Chris Pavone follows The Expats, which won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, with The Accident, in which a New York literary agent receives a nonfiction manuscript submission that shocks her with its dangerous revelations about a media baron. Said the starred PW review, “think Rupert Murdoch crossed with Charles Foster Kane,” or should that be Roger Ailes? On top of a 100,000-copy printing, there will be a seven-city author tour.

I Am Pilgrim, a powerful and formidably researched globe-spanning thriller, marks the fiction debut of English-born screenwriter and producer Terry Hayes. The publisher has announced a first printing of 150,000. Last year, Transworld published it to great success in the U.K., and rights have been sold to major publishers in nine other markets.

Patrick Lee makes the jump from paperback to hardcover with Runner, in which Sam Dryden, a former black-ops soldier, encounters a girl named Rachel on an early morning jog and rescues her from thugs working for a dangerous organization. Lee Child calls it “breathless, involving, smart, and completely convincing.” The publisher is launching a major six-figure marketing campaign, including a 100,000-copy first printing. Warner Brothers has acquired the film rights.

After a five-year hiatus, German-born Greg Iles returns with Natchez Burning, an epic thriller dealing with civil rights set in historic Natchez, Miss. Stephen King calls it “extraordinarily entertaining and fiendishly suspenseful,” while Liate Stehlik, Morrow’s publisher, thinks “this is the novel that will take him to an important new level.” Also spanning decades is Edgar-winner Laura Lippman’s After I’m Gone, a standalone about a Baltimore bookmaker who skips town on July 4, 1976, leaving behind his wife, three daughters, and his mistress. The six-city author tour will take Lippman, a former reporter for the Baltimore Sun, to Austin, Baltimore, Houston, New Orleans, Kansas City, and Washington, D.C. Edgar-winner Bruce DeSilva puts his many years as a newspaper journalist to good use in Providence Rag, in which his series hero, Liam Mulligan, who works for a dying Providence, R.I., newspaper, faces some tough ethical choices in a case involving a juvenile serial killer.

Scottish author Denise Mina’s Glasgow cop, Det. Insp. Alex Morrow, also finds himself in a moral quandary in The Red Road, a tale of corruption, ruined lives, and the far-reaching ripple effects of crime in perhaps her finest novel yet. A five-city author tour will take Mina to Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. Benjamin Black, the pen name for Irish author John Banville, resurrects Raymond Chandler’s world-weary mean-streets walking PI in The Black-Eyed Blonde. In this pitch-perfect recreation of a character and his time and place, Black nails the original’s creative and memorable similes and metaphors. British-author David Downing launches a new spy series with Jack of Spies, set in 1913 on the eve of WWI. Downing will make his first ever U.S. author tour. A $150,000 marketing and ad budget backs this one. Finally, Philip Kerr, author of the Bernie Gunther PI series set in Nazi Germany, ventures into new territory with Prayer. A killer is stalking prominent American atheists, but good religious people are also falling victim to a killer. Whose side is God on? The answer is sure to shock readers.

PW’s Top 10: Mysteries & Thrillers

The Accident. Chris Pavone. Crown, Mar.

I Am Pilgrim. Terry Hayes. Atria/Emily Bestler, May

Runner. Patrick Lee. Minotaur, Feb.

Natchez Burning. Greg Iles. William Morrow, Apr.

After I’m Gone. Laura Lippman. William Morrow, Feb.

Providence Rag. Bruce DeSilva. Forge, Mar.

The Red Road. Denise Mina. Little, Brown, Feb.

The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel. Benjamin Black. Henry Holt, Mar.

Jack of Spies. David Downing. Soho Crime, May

Prayer. Philip Kerr. Putnam/Marian Wood, May

Fiction: Mysteries & Thrillers Listings

Akashic

Singapore Noir edited by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan (June 3, paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-1-61775-235-3). The 14 contributors to this all-original anthology, Singapore natives and non-natives alike, expose the Asian city state in all its noir glory.

Amazon/Thomas & Mercer

Plaster City: A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco by Johnny Shaw (Apr. 15, paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-47781-758-2). In this sequel to Dove Season, semi-reformed brawler Jimmy Veeder helps a friend find his missing teenage daughter.

