A good part of the fun of reviewing crime fiction is tracking how its many subgenres continue to morph, change, and otherwise evolve. Granted, there’s plenty that stays the same, and a lot of readers are quite happy with that. If after a tough week at work you need to curl up with a cozy featuring a librarian, a cat, and a body in the garden—or a classic British police procedural starring a moody, edgy, alcoholic detective—you won’t get any guff from us.
Still, it’s helpful to hit pause every now and then and take a moment to speculate about where we seem to be headed in this ever-expanding world of crime fiction—if only to give our library borrowers and bookstore customers a leg up in discovering forthcoming titles.
All the books mentioned below have been, or will be, published in late 2023 or in 2024. Quotations are taken from firstCLUE reviews, and links give access to the full reviews. As with all the books we review, we wholeheartedly endorse these.
Thanks to our contributing editors Jeff Ayers and Willy Williams, who help make firstCLUE as comprehensive as it is.
TRUE CRIME
Today’s readers can find crime fiction that emulates true crime, a hugely popular genre that has been sweeping multiple platforms for the past several years, from Netflix series to podcasts. The books below, just a few of the novels that true-crime fans can look forward to this year, feature healthy doses of verisimilitude and plots that strongly lean on the influence of social media on investigations, especially of cold cases.
The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett (January 23, 2024) is a “doozy of a thriller” centering on a suicide cult, the members of which largely followed their plan—but one couple left a baby behind, and finding that now-grown survivor is the goal of true-crime author Amanda Bailey. “This book is immensely clever,” said our review, and “written in a dossier style that serves up Amanda’s research, communication, and discoveries, from emails to texts, from film treatments to transcripts, and from casual phone calls with her assistant to historical news stories.”
True crime on the other side of the pond also features in Abigail Dean’s Day One (March 26, 2024). This “realistic and absorbing look at media gone wrong and the lives it scorches” begins with a school shooting in an English village and takes an unstinting look at the rabid aftermath, when conspiracy theorists claim that the shooting never happened and the victims never existed.
A media frenzy features in Kellye Garrett’s Missing White Woman (April 30, 2024), too. A firestorm is ignited when Bree, a young Black woman on vacation, finds a body. “Garrett does a great job of tracking the racism Bree experiences, from the neighbors’ microaggressions to the stereotypes purported about [her boyfriend] to the national frenzy that only a white woman’s disappearance could generate.”
Examining the effects of true-crime podcasts on the lives they profile offers a timely and intriguing way to look at the repercussions of media glare on survivors. In Nicola Solvinic’s The Hunter’s Daughter (May 14, 2024), a Midwestern police detective has enough to deal with after killing a violent perpetrator and being shot in the process. But while recovering, she pushes herself into the investigation of a serial killer whose horrifying work resembles that of her father. Then a cold-case podcaster gets involved, prompting readers to wonder whether the truth really needs to come out in every case.
In Jahmal Mayfield’s “thoughtful, exciting debut,” Smoke Kings (February 6, 2024), grief leads to an audacious plan. A group of Black friends kidnaps a white man and demands answers about when his grandfather threw a Black man off a bridge. “‘Pawpaw? Impossible,’ is the reaction, but the verdict is the same: Scott must each week deposit $311.54 into an account the group provides.”
Amy Tintera’s Listen for the Lie (April 30, 2024) finds protagonist Lucy Chase leaving Los Angeles for her hometown of Plumpton, Texas. She hasn’t been in five years, for good reason: she’s widely believed to have killed her best friend there. Also in town is Ben Owens, editor of true-crime podcast “Listen for the Lie,” and he’s looking into the killing. We recommended this one for readers who enjoyed Jennifer Hillier’s Things We Do in the Dark and Bella Mackie’s How to Kill Your Family.
SMALL TOWNS
From Cotswold villages to Appalachian hamlets, small towns continue to blow up as a setting for mysteries. Whether it’s characters returning to their hometowns to face the unsavory past or the hometown residents getting up to no good, books set in small towns are an ever-growing crime-fiction category.
Iris Yamashita’s Village in the Dark (February 13, 2024), is set in an Alaskan town that consists of a single apartment building with 205 residents, stores, and even a bar inside. The book opens with detective Cara Kennedy having her husband’s and son’s bodies exhumed. Cara and many of the women in town are fascinating characters and the story that brings them together and sees them struggling against inner demons, and very real danger, is gripping.
