‘A tangled, terrifying story’: The best crime novels out now – THE DARK HOURS by Amy
THE DARK HOURS by Amy Jordan (HQ £16.99, 352pp)
BACK in 1994, new young police officer Julia Harte, a member of the Irish Garda, had an almost fatal brush with serial killer James Cox in Cork, Ireland.
Now, 30 years later and aged 60, she has retired to a small town on the coast, hoping to put the past behind her after many years as a detective inspector.
But one month after Cox’s death, a copycat seems to have surfaced and Julia is dragged back into a new investigation, forcing her to confront her agonising past.
Told with an exceptional eye for the pressures on police officers, this dazzlingly mature debut from a former civil servant announces the arrival of a remarkable new talent.
The tangled, terrifying story she tells feels as though Jordan has been writing for decades. It would make great TV – it’s as good as Broadchurch.
THE BIG EMPTY by Robert Crais (Simon & Schuster £20, 384pp)
PRIVATE investigator Elvis Cole and his silent – and distinctly frightening – ex-Marine partner Joe Pike have become one of the best-loved double acts in crime fiction and this 20th story underlines why.
Cole is hired by influencer Traci Beller, who has made her name baking muffins on social media, to search for her father Tommy, who went missing in Los Angeles ten years ago when she was 13.
Other private eyes have tried to find out what happened, without success. Then Cole discovers a trailer-trash mother and her daughter who may hold the key to where Tommy went, but there are violent men who don’t want anyone to know the truth.
Told with Crais’s typical laconic, Philip Marlowe-style wit, the search comes to a dark, shocking conclusion.
THE DAY OF THE ROARING by Nina Bhadreshwar (Hemlock Press £16.99, 400pp)
BLACK DI Diana Walker, daughter of Kenyan parents and working in Sheffield, lies at the heart of this ambitious debut by a former journalist.
A dismembered head is found in a locked filing cabinet on the derelict site of what was once a failed secondary school. It turns out to belong to the former headmaster.
But there is no apparent motive for the crime and some of Walker’s colleagues put it down to county-lines violence.
She is not so sure and starts to delve into the school’s background. It transpires that another teacher is missing while a second has been found dead.
Add into the plot the coercion of black women and female genital mutilation, not to mention Britain’s colonial past and organised crime.
The result is a fine story that is all but lost in other issues: a shame.