I WILL FIND YOU by Harlan Coben
It’s the mark of a fine crime writer that they can produce excellent series (in this case my favourite is those books featuring Myron Bolitar) but also create standalone novels, such as this one. Five years ago, David Burroughs began a life sentence for murdering his son Matthew. Burroughs, wrongly accused and convicted of the murder is rotting away in a maximum-security prison. The world has moved on without him. Then his sister in law, makes a surprise appearance during visiting hours bearing a strange photograph. It’s a holiday shot of a busy amusement park a friend shared with her, and in the background, is a boy bearing an uncanny resemblance to David’s son. Even though it can’t be, David just knows: Matthew is still alive. Shaken out of his institutional depression, David plans to escape, determined to achieve the impossible – save his son, clear his own name, and discover the real story of what happened. From Grand Central Publishing, this is out now. Click the link below for the Amazon page:
EVERYONE HERE IS LYING by Shari Lapena
Back in 2020 I was thoroughly gripped by Shari Lapena’s The End of Her and I remember using the term ‘anxiety porn’. It looks as if there is more of the same here.Welcome to Stanhope is regarded as a safe neighbourhood, and a place for families to live out the American Dream. William Wooler should fit right in there, at least on the surface. But he’s been having an affair, an affair that ends horribly one afternoon at a motel up the road. He returns to his house, devastated and angry, only to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter Avery home from school unexpectedly. William loses his temper. Hours later, Avery’s family declare her missing. Suddenly Stanhope’s reputation as being a suburban idyll takes a sever hit. William isn’t the only one on his street who’s hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, the neighbourly and trusting atmosphere starts to fragment, and then disintegrates completely. Everyone Is Lying is published by Bantam and will be available in July.
NO ONE SAW A THING by Andrea Mara
Dublin author Andrea Mara certainly has a thing for those awful parental moments when you think your child may have gone missing. She takes things one stage further here with a chilling account of an apparent abduction. A woman stands on a crowded tube platform in London. Her two little girls jump on the train ahead of her. As she tries to join them, the doors slide shut and the train moves away, leaving her behind. By the time she gets to the next stop, she has convinced herself that everything will be fine. But she soon starts to panic, because there aren’t two children waiting for her on the platform. There’s only one.Has her other daughter got lost? Been taken by a passing stranger? Or perhaps the culprit is closer to home than she thinks? No one is telling the truth, and the longer the search continues, the harder the missing child will be to find. Out in May, this is published by Bantam.
THE TRAP by Catharine Ryan Howard
There seems to be an abundance of fine women crime writers from Ireland at the moment, but they aren’t all from Dublin. It’s a long time since I read a novel by Cork-based author Catherine Ryan Howard but, inspired by a series of still-unsolved disappearances, The Trap looks to be a winner.A young woman uses herself as bait to try to track down the man who took her sister. The blurb says:
“Stranded on a dark road in the middle of the night, a young woman accepts a lift from a passing stranger. It’s the nightmare scenario that every girl is warned about, and she knows the dangers all too well – but what other choice does she have? As they drive, she alternates between fear and relief – one moment thinking he is just a good man doing a good thing, the next convinced he’s a monster. But when he delivers her safely to her destination, she realizes her fears were unfounded. And her heart sinks. Because a monster is what she’s looking for.”
Published by Bantam, The Trap will be out in August
THE LAST SONGBIRD by Daniel Weizman
Back to America for the final novel in this selection, and we are in California. A struggling songwriter and Lyft driver, Adam Zantz’s life changes when he accepts a ride request in Malibu and he picks up Annie Linden – a fabled 1970s music icon. During that initial ride, the two quickly strike a bond, and over the next three years, Adam becomes her exclusive driver and Annie listens to his music, encouraging Adam even as he finds himself driving more often than songwriting. When Annie disappears, and her body washes up under a pier – a heartbroken Adam plays detective, only for the cops to believe he was somehow responsible. Desperate to clear his name and discover who killed the one person who believed in his music , Adam digs into Annie’s past. As he spends his days driving around the labyrinth of LA highways, Adam comes to question how well he, or anyone else, knew Annie – if at all. This is published by Melville House and will be out in May.
Domestic noir is often notable for the fact that police investigations only play a tiny part in the plots, with the author concentrating mainly on the nasty things that people who live on bland suburban estates do to each other. The latest novel from Lisa Jewell (left) is different, in that one of the central characters is London copper DCI Samuel Owusu, who takes charge of an investigation prompted by the discovery of a bag on human bones washed up on the Thames mud.