It’s winter when a fire destroys a farmhouse in rural Sweden, burning it to the ground. With the parents out for the night, the only victim was the twenty-something daughter of the house. But she wasn’t killed by the fire; her autopsy reveals that she was murdered by blows to the head. Who would have wanted to kill Lovisa, who was loved by everyone? Christoffer Carlsson’s Under the Storm (February 27, 2024) goes deep into the community for answers.
Kudos to Edwin Hill (Who to Believe, January 23, 2024) for a book so sophisticated, suspenseful, and shocking. It’s set in Monreith, a small, coastal suburb south of Boston where everyone knows, and oftentimes loathes, everyone else. It’s also where restaurateur Laurel Thibodeau is brutally murdered and her husband—it’s always the spouse, right?—is the prime suspect. But while Laurel’s murder sets things in motion, the novel is really centered on six friends whose lives are intertwined in the most disturbing of ways. The novel takes place in one late summer day, culminating in a birthday dinner for one of the six that yields yet more tragedy. Hill takes some big risks here—he moves the narration among the group, playing with time as well—but what could have been a bore works wonderfully.
THE #METOO MOVEMENT
The hashtag “#MeToo” was first used back in 2006 in relation to sexual assault, but crime-fiction writers have continued to find innovative ways to draw on the #MeToo Movement for stories that focus on sexual abuse, rape culture, and murder.
There is little doubt as to the inspiration #MeToo plays in Katia Lief’s Invisible Woman (January 9, 2024), in which a celebrity/rapist from decades ago is suddenly outed. A “psychologically savvy look at the many victims of sexual assault,” our reviewer wrote, “as well as a satisfying tale of coping through action taken.”
The pre-#MeToo era is clearly displayed in Joanna Pearson’s Bright and Tender Dark (June 4, 2024) as college student Karlie “faces what turns out to be her final days, and readers will love to hate the professor who has a way too close relationship to his female students. A dark debut by an author to watch.”
Toxic masculinity. The oh-so-innocent man who’s only controlling because he cares so much. A system that ridicules women if they wait too long to report a sexual crime while torturing them once they do report. It’s all in Araminta Hall’s deeply suspenseful One of the Good Guys (January 9, 2024).
When Louise Manson, a professor at Trinity College, Dublin, goes after a predator from her former school, there are serious repercussions…for her, in Fiona McPhillips’s When We Were Silent (March 21, 2024.) “Try this one if you like a story of a woman who’s had enough and isn’t afraid to show it anymore.”
WOMEN WHO KILL
This is the year in which British women are taking up arms—or knives, poisons, or other instruments—and knocking off the bad men in their lives, from abusive husbands to rapist uncles to misogynistic politicians.
In Julie Mae Cohen’s Bad Men (May 7, 2024), Saffy Huntley-Oliver—socialite, thrice an heiress, and a devoted serial killer—loves nothing more than eliminating such men. “Killing bad men is my private hobby, my passion project, the thing that makes me tick. It’s my own humble attempt at smashing the patriarchy.”
Sally can’t take any more physical and psychological abuse from her husband. So she does the only thing she can do: she fights back, smashing him on the head with an iron skillet. But killing is the easy part. It’s disposing of the body that’s the challenge. Fortunately, Sally soon discovers that she’s not the only woman in the neighborhood who has a husband rotting away in the basement. Check out Alexia Casale’s The Best Way to Bury Your Husband (March 19, 2024) to see how Sally and her neighbors get out of this mess.
Claire, serial killer and hero of Joanna Wallace’s You’d Look Better as a Ghost (March 6, 2024) is always planning her next kill, typically of someone who crossed her. Today the 30ish Claire is plotting the murder of Lucas, an arts administrator who rejected one of her paintings. But no sooner is Lucas dead and planted in the back garden when Claire is a victim of blackmail. A dark masterpiece.
In Jahmal Mayfield’s “thoughtful, exciting debut,” Smoke Kings (February 6, 2024), grief leads to an audacious plan. A group of Black friends kidnaps a white man and demands answers about when his grandfather threw a Black man off a bridge. “‘Pawpaw? Impossible,’ is the reaction, but the verdict is the same: Scott must each week deposit $311.54 into an account the group provides.”
C. J. Wray’s witty The Excitements (March 30, 2024), about the two, nearly 100-year-old, Wilson sisters and their many escapades—they call them “excitements”—is captivating. And it succeeds without an ounce of the treacly cuteness so often encountered in crime fiction featuring female nonagenarians. The sisters are well-known as World War II veterans, and their wartime efforts seem innocent enough. But the truth is far more complicated. As they head off to Paris to receive the Légion d’honneur, they have retribution to exact, revenge to carry out, and one final grand heist to pull off.
