Highlights for spring 2017 range from the first crime thriller from a major publisher centered on transgender issues to an epic examination of racial strife and civil rights in the Deep South.
Top 10
Down a Dark Road
Linda Castillo. Minotaur, July 11
Crime and religion collide in Castillo’s ninth Kate Burkholder mystery. The police chief of Painters Mill, Ohio, must track down an Amish man convicted of murdering his wife who has escaped from prison and taken his five children hostage.
Echoes in Death
J.D. Robb. St. Martin’s, Feb. 7
The 44th novel featuring Lt. Eve Dallas from Robb (the pseudonym of Nora Roberts), a tale of murder and high society in a future Manhattan, shows why she dominates bestseller lists.
The Freedom Broker: A Thea Paris Novel
K.J. Howe. Quercus, Feb. 7
Howe, the executive director of ITW’s Thrillerfest, introduces a distinctive heroine in her debut, kidnapping negotiator Thea Paris. James Patterson says, “This is fact and fiction at its best.”
The Kremlin’s Candidate
Jason Matthews. Scribner, May 9
In Matthews’s conclusion to the spy trilogy that began with Red Sparrow, former secretary of commerce Natalie Childers has secrets related to her husband’s business dealings that could destroy her run for the American presidency.
Long Black Veil
Jennifer Finney Boylan. Crown, Apr. 11
The author of the memoir She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders delivers an atmospheric thriller that explores the meaning of identity, loyalty, and love.
Magpie Murders
Anthony Horowitz. Harper, June 6
Horowitz revived Sherlock Holmes in House of Silk and James Bond in Trigger Mortis. Now he pays homage to such classic British crime authors as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers in a mystery in which the reader becomes the detective.
Mississippi Blood
Greg Iles. Morrow, Mar. 28
Iles’s conclusion to his Natchez Burning trilogy focuses on racial strife and civil rights, issues that have recently moved to the forefront of American life and politics.
Since We Fell
Dennis Lehane. Ecco, May 16
This psychological thriller from the author of Mystic River explores how the madness of the world at large can affect our most intimate relationships.
Testimony
Scott Turow. Grand Central, May 23
In the tradition of Presumed Innocent, Turow delivers a legal thriller about an American prosecutor’s investigation into the Bosnian War.
Wolf on a String
Benjamin Black. Holt, June 6
Black, the pen name of the Man Booker Prize–winning novelist John Banville, is the author of the Quirke mystery series set in 1950s Ireland and a Philip Marlowe pastiche, The Black-Eyed Blonde. Now he turns his eye on 16th-century Prague in a tale of murder and magic.
Mysteries & Thrillers Listings
Akashic
The Scientology Murders: A Dead Detective Novel by William Heffernan (Apr. 11, trade paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-1-61775-536-1). While investigating a murder that has also left his much-loved adoptive father seriously wounded, Harry Doyle (aka the Dead Detective) finds himself contending with executives from the Church of Scientology.
Amazon/47North
The Man of Legends by Kenneth Johnson (June 6, trade paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-4778-1968-5). Set in modern-day New York City, this SF thriller tells the story of a journalist who uncovers the startling mystery of a cursed, heroic, legendary man who has profoundly altered the course of human history for 2,000 years while being hotly pursued by the Vatican.
Atlantic Monthly
Earthly Remains: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery by Donna Leon (Apr. 4, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-0-8021-2647-4). In need of a break, Commissario Brunetti takes a leave of absence from the police on an island in the lagoon off Venice. When the caretaker of the house where he’s staying goes missing following a sudden storm, Brunetti feels compelled to investigate.
Atria
Defectors by Joseph Kanon (June 6, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-1-5011-2139-5). In 1949, CIA agent Frank Weeks was exposed as a Communist spy and fled the U.S. Now, 12 years later, he has written his memoirs, a KGB-approved project almost certain to be an international bestseller, and has asked his brother, a publisher, to come to Moscow to edit the manuscript.
Atria/37 Ink
The Cutaway by Christina Kovac (Mar. 21, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-1-5011-4169-0). Brilliant TV news producer Virginia Knightly risks her career, her life, and perhaps even her own sanity by diving deep into an investigation that will drag her mercilessly through the inextricable webs of corruption that bind the press, the police, and politics in Washington, D.C.
Ballantine
Don’t Close Your Eyes by Holly Seddon (July 11, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-1-101-88589-5). Set in Kent, England, this novel of psychological suspense centers on twin sisters, Robin and Sarah, whose lives have driven them apart, and the shocking family secrets that bind them together.
Bantam
Dangerous Minds: A Knight and Moon Novel by Janet Evanovich (June 20, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-553-39274-6). Riley Moon, an ambitious financial analyst, and Emerson Knight, a billionaire’s son and reclusive martial arts expert, are a perfectly mismatched crime-fighting duo. In their second outing, they seek to take down big league crime.
