I am surprised at how many 2023 titles I’ve already read — 17 of them. And if the 17 are any indication, 2023 will be a banner year for mystery, crime fiction and thrillers. There is only one of the 17 that I have some reservation in recommending (EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE). I didn’t like it as much as DP contributors Jeff Popple and Kristopher Zgorski who absolutely loved it. So it may be wise to give it a try. It could just be me.
I’ll follow this up in the next few days with My Most Anticipated Reads of 2023.
Here are the 17
This title came out in 2021 in Australia and was on both Jeff Popple’s and my 2021 best lists **THE HOUSEMATE, Sarah Bailey (Polis, $27.99, April). Three housemates. One dead, one missing and one accused of murder. Dubbed the Housemate Homicide, it’s a mystery that has baffled Australians for almost a decade. Melbourne-based journalist Olive Groves worked on the story as a junior reporter and became obsessed by the case. Now, nine years later, the missing housemate turns up dead on a remote property. Olive is once again assigned to the story, this time reluctantly paired with precocious millennial podcaster Cooper Ng. As Oli and Cooper unearth new facts about the three housemates, a dark web of secrets is uncovered. The revelations catapult Oli back to the death of the first housemate, forcing her to confront past traumas and insecurities that have risen to the surface again. DP (2)
**THE LIE MAKER, Linwood Barclay (Morrow, $30.00, May). Your dad’s not a good person. Your dad killed people, son. These are some of the last words Jack Givins’ father spoke to him before he was whisked away by witness protection, leaving Jack and his mother to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives as best they could. Years later, Jack is a grown man with problems of his own. He’s a talented but struggling author, barely scraping by on the royalties from his moderately successful first book. So when the U.S. Marshals approach him with a lucrative opportunity, he’s in no position to turn them down. They’re recruiting writers like Jack to create false histories for people in witness protection—people like Jack’s father. The coincidence is astonishing to Jack at first, but he soon realizes this may be a chance to find his dad. Only there’s one problem—Jack’s father hasn’t made contact with his handlers recently, and they have no idea where he is. He could be in serious danger, and Jack may be the only one who can find him. DP
First in a trilogy, which gets off to a good start. **RED QUEEN, Juan Gomez-Jurado (Minotaur, $27.99, March). Antonia Scott – the daughter of a British diplomat and a Spanish mother – has a gifted forensic mind, whose ability to reconstruct crimes and solve baffling murders is legendary. But after a personal trauma, she’s refused to continue her work or even leave her apartment. Jon Gutierrez, a police officer in Bilbao – disgraced, suspended, and about to face criminal charges – is offered a chance to salvage his career by a secretive organization that works in the shadows to direct criminal investigations of a highly sensitive nature. All he has to do is succeed where many others have failed: Convince a recalcitrant Antonia to come out of her self-imposed retirement, protecting her and helping her investigate a new, terrifying case. The case is a macabre, ritualistic murder – a teen-aged boy from a wealthy family whose body was found without a drop of blood left in it. But the murder is just the start. A high-ranking executive and daughter of one of the richest men in Spain is kidnapped, a crime which is tied to the previous murder. Behind them both is a hidden mastermind with even more sinister plans. And the only person with a chance to see the connections, solve the crimes and successfully match wits with the killer before tragedy strikes again…is Antonia Scott. DP
**EXILES, Jane Harper (Flatiron Books, $27.99, January). Federal Investigator Aaron Falk is on his way to a small town deep in Southern Australian wine country for the christening of an old friend’s baby. But mystery follows him, even on vacation. This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of Kim Gillespie’s disappearance. One year ago, at a busy town festival on a warm spring night, Kim safely tucked her sleeping baby into her stroller, then vanished into the crowd. No one has seen her since. When Kim’s older daughter makes a plea for anyone with information about her missing mom to come forward, Falk and his old buddy Raco can’t leave the case alone.