Ask any book reviewer with children – or grandchildren – what is the most painful crime plot they have to read and, if they are anything like me, they will say the trope of missing (presumed murdered) children. Still, it happens all too often in real life, and so it remains a legitimate subject for crime fiction. Dublin writer Andrea Mara (right) takes a stab at this most difficult of subjects in Hide and Seek.
This thriller is set in Finchley – not Mrs Thatcher’s old baileywick but a fictional (I believe) small town in upstate New York, where three bodies are discovered in an old mine. The local Sheriff is out of his depth, and asks the FBI for help. They persuade a former agent, Ronin Nash to take the case, but he discovers the town has a big secret which powerful people will go to any lengths to protect. The author tells us:
Detective Jane Rizzoli
Described as a literary thriller, Hawk Mountain tells the story of a thirty-something man – Todd – who is accidentally re-united with his high school tormentor. The Jack of old seems to be a reformed character, warm, radiant and sorry for his youthful misdemeanours. But is he? And was the chance reunion accidental at all? Cue a spiral of menace and entrapment which plumbs the very worst parts of the human psyche. Perhaps I don’t get out as much as I should, but I think this is the first thriller written by a former adult movie performer. He says:
I missed From The Shadows, the first book in the DI Monica Kennedy series, but thoroughly 
‘The Reading of the Will’ used to be a standard trope in crime fiction years ago. Picture the scene, preferably in black and white. The fusty old solicitor addresses the family, gathered in the library of a stately old house. What he announces sets up the plot of the novel/film, and pitches different family members against each other. Rebecca Reid revives this chestnut, and gives it a modern slant, when the family of the recently deceased Cecily Mordaunt gather in Norfolk at Roxborough Hall, each hoping to leave the scene as significant beneficiaries of the old lady. Of course there is disappointment and joy – which will lead to chicanery and revenge. Rebecca Reid is a freelance journalist. She graduated from Royal Holloway’s Creative Writing MA in 2015. She is the author of Perfect Liars, Truth Hurts, Two Wrongs and The Power of Rude. The Will is her latest book, and joins two of the other novels in this post in being published 
Lesley Kara (left) specialises in creating tension between ordinary people in humdrum surroundings – in other words, normal circumstances experienced by the vast majority of us. I reviewed her excellent debut novel The Rumour, and her new book is centred around – as the name suggests – a murder that took place above Scarlett’s flat. The victim was her aunt, and as Scarlett tries to live as normal a life as possible with such a terrible event – almost literally – hanging over her head, it is up to her to make the funeral arrangements for her relative. As she does so, she meets Dee, the funeral director. Dee has problems of her own, but an unexpected link binds the two women together, and both are now in terrible danger. 
For the uninitiated, Merrily Watkins is a single mum, and vicar of a village in Herefordshire. She also serves as Diocesan Deliverance Consultant – aka an exorcist. The series began in 1998 with The Wine of Angels, and seemed to have terminated rather abruptly with All of a Winter’s Night in 2017. A new book titled For The Hell of It was billed to come out in 2020, but this seems to have been reimagined as The Fever of the World. Here, Merrily becomes involved in a murder investigation led by local copper David Vaynor who, in a previous life, was an expert in the poetry of William Wordsworth. Aficionados of the work of Wordsworth may well recognise the provenance of the book’s title, taken from the poem composed on the banks of the River Wye near Tintern Abbey:
L. M. (Mark) Weeks is a Senior Counsel and former Partner in the global law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. He has practiced law in New York and Tokyo for more than 30 years and served as Managing Partner of Orrick’s Tokyo office from 2007-17. Mark speaks, reads and writes fluent Japanese. In addition to his work at Orrick, Mark has done pro bono work with young HIV+ parents, indigent criminal defendants, and fisheries conservation organizations. Mark’s passion is tournament fly fishing for tarpon and record chasing. A traveling angler, he has fished all over the world. He was born in Anchorage, Alaska, and raised in Nampa, Idaho. Bottled Lightning is his debut novel, and will be available on 13the June.
Mark Zvonkovic 
Confession time: while I have read and enjoyed previous novels by mesdames Massen, Perks and Spain, Andrea Mara is a new name to me. Turns out she is a compatriot of Jo Spain, also lives in Dublin’s fair City, and her previous novel All Her Fault was a bestseller. So, the loss is all mine. In Hide and Seek, it’s worst nightmare time, especially if you are a parent or, like me, a grandparent. The back-story is that little Lily Murphy goes missing from her Dublin suburb and is never found. Years later, Joanna moves into what was Lily’s home and from here, things just become more scary and spine tingling. This will be published by Bantam Press 
Eve Hunter is well established now in the sharp-elbowed assembly of fictional Detective Inspectors. Her beat is The Granite City of Aberdeen. I reviewed – and enjoyed – two earlier novels, 
Heidi Perks is another writer whose previous books 
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