As ever we have an eclectic selection for you this month:

True Crime: A Memoir by Patricia Cornwell

Surely a top title of the year. A memoir from one of the most popular crime writers of the last thirty years. Cornwell said she would never write her life story but fortunately for the many fans keen for this book she has relented.
Her long-running Kay Scarpetta series continues to hit the bestseller lists and the recent TV/streaming series of the detective/ME has made this book all the more intriguing and timely. Scarpetta stars Nicole Kidman and was finally made, thanks in part to the perseverance of one of the show’s other stars, Jamie Lee Curtis, duly acknowledged in the book. Indeed this memoir initially came from a film treatment.
There have always been questions about how much the Scarpetta novels reflected on Cornwell’s own life; they are, of course, drawn from her experience as a medical examiner. This book certainly illustrates the parallels, the origin stories, which fans will lap up. For instance, she reflects on her concern for victims and her hatred of violence.
Cornwell’s first novel, Postmortem, came out in 1990 and instantly struck a chord with readers but of course the story starts much earlier. She was born in 1956 and the memoir begins with her childhood, which was sadly unhappy, peripatetic and unstable; she and her mother were abandoned by her father. She is candid about the years of her mother’s depression. At one time in Florida the absence of good parenting led to her to forge a surrogate mother-daughter relationship with the wife of evangelist Billy Graham.
Cornwell then covers her desire to work in pathology as a medical examiner, the struggles to make that happen, and then the obstacles to having a fulfilling career in a sometimes hostile environment facing sexism and misogyny. There are poignant stories including a Concorde trip UK 1991 to celebrate her debut novel which was ruined by a nasty experience.
There is not much on being a writer and the last 25 years are less well covered but we do learn about Cornwell’s interests outside her career, her childhood illness, and a car crash that could have been fatal and much more. The multi-award winning novelist has delivered an early Christmas present for her many fans.
Sphere 5th May

Astronaut! by Oana Aristide

Aristide is a writer, she has been an economist, a traveller and a hotelier. At a young age she moved from Romania to Sweden, where she later published the successful novel Under the Blue. Now we have Astronaut!, the name suggests dreams, hope and escape, a contrast to the depressing brutal reality of dictatorship. It is set during the last throes of Ceausescu’s Romania. In Sighisoara, we see Comrade Blaga walking down the street with a young girl, Lia. He is leading her by the hand taking her home, as if a good Samaritan. It’s a creepy scene, there are undertones. Blaga enjoys intimidating the town folk and now the family have a problem with the official.
Then Police inspector Constantin is called to a murder scene. A male body has turned up in a ditch. As the team investigates a problem arises, the body has to be moved, the noise they can hear nearby comes from a shooting party at the President’s estate. There can be no hint of a connection.
Blaga ‘the devil’ is dead and initially Lia’s mother thinks her husband did it but this is a more complex story. Blaga’s is not the only brutal death. Then there is the neighbour upstairs, comrade Mantea, who has been plotting against the regime. His opportunity to get close to the ‘leader’ comes with a school competition and a prize ceremony, Lia is an unwitting pawn in a dangerous game.
A sinister tone permeates from the first page, this is a suspenseful, well-crafted thriller. The style is spare and dark, the tone satirical; it reflects the paranoia of the state and the grim reality of life under dictatorship.
Wildfire out now

Time to Kill by Thomas Waugh

Readers may be familiar with Waugh’s Daniel Ambler spy thrillers, a contemporary homage to the great writer Eric Ambler. This is loosely connected as character Daniel Ambler, writer and spy, plays his part here but this is not his story.
This is about James Marshal, a former para and private military contractor. With his wife Marija away on holiday Marshall has a free week. As he puts it himself, he has ‘Time to Kill.’ He bumps into Flora Gayle, an old friend, a woman grieving the loss of her son. She tells Marshal about his death at the hands of drug dealers. These guys intimidate local people and act with impunity, naturally, the police are nowhere to be seen when needed. Marshal isn’t about to stand by and do nothing. He has friends, he has Ambler’s contacts, he has skills. He watches; first the spotters and the street dealers but there is a chain to follow which leads all the way to the Cali Cartel. There’s a question here too – how much is the inadequate response of the state cock-up and how much conspiracy? This is an angry and funny read, a satirical one-two punch to the jaw. No doubt some will be offended as multiple ‘targets’ are skewered.
Sharpe Books out now

Last One Out by Jane Harper

Outback noir exploded in Britain when Harper published The Dry, 2017. A succession of really great writers kept Antipodean crime writing front and centre – Chris Hammer, Peter Papathanasiou, Dinuka McKenzie, Ashley Kalagian Blunt. That has tailed off but not totally faded away and there is always room for another good ‘un. Now Harper is back with her first novel since 2023, Exiles. It’s a new standalone. Last One Out features Ro Crowley, she has returned to Carralon Ridge, a small mining town where her son went missing on his 21st birthday five years earlier. Ro is back for the annual memorial for Sam. The rural backwater is run down, decaying and dying because most of the people have left or are leaving. The coal mine has done for the town, the buildings are collapsing and only a few people with some knowledge of the past remain but these die-hards may have the answers Ro is looking for about what happened to Sam. There may still be clues, if only a set of unexplained footprints could yield an answer, thenmRo’s wait might finally be over.
Harper builds suspense expertly and the claustrophobic atmosphere is rich and heav Tyhere is more than a nod to climate change but it is integrated smoothly into the story, welded to the plot not shoehorned in as it is with some American and British thrillers. Poignant and epic, how to tell a small story and make it echo wider themes.
Macmillan out now

