The Midnight King
by Tariq Ashkanani (Viper, $37.99)
Edinburgh solicitor and author Tariq Ashkanani announced himself as an exciting new talent while gathering good reviews and awards for his first two crime novels, layered smalltown thrillers set in the US. With this new dark tale he takes a leap.
In the crime-meets-horror The Midnight King, former detective Isaac Holloway is limping through life as a private eye doing low-level insurance and cheating-spouse cases while his old school pal Nathan Cole has reluctantly returned to Nashville following the suicide of his father, a renowned pulp fiction author. Isaac is one of the few who knows how troubled Nathan’s relationship was with his dad, but even he doesn’t know just how evil Lucas Cole was. As Isaac and Nathan separately search for a young girl who’s gone missing, another man sits on death row and Nathan begins to read his father’s unpublished final manuscript. Ashkanani crafts a tremendous tale, though given serial child abductions and very dark twists, it may prove too much for some.
El Dorado Drive
by Megan Abbott (Little, Brown, $37.99)
American screenwriter and novelist Megan Abbott also delves into complicated family relationships in her latest thriller. Something of a virtuoso when it comes to exploring the cracks and crevices in seemingly ordinary lives, Abbott is a modern queen of feminist noir, from her gangster moll and protégé in Queenpin to cheerleaders in Dare Me (which she adapted into a hit Netflix drama) or ballet-loving sisters in The Turnout. Abbott has a deft touch for bringing inner messiness – ambitions, desires and frustrations – to the page.
In El Dorado Drive the Detroit native “returns home” with a tale of three middle-aged sisters, Pam, Debra and Harper – all in dire financial straits for various reasons – who join “The Wheel”. This is an exclusive women’s club promising wealth and empowerment, but which turns fatal. Set against the global financial crisis and demise of Detroit’s auto industry, the novel is elevated “domestic noir”, skipping along on Abbott’s fine prose, incisive observations and compelling characterisation. It’s subversive, dark and clever and illustrates that old biblical chestnut that love of money is the root of all evil. Very, very good.
Burying Jericho
by William Hussey (Bonnier, $37.99)
A couple of years ago, award-winning YA author William Hussey made an impressive first venture into adult fiction with the superb Killing Jericho, which introduced one of the freshest series leads the crime genre has seen in many years. Scott Jericho grew up gay in the travelling fairground community, became a cop then convict, and tries to escape his ghosts in a haze of drugs and casual sex. Yet his years as a traveller have given him an uncanny knack for keen observations and reading people.
This third instalment sees Jericho lured into a baffling case by gangster Mark Noonan. A worried mother wants to find her missing son, so Jericho travels to a rundown Norfolk town and uncovers a spiderweb of secrets and folklore, including unexpected ties to his own fairground family. His boyfriend, Harry, is meanwhile conducting investigations of his own, as a twisted killer from Jericho’s past zeroes in on them both.
Hussey, himself a gay man who grew up in the UK’s traveller community, can flat-out write. Burying Jericho is a compelling, emotionally hard-hitting page-turner that upends expectations and is likely to leave readers, alongside characters, reeling.
