Crime and mystery novels for reading groups and book clubs
Browse Gumshoe Books' suggestions for your reading group or book club, including both classic and recent crime and mystery fiction.
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By Graeme Macrae Burnet
Published on
Polygon, 152 pages.
On 9 July 1857, Angus MacPhee, a labourer from Liniclate on the island of Benbecula, murdered his father, mother and aunt. At trial in Inverness he was found to be criminally insane and confined in the Criminal Lunatic Department of Perth Prison. Some years later, Angus’s older brother Malcolm recounts the events leading up to the murders while trying to keep a grip on his own sanity.
Malcolm is living in isolation, ostracised by the community and haunted by this gruesome episode in his past. From Graeme Macrae Burnet, the Booker-shortlisted author of His Bloody Project, comes a dark, psychological thriller, leavened by moments of black humour and absurdity.
By Chris Chibnall
Published on
Penguin, 368 pages.
When Nicola Bridge moves back to Dorset after years as a CID detective in the big city, the last thing she expects is for the picturesque village of Fleetcombe to become a grisly crime scene. Jim Tiernan, landlord of the White Hart pub, has been found dead, the body staged with macabre relish on an isolated country road.
As soon as she starts asking questions, Nicola realises everyone in the village has something to hide. Frankie, the hairdresser who isn’t a skilled enough actor to conceal they’re lying about the night of the murder. Eddie, the delivery driver whose heart starts racing every time he drives past the crime scene.
Deakins, the embittered farmer still living in the shadow of a supposedly murderous ancestor. And even the little girl, hidden at the top of the playground slide, who’s watching them all. Whispers.
Rumours. Lies. But Nicola knows that somewhere among them, a killer is hiding in plain sight.
Because sometimes the smallest villages hide the darkest secrets...
By Bonnie Burke-Patel
Published on
Bedford Square, 256 pages.
Anna Deerin moves to a remote Cotswold cottage to become a gardener, trying to strip away everything she’s spent all her life as a woman striving for, craving the anonymity and privacy her new off-grid life provides.
But when she clears the last vegetable bed and digs up not twigs but bones, the outside world is readmitted. With it comes Detective Inspector Hitesh Mistry, who has his own reasons for a new start in the village of Upper Magna. Drawn in spite of herself to this unknown woman from another time, Anna is determined to uncover her identity and gain recognition for her, if not justice.
As threats to Anna and her new life grow closer, she and DI Mistry will find that this murder is inextricably bound up with issues of gender, family, community, race and British identity itself – all as relevant in decades past as they are to Anna today.
By Jon Atli Jonasson
Published on
Corylus Books, 280 pages.
Two broken cops. One irretrievably damaged and the other an outcast.
Dóra struggles to cope with life after taking a bullet to the head. Rado is the child of refugees, his career shunted off the tracks due to his family connections to an organised crime gang. But they’re the only ones available when a troubled teenager vanishes from a school trip, and the trail gets darker the further they pursue it.
Broken takes place in a side of Reykjavík no visitor would ever want to see, as the mismatched pair tread on all the wrong toes in the search for the missing youngster. This takes place against the backdrop of a vicious vendetta and price on Dóra’s head. A brutal turf war embroils Rado’s family as he and Dóra follow the threads of corruption higher and higher, to the top of the exclusive apartment block on the outskirts of the city.
The first novel by award-winning screenwriter Jón Atli Jónasson to appear in English, Broken is the first of a razor-edged crime trilogy shot through with black humour and characters who leap off the page.
By Karsten Dusse
Published on
Faber & Faber, 416 pages.
Björn has been given an ultimatum: repair his work-life balance, or his wife Katharina will leave him - and take their daughter. He reluctantly starts a mindfulness class and to his surprise, it's a revelation.
He becomes calmer, more focused, and he's starting to understand what's really important in life. So when his client and brutal crime boss Dragan Sergowicz tries to interfere with his precious family time, Björn remembers his new-found goal to find serenity - and kills him. Now Björn can deepen his practice and seek inner peace - violently.
By Agatha Christie
Published on
Harper Collins, 288 pages.
Miss Marple 7
Elspeth McGillicuddy is positive she witnessed a man strangling a woman to death. But it was only the merest glimpse through a carriage window as the trains drew parallel. She is the only witness, there are no suspects, and, most importantly, there is no corpse.
Who, apart from her friend Jane Marple, would take her seriously?
By Josephine Tey
Published on
Pushkin Vertigo, 256 pages.
Alan Grant
The last and most influential of Josephine Tey's novels, originally published in 1951.
Who really killed the princes in the tower?
Was Richard III truly the ogre of legend and Shakespeare’s play – a wicked uncle who murdered his nephews to steal the crown of England?
Inspector Alan Grant is not so sure. Laid up in hospital with a broken leg, he becomes obsessed with unravelling this most enduring of historical mysteries. As he investigates with the help of an enthusiastic young American scholar, he unearths long-buried intrigues and comes to a startling conclusion.