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Among the genres that have been keeping published books a profitable enterprise, crime fiction has evolved to being more than your standard murder mystery. We now have crime novels that offer potent social commentary, or serve up unique, memorable crime-solvers. Feast your eyes and minds on the following.
Imposter Syndrome by Joseph Knox
Lynch is a con artist who’s burned out and broke when he arrives in London from what’s hinted as a disastrous mishap in Paris. At Heathrow, he literally bumps into Bobbie, an heiress who’s rehab-bound to Los Angeles. She mistakes him for her brother Heydon Pierce, who disappeared five years ago, leaving his abandoned car on a London bridge. There’s a lot of family history gradually revealed and we discover just how troubled a young man Heydon was. He was in for a lot of money to a loan shark, and said money lender has now come calling. There’s another sister named Regan and we also meet the imperious matriarch, Miranda. Lynch naturally sees all this as opportunity knocking and, against all wisdom, he impersonates Heydon in exchange for money.
Logic here is for Miranda to hire Lynch, and use him to flush out the people responsible for the disappearance and presumed death of Heydon. What ensues is a darker rabbit hole than we could imagine, as the back story of Heydon’s life unravels. As for the opportunistic Lynch, he’s like an update of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley, too smart for his own good and ready to play the odds at the drop of a pin. The pacing is crisp, the misdirection effective, and we’re soon invested with Lynch’s odyssey, trying to find out what and who is behind Heydon’s vanishing. As the number of dead bodies pile up, and the wilderness of mirrors thickens, we hurriedly turn the pages to discover the “real story.” This is the sort of novel you speed-read the first time to reach the resolution, then go back to in order to appreciate how the author has put it all together.
All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker
Set in Monta Clare, Missouri in 1975, this novel opens by introducing us to the one-eyed boy called Patch. His best friend is a girl named Saint, his crush a girl named Misty. Misty comes from one of the wealthier families in town. Girls have been disappearing around the area, and when Misty is targeted by the serial abuser, Patch intercedes and saves Misty, but ends up as the one kidnapped. Chapters that transport us to the friendship between Patch, the pirate, and beekeeper Saint are precious, laced with the magic of childhood, and how outcasts come together. Structured in the form of short chapters, the cluster of events encompass over 26 years in the life of the community, extending to 2001. Compassionate, the narrative deftly explores that fine line that exists between tragedy and triumph.
I would challenge any reader not to get teary-eyed as the narrative takes on a journey of ache and anguish, where obsession, coincidence, and love are three sides of the same triangle. There’s Saint with her devotion to Patch, there’s Misty confusing her guilt over being saved with a commitment to Patch, and there’s Patch and his quixotic search for the “girl” Grace, who saved him while he was incarcerated. It’s a thriller and an epic love story that crosses generations. And while it’s a missing person mystery, there’s the question left hanging: Did that person even really exist? Just as they say it takes a village to raise a child, we find out that serial killers also need enablers. There may be too many coincidences in the narrative, but it’s a stirring saga that really works!
The Bang-Bang Sisters by Rio Youers
Jessie on vocals and guitar, older sister Brea on bass, and best friend Flo on drums make up a traveling, killer rock band. They gig at night then, later in the night, turn into highly skilled vigilantes. Relying on a dark site known as The Trace, the three women hunt down established scum of the Earth, who have slipped through the porous justice system. One such scum is the serial killer known as the wren, called by that moniker for leaving bird feathers in the wounds of his victims. Tips on the wren, said to be residing in Reedsville, Alabama lead the three to this lawless town. It’s a town run by this crime boss named Chance Kotter, who has bad history with the Bang-Bang Sisters. And so the foray to Reedsville is really a trap set up by Kotter to exact revenge.
The revenge comes in the form of a sadistic game of survival, where theoretically, only one of the three girls will survive, and reunite with the Sisters’ family members back in LA, who are now hostages of Kotter’s henchmen. In this suspense thriller that turns visceral, the three protagonists play like you’re reading the next Tarantino film—pulp noir, with all kinds of hand-to-hand combat weaved into the storyline. That the wren does exist adds to the merry mix. And when this serial killer does show up, it’s only one of the many twists and turns that Youers conjures up to add up to the stakes that the three girls have to face. At turns bloody, and ultra-violent, this is not a read for those weak of heart, as the passage are highly descriptive. A rocking adventure!