CLOSED CIRCLES
You don’t see a lot of locked-room mysteries anymore—they feel very 1930s—but their cousin, closed-circle mysteries, continues to grow and grow. These are often set on a remote island, a frozen mountaintop, or some other barely reachable venue, and have a controlled cast of characters. No one is arriving, no one is leaving, and a huge winter storm is barreling towards the hapless characters.
In The Night of the Storm (January 16, 2024) by Nishita Parekh, the story is set during a real event: Hurricane Harvey, which hit Sugar Land, TX in 2017. Readers will fear the worst, knowing how bad the storm became, and debut author Parekh builds tension wonderfully as the storms outside and inside the house threaten to wipe out everything protagonist Jia holds dear.
In Nightwatching (February 6, 2024) by Tracy Sierra, a woman and her two children undergo a sort of home attack while a blizzard rages outside, no one has coats, and escape is impossible. Then the mom remembers that the house has a tiny, hidden room, and she hustles the children and herself into it, while still worrying how they will be able to survive. This unique, thinking-person’s thriller would be great for a book discussion, there’s so much here to unpack.
You know those cute programs where kids leave their teddy bears for a library sleepover? Eva Jurczyk’s That Night in the Library (June 11, 2024) is nothing like that. Instead, staying in the library overnight are student workers who have just completed a tough interview process for the one permanent job. Also attending is non-student Ro, who provides the acid that will kickstart a ceremony that has been meticulously planned. The ending here is a shock, and along the way the author delivers chills that are packed with narcissistic venom and choking claustrophobia.
Scotland always provides a good closed circle, and Emma Bamford’s Eye of the Beholder (August 6, 2024) doesn’t disappoint. Ghostwriter Maddy has taken on a new assignment: the memoir of an internationally revered cosmetic surgeon, and heads off to the subject’s home in the Scottish Highlands to really hunker down on the memoir. Except no. Strangers show up, their purpose unclear, while figures can be seen out in the fog, staring at the house. And then the food starts disappearing. Someone get me out of here!
COZIES PLUS
Could cozies get any more popular? Yes, it turns out, especially when they mix things up with other sub-genres to create something wholly different.
Take a look at one of our favorite series, Deep Dish Mysteries by Mindy Quigley. The most recent volume, Public Anchovy #1 (December 26, 2023), has Delilah and her crew from the restaurant catering a fancy reception at a mansion owned by a library trustee. All goes well until a huge storm comes over Geneva Bay. While most of the guests are able to escape, the staff remains behind, without electricity or heat, and with the knowledge that a murderer is in their midst. Is this a closed cozy?
Then there’s Olivia Blacke’s Rhythm and Clues (March 26, 2024), set in the small Texas town of Cedar River, where gossip spreads like warm butter. The three Jessup sisters are still struggling to keep their cafe/vinyl record store alive. When a crazy storm rips through town—this is Texas, after all—it washes out the roads, knocks out the electricity, and leaves a corpse in a parked car near their shop: the corpse of a predatory investor the women were trying to avoid.
It’s great when a series keeps getting better and better, and the latest, Eleven Huskies (May 14, 2024) by Phillip Schott in the “Vet Mystery” series, does exactly that. Veterinarian Peter Bannerman is on vacation with his family in northern Manitoba—lots of hiking and canoeing, mosquitos and dogs. But things quickly go wrong. Nature provides a terrifying forest fire that nearly kills the Bannermans, forcing them to seek safety in the Lodge, along with a murderer.
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (February 13, 2024) by Malka Older is one of the most radical cozy blends you can encounter. It features two women seemingly in love, one a detective, the other, Pleiti, a don at an Oxbridge-like university. Nothing too extraordinary there, except they live on the planet Jupiter, where humans escaped to years ago. This is a space opera and a detective story, a romance and a cozy mystery. The pleasures in this book are many: the growing relationship between the two women. The brilliant world-building. And the ruminations from Pleiti about the aim of returning to Earth, her research area, and the hints of political dissent. Brilliant on all counts.
SUPERNATURAL
Horror and its less-scary cousin, the supernatural, are having a moment, perhaps spurred on by the success of Silvio Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic. The pandemic might also have been a catalyst for this theme, with fear between the pages feeling more approachable and safely contained than the danger outside for the past few years. The following titles add a scary or otherworldly, or both, tinge to absorbing crime tales, heightening the drama and imparting a tantalizing feeling of unreality.
