Penance by Eliza Clark review – art or porn?
Set in a northern seaside town, this show-stopping second novel is a bravura deconstruction of our voyeuristic love for true crime
The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup
Black River by Nilanjana Roy; Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen; Killingly by Katharine Beutner; The End of Us by Olivia Kiernan; The Trial by Rob Rinder
Kala by Colin Walsh review – vanishings, betrayals and friends reunited in rural Ireland
This confidently plotted debut novel from the award-winning short story writer has a strong cast and vivid dialogue
Top 10 books about missing persons
These interrupted stories, in fiction and real life, are powerfully moving and key into a universal anxiety
The best recent crime and thriller writing – review roundup
An Indian village seeks mob justice after a girl’s death, the great Inspector Banks bows out, and clerical investigations resume for Richard Coles
Vaseem Khan becomes first person of colour to chair Crime Writers’ Association
Khan, author of two crime series set in India, said he aimed to make the CWA ‘a home for all crime writers’
Lost story by ‘poet of the tabloid murder’ James M Cain discovered in Library of Congress
Strand Magazine will publish Blackmail, a tale of a blind Korean war veteran, found by New York editor Andrew Gulli
Top 10 cops in fiction
At war with the establishment, putting themselves in reckless danger and succumbing to terrible habits, these unreliable figures are dependably entertaining
‘Candid’, ‘gripping’, ‘compulsory reading’: the best Australian books out in May
Each month, Guardian Australia editors and critics pick out the upcoming titles they’ve already devoured – or can’t wait to get their hands on
‘You’re not the nice guy I thought you were’: the Australian crime novelist and the French bank thief
Marele Day has spent a lifetime writing crime fiction, but it took decades to tell the epic story of a real-life criminal she had come to call a friend
Anne Perry obituary
Bestselling historical crime novelist whose troubled adolescence, and part in a notorious murder, was the subject of a film by Peter Jackson
The best recent crime and thriller writing – review roundup
A village treasure hunt digs up trouble, a game of dares goes too far and a Mary Higgins Clark classic is revisited in this month’s highlights
Loving Highsmith review – Ripley author tribute soft-pedals writer’s nasty side
Ostensibly about the relationships of the celebrated novelist, this documentary is coy about Patricia Highsmith’s obsessiveness and antisemitism
In brief: The Wakes; Humanly Possible; A Tidy Ending – reviews
A wittily poignant tale of friendship, death and unexpected joy; an impressively wide-ranging history of humanism; and a darkly comic crime novel
Eric Brown, science fiction author and Guardian critic, dies aged 62
Writers, publishers and agents pay tribute to a warm, generous figure, author of more than 50 books ranging from SFF to crime to children’s literature