Atlantic Monthly

By Its Cover by Donna Leon (Apr. 1, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-8021-2264-3). Commissario Guido Brunetti looks into the theft of pages from several rare books in a Venetian library. The apparent culprit is an American professor who requested the volumes, but he turns out not to exist.

Atria/Emily Bestler

I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes (May 27, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-4391-7772-3). Only one man, known as Pilgrim, can link a series of deaths across the globe, including the murder of an anonymous young woman in a run-down hotel, all identifying characteristics dissolved by acid.

Ballantine

Death on Blackheath: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel by Anne Perry (Apr. 8, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-345-54838-2). Thomas Pitt, as the commander of Special Branch, must keep Victorian England safe from spies and traitors, so is the murder of a young woman near the London home of naval weapons expert Dudley Kynaston an ordinary crime—or an attempt to frame Kynaston?

Bantam

The City by Dean Koontz (July 8, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-345-54593-0). This standalone from the author of the Odd Thomas series moves back and forth across decades and generations as a gifted musician relates the “terrible and wonderful” events that began in his city in 1967, when he was 10.

Berkley Prime Crime

Murder on Bamboo Lane by Naomi Hirahara (Apr. 1, paper, $7.99, ISBN 978-0-425-26495). In the first Ellie Rush mystery, the rookie LAPD bicycle cop, who dreams of being a homicide detective, is shocked when the first dead body she encounters on the job is that of a former college classmate.

Bitter Lemon

(dist. by Consortium)

Hotel Brasil: The Mystery of the Severed Heads by Frei Betto (Mar. 18, paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-908524-27-0). When the head of an aging gemstone trader, one of the residents of a dilapidated Rio de Janeiro hotel, turns up in a hallway, suspicion falls on such other hotel residents as a flamboyant cross-dresser and a retired prostitute turned pimp.

Bloomsbury

Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil by James Runcie (June 10, paper, $17, ISBN 978-1-60819-952-5). English clerical detective Sidney Chambers has four longer mysteries to solve, including the theft of a baby from a hospital just before Christmas 1963.

Counterpoint

Hop Alley by Scott Phillips (May 13, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-1-61902-307-9). In this sequel to 2004’s Cottonwood, Bill Ogden, now living as Bill Sadlaw in Denver, runs a photo shop near the Chinese part of town known as Hop Alley, where he must deal with a mysterious murder and an all-out riot.

Crown

The Accident by Chris Pavone (Mar. 11, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-385-34845-4). The contents of The Accident, a manuscript submission by an anonymous author, shock New York literary agent Isabel Reed, who worries that the revelations of this nonfiction work about Charlie Wolfe, a global media baron, pose a real danger.

Delacorte

Love Story, with Murders by Harry Bingham (Feb. 18, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-345-53376-0). Issues of mental health and identity parallel an investigation into two murders in the second novel featuring Det. Constable Fiona Griffiths.

Doubleday

The Winter People by Jennifer McMillan (Feb. 11, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-0-385-53849-7). This thriller from the author of Promise Not to Tell about ghostly secrets, dark choices, and the unbreakable bond between mothers and daughters reveals that sometimes those bonds are too unbreakable.

Dutton

Missing You by Harlan Coben (Mar. 18, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-525-95349-4). NYPD detective Kat Donovan has mixed emotions on finding a photo of her ex-fiancé on an online dating site. When she reaches out to the man who broke her heart 18 years earlier, her reawakened hope soon turns to dark suspicion.

Suspicion by Joseph Finder (May 27, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-525-95460-6). Danny Goodman, a single father who suddenly finds himself unable to afford his teenage daughter’s private school, accepts a $50,000 loan from the father of his daughter’s new best friend. Unfortunately, it’s drug money.

ECW

(dist. by IPG)

The Buffalo Job by Mike Knowles (June 10, paper, $12.95, ISBN 978-1-77041-171-5). The Hamilton, Ontario, mob enforcer known only as Wilson travels to Buffalo, N.Y., to steal a 200-year-old violin. He has only a week to complete the job.

Forge

Providence Rag by Bruce DeSilva (Mar. 11, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-0-7653-7429-5). Providence, R.I., newspaper reporter Liam Mulligan must find a way to balance his passion for the truth with his desire to protect the public in a case involving a convicted killer whose extended incarceration may have been unethical.