In Alisa Alering’s wonderfully, creepily named Smothermoss (July 16, 2024), Sheila, 17, and Angie, 12, are sisters living in grinding poverty in 1980s Appalachia. They have scary gifts: “Sheila is burdened and chafed by a rope around her neck, visible only to her, that grows thicker and longer over time. Angie draws sinister tarot-type cards that she carries everywhere, with figures like ‘A creature made of root and sinew [with] a crooked crown of worms’,” and the beasts impart frightening messages. When two Appalachian trail hikers are killed, Angie takes on the investigation.
Supernatural elements enrich Shari Lapena’s What Have You Done? (July 30, 2024), in which a small Vermont town reels in shock and grief after a local teen girl is found murdered. The girl’s mother believes she is communicating with her dead daughter, and the young woman’s friends have some inexplicable experiences as well, “adding to the edginess and puzzlement.”
One of the more unusual books of the year, L. J. Shepherd’s “brilliantly disorienting debut” The Trials of Lila Dalton (August 27, 2024) takes place on forbidding Assumption Island in the north Atlantic. Lila Dalton suddenly finds herself in court, apparently as a lawyer. Who is the client? What is the case? Who is the stranger in the mirror? Lila has no idea of anything, and danger is in store. Unlike her protagonist, Shepherd is a practicing barrister, and courtroom and legal details enrich this wonderfully chilly mystery.
“Everything is creepy about the Windermere,” said our review of Lisa Unger’s The New Couple in 5B (March 5, 2024). “What’s up with the doorman, who seemingly works around the clock? And the child […] crouching in the basement?” Don’t move into this building whatever you do, but readers will relish “[watching] in terror as ‘something dark is on the horizon’ becomes something dark that is right next to you.”
DON’T MIND ME
Women sleuths have always been a mainstay of crime fiction. Some books coming out this year star an enjoyable subset of that group: women who embody the “downstairs” or “sidekick” role. Being a hotel maid, a delivery “girl,” or even the Wright brothers’ sister allows access to murder venues and the kinds of low expectations that allow our wily heroes to investigate unnoticed.
Katherine Schellman’s The Last Note of Warning (June 4, 2024), third in the author’s Nightingale Mystery series, sees queer protagonist Vivian Kelly still working in a speakeasy, dancing her cares away, at night; by day, she’s now been promoted from seamstress to delivering dresses to wealthy clients. On one of these runs, she finds the master of the house dead and is accused of his murder, with underground sleuthing the only way to clear her name. Romance is thrown in here as well, adding an intriguing (not to mention frustrating! Get out of your own way, Vivian!) personal story to the satisfying whodunit.
Inside its gorgeous cover, Avery Cunningham’s prohibition-era set debut, The Mayor of Maxwell Street (January 30, 2024), introduces Nelly Sawyer, daughter of the richest Black man in America. Nelly writes anonymously for a newspaper, as a woman isn’t thought of as suitable for the job. She also lives a kind of hidden life outside work, as white Chicagoans take her for a maid at society events. During debutante season, Nelly pursues a clandestine investigation into the identity of a ruthless local boss, the Mayor of Maxwell Street, thrusting her into “a vicious game of deceit that adds high suspense and sometimes terrible danger to the politics-laden season.”
A real-life sidekick, Katharine Wright, is an amateur detective in Amanda Flower’s To Slip the Bonds of Earth (March 26, 2024). Katharine was the sister of Orville and Wilbur, aviation pioneers who left her at home to run the family’s bicycle shop while they were off making history. Here we find the boys returning home in triumph, only for shy Wilbur to have their unpatented airplane designs go missing at a party. Katharine is on the case in this “informative, fun, and absorbing mystery.”
Moving forward to the present day, Nita Prose’s The Mystery Guest (November 28, 2023) sees the protagonist of The Maid, Molly Gray, back at the Regency Grand Hotel, where an illustrious guest “suddenly drops dead. Very, very dead. And not from a medical condition.” Molly’s investigation takes her back to her childhood while “guests and employees start looking at each other with accusation in their eyes [and] the pressure for Molly to solve the case mounts.”
Later this year we’ll update you on themes and books that will be out in the second half of 2024. In the meantime, sign up for our free newsletter, firstCLUE, to get crime-fiction recommendations in your mailbox every week!
