#crimefiction: 5 Overlooked Crime Fiction Books
Violet, Welcome To Holyhell, The Girl From Riga, Canary, Where The Devil Can't Go
Violet splits up with her boyfriend while traveling across the Far East. In Beijing, she meets up with Carrie who is also travelling alone. The two young women decide to continue their journey together but all is decidedly not what it seems …
SJI Holliday’s Violet is absolutely terrific. Gripping, fast-moving, darkly funny, painfully real, and sharply cruel. Like a 21st century Patricia Highsmith, Violet is very highly recommended.
A teenage girl is arrested by the police and becomes an informant. Fast moving, smart, funny and touching, Canary is an action-packed joy.
It’s 1976, and Britain is in the grip of an unbearable heatwave when Bowen leaves London to return to his home town in northeast Wales. As events spiral out of Bowen’s control, his old partner Nash follows his trail. Meanwhile, young Jay finds a briefcase stuffed with cash.
Math Bird’s Welcome To HolyHell is just fantastic. It has the sharp plotting of peak Elmore Leonard combined with the brooding lyrical atmosphere of James Lee Burke. The characters are all marvelously well-drawn and the sense of time and place is spot on. Welcome To HolyHell is a great slice of hardboiled crime fiction that is also moving and funny
Aidan and Neil Asher are part of Liverpool gangster Irvine King’s crew. When a dirty business gets even dirtier, and Neil forms a clandestine relationship with Valentyna, King’s girlfriend, the situation soon spirals violently out of control.
David Siddall’s The Girl From Riga is a cracking read. Brilliantly paced, tense and naturalistic, with sharp twists and turns, The Girl From Riga is highly recommended.
Janusz Kiszka is a Polish ex-pat who has been living in London for over twenty years. A man with a past he’d rather forget. Janusz is a ‘fixer’. A kind of unofficial Private Eye. When he is asked by his priest to track down a missing Polish waitress it seems like a straightforward case of a young girl running away with her boyfriend.
However, as Janusz searches for the girl, he digs deeper and uncovers something much more sinister. Meanwhile, D C Natalie Kershaw, new to the job and trying to make her mark, is investigating the suspicious death of a young Polish girl whose body is washed up from the river Thames. And, of course, the two stories intertwine.
Where The Devil Can’t Go is the cracking début novel from Anya Lipska, which mixes a well paced police procedural with a tense political thriller. The world of the Polish ex pat in London is brilliantly drawn, as are the scenes set in Poland, and both Janusz Kiszka and Natalie Kershaw are vivid, gritty, no-nonsense characters who deserve to feature in more novels.
I’m always looking for lesser known crime reads. I trust your taste.
I picked up two books off of this list! Getting stuck in after dinner! 👍