In brief: Untitled: The Real Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor; The King’s Evil; Circe – reviews

A sympathetic biography of Edward VIII’s American wife, an enthralling Restoration crime thriller and Madeline Miller’s excellent retelling of The Odyssey

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

Kill [redacted] by Anthony Good; The Guilty Party by Mel McGrath; The Mobster’s Lament by Ray Celestin; Casanova and the Faceless Woman by Olivier Borde-Cabuçon; Cruel Acts by Jane Casey; and A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself by William Boyle

The Plotters by Un-su Kim review – a sniper in Seoul

A contract killer finds himself at the centre of a conspiracy in a dreamlike alternative Korea

Muscle by Alan Trotter review – meta pulp fiction

This debut novel from a young Scottish writer takes an oblique approach to a pulp detective yarn

Crime writer Don Winslow challenges Trump to border wall debate

Stephen King seconds call for Fox News head-to-head, offering $10,000 to make it happen

The Wych Elm by Tana French review – a portrait of privilege

A twisty pageturner that considers the bruised relationship between the world and the self

Tana French: ‘Nobody with imagination should commit a crime. You wouldn’t handle the stress’

The author has branched out with the twisty, psychological thriller The Wych Elm. She shares her conversations with a retired detective and why she’s not interested in true crime

Muscle by Alan Trotter review – a new take on noir

As with the best pulp fiction, there’s serious existential heft to this dazzling debut about a pair of toughs marauding around 50s America

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

The Last by Hanna Jameson; To Kill the Truth by Sam Bourne; The Lost Man by Jane Harper; Flowers Over the Inferno by Ilaria Tuti; The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides; and Fade to Grey by John Lincoln

Second AJ Finn novel on way despite Dan Mallory scandal, says publisher

Revelations that the author of The Woman in the Window lied repeatedly about having cancer have not dissuaded HarperCollins from publishing a followup

Smart goons and a character called _____: the subversive hardboiled crime of Alan Trotter

The novelist explains his experimental approach to the noir detective, focusing on characters traditionally forgotten, even in their down time between jobs

In brief: Born to Be Posthumous; The Chestnut Man; How to Rule the World

A biography of the influential American illustrator Edward Gorey, debut crime fiction from the creator of The Killing, and a comic novel from Tibor Fischer about a documentary film-maker

Slow Motion Ghosts by Jeff Noon review – murder and glam rock

Noon’s foray into crime fiction is a journey into the underworlds of police violence and occult obsession

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley; The Flower Girls by Alice Clark-Platts; Red Snow by Will Dean; Fog Island by Mariette Lindstein; A Long Night in Paris by Dov Alfon

The Krull House by Georges Simenon review – a dark masterpiece

First published in 1939, this eerily prophetic study of race hatred and mass hysteria in a small French town is vintage Simenon