The Riddle of the Trees by Marc S Perlman

American lawyer Perlman has a love of Eastern Europe and a knowledge drawn from travelling the region that infuses this spy thriller. After the fall of the Soviet Empire, a Belarusian physicist, troubled by the dictatorship, believes in a better world for his family. He has joined the resistance and is on his first mission, sadly it and he are doomed as the security forces, still known as the KGB, are watching every move. The courier winds up dead in a forest. Meanwhile, Jack Miller is heading to Eastern Europe to explore the place his family’s past, he needs to understand the rift that developed between his grandfather and father, Holocaust survivors. In Minsk Jack falls for tour guide Anna. Their journey into the past together, which takes them to the Belavezskaya Forest, will lead them to secrets that have dire consequences for the future of the world. With the KGB on their tail, Jack must survive to tell the west what is going on, it will test his love for Anna.
This is complex, the threads of the story build steadily toward a twisty and satisfying denouement. It’s a story of post Soviet collapse that has roots deep in WWII. It’s about reconnecting with family Cold War roots and the generations that lived through unimaginable times and had to make difficult choices.
Köehlerbooks out now

A Strange Way to Die by R Pearl and G Bamford

Still in the spy world but that’s where the similarity ends. This is an explosive, fun filled thriller. The first in the Hiroshi Suzuki Files. It is a naked homage to Bond, fans will note some of the references throughout the book, including the character name. It works, this is fun and I ripped through it. I’m keen to see the next up in the series which I believe is coming soon. The mother-in-law/son-in-law writing duo have created an Anglo-Japanese secret agent, Hiroshi, who globetrots tackling existential threats to humanity.
In the Solomon Islands an explosion under the sea causes a tsunami but is it a man made disaster? If so, why? Who has the power and money for such an operation. Thanks to intelligence received by CIRO in Japan, Hiroshi is watching the pharma billionaire Dr. Khyller. Hiroshi falls into the hands of Dr. Khyller, while a mysterious assassin hides in the shadows, the story hops between Paris, Tokyo, Monte Carlo and London. Classic action oriented espionage.
Arlington Press out now

A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz

Hawthorne, the detective, and Horowitz, the writer, make up an uneasy partnership and they are back and on fine bickering form. The current bone of contention is film rights. Their agent offers the usual 50-50 split when the first book in the Hawthorne/Horowitz series The Word is Murder is set for production. Horowitz feels cheated, there must be a better/fairer split.
The pair are back in Hastings, the scene of Foyle’s War. This time for the first day of filming of H&H1. The cast are assembled but the whole production is in disarray. There are ‘artistic differences’; the director is pompous and pretentious, the screenwriter an eco-warrior, the producers are running out of money and the stars hate each other.
Then Hawthorne is stabbed to death…
Well, not Hawthorne exactly but the actor playing him, still maybe the real Hawthorne was the target. Only one man can investigate. A lovely twisty layered tale, oozing humour. I’ll happily repeat, no one does this tongue in cheek, farce/comedy half as well as Horowitz. With the film of the book what we have is a meta-meta-fiction, that is the opposite of pretentious or clunky. A Deadly Episode had me smiling all the way, H&H are a class act.
Century out now.

Red Scorpion by Tom Bradby

I’m really looking forward to Secret Service which has just started on ITV this week. Newsreader/journalist, Bradby’s trilogy featuring Kate Henderson has been filmed and stars the wonderful Gemma Arterton. This new novel is not, however, a spy novel, it is an international action thriller.
Dr. Laura Strong is an A&E doctor, exhausted and broke, in debt to a loan shark and looking after her disabled younger brother. Life could be better.
Then one night she treats a young man, the son of Rafael Fernandez, a South American coffee magnate, a former special forces soldier. Max has 24/7 care needs and Rafa offers Laura a job looking after him. She turns it down but then he makes an outrageous offer – £1m a year. Desperately needing money, Laura accepts. What Rafa isn’t saying is that his money comes from the family business – drugs. He is trying to live down the legacy of his father, one of the most ruthless gangsters in Colombia. Rafa has only one rule, never betray or cross him. Of course, this is not a world you can just leave with no consequences and Rafa is in trouble. Laura is approached by the secret service who want her to spy on Rafa. When she accepts she has no idea that she is getting into bed with rogue elements. The action shifts from London to Bogota, Cartagena, Medallin and winds up in Ljubljana. Pacy, the first beach read recommendation of the year.
Bantam out now.

Holy F*ck by Joseph Incardona

Translated from the French by Sam Taylor. As Monty Python used to say and now for something completely different… Swiss author Incardona has written for theatre and film and his novels have been translated into several languages. He is finally available in English thanks to Bitter Lemon Press. This is a high concept adventure. The kind of intriguing and entertaining book big publishers would never go near, it’s just too ‘out there’.
Stella Thibodeaux is nineteen, she is a sex worker and a miracle worker. A man with psoriasis has sex with Stella and the next day comes back with baby smooth skin claiming she cured him. Word spreads, it is said she can heal the sick, even cure the dying. Stella is not beautiful nor smart but she appears trustworthy, she makes everyone feel special. The Vatican is not happy the new face of God’s benevolence should be the purveyor of love for sale in a camper van. On the other hand a young dead martyr would do the church the power of good. The Bronski brothers are the Vatican assassins. They are dispatched to expedite the martyrdom. Stella, however, is not without friends – let the fun and games begin.
This is a satire on faith and religion and altogether more earthly desires. Another that may offend but is wickedly funny. Has the pace of a Dan brown but with depth and emotion and truly memorable characters.
Bitter Lemon Press out now.

Paul Burke