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January book club nominations: Crime / mystery

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
edited January 2023 in General Chat
Hi everyone; it's that time again!

January is crime month; it's dark and sinister, and a little chilly. Perfect!

True crime, or crime fiction - the only requirement is that it's a good read.

Crime fiction often deals with quite difficult issues; if you're aware of an especially disturbing element in the story, please note it in your nomination (try to avoid spoilers, though).

Nomation format:
Book: Snuff by Terry Pratchett | Kindle Edition | ePub

Synopsis: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a policeman taking a holiday would barely have had time to open his suitcase before he finds his first corpse.

And Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is on holiday in the pleasant and innocent countryside, but not for him a mere body in the wardrobe. There are many, many bodies and an ancient crime more terrible than murder.

He is out of his jurisdiction, out of his depth, out of bacon sandwiches, occasionally snookered and out of his mind, but never out of guile. Where there is a crime there must be a finding, there must be a chase and there must be a punishment.

They say that in the end all sins are forgiven.

But not quite all...
From Amazon

Reason for Nomination: Any reason you like can go here. The above is an example, and was our book for March 2012, so no nominating (it's a terrific crime novel, tho)!

As I did above, if there are Kindle/e-reader editions, put separate links to those, please.
Post edited by JustV on

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Hello, on phone. So nominating lazily all three Thomas Harris Hannibal classics. Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Pick one? With it being a series I don't know, I'm not sure which would be best to read stand-alone?
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

    from Amazon:
    As boys, George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur, living in shabby genteel Edinburgh, find themselves in a vast and complex world at the heart of the British Empire. Years later—one struggling with his identity in a world hostile to his ancestry, the other creating the world’s most famous detective while in love with a woman who is not his wife–their fates become inextricably connected.

    In Arthur & George, Julian Barnes explores the grand tapestry of late-Victorian Britain to create his most intriguing and engrossing novel yet.

    and to con tinue the Sherlock theme..

    The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

    from Amazon:
    The Hound of the Baskervilles is the classic detective chiller. It features the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, in his most challenging case. The Baskerville family is haunted by a phantom beast "with blazing eyes and dripping jaws" which roams the mist-enshrouded moors around the isolated Baskerville Hall on Dartmoor. Now the hound seems to be stalking young Sir Henry, the new master of the Baskerville estate. Is this devilish spectre the manifestation of the family curse? Or is Sir Henry the victim of a vile and scheming murderer? Only Sherlock Holmes can solve this devilish affair.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Arthur and George is a brilliant suggestion!
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    piccolo wrote: »
    Arthur and George is a brilliant suggestion!

    yeah i loved it, the book cover is rather pretty too
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Book: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré | ePub | Kindle | Audio (dramatised)

    Synopsis: The enduring novel by one of our greatest storytellers. George Smiley, who is a troubled man of infinite compassion, is also a single-mindedly ruthless adversary as a spy. The scene which he enters is a Cold War landscape of moles and lamplighters, scalp-hunters and pavement artists, where men are turned, burned or bought for stock. Smiley's mission is to catch a Moscow Centre mole burrowed thirty years deep into the Circus itself. (publisher's synopsis)

    Reason for nomination: It's a classic of the genre. I've never read any LeCarré, but he's the father of my current favourite (Nick Harkaway) and my mum says he's good.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Book: The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino | Kindle | ePub

    Synopsis: Yasuko is quietly getting on with her life, living in an apartment block in Tokyo, raising her only daughter without assistance from her ex-husband, and eking out a living from working in a bento shop. She has little to do with her upstairs neighbour, although she is aware that he is interested in her.
    Detective Kusanagi is called to a crime scene that appears to be straightforward, but nothing quite fits. The events that follow will transform the lives of everyone involved.

    Reason for nomination: I picked this up after endless customer recommendations back when I worked in a bookshop. I was completely gripped, and obsessed with trying to solve it. Needless to say, I didn't work it out.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Red Dragon then. #stillonmyphone
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

    from amazon: US Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to find an escaped murderer named Rachel Solando.


    As a killer hurricane bears down on the island, the investigation deepens and the questions mount. How has a barefoot woman escaped from a locked room? Who is leaving them clues in the form of cryptic codes? And what really goes on in Ward C?