Grand Central

The Target by David Baldacci (Apr. 22, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-4555-2120-3). When the U.S. president wants to take down a global menace once and for all, at the risk of impeachment, he turns to the one team that can pull off the impossible: Will Robie and his partner, Jessica Reel. As the pair prepare for their mission, they are stalked by an unknown and unlikely assassin.

The Skin Collector by Jeffery Deaver (May 13, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-4555-1713-8). In this sequel to The Bone Collector, Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs get on the trail of a killer who tattoos his victims’ flesh with cryptic messages, using a tattoo gun loaded with poison.

Grove/Atlantic/Mysterious Press

Lion Plays Rough: A Leo Maxwell Mystery by Lachlan Smith (Feb. 4, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-0-8021-2216-2). Criminal defense attorney Leo Maxwell seeks to make a career breakthrough defending an Oakland gang member and his alluring sister. As more details come to light, Leo finds himself the target of both corrupt police and gang leaders.

Harper

Ripper by Isabel Allende (Feb., hardcover, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-229140-0). This contemporary mystery from an author known for her mainstream fiction centers on an online game named after the infamous Whitechapel murderer, whose teenage players get on the track of a serial killer in San Francisco, Calif.

Harper/Bourbon Street

The Death of Lucy Kyte by Nicola Upton (June 10, paper, $15.99, ISBN 978-0-06-219545-6). When author Josephine Tey inherits Red Barn Cottage from her estranged godmother, she must personally claim the house in the Suffolk countryside—and deal with a mysterious second benefactor, Lucy Kyte, whom no one in the village admits to knowing.

Henry Holt

The Black-Eyed Blonde: A Philip Marlowe Novel by Benjamin Black (Mar. 4, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-8050-9814-3). Black (aka John Banville) resurrects Raymond Chandler’s L.A. PI Philip Marlowe for a new adventure on the mean streets of Bay City, Calif.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Mariner

The Devil in the Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson (June 10, paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-0-544-17667-6). This first novel from the editor-in-chief of Little, Brown U.K. introduces Tom Hawkins, who finds himself in London’s notorious debtors’ prison, the Marshalsea Gaol, in 1727—and on a murderer’s trail.

Kensington

Desperate by Daniel Palmer (Apr. 29, $25, ISBN 978-0-7582-9343-5). After a miscarriage, Anna Miller and her husband, Gage Dekker, whose first wife and young son died in an accident six years earlier, decide to adopt—but the desperate pregnant woman, whom they meet through an adoption web site, turns their lives into a nightmare.

Knopf

The Corsican Caper by Peter Mayle (May 16, hardcover, $23.95, ISBN 978-0-307-96286-7). Master sleuth Sam Levitt eats, drinks, and romances his way through the South of France—even as he investigates a case of deadly intrigue among the Riviera’s jet set.

Little, Brown

The Red Road by Denise Mina (Feb. 25, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-316-18851-7). Scottish police detective Alex Morrow testifies at trial against arms dealer Michael Brown, whose prints have been found on confiscated guns. But how have the imprisoned Brown’s prints turned up at a brand new murder scene?

Little, Brown/Mulholland

The Competition by Marcia Clark (July 8, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-316-22097-2). Los Angeles DA Rachel Knight investigates a Columbine-style massacre at a San Fernando Valley high school. Two students identified as the killers are dead—but could they in fact be victims?

Melville International Crime

The Dog Killer of Utica by Frank Lentricchia (Apr. 22, paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-1-61219-337-3). Eliot Conte has given up the PI game and returned to his great love, teaching American literature, but the peace doesn’t last long after one of his students, a Bosnian Muslim, disappears. Meanwhile, the brutal slayings of pet dogs disturbs the tightknit community of Utica, N.Y.

Minotaur Books

Runner by Patrick Lee (Feb. 18, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-250-03073-3). While jogging on a California beach, Sam Dryden, a former Delta Ranger, rescues 12-year-old Rachel fleeing heavily armed men. Their escape takes them across the country, while Rachel’s slow recovery of her memory points to a sinister secret government project.

The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer (Mar. 18, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-250-03613-1). Sophie Kohl is living her worst nightmare. Minutes after she confesses to her husband, a mid-level diplomat at the American embassy in Hungary, that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, he is shot in the head and killed.

