The Best New Crime Fiction of April 2020

Did you know there is a London in North Dakota? There is! And that’s where Amos Decker, an FBI consultant with a perfect memory (of course), heads to with FBI agent Alex Jamison. There’s been a sudden boom in this thriving fracking town, and money and a flood of people naturally also brings problems...including murder. It’s a mystery. You saw this coming. Anyhoo, Decker and Jamison have their work cut out for them starting with: why was this young woman autopsied and then dumped?...

Need to catch up? Check out the complete Memory Man series in order here. 

How about a historical YA mystery set in the 1800s Joseon dynasty?! Sixteen-year-old Seol is orphaned and indentured to the police bureau, specifically assisting an inspector who is investigating the politically charged murder of a noblewoman. The murder victim has secrets (I love secrets!), but as Seol learns more and befriends the inspector, the inspector becomes the prime suspect. Dun dun dun!

Need some cat-and mouse-thrills in your life? Like reading a book series and then watching the adaptation? This one's for you! The premise of both the book series and the TV adaptation is that a psychopath assassin, Villanelle, is taking out the rich and powerful and finds herself in a cat-and-mouse game with a former MI6 operative, Eve, who was tasked by the national security services to find Villanelle and stop her. The TV series strayed from the novels, so you can play spot-the-differences if you marathon both, and this is a fun pick while you wait for season 3 to drop on April 12th.

Related: 5 Female Antagonists Who Inspired the Creator of Killing Eve

If you’re a fan of complicated PIs, have I got a great series for you! This is the third in the series, which follows Nora Watts, a human lie detector who has survived some traumatic events and started out by learning that the daughter she’d placed for adoption years before was now missing and the adoptive parents needed Watts to find her. But that was book one, and this is book three, and Watts has made quite a few enemies since—that silly "past is always gonna come back" thing—so she needs some reinforcements in the form of an eccentric billionaire and an ex-cop to fight back! If you want to follow a PI and read some thriller-level scenes, here you go!

Here’s another series entry, but this one is a Scandinavian translation that follows a woman from Copenhagen who learns she has inherited a funeral home in Wisconsin. I know! The story begins with all the drama that happened after her moving to Wisconsin, discovering the funeral home was bankrupt, the family was not welcoming, and of course murder. Now her estranged (and dead) father’s past comes knocking, and if she’d like to keep herself and those she loves safe, well, she’s gonna have to go deep into the man’s past and secrets…

Samantha Downing wrote My Lovely Wife, a twisty thriller that I really enjoyed (and is now being adapted by Nicole Kidman’s production company), so I was really looking forward to her next book. And then I saw the title and cover and laughed and laughed and laughed and did all the gimme hands. This time we have a family, a large inheritance, and a roadtrip they must complete together in order to see any of the moola. There are, of course, stipulations—like they can’t end up in jail—so you know this is going to go off the rails, and you can count on Downing for twists and suspense. Make the popcorn and enjoy!

A former soldier in a covert operations team in the special forces, David Shelley, is trying to settle back into civilian life in London. But it’s a thriller, so you know he’s not gonna get any peace. Instead, a woman he once protected dies by suicide—at least that’s how the police see it—but her parents know that can’t be the truth and instead turn to Shelley for help. And since the title of this book is literally "revenge," you know you can expect that dish best served cold.

And for something a little different, here is an anthology where a bunch of mystery writers share the real-life mysteries they’ve encountered. From the exploration of genre tropes like haunted houses and elusive perps to real-life medical mysteries and crimes of war, there’s something for all types of readers, and it’s a great way to sample a little writing from a lot of writers at once to find your next favorite mystery author.