I want to alert you to a few good books coming out in the next few months that you should keep an eye out for.

I read this book a couple of years ago when it came out in the U.K. and Australia. It was one of my favorite books of 2023. It has finally arrived on our shores.
THE HOUSEMATE by Sarah Bailey (Datura Books, $18.99, Kindle, $6.99, February 25).
Journalist Olive Groves worked on the “Housemate Homicide” story as a junior reporter and became obsessed with the case. Now, nine years later, the missing housemate turns up dead on a remote property sparking controversy and begging the question – what really happened between the three housemates that night? Olive is once again assigned to the story, this time reluctantly paired with precocious and overly eager millennial podcaster Cooper Ng.
As Olive and Cooper unearth new facts about the story, a dark web of secrets is uncovered, forcing Olive to confront her own past traumas and insecurities that have risen to the surface. As she delves deeper than ever before, will Olive’s suspicions threaten her future happiness and even her sanity? And will her relentless search for the murderer put her new family in danger?

I’ve read all four of this series and am a big fan. In this one Kim Hays deftly handles the lives of her characters to find a sublimely satisfying ending to this tale. This series should be read in order to get its full impact.
SPLINTERED JUSTICE by Kim Hays (Seventh Street Books, $22.95, April). Linder & Donatelli #4. Sometimes, a murder stays hidden in plain sight. When it isn’t clear if a crime has been committed, how do you get justice for the victim?
Swiss homicide detective Giuliana Linder of the Bern Police and her investigating partner Renzo Donatelli are facing cases that may not be what they appear. Renzo is on the scene near the Bern cathedral when a young man repairing a medieval window is injured by falling from a scaffold—a fall deliberately caused by a teenage boy.
Finding evidence that the boy’s attack on the glassworker is linked to his mother’s suicide fifteen years earlier, Renzo decides to reexamine the woman’s death, hoping his work on the case will help get him promoted to homicide detective. He learns that the apparent suicide still haunts the injured glassworker, although he was a child of ten when the boy’s mother died.
Now that Renzo has left his wife, Giuliana knows she has to choose what she wants from their future together.

In 2022 when EVEN THE DARKEST NIGHT came out to high critical acclaim (mine included) I welcomed a new star to our world of crime fiction and put the author on the cover of DP #96. The second in the series didn’t have the same juice as the first, but I’m still anxious to continue following Melchor Marin’s life and trials.
FORTRESS OF EVIL by Javier Cercas (MacLehose Press, £22.00, April, U.K. only so far). Melchor Marin #3
Years have passed since Melchor took revenge for his mother’s murder and at last found peace with his daughter Cosette in the sleepy backwater of Terra Alta.
But their idyll is shattered when one day Cosette, now seventeen, discovers that her father has been concealing the truth of her mother’s death- that she was killed in a hit-and-run “accident” intended to scare Melchor off a case.
Angry and betrayed, Cosette disappears to Mallorca with her friend Elisa. And that’s the last Melchor hears of her. His texts and calls go unanswered, and when she returns alone, Elisa can only say Cosette needed “space to think”.
Now the former policeman has no choice but to travel to Port de Pollença, where his daughter was last seen alive, and enter the dark, looking-glass world of Swedish-American billionaire Rafael Mattson.

I was a big fan of Michael McGarrity’s Kevin Kerney series set in New Mexico. But I didn’t read any of the Western sagas that he wrote after that. Now, at age 86, Michael McGarrity has come up with a potential new series set in, of all places, 1950s New York City! I am reading an advanced copy right now and enjoying it. Review to follow.
NIGHT IN THE CITY by Michael McGarrity (Norton, $28.99, May). Sam Monroe thought his steamy love affair with Manhattan socialite Laura Nielson was dead and buried, but when she didn’t show up after unexpectedly calling him late at night and asking to meet, he decides to investigate. He finds her naked on her penthouse balcony, strangled, his dog tags wrapped around her neck. With a bull’s-eye on his back as the prime suspect, Sam begins a search for the killer that reveals Laura’s involvement with several men, some with ties to a well-known crime family.
As circumstantial evidence mounts against him, the cops close in, especially a heavy-handed rogue patrolman carrying a grudge against Sam and looking for serious payback. Forced to operate in the shadows, he relies on the unofficial help of several coworkers in the DA’s office and Debora Jean Ryan, a private investigator who offers to assist but has an agenda that she refuses to disclose. As they probe Laura’s past looking for clues, they must also figure out Laura’s mysterious trip out west, the death of a young man in New Jersey during her childhood, and who is making attempts on his life.

Alan Parks is still writing about Glasgow, Scotland but has gone back in time to the early days of World War II to start a new series.
GUNNER by Alan Parks (Baskerville, £16.99, July U.K. only so far). First of a new series. March, 1941. Joseph Gunner is back on the streets of Glasgow after being wounded on the front lines in France.
Keeping the pain in his leg at bay with the help of morphine, Gunner, a former detective, is hoping to keep his head down as the Luftwaffe begin bombing Glasgow.
But when he runs into his old boss Drummond, he is persuaded to help examine a body found in the wreckage. When the body turns out to be that of a German, mutilated to disguise his identity, Gunner reluctantly agrees to investigate.
As Gunner begins to hunt for the truth he runs into old flames, bitter enemies, before finding himself embroiled in a high-level conspiracy that reaches far beyond his hometown of Glasgow.

AN INSIDE JOB by Daniel Silva (Harper, $32.00, July). The next Gabriel Allon. No plot summary available yet. I always look forward to the next Daniel Silva. Most of them work for me. Every once in a while one seems to be a formula retread. I look forward to seeing which AN INSIDE JOB will turn out to be.