Destroyer Angel by Nevada Barr (Apr. 1, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-312-61458-4). While on a camping trip in the Iron Range of upstate Minnesota with some girlfriends, park ranger Anna Pigeon takes a solo canoe trip on the second day. On her return, she discovers armed thugs have taken her friends captive.

Mira

When Shadows Fall by J.T. Ellison (Mar., hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-7783-1604-6). Forensic pathologist Dr. Samantha Owens receives a disturbing letter from a dead man imploring her to solve his murder. An autopsy contradicts the police finding of suicide.

Morrow

After I’m Gone by Laura Lippman (Feb. 11, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-06-208339-5). On July 4, 1976, shady businessman Felix Brewer escapes the law by fleeing suburban Maryland, leaving behind his wife, three daughters, and a mistress. Years later, the mistress disappears and her remains turn up in a local park.

Natchez Burning by Greg Iles (Apr. 29, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-231107-8). In this first of a thriller trilogy, Penn Cage, the mayor of Natchez, Miss., and a former prosecutor, uncovers historical secrets that could reveal racial crimes many thought were long buried.

NAL/Obsidian

Why Kings Confess: A Sebastian St. Cyr Novel by C.S. Harris (Mar. 4, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-451-41755-8). In this Regency mystery, the grisly murder of a French doctor on a London street leads aristocratic sleuth Sebastian St. Cyr to a scheme to make peace with Napoleon.

Oceanview

(dist. by Midpoint trade)

The Disposables by David Putnam (May 6, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-60809-118-8). Bruno Johnson, once a tough street cop but now an ex-con on parole, is bullied by his former partner, Bobby Wicks, now a high-ranking detective, into helping solve a high-profile crime—unofficially, of course.

Pegasus Crime

(dist. by Norton)

Baudelaire’s Revenge by Bob van Laerhoven (Apr. 15, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-1-60598-548-0). Amid the social and political turmoil of the Franco-Prussian War, a killer is stalking 1870 Paris, leaving lines from the recently deceased poet Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal on each victim’s body.

The Hidden Child by Camilla Läckberg (May 15, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-1-60598-553-4). When crime writer Erica Falck discovers a Nazi medal among her late mother’s possessions, her search for answers leads her to a retired history teacher, who’s soon murdered.

Permanent Press

My Lady of the Bog by Peter Hayes (Apr., hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-57962-354-8). An American anthropologist is smitten after examining a beautiful and perfectly preserved female body found in an English bog, where she died 700 years earlier.

Poisoned Pen

Panthers Play for Keeps: A Pru Marlowe Pet Noir by Clea Simon (Apr. 1, hardcover, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-59058-870-3). While walking her dog in the Berkshires, Pru comes across the body of a woman who appears to have been mauled by a wild cat. But she knows there have been no pumas in the Berkshire woods for years.

Prometheus/Seventh Street

In the Morning I’ll Be Gone: A Detective Sean Duffy Novel by Adrian McKinty (Mar. 4, paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-1-61614-877-5). The conclusion to McKinty’s Troubles trilogy combines an IRA thriller with a locked-room mystery. The investigating officers are certain Lizzie Fitzpatrick’s demise was an accident, because, after all, Lizzie was alone in a locked pub when she died.

Pulpwood

Rivers to Blood: A John Jordan Mystery by Michael Lister (Mar. 1, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-888146-39-4). John Jordan, a Florida prison chaplain, must contend with a new warden who wants to replace Jordan with his own man while dealing with a host of problems, including an escaped convict and a sexual predator.

Putnam

Stone Cold by C.J. box (Mar. 11, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-399-16076-9). Joe Pickett, still officially a game warden but now mostly a troubleshooter for Wyoming’s controversial governor, investigates a rich stranger who has built himself a fortress in the state’s remote Black Hills. Rumor has it the stranger’s wealth comes from killing people for high fees.

Putnam/Marian Wood

Prayer by Philip Kerr (May 6, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-399-16765-2). FBI agent Gil Martins looks into the suspicious deaths of a number of prominent atheists in this standalone from the creator of the Bernie Gunther PI series.

Quercus

The Deliverance of Evil by Roberto Costantini (Feb. 11, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-62365-002-5). The unsolved murder of a beautiful young woman, on the eve of Italy’s triumph in the World Cup final in 1982, comes back to haunt Commissario Michele Balistreri 24 years later, when Italy is on the brink of another World Cup victory.

