Unlike the hapless victims who fall prey to the vengeful butler’s candlestick in the library, crime fiction is a genre that will simply never die.
2017 has seen some fantastic new books enter the ring and we’ve rounded up ten of our favourites.
From the macabre murder mystery to the heart-stopping thriller, there’s something to suit all tastes in our list of the best crime and thriller books of this year - check them out below!
Buried secrets, unexpected death and a trail of bloody clues lie at the heart of Anthony Horowitz's page-turning new thriller.
A wealthy woman strangled six hours after she’s arranged her own funeral.
A very private detective uncovering secrets but hiding his own.
A reluctant author drawn into a story he can’t control.
What do they have in common?
Unexpected death, an unsolved mystery and a trail of bloody clues lie at the heart of Anthony Horowitz's page-turning new thriller.
SPREAD THE WORD. THE WORD IS MURDER.
The gripping new psychological thriller from the author of the bestselling The One Who Got Away.
An old castle...
For more than 150 years, a grand house known as Alden Castle has stood proudly in the hills above the historic town of Paso Robles, home to a family weighed down by secrets and debt.
A fresh body...
When, after much rancour, the castle is sold, billionaire developers move in, only to discover one skeleton after another, including a fresh corpse, rotting in the old family cemetery.
An unsolved mystery...
As three generations of the well-respected Alden-Stowe family come in for scrutiny, detectives will discover a twisted web of rivalries, alliances, deceit, and treachery.
Set amidst the rolling hills of the California wine district, and featuring gold-digger wives, a frustrated housekeeper, a demented patriarch and forbidden love, police must decide: who has died? Who has survived? And who, amidst all this horror and betrayal, is the lucky one?
In the last days before her death, Nel called her sister. Jules didn’t pick up the phone, ignoring her plea for help.
Now Nel is dead. They say she jumped. And Jules has been dragged back to the one place she hoped she had escaped for good, to care for the teenage girl her sister left behind.
But Jules is afraid. So afraid. Of her long-buried memories, of the old Mill House, of knowing that Nel would never have jumped.
And most of all she’s afraid of the water, and the place they call the Drowning Pool...
With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, satisfying read that hinges on the stories we tell about our pasts and their power to destroy the lives we live now.
“This story has been brewing for a good while. For me there is something irresistible about the stories we tell ourselves, the way voices and truths can be hidden consciously or unconsciously, memories can be washed away and whole histories submerged. Then two sisters appeared, and the novel began to form." - Paul Hawkins
Volunteering his services as a pilot to fly renowned international peace advocate Egon Kisch between Fremantle and Melbourne, Rowland is unaware how hard Australia 's new attorney-general will fight to keep the raging reporter off Australian soil.
In this, it seems, the government is not alone, as clandestine right-wing militias reconstitute into deadly strike forces. A disgraced minister, an unidentified corpse and an old flame all bring their own special bedlam.
Once again Rowland Sinclair stands against the unthinkable, with an artist, a poet and a brazen sculptress by his side.
For all fans of The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl comes this spellbinding Hitchcockian thriller which takes psychological suspense to the next level.
Jane stumbles on the rental opportunity of a lifetime: the chance to live in a beautiful ultra-minimalist house designed by an enigmatic architect, on condition she abides by a long list of exacting rules.
After moving in, she discovers that a previous tenant, Emma, met a mysterious death there and starts to wonder if her own story will be a re-run of the girl before.
As twist after twist catches the reader off guard, Emma's past and Jane's present become inexorably entwined in this tense, page-turning portrayal of psychological obsession.
The young detectives call Alan Auhl a retread, but that doesn’t faze him. He does things his own way - and gets results.
He still lives with his ex-wife, off and on, in a big house full of random boarders and hard-luck stories. And he’s still a cop, even though he retired from Homicide some years ago.
He works cold cases now. Like the death of John Elphick - his daughters still convinced he was murdered, the coroner not so sure. Or the skeleton that’s just been found under a concrete slab. Or the doctor who killed two wives and a girlfriend, and left no evidence at all.
Auhl will stick with these cases until justice is done. One way or another.
Includes an extract of Two Kinds of Truth, the new Harry Bosch novel to be published in November 2017.
Los Angeles can be a dangerous city never more so than in the dead of night.
Renee Ballard works the night shift at the LAPD in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none as each morning she turns her cases over to day shift detectives. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor.
But one night she catches two cases she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn. Against orders and her own partner's wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night.
As the cases entwine, they pull her closer to her own demons and the reason she won't give up her job - no matter what the department throws at her.
The compelling new psychological thriller that will break your heart into tiny pieces, from world-renowned author MICHAEL ROBOTHAM Everyone has an idea of what their perfect life is. For Agatha, it's Meghan Shaughnessy's. These two women from vastly different backgrounds have one thing in common - a dangerous secret that could destroy everything they hold dear.
Both will risk everything to hide the truth, but their worlds are about to collide in a shocking act that cannot be undone.
THE SECRETS SHE KEEPS is a compelling psychological thriller that delves deeply into the psyche of the human mind, by internationally bestselling author Michael Robotham.
