Criminally good reads
The Night She Disappeared Lisa Jewell Century, £14.99
It’s been a year since Kim’s teenage daughter, Tallulah, and her partner, Zach, disappeared without trace.
They were last seen at a pool party at her college acquaintance Scarlett’s lavish home. But Kim knows Tallulah would never intentionally abandon her baby, Noah.
Then Shaun takes a new job as headmaster of Maypole House school, moving into a cottage on the grounds with his crime writer girlfriend Sophie.
When Sophie spots a sign in the woods saying “Dig here”, her findings reopen the dormant police investigation and will ultimately shine a light on the dark and disturbing events of that fateful night.
The finger of suspicion points to all the key players, from the fragile Scarlett to the controlling Zach, keeping the reader on their toes throughout.
This is Lisa Jewell’s most engrossing thriller to date and you’ll be torn between gulping it down and eking it out for as long as possible. CH
The Devil’s Advocate Steve Cavanagh Orion, £12.99
Defence lawyer Eddie
Flynn travels from New
York to Alabama to defend Andy Dubois, a young man accused of murdering a fellow bar worker. The stakes are high as Alabama still has the death penalty.
And in court he will face prosecutor Randal Korn who has sent more men to the electric chair than any district attorney in US history.
Flynn is not welcome in the small town of Buckstown where seemingly everyone has decided Andy is guilty.
Then the defence attorney representing Andy disappears and Korn and the town’s corrupt sheriff appear to be responsible.
Flynn knows he must fight fire with fire to destroy the prosecution case.
But he will only succeed if he stays one step ahead of a calculating killer.
The seventh Eddie Flynn novel is clever and unbearably tense with a tour de force of a finale. Cavanagh’s previous novels The Liar and Thirteen have won prestigious awards – but The Devil’s Advocate is his best yet. JC
Hostage Clare Mackintosh Sphere, £14.99
It’s probably a good thing that Clare Mackintosh’s fifth novel has been published during this summer of staycations. It’s the perfect beach read – as long as you don’t need to travel by plane to get yourself home.
Numerous celebrities and bigwigs are on board the inaugural flight on a new non-stop London-to-Sydney route lasting 20 hours. Stewardess Mina is concerned the airline has skimped on safety tests, but she has bigger worries when a passenger drops dead and she finds a photo of her young daughter in his wallet. Is somebody sending her a sinister message?
What follows is a breathless hostage drama/hijack thriller and a clever whodunnit, transforming everybody’s worst nightmare into unputdownable entertainment. JK
Dream Girl Laura Lippman Faber, £14.99
Many male writers have cited the artistic temperament as justification for appalling behaviour over the years, but these days we are less accepting of that selfserving excuse.
This is the theme at the centre of Laura Lippman’s 25th novel, which takes us into the mind of veteran author Gerry Andersen as he recuperates from an accident.
Gerry spends his bed-bound days looking back over his life and generally congratulating himself on his decency.
But when he starts receiving phone calls from a woman claiming to be a character from one of his books, he is obliged to reflect more honestly on his past to work out who might have a motive to torment him. The situation escalates with the sudden appearance of a corpse.
This superb mixture of psychological horror story and literary satire is as creepily fun as Hitchcock at his best. JK
Rabbit Hole Mark Billingham Little, Brown, £20
I can think of many fictional coppers who need a spell on a psychiatric ward, and this standalone thriller from Mark Billingham features an investigating officer who’s been sectioned.
Our narrator is DC Alice Armitage of the Met, who has been committed to a psychiatric hospital after the death of a colleague in the line of duty sent her mental health haywire.
When a murderer strikes on the ward, Alice puts her sleuthing skills to the test – to a marked lack of encouragement from the official police investigators.
Is our narrator hiding details about her past from us?
This novel makes for an unusual and ambitious change of pace from Billingham.
It’s a slow-burning character study of Alice and her fellow patients – and suspects – written with immense sympathy, but also glorious jet-black humour. JK
Billy Summers Stephen King Hodder & Stoughton, £20
Billy Summers lives in a binary world. There are good guys and bad guys – and bad guys should get what’s coming to them.
This simple moral code enables him to justify his job as a highly paid assassin. But just as he is considering retirement, he is approached about one last hit that comes with such a big pay day it could change his life for ever.
And it does – but not in the way he had expected.
This gripping novel starts slowly, but once King starts building the tension you won’t be able to turn the pages quickly enough. A compelling and engrossing read. MG
The Second Woman Charlotte Philby Borough Press, £14.99
James Bond had it easy.
The protagonists in Charlotte Philby’s spy novels have to worry about feeding times and nappy changes as well as espionage.
Her thrillers have been a gamechanger for the spy genre. In place of the usual posh male perspective, she explores how undercover work impacts on being a parent – and vice versa.
Her third novel begins with the apparent suicide of a woman suffering from postnatal depression, but Madeleine Farrow of the National Crime Agency wants to know why the circumstances resemble the death of a Greek woman two decades ago.
The answer comes in a gripping novel that spans decades and continents, and – perhaps appropriately for a book by the granddaughter of Kim Philby – hinges on family secrets and how their impact can last for generations. JK