As Falk soaks up life in the lush valley, he is welcomed into the tight-knit circle of Kim’s friends and loved ones. But the group may be more fractured than it seems. Between Falk’s closest friend, the missing mother, and a woman he’s drawn to, dark questions linger as long-ago truths begin to emerge. What would make a mother abandon her child? What happened to Kim Gillespie? BL, PW & DP
This tops my very-early best of 2023 list. Marvelous storytelling — reminiscent of RAZORBLADE TEARS. **SMALL MERCIES, Dennis Lehane (Harper, $30.00, April). In the summer of 1974 a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessey is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of “Southie,” the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart. One night Mary Pat’s teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn’t come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train under mysterious circumstances. The two events seem unconnected. But Mary Pat, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched—asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob, and the men who work for him, men who don’t take kindly to any threat to their business. DP
Read the British edition last year. Was on my best of 2022 list. Great series. **LYING BESIDE YOU, Michael Robotham (Scribner, $27.99, February). As a boy, Cyrus Haven survived a family massacre and slowly pieced his life back together. Now, after almost twenty years, his brother is applying to be released from a secure psychiatric hospital—and Cyrus is expected to forgive Elias and welcome him home. Elias is returning to a very different world. Cyrus is now a successful psychologist, working with the police, sharing his house with Evie Cormac, a damaged and gifted teenager who can tell when someone is lying. Evie has gone back to school and is working part-time at an inner-city bar, but she continues to struggle with authority and following rules. When a man is murdered and his daughter disappears, Cyrus is called in to profile the killer and help piece together Maya Kirk’s last hours. Police believe she was drugged and driven away from the same bar where Evie is working. Soon, a second victim is taken, and Evie is the only person who glimpsed the man behind the wheel. But there’s a problem. Only two people believe her. One is Cyrus. Kirkus & DP(3)
I found this brilliantly plotted but confusing for most of the book and very slow. Kristopher Zgorski thinks that it will be nominated for an Edgar Award. **EVERYONE IN MY FAMILY HAS KILLED SOMEONE, Benjamin Stevenson (Mariner, $30.00, January). Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate. I’m Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I’d killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. PW, AZ & DP(2)
I met the author at Bouchercon, came home and read the advance of this book and was really impressed by this down-and-dirty crime novel. **THE END OF THE ROAD, Andrew Welsh-Huggins (Mysterious Press, $26.95, April). Myles’s courtroom testimony should have put Pryor, their one-eyed ringleader, behind bars after the bank robbery gone wrong, yet somehow Pryor got off scot-free while Myles served time. Now, upon his release, Myles decides he is done with his life of crime?a change that will only be possible if he can kill Pryor and turn over a new leaf. Pryor has other ideas, and the collision between these two deadly forces soon leaves the ex-con in critical condition, clinging to life in a hospital bed. With Myles in recovery, it’s up to his girlfriend Penny to avenge her lover and salvage their chance at normalcy. As Pryor and his cronies prepare for their biggest score yet–stealing the legendary fortune said to be hidden in a farmhouse outside their small Ohio town–Penny is hot on their heels. But is she prepared for the carnage Pryor will gleefully wreak on the path to his prize? DP
**BETTER THE BLOOD, Michael Bennett (Atlantic Monthly, $27.00, January). A tenacious Maori detective, Hana Westerman juggles single motherhood, endemic prejudice, and the pressures of her career in Auckland CIB. Led to a crime scene by a mysterious video, she discovers a man ritualistically hanging in a secret room and a puzzling inward-curving inscription. Delving into the investigation after a second, apparently unrelated, death, she uncovers a chilling connection to an historic crime: 160 years before, during the brutal and bloody British colonization of New Zealand, a troop of colonial soldiers unjustly executed a Maori Chief. Hana realizes that the murders are utu—the Maori tradition of rebalancing for the crime committed eight generations ago. There were six soldiers in the British troop, and since descendants of two of the soldiers have been killed, four more potential murders remain. Hana is thus hunting New Zealand’s first serial killer. Kirkus, AZ, PW & DP
Follow-up to last year’s PESTICIDE. If you like police procedurals with great characters and fine writing, you should try this series. **SONS AND BROTHERS, Kim Hays (Seventh Street Books, $17.95, April). Walking his dog along Bern’s Aare river on an icy November night, a surgeon in his seventies is hit in the face and thrown into the river to drown. When his bruised corpse is found, his watch is missing. A mugging gone wrong? The more Swiss police detective Giuliana Linder and her assistant Renzo Donatelli learn about Johann Karl Gurtner, the more convinced they are that his death was not random. Talking to Gurtner’s family raises as many questions as it answers, but one thing becomes clear: the surgeon’s relationship with his middle son, Markus, was grim. Tracking others who might have had reason to hate Gurtner, Giuliana and Renzo find themselves once again dealing with their attraction to one another and their ambivalence about having an affair.
