2023 reading so far: crime

Been too long since updating this blog – largely because of the combination of work being very busy and the consistent demands of a three-year old. The latter also means that a fair amount of reading has been involving dinosaurs, dogs that fly, wild things and bears that eat marmalade, rather than anything more highbrow. Nevertheless, that combination has also necessitated some escapism when it can be snatched, so here’s a round-up of crime reading I’ve enjoyed (or not) in the first half of the year:

I was a bit slow to this but have been catching up on M W Craven‘s series featuring Washington Poe, so have read The Puppet Show, Black Summer and The Botanist – the latter of which has just won the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year. I’ve found they have improved as the series has gone on (which isn’t always the case) and particularly with Poe and his sidekick Tilly Bradshaw developing nicely as main characters. The nicely sarcastic (and very British) humour is absolutely to my tastes, and remind me a little of Mick Herron’s Slough House books – although we are firmly in serial killer / police procedural territory here. To that point, the plots are fairly far-fetched, but there’s some ingenuity in the plotting and the pacing is excellent – so there’s good reason these have been so successful.

Another series I’ve been keeping up-to-date with is Holly Watt‘s novels featuring the investigative journalist Casey Benedict. The two I’ve read this year are The Hunt And The Kill and The End of the Game. Watt’s approach is to structure a thriller round a particular topic, and these two feature antibiotic resistance and AI/hedge funds/gambling respectively. Watt is undoubtedly a talented novelist, but I found these two to be lesser than the ones that preceded them (especially the excellent To the Lions), as the relationship to the ‘topic’ felt more forced, and the ‘thriller-y’ elements more Netflix-series oriented – by the end of these, Benedict is feeling more like a female Bond or Bourne than anything close to a realistic journalist (indeed, The End of the Game has rope ladders to facilitate an escape from a villain’s hideaway in the mountains). All of which is a shame, because the characters can be quite compelling and the suspense ratchets up nicely – I will keep reading, and hope for a return to earlier form.

I read three very different crime books back-to-back in March, and found each engrossing in their own way. The first was Notes On An Execution by Danya Kukafka which is a hugely well-achieved and structured book looking at a serial killer through the eyes and lives of the women that are affected by his actions (or who help shape them). What is impressive is the way in which Kukafka blends empathy and poignancy in different moments and reflections, with a real feeling of suspense at the final outcome. Highly recommended.

I followed that withDamascus Station by David McCloskey, a spy thriller rooted in Syria and a forbidden romance. There’s lots of familiar tropes here – Middle East / US, recruiting a mole, assassinations, CIA stations overseas – but it’s very well done by McCloskey. There is enough interest in the main characters (Sam & Mariam) to overcome elements that feel truly far-fetched or well-worn, and the set-piece actions are effective and occasionally shocking. Must surely be a Netflix mini-series soon.

Then came The Chase by Ava Glass which, as the title suggests, is entirely about a chase; a chase conducted, almost uniquely in this day and age, entirely on foot trying to avoid all technological tracking. This is fairly thin, insubstantial stuff but undeniably thrilling and exciting – I note from my GoodReads account that I read it in one day.

Four more to quickly recommend:
– We Begin At The End by Chris Whitaker – sweeping, moving, gut-punching and impressive, I really enjoyed this and can see why it’s won many awards; not quite as ‘unputdownable’ as the blurbs suggest, but it is very powerful and engages right to the last page; I would really recommend this and am going back to read more of Whitaker’s work

– The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff – fabulous and funny novel about a group of Indian women in a village who decide (for different reasons) to do away with their feckless husbands; but in amongst the black humour, there’s some rich and complex characters, and some real insight into some of the challenges that face women of lower castes in more rural villages. Great stuff.

– Ascension by Oliver Harris – I haven’t read anything by Harris before, but picked this up at the local train station book swap and found it pretty engrossing. It’s set on Ascension Island and Harris does a great job (as they say) of making the island a character and bringing it into the heart of the story – and there was enough intrigue and mystery in the international spying-meets-local island politics plot to maintain the momentum to the end. Intriguing and worth a read.

– Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen – this is a fun premise, in which a ‘proper’ writer is challenged to write a lowly crime book in a month and is dispatched to a rural location in Iceland to do so; but Danish author Hannah is soon pulled into a local murder investigation and drawn into a web of family history and small-town relationships. Hannah is a fun character, with ‘cutting’ and ‘withering’ being her default settings, and although things get a little preposterous, I thoroughly enjoyed this.

So, in order of recommendation, a top 12 so far in 2023:
1) Notes On An Execution by Danya Kukafka
2) The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
3) We Begin At The End by Chris Whitaker
4) The Botanist by M W Craven
5) Ascension by Oliver Harris
6) Damascus Station by David McCloskey
7) Outback by Patricia Wolf (decent Aussie crime novel)
8) A Killing In November by Simon Mason (new promising UK police series)
9) The Night Man by Jorn Lier Horst (more William Wisting – ever-reliable)
10) The Stone Circle by Elly Griffiths (more Ruth Galloway – ever-reliable)
11) A Heart Full Of Headstones by Ian Rankin (more Rebus – still good)
12) The Chase by Ava Glass