Berkley
Gone Without a Trace by Mary Torjussen (Apr. 11, trade paper, $16, ISBN 978-0-399-58501-2). Hannah Monroe’s boyfriend, Matt, is gone, and so is every trace that their four-year relationship ever existed. As Hannah struggles to get through the next few days, she knows that she’ll do whatever it takes to find Matt and get answers.
Bitter Lemon
The Road to Ithaca by Ben Pastor (Mar. 14, trade paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-908524-80-5). In May 1941, Wehrmacht officer Martin Bora is sent to German-occupied Crete to investigate the murder of a Red Cross representative befriended by SS chief Heinrich Himmler. All the clues lead to a platoon of trigger-happy German paratroopers, but is this the truth?
Bloomsbury USA
Based on a True Story by Delphine de Vigan, trans. by George Miller (May 9, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-1-63286-815-2). In this metafictional psychological thriller, Delphine, a successful novelist, meets L.L., an intuitive woman who promises to cure her writer’s block. As their lives become more and more entwined, L. threatens Delphine’s identity, both as a writer and as an individual.
Crooked Lane
Edited Out: A Mysterious Detective Mystery by E.J. Copperman (May 16, hardcover, $25.99, ISBN 978-1-68331-130-0). Mystery author Rachel Goldman is getting used to the idea that her fictional creation, Duffy Madison, has somehow taken flesh-and-blood form. But what’s Rachel to do when Duffy shows up and asks about the one thing she doesn’t want to do: find a missing person?
Crown
Long Black Veil by Jennifer Finney Boylan (Apr. 11, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-0-451-49632-4). When the body of Judith Carrigan’s college friend Wailer is discovered 20 years after she disappeared in an abandoned Philadelphia prison, Judith, who’s a different person from the woman she is today, must confront long-held and hard-won secrets that could ruin the idyllic life she’s built for herself.
Doubleday
Unreliable by Lee Irby (Apr. 18, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-385-54205-0). Edwin Stith, a college writing instructor in upstate New York, most definitely did not—but maybe did—kill his ex-wife. Stith’s homecoming to Richmond, Va., leads him deep into a morass of long-gestating secrets and dangers, of old flames still burning strong and new passions ready to consume everything he holds dear.
Dutton
Deadfall by Linda Fairstein (July 25, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-101-98404-8). Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper and NYPD detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace know that predators lurk close to home, and in the aftermath of the shocking drive-by murder of an important city employee, the trio must discover who the bigger snake is: the killer or the victim.
Ecco
Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane (May 16, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-0-06-212938-3). Rachel Childs, a woman on the psychological brink, only leaves the house to drink alone at neighborhood bars. When she meets a raffish businessman who sees past her intense neuroses and pushes her back to her former self, she finds happiness. Then she sees something she shouldn’t. 500,000-copy announced first printing.
ECW
The Hell of It All: A T.J. Peterson Mystery by Bob Kroll (Mar. 14, trade paper, $14.95, ISBN 978-1-77041-338-2). Retired Canadian detective Peterson is working the table scraps that his former partner sometimes throws his way. One of them has Peterson hearing from a snitch about a body buried 30 years ago, the same time a drug kingpin went MIA.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama, trans. by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies (Feb. 7, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-374-26551-9). For five days in January 1989, the parents of a seven-year-old Tokyo schoolgirl listened to the demands of their daughter’s kidnapper. They would never see their daughter again. Fourteen years later, a press officer notices an anomaly in the case.
Forge
Tower Down: A Kirk McGarvey Novel by David Hagberg (May 16, hardcover, $25.99, ISBN 978-0-7653-7871-2). A freelance killer, code-named Al-Nassar, blows the supports on a pencil tower in Manhattan and sends it crashing down. CIA legend McGarvey believes that someone in the Saudi Arabian government is behind the attack.
Grand Central
Testimony by Scott Turow (May 23, hardcover, $29, ISBN 978-1-4555-5354-9). American prosecutor Bill ten Boom investigates a refugee camp’s mystifying disappearance during the Bosnian War. In order to uncover what happened during the apocalyptic chaos after the war, Boom must navigate a host of suspects that include Serb paramilitaries, organized crime gangs, and the U.S. government. 300,000-copy announced first printing.
Grove/Atlantic/Mysterious
The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes by Lyndsay Faye (Mar. 7, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-0-8021-2592-7). Faye’s best Holmes tales, including two new works, are brought together in a collection that spans Holmes’s career, from self-taught young upstart to publicly lauded detective, both before and after his faked death over a Swiss waterfall in 1894.
Hard Case Crime
Snatch by Gregory Mcdonald (Feb. 7, trade paper, $12.95, ISBN 978-1-78565-182-3). This volume collects two classic Mcdonald novels, Snatched (1980) and Safekeeping (1985), each about the kidnapping of an eight-year-old boy from a prominent family.
