For the dog days of summer, new paperbacks to chew on

Macintyre, the popular author of fast-paced books about midcentury spies,” wrote Lara Feigel in The Guardian. “Reading this book, I could see the film it will become.”

“The Kingdom” by Jo Nesbo (Vintage Crime, $17). The prolific Norwegian crime author is best known for the Harry Hole series, but this one’s a stand-alone, involving brothers Roy and Carl.

The book “puts all the murky, violent twists on brotherly love that you’d expect from this leading exponent of Nordic noir,” wrote Kirkus Reviews, which named it one of the best mystery/thrillers of 2020. “Nesbo peels away the secrets surrounding Carl’s project, his backstory, and his connections to his old neighbors so methodically that most readers, like frogs in a gradually warming pan of water, will take quite a while to realize just how extensive, wholesale, and disturbing those secrets really are.”

“Fortune Favors the Dead” by Stephen Spotswood (Vintage Crime, $16, out Aug. 3). One more mystery: I discovered this zippy series opener, set in 1940s New York, last spring and devoured every word, falling hard for Willowjean “Will” Parker, a former circus knife thrower (!) turned assistant to famous New York detective Lillian Pentecost.

It’s great, jazzy fun — Spotswood has a knack for the sort of phrase you’d hear in an exceptionally smart film noir — and you’ll want to get this one read (and reread) before the sequel, “Murder Under Her Skin,” arrives in December.