by SJI Holliday
Are you itching to hear more brilliant book recommendations from your favourite BritCrime authors? Well you're in luck - here's the second part of our 'books of the year' - and you can read the first part here.
Quentin Bates
♠ The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood
♠ Old Flames by John Lawton
♠ Three Minutes of Silence by Georgi Vladimov
The Wicked Girls is populated by some truly vile characters and reeks of deception, lies and badly-kept secrets as the past comes to call. It’s a thoroughly unsettling read, full of surprises and it draws you into the shadowy world of a shabby fairground, a seaside resort that has seen better days and two women who are inexorably drawn together as they share a terrible childhood secret. It’s one of those books that stays with you for days after you’ve read the last page and begs the question: Should seedy seaside noir be a genre of its own?
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Mel Sherratt
♠ The Lie by CL Taylor
♠ Evil Games by Angela Marsons
♠ Daughter by Jane Shemilt
The Lie had me turning the pages so quickly. I felt like I was in the group of main characters. I could sense their horror, feel their pain, smell their filth, share their dread. I absolutely loved its dark, grungy feel, and it’s story of toxic friendships. I literally couldn’t put down until I had finished it.
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Helen Cadbury
♠ Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan
♠ Little Egypt by Lesley Glaister
♠ Café Assassin by Michael Stewart
Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual is a funny and straightforward way to think about what we eat. If you feel inundated by advice on diet and your health, Pollan is a breath of fresh air. Rules such as ‘eat nothing your grandmother wouldn’t recognise as food’ make complete sense when you look at the ingredients on the packaging of so much processed food. Fresh, mainly plant-based, food is what’s good for you and you don’t need to be faddy or fasting to make it easy to remember decisions that will improve your shopping and cooking habits. There are no banned substances, just a reminder that some things were always meant for treats, not every day. Food is fuel. Writers need fuel. This is an excellent book for writers and everyone else.
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Alexandra Sokoloff
♠ Half the Sky by Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn
♠ Those We Left Behind by Stuart Neville
♠ Rubbernecker by Belinda Bauer
Half the Sky is nonfiction about the worst crimes in the world. This 2009 expose and rallying cry against global sex trafficking, gender-based violence, forced marriage, female genital mutilation and other atrocities is a book everyone should read every year, until every one of these horrors has been eradicated. The book has effective, practical actions that can be taken in minutes, and is essential reading for crime authors who use the arena of sex trafficking and want to do justice to the topic – and to the victims.
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Luca Veste
♠ What Remains by Tim Weaver
♠ I Know Who Did It by Steve Mosby
♠ The Death House by Sarah Pinborough
What Remains, Weaver's sixth novel, follows missing persons investigator David Raker as he investigates the murders which have consumed the life of a former Met detective Colm Healy. What at first seems standard fare, suddenly takes a very different turn. What transpires, is a story full of suspense, flair, and horrifying twists. It contains one of the best moments in crime fiction I've read in a long time, and is filled with extraordinary writing and plotting, Tim Weaver is fast becoming one of my favourite crime fiction writers.
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M.J. McGrath
♠ The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
♠ The Abrupt Physics of Dying Paul E Hardisty
♠ Fire Damage by Kate Medina
The Sound of Things Falling is set in Colombia in 2009 and it opens with the hunting down of Pablo Escobar's hippo. What else can I say? It was published a while ago, but a visit to the Medellin Crime Festival in Colombia introduced me to this masterpiece.
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Please join us for our free online Christmas Party at BritCrime Mansions, Sunday 13th December, 6:30 pm UK time, 1:30pm EST.
There will be three golden ticket-holders among the guests. Sign up here for a chance to win.
Join us on Facebook from 6:30pm on Sunday for a chat over a glass of virtual mulled wine. Find us here.
At 7:30pm UK time, 2:30pm EST a few of us will be live on Blab. Find us here.
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