Harper
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz (June 6, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-06-264522-7). When editor Susan Ryeland gets the manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest traditional English mystery, she’s expecting the usual. But the more she reads, the more she’s convinced that there’s another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder. 150,000-copy announced first printing.
Holt
Wolf on a String by Benjamin Black (June 6, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-62779-517-3). Christian Stern, a scholar and alchemist, arrives in Prague in 1599, intent on making his fortune at the court of the Holy Roman emperor, Rudolf II. The night of his arrival, Christian stumbles on the body of a well-born young woman in an alley near Rudolf’s castle.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Fourth Monkey by J.D. Barker (June 27, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-544-96884-4). For more than five years, the Four Monkey Killer has terrorized the residents of Chicago. When the killer’s body is found, the police quickly realize he was on his way to deliver one final message, one that suggests that an intended victim he has taken may still be alive. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
Kensington
Banana Cream Pie Murder by Joanne Fluke (Feb. 28, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-1-61773-220-1). A romantic seven-day cruise is the perfect start to bakery owner Hannah Swensen’s marriage. However, with a murder mystery heating up in Lake Eden, Minn., it seems the newlywed’s homecoming won’t be as sweet as she anticipated.
Knopf
The Thirst: A Harry Hole Novel by Jo Nesbø, trans. by Neil Smith (May 9, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-385-35216-1). Maverick detective Harry Hole is inextricably drawn back into the Oslo police force as a serial killer begins targeting Tinder daters. The murderer’s MO reignites Harry’s hunt for a nemesis from his past.
Little, Brown
The Long Drop by Denise Mina (May 23, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-316-38057-7). In 1950s Glasgow, someone slaughtered a household of women in their beds. The police were sure William Watt was guilty, but he had a cast-iron alibi. When Watt says he’ll pay for information to clear his name, a career criminal steps forward with compelling details only the murderer could know. 30,000-copy announced first printing.
LB/Mulholland
Crime Song by David Swinson (May 2, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-316-26421-1). PI Frank Marr is secretly a drug addict, and his longtime supply of cocaine is about to run out. While staking out an upscale Washington, D.C., nightclub in an attempt to target the stash-houses of dealers from whom to steal for his fix, he settles on a target: a college student. 25,000-copy announced first printing.
MacLehose
Three Days and a Life by Pierre Lemaitre (July 11, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-68144-178-8). In 1999, in Beauval, France, 12-year-old Antoine Courtin accidentally kills a young neighbor girl in the woods near his home. Panicked, he conceals the body, and to his relief, he’s never suspected of any connection to her disappearance. Years later the past comes back to haunt him. 35,000-copy announced first printing.
Minotaur
Down a Dark Road by Linda Castillo (July 11, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-250-12128-8). Joseph King, who was convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to life in prison, escapes and heads for Painters Mill, Ohio, where police chief Kate Burkholder soon faces a nightmare scenario: King shows up with a gun and kidnaps his five children from their uncle’s house.
Mira
Marked for Revenge by Emelie Schepp (Feb. 28, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-0-7783-1965-8). When a young Thai woman overdoses while smuggling drugs, the trail points to Danillo, the one criminal that public prosecutor Jana Berzelius most wants to destroy. Berzelius must secretly hunt down Danillo, with whom she shares a horrific past.
Morrow
Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles (Mar. 28, hardcover, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-231115-3). The endgame is at hand for lawyer Penn Cage, his family, and the enemies working to destroy them in the final volume of the Natchez Burning trilogy set in present-day Natchez, Miss.
Norton
Fateful Mornings: A Henry Farrell Novel by Tom Bouman (June 27, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-0-393-24964-4). The snow has melted in Wild Thyme, Pa., but for police officer Farrell, summer has brought nothing but trouble. Heroin has arrived, bringing a surge in burglaries and other crimes.
Oceanview
The Vanquished by David Putnam (Feb. 7, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-60809-216-1). The FBI recruits Bruno Johnson, a former cop and ex-con, to recover a stolen military drone armed with Hellfire missiles, while Bruno struggles to keep his pregnant wife, Marie, out of the crossfire.
Overlook
Lucidity by David Carnoy (Feb. 7, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-4683-1087-0). Twenty years after the unsolved case of Stacey Walker’s disappearance went cold, police detective Hank Madden tries to find her body and track down her missing husband, the presumed murderer.
Pegasus Crime
City of Masks: A Somershill Manor Mystery by S.D. Sykes (July 4, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-1-68177-342-1). In 1358, Oswald de Lacy, Lord Somershill, is in Venice awaiting a pilgrim ship to the Holy Land. When he finds a dead man at the carnival, he’s dragged into a murder investigation that draws him deep into the intrigues of this paranoid, mysterious city.