Quirk

(dist. by Random House)

World of Trouble: The Last Policeman Book III by Ben H. Winters (July 15, paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-5947-4685-7). The final installment in the Edgar-winning Last Policeman trilogy has the clock ticking for Hank Palace as he works to find his sister before the world comes to an end.

Random/Titan/Hard Case Crime

Borderline by Lawrence Block (May 20, paper, $9.95, ISBN 978-1-78116-777-9). On the border between El Paso, Tex., and Juarez, Mexico, a number of people are about to cross paths with fatal results, among them a professional gambler, a bored divorcée, and a killer on the run from the police.

St. Martin’s

The Trident Deception by Rick Campbell (Mar. 11, hardcover, $25.99, ISBN 978-0-250-03901-9). After receiving false orders, an American ballistic missile submarine races from the waters off Hawaii to the Persian Gulf—intent on attacking Iran.

St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne

The Dealer and the Dead by Gerald Seymour (Feb. 11, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-250-01878-6). A wealthy arms dealer, Harvey Gillot, who reneged on an arms deal that led to the destruction of the town of Vukovar during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, must face the consequences in the present.

Scribner

The Lie by Hesh Kestin (Mar. 4, hardcover, $24, ISBN 978-1-4767-4009-6). Dahlia Barr, an Israeli human rights lawyer, accepts the unlikely position of deciding which prisoners of the Jewish State are to be tortured in order to try to save lives. The job becomes personal when Hezbollah kidnaps Dahlia’s 20-year-old Israeli soldier son.

Severn House

The Boy in the Woods by Carter Wilson (May, hardcover, $28.95, ISBN 978-0-7278-9395-8). Tommy, one of three 14-year-olds to witness a horrific murder near their Oregon homes in 1981, becomes a bestselling author 30 years later. When he writes about the murder in a work of fiction, a woman approaches him who threatens to divulge his darkest secret.

Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion in Mr. Campion’s Farewell completed by Mike Ripley (June, hardcover, $28.95, ISBN 978-0-7278-8383-4). From three chapters of an unfinished novel by Margery Allingham, one of the greats of detective fiction’s Golden Age, Mike Ripley has created a quintessentially British mystery set in Allingham’s beloved East Anglia, complete with all the regular characters.

Simon & Schuster

Wayfaring Stranger by James Lee Burke (July 15, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-4767-1079-2). This sprawling thriller takes a teenage boy from a chance encounter with Bonnie and Clyde in 1934 to the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and the postwar oil fields along the Texas-Louisiana coast.

Soho Crime

Jack of Spies by David Downing (May 27, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-1-61695-268-6). In 1913, Jack McColl, a Scottish car salesman with a knack for languages, moonlights collecting intelligence for His Majesty’s Navy as he travels the world.

Herbie’s Game by Timothy Hallinan (July 15, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-1-61695-429-1). Wattles, the San Fernando Valley’s top “executive crook,” turns for help to Junior Bender, professional burglar and begrudging private eye for criminals, after the theft from his safe of a list of people linked to a hit.

Stockholm Text

The Dead of Summer by Mari Jungstedt (Feb., paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-91-87173-98-1). Swedish police inspector Anders Knutas looks into the murder of a construction company owner, who was shot in the stomach several times after a fatal shot to the head. Why the overkill?

Tyrus

(dist. by F+W Media)

The Hollow Girl by Reed Farrel Coleman (May 18, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-4405-6202-4). Despite being bent on self-destruction, Brooklyn PI Moe Prager seeks to rescue a young woman whose captor, he comes to realize, plans to execute her in public.

Viking

Savage Girl by Jean Zimmerman (Mar. 10, hardcover, $27.95, ISBN 978-0-670-01485-9). Could a young girl, allegedly raised by wolves in the American west, be a serial killer? Or is the urbane narrator, who’s fascinated by her, the real culprit?

Weinstein Books

The Blonde by Anna Godbersen (May 13, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-1-60286-222-7). In 1959, Hollywood star Marilyn Monroe becomes a Soviet spy. Her first mission: to uncover something about presidential candidate John F. Kennedy that no one else knows.