The Keeper by Tana French (Viking, £16.99)
The final book in French’s Cal Hooper trilogy sees the retired Chicago detective drawn into a power struggle for the future of the small Irish town he has made his home. Ardnakelty is a place where everyone is interconnected, with grudges and loyalties lasting for generations, and Hooper, now engaged to local widow Lena and mentor to 16-year-old Trey, is becoming a part of its fabric. When the body of Rachel Holohan, girlfriend of the son of local bigshot Tommy Moynihan, is recovered from the river, the consensus is suicide, but Trey convinces Hooper to investigate. Tommy doesn’t like people interfering in his business, especially when it emerges that Rachel was concerned about his plans for the town. An immersive, slow-burn of a book, as much about the march of time and the inevitably changing nature of Irish rural life as it is about solving a crime, The Keeper is dense, compelling and superbly atmospheric.
The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman (Virago, £20)
Set in a Chelsea boarding house in 1953, Garman’s debut novel opens with Jimmy Sullivan – who “wore spiv’s shoes and spoke in unmistakable Cockney tones” – bleeding to death under the dispassionate gaze of the landlady and her lodgers. The big Victorian house, presided over by bohemian literary widow Honor Wilson, is home to a debutante fallen on hard times, a wannabe writer, a young cinema usher with social aspirations, and a Jewish poet who managed to escape Hitler but lost his wife and child in the process. All have secrets, but none more than Honor herself, and the arrival of Jimmy, who claims to be the son of an old family retainer, threatens them all. This is not only an excellent mystery, but an evocative portrayal of a group of people displaced socially and geographically by war and its aftermath, with the moral and topographical landscape of 1950s London superbly rendered.
Mrs Shim Is a Killer by Kang Jiyoung, translated by Paige Morris (Doubleday, £14.99)
Episodic but with an overarching plot about the rivalry between two detective agencies that specialise in drastic solutions to their clients’ problems, Korean bestseller Kang’s English-language debut is a droll thriller featuring an unassuming middle-aged widow and mother of two who becomes a contract killer. Mrs Shim, in need of money after losing her job in a butcher’s shop, puts her knife skills to good use at the Smile Detective Agency; her success leaves its nearest competitor, the Happy Agency, rattled. Told through a diverse series of characters, including Mrs Shim’s son who, needing money for university, also becomes a murderer-for-hire, this is a story of conflicting loyalties. It can be hard to keep track of the large cast, and emotional connection to the characters is limited, but it’s a bizarre and fascinating read, with the puzzle pieces slowly locking together for a spectacular final standoff.
A Killer in the Family by Amin Ahmad (Hutchinson Heinemann, £16.99)
Ahmad’s debut novel begins in Mumbai, where dreamy, immature Ali Azeem’s family, their fortunes declining, are desperate to marry him off; they can’t believe their luck when phenomenally rich New York property developer Abbas Khan comes looking for a match for his younger daughter, psychiatric-hospital doctor Maryam. Ali agrees, but finds his prospective sister-in-law, Farhan, six years older and divorced, far more attractive – and the feeling turns out to be mutual. Now living in a grand New York apartment, Ali, very much an innocent abroad, misses red flags left, right and centre; he fails to realise that Farhan’s brash exterior cloaks damage and that Abbas’s urbane veneer hides a dangerous man, and finds his new wife simply unknowable. There’s also the matter of the mysterious postcards, and the growing likelihood that the Khans may be linked to a serial killer. Ali and Farhan pass the narrative baton between them for a propulsive thriller with an enjoyable side order of social satire.
The Drowning Place by Sarah Hilary (Harvill, £16.99)
Trauma has caused paranormal social contagion in Hilary’s fictitious small town in the picturesque Peak District. Aged 11, Joseph Ashe was the sole survivor of a school bus crash in which nine children and three adults drowned in a reservoir; now, 17 years later and a detective sergeant, he still talks to his dead best friend. Other residents sense the dead children, too, and even newly transferred DI Laurie Bower is affected, seeing flashes of her dead younger sister. The booby traps are not only emotional but physical, the former home of one drowned girl having been rigged with a concealed crossbow – and no sooner do Ashe and Bower start figuring out what’s going on, a young couple are found shot. As well as creating compelling mysteries, Hilary is especially good at the delicate but merciless filleting of PTSD, guilt and grief, and here she excels: a flying start to what promises to be a truly excellent new series.