Penguin/Blue Rider
Cruel Mercy by David Mark (Feb. 7, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-399-18511-3). Det. Sgt. Aector McAvoy leaves his native Yorkshire for Manhattan, where a crime on the Lower East Side has left one man dead and another, a boxer, in a medically induced coma. McAvoy’s knowledge of the victims could help solve the case.
Permanent
The Third Hell by Connie Dial (Feb. 28, hardcover, $29, ISBN 978-1-57962-494-1). LAPD Det. Nino Angelo retires from the force after suffering a serious bullet wound. But he gets back into action after the kidnapping of his 12-year-old son.
Poisoned Pen
Burials: A Faye Longchamp Mystery by Mary Anna Evans (Mar. 7, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-4642-0750-1). In Oklahoma, Longchamp, who runs an archeological consulting firm, oversees the reopening of a Muscogee (Creek) Nation burial site that reveals the bones of an archeologist who disappeared 29 years earlier.
Polis
The Woman from Prague by Rob Hart (July 11, hardcover, $24.99, ISBN 978-1-943818-47-1). Amateur PI Ash McKenna has been working for an apartment rental company in Prague for three months, and it’s time to move on. Then a man claiming to work for the U.S. government offers to protect Ash in exchange for a favor.
Prometheus Books/Seventh Street
Police at the Station and They Don’t Look Friendly: A Detective Sean Duffy Novel by Adrian McKinty (Mar. 7, trade paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-1-63388-259-1). In Belfast in 1988, a man is killed with a bolt from a crossbow in front of his house. Uncovering who is responsible for the murder will take Detective Duffy down his most dangerous road yet.
Putnam
Vicious Circle by C.J. Box (Mar. 21, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-399-17661-6). The past comes back to haunt Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett in the form of the disreputable Cates family. Joe has always wondered if there’d be a day of reckoning, and now all he can do is wait for the Cates to make the first move.
Quercus
The Freedom Broker: A Thea Paris Novel by K.J. Howe (Feb. 7, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-68144-310-2). Elite kidnap and ransom negotiator Paris must use all her skills and experience for the most urgent and challenging rescue mission of her life: her father’s. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
Redhook
Three Strikes by Kate Kessler (July 11, trade paper, $15.99, ISBN 978-0-316-30255-5). Thanksgiving is approaching, and Audrey Harte has a lot to be thankful for—her mother, Maggie Jones, has recovered from surgery, for one thing. So when an 18-year-old girl turns up, claiming to be the daughter Maggie gave up for adoption, Audrey isn’t sure whether to be thankful. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
Scribner
The Kremlin’s Candidate by Jason Matthews (May 9, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-5011-4008-2). A junior American code clerk who has defected to the Russians informs the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service that former secretary of commerce Natalie Childers manipulated U.S. global trade agreements to facilitate trade deals for the investment conglomerate owned by her husband. Natalie is now the Democratic presidential candidate.
Severn
Old Bones: A Bill Slider Mystery by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles (Feb. 1, hardcover, $29.99, ISBN 978-0-7278-8665-1). A young couple discover human remains buried in the garden of their new house. Could this be the resting place of 14-year-old Amanda Knight, who disappeared from the same garden two decades before and was never seen again?
Simon & Schuster
All by Myself, Alone by Mary Higgins Clark (Apr. 4, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-5011-3111-0). Aboard a cruise ship, Celia Kilbride, a gems and jewelry expert, meets 86-year-old Lady Emily Haywood, the owner of a priceless emerald necklace. Three days out to sea, Lady Em is found dead—and the necklace is missing.
Soho Crime
What My Body Remembers by Agnete Friis, trans. by Lindy Falk van Rooyen (May 2, hardcover, $25.95, ISBN 978-1-61695-602-8). Ella Nygaard, 27, has been a ward of the state since age seven, after her father murdered her mother. When the state takes her son, Alex, and places him with a foster family, she kidnaps Alex and flees to the seaside town where she was born.
St. Martin’s
Echoes in Death by J.D. Robb (Feb. 7, hardcover, $27.99, ISBN 978-1-250-12311-4). Late one night, police detective Eve Dallas and her billionaire husband, Roarke, come across a young woman—dazed, naked, and bloody—wandering a Manhattan street. The woman’s husband, an orthopedic surgeon, lies dead in the couple’s townhouse. If the wife didn’t kill the husband, who did? 750,000-copy announced first printing.
Viking
Cold Hearted River by Keith McCafferty (July 4, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-525-42960-9). Sheriff Martha Ettinger and sometime PI Sean Stranahan investigate the death of a woman who was stranded in a spring snowstorm. A leather fly wallet in a pannier on the saddle of the woman’s horse is engraved with the initials E.H., putting Sean on the trail of a missing steamer trunk belonging to Ernest Hemingway.
