July heats up with steamy new books
Some book publishers are savvy, they send out advance copies of books to reviewers several months before new titles are due to be published.
This strategy gives review- ers the opportunity to peruse and evaluate material with some lead time to prepare for reviews and interviews.
In past columns, I have observed that major book publishers tend to mirror the school year when it comes to releasing the majority of the books that they issue. I’m detecting a slight tweak in their approach.
I recently read advance copies of some books that will be coming out during the normally slow month of July and several of them are among the best books that will be published this year, in my opinion. Mark your calendars so you can take one of these books along with you on your summer vacation. Here they are:
“The Chain” by Adrian McKinty
Mulholland Books, 368 pages, $28, July 9
Adrian McKinty has been on this reviewer’s radar for years. His series set in Northern Ireland during “The Troubles” that features the police detective Sean Duffy is one of my favorites. His latest effort, a standalone thriller called “The Chain,” has a diabolical plot that is the scary read of 2019.
Picture this: you are a nice couple with good kids. One of the children doesn’t come home. You receive a creepy phone call from someone with a distorted voice demanding a monetary ransom for your child. That’s not all; to get your child back you’ll need to pay a ransom to the kidnapping ring known as “The Chain.” Then you must kidnap another child, hold him or her for ransom and when that payment has been extorted, then that kid’s parents kidnap yet another child and you finally get yours back. None other than Lee Child has remarked that “McKinty is so good, I’m really starting to hate him.”
“Knife” by Jo Nesbo
Knopf 451 pages, $27.95, July 9
A year ago my favorite crime novelist, Philip Kerr, died. I have now found a worthy replacement. I love Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole series. In “Knife,” Nesbo outdoes himself. As it opens, Norwegian homicide cop Harry Hole is drinking himself to death. His wife has thrown him out.
He’s a broken man. Then somebody kills her. Harry Hole can’t remember what he was doing when it happened. Did he do it? He loved her and he’ll find her killer even if he dies trying.
“Lady in the Lake” by Laura Lippman
(William Morrow, 352 pages, July 23)
This is the one book out of this group that I haven’t quite finished reading yet.
Lippman had me on the first page. Set in Baltimore in 1966, “Lady in the Lake” has a protagonist, Maddie Schwartz, who is a newspaper reporter determined to solve the murder of a woman who was found in a lake. Lippman’s background as a newspaper reporter in Baltimore gave her the deep background and the journalistic chops this story required.
I just opened my mail to find an advance copy of “A Dangerous Man,” the latest Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novel by Robert Crais. The summer reading list will remain hot! It comes out on Aug. 6.