Crime fiction roundup: ‘Rise the Dark’ by Michael Koryta and more
Rise the Dark by Michael Koryta, Little, Brown, 400 pages, $26 Among his many gifts, Michael Koryta is a virtuoso in his use of outdoor settings. Ranging from the eerily...
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‘You Will Know Me’: Megan Abbott sticks landing in novel about driven gymnast
Megan Abbott must have ice in her veins. In hijacking young-adult fiction for her own devious grown-up purposes, she writes from such a chilly remove you may want to turn...
Crime fiction roundup: ‘Collecting the Dead’ and more
"Collecting the Dead" by Spencer Kope, Minotaur, 320 pages, $25.99 Magnus "Steps" Craig, the FBI tracker introduced in Spencer Kope's auspicious debut, "Collecting the Dead," was born with a gift...
No end to tension in Iain Reid’s thriller
"I'm Thinking of Ending Things," a psychological thriller by the young Canadian writer Iain Reid, begins innocently enough. A young man named Jake and a young woman who remains nameless...
Crime fiction roundup: ‘The Second Life of Nick Mason’
The Second Life of Nick Mason by Steve Hamilton, Putnam, 304 pages, $26 As fertile as Chicago is for crime fiction, it isn't often that an outsider captures the underside...
‘Wilde Lake’: Laura Lippman is back with another genre bender
It was a pretty big deal for crime fiction when, in early 1971, The New York Times Book Review published on its cover Eudora Welty's long, laudatory review of Ross...
Crime novels can make for great TV — or sometimes they get iced
As fans of crime fiction well know, it isn't terribly often that a film or a TV adaptation does well by the genre. For every "Justified," the pitch-perfect FX series...
Crime fiction roundup: ‘Thursday’s Children’ by Nicci French, more
Thursday's Children by Nicci French, Penguin, 336 pages, $16 With her brooding intelligence and maddening aloofness, Frieda Klein may be the most compelling female character in today's crime fiction. A...
Crime fiction roundup: ‘The Widow,’ more
The Widow by Fiona Barton, New American Library, 324 pages, $26 Riding the streak of humdinger, unreliably narrated mysteries started by "Gone Girl" and "The Girl on the Train," Fiona...
3 stories, 1 chimp drive Yann Martel’s ‘High Mountains of Portugal’
It may come as a surprise to two journeyers in Yann Martel's latest work of fiction that there are actually no mountains in the High Mountains of Portugal. Whatever it...