Behind their investigation, another story has been unfolding. During the year leading up to Gurtner’s death, his son Markus became friends with a former classmate of his father’s from the village where the two men grew up. Unlike the privileged young Gurtner, Jakob Amsler was forcibly removed from his mother at nine and contracted to live and work on a village farm. From Jakob, Markus learns that his father’s early life contains some very odd secrets—secrets that Giuliana and Renzo are now trying to uncover. DP
One of my favorite writers departs from his well-received Poe/Tilley series with a Reacher-esque action thriller, which I enjoyed a lot. **FEARLESS, M. W. Craven (Flatiron Books, $27.99, July). Ben Koenig used to head the US Marshal’s elite Special Operations Group. His team hunted the bad guys – the really bad guys, and he could find anyone. Then one day Koenig himself disappeared. Koenig has been on the run for six years. Now suddenly his face is on every television screen in the country and his cover is blown. A woman has gone missing, and her father will do anything to find her. He wants Koenig to discover what happened, no matter the cost. The trail leads Koenig to a small town in the burning heat of the Chihuahuan Desert, where some people have a secret they’ll do anything to protect. But Koenig has a secret of his own: a unique condition that makes him unable to feel fear. Now Koenig is coming for them. And they should be afraid. DP
Not my usual fare, but I really got into this book which is steeped in dark humor. **KILLING ME, Michelle Gagnon (Putnam, $28.00, May). Amber Jamison cannot believe she’s about to become the latest victim of a serial killer—she’s savvy and street smart, so when she gets pushed into, of all things, a white windowless van, she’s more angry than afraid. Things get even weirder when she’s miraculously saved by a mysterious woman…who promptly disappears. Who was she? And why is she hunting serial killers? You’d think escaping one psychopath would be enough, but Amber’s problems are just beginning. Her close call has law enforcement circling a past she’s tried to outrun. So she flees across the country, ending up at a seedy motel in Las Vegas with a noir-obsessed manager and a sex worker as her unlikely companions…and danger right behind. She’s landed in the crosshairs of the world’s most prolific killer, caught up in a deadly game that’s been going on for years. To survive, she’s forced to dust off her old playbook and partner with someone she can’t trust. DP
Nobody writes a better action thriller than Mark Greaney as evidenced by his latest. **BURNER, Mark Greaney (Berkley, $29.00, February). When you kick over a rock, you never know what’s going to crawl out. Alex Velesky is about to discover that the hard way. He’s stolen records from the Swiss bank that employs him, thinking that he’ll uncover a criminal conspiracy. But he soon finds that he’s tapped into the mother lode of corruption. Before he knows it, he’s being hunted by everyone from the Russian mafia to the CIA. Court Gentry and his erstwhile lover, Zoya Zakharova, find themselves on opposites poles when it comes to Velesky. They both want him but for different reasons. That’s a problem for tomorrow. Today they need to keep him and themselves alive. PW & DP
One of my favorite series by the consistently excellent Mike Lawson **ALLIGATOR ALLEY, Mike Lawson (Atlantic Monthly Press, $27.00, February). When Andie Moore, a 23-year-old working in the DOJ’s Inspector General’s Office, is murdered in cold blood in Florida’s Everglades, it falls on DeMarco to get to the bottom of things. Paired with Emma, an enigmatic, retired ex-spy with seemingly endless connections in the military and intelligence communities, they venture south to the scene of Andie’s murder: Alligator Alley. DeMarco and Emma waste no time in identifying two suspects—a pair of crooked, near-retirement FBI agents named McIntyre and McGruder. But as they keep digging, it becomes clear that these FBI agents weren’t acting alone, and that this goes much deeper than just the murder of an innocent 23-year old woman. BL, PW & DP
This debut thriller is a lot of fun, even though one thinks he knows where the plot is going — until he’s proved wrong. **GOING ZERO, Anthony McCarten (Harper, $30.00, April). TWO HOURS TO VANISH. Ten Americans have been carefully selected to Beta test a ground-breaking piece of spyware. Pioneered by tech-wunderkind Cy Baxter in collaboration with the CIA, FUSION can track anyone on earth. But does it work? Each participant is given two hours to ‘Go Zero’ – to go off-grid and disappear – and then thirty days to elude the highly sophisticated Capture Teams sent to find them. Any Zero that beats FUSION will receive $3 million. If Cy’s system prevails, he wins a $90 billion-dollar government contract to revolutionize surveillance forever. For one contestant, an unassuming Boston librarian named Kaitlyn Day, the stakes are far higher than money, and her reasons for entering the test more personal than anyone imagines. Kaitlyn needs to win as badly as Cy needs to realize his own ambitions. They have no choice but to finish the game and when the timer hits zero, there will only be one winner. DP
I’m chuffed that the writers asked me to be an “early reader” on this series. Very cool main character and very imaginative settings he’s placed in. **BLIND FEAR, Brandon Webb & John David Mann (Bantam, $28.99, July). By day, AWOL Navy SEAL Finn is hiding out on Vieques, a tiny island paradise off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, living in a spare room behind a seafood restaurant owned by a blind local. By night he scours the dark web, hunting for the rogue officer responsible for the crimes he is accused of committing. But Finn’s world is about to be turned upside down by a new nightmare, when his employer’s two grandchildren go missing. To find them, he’ll have to infiltrate the island’s dangerous criminal underbelly and expose a shadowy crime network known as La Empresa—even if it means exposing himself in the process. DP
I read the British edition in 2022 and it was on my 2022 best list. Debut thriller. **THE PARTISAN, Patrick Worrall (Union Square, $17.99, April). Summer 1961: The brutal Cold War between East and West is becoming ever more perilous. Two young prodigies from either side of the Iron Curtain, Yulia and Michael, meet at a chess tournament in London. They don’t know it, but they’re about to compete in the deadliest game ever played. Shadowing them is Greta, a ruthless Lithuanian resistance fighter who is hunting down some of the most dangerous men in the world. Men who are also on the radar of Vassily, perhaps the USSR’s greatest spymaster. A man of cunning and influence, Vassily is Yulia’s minder during her visit to the West, but even he could not foresee the consequences of her meeting Michael. When the world is accelerating towards an inevitable and catastrophic conflict, what can just four people do to prevent it? DP (2)
That’s a lot of good reading and something for everyone’s tastes. I highly recommend that you seek out those that sound interesting to you. Good Reading!