in fiction for media franchises.” There were seven categories of contenders this year, but the one that seems most pertinent to Rap Sheet readers is General Fiction. Among those nominees, the winner is Raymond Benson’s The Hook and the Eye (Ian Fleming), which employs ex-CIA op Felix Leiter—familiar from several James Bond novels—as the lead in a story that finds him tangling with spies in Manhattan and tasked with safely transporting an “impossibly beautiful and impossibly secretive” woman to Texas.

Also vying for top honors in General Fiction were Murder, She Wrote: Snowy With a Chance of Murder, by Barbara Early (Berkley); Cwej: The Midas Touch, by James Hornby (Independently published); Return of the Maltese Falcon, by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime); Thunder’s Edge: Echoes of Memory, by Sarah Cawkwell (Aconyte); and Murder, She Wrote: The Body in the Trees, by Terrie Farley Moran (Berkley).

* * *

In addition to the Silver Falchion Awards, next month’s Killer Nashville conference will see presented the Claymore Awards, “given to a diverse collection of the top unpublished manuscripts submitted in 2026.” Below are the finalists in just two of 19 divisions.

Best Mystery:
• Exit, Wound, by Mark Dillman
• The Mystery of the Wolf, by David Goodlett
• Answers Will Come, by Henry James Kaye
• All the Buried Secrets, by Kim Nuesse
• The Holiday Slayer, by Janet Shawgo
• The End of Us, by Elissa Thompson

Best Investigator (includes procedural, serious private eye, detective, and noir):
• In Plain Sight, by Jacquelyn Dohoney
• Hunting the Archer, by John Foley
• Victim’s Voice, by Henry James Kaye
• Reflections in the Mist, by Avram Lavinsky
• Centaur Standing, by Clare Monteschio
• Return to Newstead Hills, by CJ Prince

Click here to see the full lineup of 2026 Claymore candidates. The winners of these commendations as well as the Silver Falchions will be revealed in the Tennessee capital on Saturday, August 22.

A Warm Reception for “Frozen”

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:54:00 +0000

Last evening brought the news that British crime novelist Elly Griffiths (aka Domenica de Rosa) has won this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award for The Frozen People (Quercus).

Also contending for that prize were The Midnight King, by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper); The Death of Us, by Abigail Dean (Hemlock Press); Beautiful Ugly, by Alice Feeney (Pan); Clown Town, by Mick Herron (Baskerville); and Quantum of Menace, by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre).

The announcement of Griffiths’ victory was delivered on the opening night of the 2026 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.

Revue of Reviewers: 7-23-26

noreply@blogger.com (J. Kingston Pierce) — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 23:00:00 +0000

Critiquing some of the most interesting recent crime, mystery, and thriller releases. Click on the individual covers to read more.