    The closer Teddy gets to the truth, the more elusive it becomes. And the more he begins to believe that he may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive him insane...

    Reason for Nomination: lots of twists and turns which shouldnt be ruined. Unless you've seen the film...
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

    from amazon: US Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to find an escaped murderer named Rachel Solando.


    As a killer hurricane bears down on the island, the investigation deepens and the questions mount. How has a barefoot woman escaped from a locked room? Who is leaving them clues in the form of cryptic codes? And what really goes on in Ward C?


    The closer Teddy gets to the truth, the more elusive it becomes. And the more he begins to believe that he may never leave Shutter Island. Because someone is trying to drive him insane...

    Reason for Nomination: lots of twists and turns which shouldnt be ruined. Unless you've seen the film...

    Ooooh ooh yes yes!

    I am on my phone also but...

    Genesis by Karin Slaughter

    Is the book that got me into crime/thriller novels.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Fiend_85 wrote: »
    Red Dragon then. #stillonmyphone

    Book: Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

    Synopsis: "Sexual hunger; demonic violence; sinister logic - the lethal components of a deadly formula driving a psychopath in the grip of an unimagin-able delusion; a boastful killer who sends the police tormenting notes; a tortured, torturing monster who finds ultimate pleasure in viciously murdering happy families, and calls himself. . . The Red Dragon.

    Special agent Will Graham has been assigned to similar cases before, cases where he was able to see and feel WITH the madmen, anticipate their moves and, most terrifying of all, be vulnerable to their horrifying brutality. Now Graham is reluctantly lured out of retirement, to find an opening to the evil mind of the Red Dragon. Red Dragon is quite probably the most suspenseful, utterly compelling thriller ever written."
    from Amazon

    Reason for nomination: "Everyone's seen Silence of the Lambs. This is the first one. Harris has a real ability to draw you into a mindset that most people aren't familiar with. It's a very troubling place to go (in a good way)." - Fiend_85

    (There's no eBook available as far as I can tell).
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Book: Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch | Kindle | ePub

    Synopsis: Probationary constable Peter Grant is an unremarkable constable in the Metropolitan Police. Unremarkable, that is, until he interviews a ghost at the scene of a gruesome murder in Covent Garden. One thing leads to another, and he finds himself DC Peter Grant, apprenticed to Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England.

    As the murders continue, and DC Grant struggles to form the simplest of spells and decline his Latin nouns, even his chances of getting into the pants of WPC Leslie May are at stake...

    (The first in the PC Peter Grant series.)

    Reason for nomination: One of my favourite books, and very good fun.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Book: The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, or the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale

    Synopsis: A terrific retelling of what was once one of the most famous murder cases in England. At the beginning of the science of detection, Jack Whicher is sent to investigate the brutal murder of Samuel Kent, child of a local dignitary. As the story unfolds, Kate Summerscale deftly sets it in the context of the new fashion for detective novels, and the public lust for ever more horrible tales in the newspapers and serialised as novels in their magazines.

    One warning, it does contain spoilers of some of the classic detective novels (The Moonstone, the Woman in White, Edwin Drood).

    Reason for nomination: True crime with depth
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    I'm going to run a very quick poll now, sorry, the time ran away from me! We might start Jan a touch late.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Genesis by Karin Slaughter

    Synopsis: Three and a half years ago former Grant County medical examiner Sara Linton moved to Atlanta hoping to leave her tragic past behind her. Now working as a doctor in Atlanta's Grady Hospital she is starting to piece her life together. But when a severely wounded young woman is brought in to the emergency room, she finds herself drawn back into a world of violence and terror. The woman has been hit by a car but, naked and brutalised, it's clear that she has been the prey of a twisted mind.

    When Special Agent Will Trent of the Criminal Investigation Team returns to the scene of the accident, he stumbles on a torture chamber buried deep beneath the earth. And this hidden house of horror reveals a ghastly truth - Sara's patient is just the first victim of a sick, sadistic killer. Wrestling the case away from the local police chief, Will and his partner Faith Mitchell find themselves at the centre of a grisly murder hunt. And Sara, Will and Faith - each with their own wounds and their own secrets - are all that stand between a madman and his next crime...
    from Google books
    Is the book that got me into crime/thriller novels.
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