The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes; The First 48 Hours by Simon Kernick; The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou by Eleni Kyriacou; The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok; Gaslight by Femi Kayode

Desperation Road review – Mel Gibson still after redemption in southern crime yarn

Hardluck single mother blows into a small town just as an ex-con returns there, and many thinly drawn secondary characters kick off

John le Carré’s son to write new George Smiley novel

Nicholas Cornwell will return his father’s best-loved spy to the page in a new novel set between The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Leo: Bloody Sweet review – leave your logic at the door for rampaging action yarn

The Tamil version of David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence is wildly enjoyable, packed full of hyenas, car chases, fight scenes and, of course, song and dance

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett; West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman; Mrs Sidhu’s Dead and Scone by Suk Pannu; Kennedy 35 by Charles Cumming; The North Light by Hideo Yokoyama

The Secret Life of John le Carré by Adam Sisman review – the constant philanderer

Three years after le Carré’s death, his official biographer reveals the adultery that was off limits during his lifetime. Does it further our appreciation of his work?

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde review – menace on Edinburgh’s mean streets

Hope Dickson Leach’s atmospheric adaptation of the classic thriller looks good but in rewriting the story, adds an unnecessary element of distraction

The best recent crime and thriller writing – review roundup

JK Rowling, as Robert Galbraith, is back with a cult classic, while elsewhere past crimes make for gripping reads

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford review – a ‘what if’ classic

The writer’s alternative history – a thriller set in a 1920s US with a huge and thriving Native American population – underlines the range and power of his imagination

The Haunting at 60: is it still one of the scariest films ever made?

Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg count the slow-burn 1963 horror as one of the greatest of all time but it wasn’t always seen as a classic

Author Mick Herron: ‘I’d have made an awful spy. I don’t have a smartphone or wifi’

As he publishes a new standalone novel, the spotlight-shunning author of the Slow Horses books talks about politics, time-travel and identity-swapping

The Secret Hours by Mick Herron review – secrets and spies

This companion piece to the Slough House series uncovers intrigue and corruption in the secret service, from 90s Berlin to the Cabinet office

The best recent crime and thriller writing – review roundup

Richard Osman, Stephen King, Mick Herron and Ann Cleeves return with murder aplenty, espionage antics and terrible secrets in basements

The Killer review – terrific David Fincher thriller about a philosophising hitman

Michael Fassbender is perfect in the main role of a yoga-loving assassin who discourses on everything from morality to the Smiths

Holly by Stephen King review – unlikely serial killers

King’s dogged private detective returns in this dark and lyrical thriller set during the pandemic