crime and thrillers
CALL ME EVIE
by J.P. Pomare (Hachette $30) A new reading year is off to a great start with this whip-smart debut from our newest thriller star. Kate’s navigating her way through teen life in uppermiddle-class Melbourne — boys, mean girls, flirty fathers of mean girls and the various sinkholes of social media — but it’s a terrified Evie we meet as this psychological thrill-fest opens. She seems to be held captive by her Uncle Jim in the small Bay of Plenty town, Maketu (Pomare grew up not far away on a horse-racing farm). Jim insists he’s helping her, having whisked her away from a crime scene, but Evie suspects she’s been set up to take the blame for his crimes. Pomare shifts between past and present exploring memory, perception and power with crisp prose and compelling characters.
THE DROP
by Mick Herron (John Murray $25) Old spies, as many John le Carre novels attest, are perfect fodder for fiction and UK’s new spymaster weaves a fablelike novella around two of them, Solomon Dortmund (an ex-Cold War operative who still has a rotary phone) and “milkman” John Bachelor, who ekes out an existence as a spook babysitter. When Dortmund sees “a drop” in a London cafe, Herron’s typically bathetic plot clicks into gear. It’s Herron, so expect bureaucratic ineptitude and political facesaving (Lady Di is in fine form here) while parallels with the current UK political situation are never far away. Herron fans note: there’s no Jackson Lamb or his ragtag collection of pastured spies but this is cut from the same cloth — funny and horrifyingly real — one only wishes it were longer.
THE INFINITE BLACKTOP
by Sara Gran (Atria Books $33) You have to be very good to make the damaged cop/PI story resonate and for every good book that comes across my desk, there are 10 dull ones. This is one of the good ones but it won’t be to everyone’s taste. It’s Gran’s third outing in the Claire DeWitt series — the self-proclaimed “best detective in the world”, a PI obsessed with a (fictional) book on detection by Jacques Silette. This jumps around in time and place (Oakland, LA, Las Vegas) as DeWitt tries to unravel three mysteries. Gran’s hard-boiled world has shades of Chandler, but is always tinged with a sense of the surreal, a blur of magic at the edges. If you want a subversive, fresh genre crime fiction voice this is the book for you. “Not everything in a book needs to be explained,” says Gran. “Trust your reader; leave them with mysteries.”
NOVEMBER ROAD
by Lou Berney (William Morrow $33) Do we really need another book based around the JFK assassination? Yes — if it’s as good as this. Berney brings the era alive in this outstanding thriller. Despite penning excellent books, like 2015’s The Long and Faraway Gone, Berney has pretty much existed under the radar, but expect that to change. Under the radar is exactly where Berney’s main protagonist, mob foot soldier Frank Guidry, wants to be when he finds himself being hunted by his mob employers after the assassination — one he’s been unknowingly implicated in. Starting a relationship with a young mother, who has left her alcoholic husband, and has two daughters in tow seems like the perfect cover. Part road story, part romance, part period piece, this topped many critic’s 2018 best-of lists. The ending will divide readers but it is certainly worth the trip.