Crimefiction and thrillers
THE LAST ACT OF HATTIE HOFFMAN by Mindy Mejia ( Hachette NZ, $ 35)
Mejia’s first foray into crime is a good one. Hattie Hoffman is a precocious, whip- smart 17- year- old. She wants “a life bigger than Pine Valley”, the small rural Minnesotan town where she’s grown up. Hattie dreams of making it as an actress in New York. Her obliging exterior — she can talk frost advisories, Pynchon or college gossip — masks a manipulative, troubled heart. She’s “unformed clay” ready to be who and what her audience wants; perfect for the stage ( Hattie’s Lady Min her school’s production of Macbeth) but trickier in real life — and deadly for the people around her, especially the men. They include — inevitably — a smitten, hipster English teacher and a football jock with whom Hattie toys. It doesn’t go so well for Hattie, who turns up dead in an old barn after opening night. Mejia captures the hardworking, no- nonsense Midwest character wonderfully. The plot’s as tricky as it needs to be in these post- Gone Girl times but character and setting is king here. If Hattie is the marquee star, other characters are just as good, especially the seen- it- all sheriff Del Goodman. Expect this to top the best- of lists in 11 months.
MISSING, PRESUMED by Susie Steiner ( Borough Press, $ 35)
Inexplicably, this slipped through the net last year. Steiner — an ex- journo — quit to write full time when her first novel Homecoming was published in 2013. She wants her writing to have the page- turning “propulsion of mystery along with the meandering and depth and relationship of a literary novel”. Present and correct on all counts. DS Manon Bradshaw is a brilliant character — think Jane Tennison from the old Prime Suspect — and her “meandering” includes a search for love that’s as compelling as her investigation into the disappearance of Edith Hind, a Cambridge postgrad from a well- connected family. That case delves into issues of class, race, power and truth, not forgetting the dating dilemmas of the middleaged: should you sleep with him just to shut him up? DS Bradshaw does. Highly recommended.
KILL THE NEXT ONE by Frederico Axat ( Text Publishing, $ 37)
Lots of meandering in this too but to less effect. Argentinian writer Axat’s third novel — this one set in the US — has an intriguing set up. Ted McKay has a brain tumour. When we meet him he’s in his lounge and about to put a bullet through his brain. But wait — someone’s at the door and has a proposition — kill two deserving men before dying? With plot twist upon plot twist — is it a dream? A conspiracy? Mental illness? What’s this horseshoe in his pocket? — this maze- like thriller will either amaze or annoy.
SIRENS by Joseph Knox ( Doubleday, $ 37)
First- time author Knox’s Sirens has received good advance notices, with one critic describing him as “a Ross MacDonald for the 21st century”. Knox, an ex- book buyer for Waterstones in the UK, is a Manchester boy and this starts off powerfully. We’re in the gritty, dark world of Manchester’s night- life: drug dealers, secret parties, junkies and bug chasers and, yes, Sirens — the beautiful, damaged women drawn to this illicit world. Speed- snorting troubled junior detective Aidan Waits is asked to look for an MP’s teenage daughter and that search puts him in the middle of a drug war and much more. Manchester’s seamy side is captured brilliantly. Knox is a writer to watch.