Many thrillers revolve around a parent trying to rescue a child, but few test the parent’s limits as fiercely as Stuart Neville’s gripping Blood Like Ours (Simon & Schuster, £16.99), which offers the moving story of a very particular family wrapped up in everything you’d want from a supernatural thriller.
The second novel in what’s now billed as a trilogy, Blood Like Ours picks up just days after the concluding events of Blood Like Mine separated Rebecca Carter and her daughter Moonflower. Sure that her mother’s gone forever, Moonflower’s bereft, afraid and desperately struggling to hold on to her true self. Unbeknown to Moonflower, though, Rebecca’s hunting feverishly for her, a hunt that drives Neville’s narrative.
Despite this separation, their singular relationship remains absorbing and central, even as Neville considerably expands the role of FBI agent Sarah McGrath, and introduces brothers Will and Jacob. The brothers are strays like Moonflower and they take her on the run, while their own backstory unfolds amid terrifying violence. The women are the highlight, though: Rebecca, Moonflower, Sarah and even the more remote Emma all bring a vividly persuasive depth to these pages.
More than just the trilogy’s middle act, from its first scene to its gratifying conclusion Blood Like Ours simultaneously evokes hope and a spiralling dread, both of which resonate across the novel. As do the best thriller writers, Neville draws out the darkness of a seemingly mundane world.
The 100 best Irish books of the 21st century: No 25 to No 1
The 100 best Irish books of the 21st century: No 50 to No 26
The 100 best Irish books of the 21st century: No 100 to No 51
August’s best new crime fiction: From Stuart Neville’s dark supernatural thriller to a perfect summer read by Laura Lippman
Just as dark in its way, Denise Mina’s excellent The Good Liar (Harvill Secker, £16.99) is another August highlight. The novel opens like a procedural before slyly becoming a much broader example of how crime fiction can dissect power’s inner workings, as her characters learn the cost of the compromises they’ve made for their own convenience and comfort.
The Good Liar shifts between two timelines. The first is set at a gala as Claudia – a blood spatter forensics expert, recently widowed under suspicious circumstances – steels herself to deliver a speech. It’s meant to be blandly honorific, but she’s prepared a bombshell revelation that will destroy careers, including her own. The other timeline begins one year earlier, as Claudia and her powerful mentor Philip (sorry, Sir Philip) are called to a crime scene: the staggeringly wealthy Earl of Strathearn and his much younger fiancee have been brutally murdered.
Mina weaves these timelines ever closer, steadily increasing the pressure on Claudia. The varied plot strands – divorce, betrayal, murder, shell companies, illicit relationships – are anchored by the deadly weight of aristocratic class, painted here in all its inbred connections and relentless self-interest. Even Claudia struggles to resist the temptations of shiny bangles such as lunch at Claridge’s.
As persuasive as the storytelling is, the real hook is Mina’s voice. Devastatingly angry and acidic, its sceptical, desert-dry wit gives Claudia and the others – many of whom are more than they seem at first – the sharp edges that make this book gleam.
It’s easy to see why Elliot Ackerman’s entertaining Sheepdogs (Viking, £16.99) drove a TV bidding war: lean but globe-trotting, it’s both funny and deadly earnest. Where lots of military thrillers lean on gruff brutality, this instead lends something like the castoff perspective of Slow Horses to the chaotic pessimism of David O Russell’s film, Three Kings.
We meet Skwerl and Cheese as they’re hustling to repossess – not steal! – a private jet stashed at an isolated Ugandan airfield. They’re both over-qualified: Skwerl’s a former CIA operative fired for going public about a bloodily botched mission, and Cheese was the best Afghan pilot employed by the Americans, a credential that did him little good when the US left (Ackerman’s also written non-fiction about America’s Afghan allies and shows real conviction in his depiction of Cheese’s experiences).
Tricky from the start, their plan immediately grows even messier. Skwerl, Cheese and their ragtag team are soon enmeshed in everything from revenge, blackmail, and professional BDSM to smuggling and off-books paramilitary funding. The connective tissue here is a sardonic sense of absurdity that’s anchored in their lives, like when Cheese recognises that “Stealing (or repossessing) a luxury jet probably didn’t fall into the category of good behaviour in his adopted country. But having five hundred grand in his bank account did. Cheese understood this much about America.” After 300 quick pages, Ackerman sticks the landing, tying up the diverse threads while promising further exploits from these characters.
The cosy centre of Samantha Downing’s gleeful Too Old for This (Michael Joseph, £16.99) may appear less flashy, but it’s ringed by a deadpan humour that perfectly complements its eccentric plot and narrator, Lottie Jones.
Back in the 1980s, single mother Lottie faced a media frenzy after being questioned by the Spokane police for three murders. She committed all three, but was exonerated when the cops couldn’t prove anything. Using a large settlement for wrongful arrest, she changed her name and moved to a small town where she raised her son, her past a secret. Now 75, she’s settled into a rhythm of church potluck dinners and bingo nights spent gossiping with friends about their children’s questionable life choices.
The arrival of Plum Dixon, a young documentarian, disrupts Lottie’s quiet existence and – deploying an umbrella, her spare freezer and a chainsaw – Lottie’s suddenly back to what made her notorious those many years ago. The world has changed, though: cameras, smartphones and DNA evidence make it so much more difficult to cover one’s tracks. Between this new technology and her bad hip, “murder began to feel like a chore instead of a joy”, just one more demand on her time. Now, she has to juggle a growing body count, appointments to tour retirement homes, and her son’s wedding preparations. She needs a nap. That, and maybe one more opportunity to “feel all lit up inside” by the “sound of hitting a skull”.
Bringing a big city detective’s instincts to the warmth of a cosy mystery, Laura Lippman delivers an armchair tour of France in Murder Takes a Vacation (Faber, £9.99), a witty adventure starring Mrs Muriel Blossom, former employee of Lippman’s series protagonist, PI Tess Monaghan. Tess does make a brief appearance, but this tale belongs to Muriel. Well into her 60s and accustomed to going unnoticed, she’s surprised by a flood of attention from a bevy of strangers, whose veiled motives shape the events.
Widowed, and recently enriched by finding a multi-million-dollar lottery ticket in a convenience store parking lot, Muriel treats herself and best friend Elinor to a luxury cruise up the Seine, anticipating a relaxing week of good food, museums and day trips. However, after being befriended by the handsome, mysterious Allan at the airport and unknowingly eating a marijuana gummy during the flight, she departs from her meticulously planned itinerary. Before long, further complications arise involving the motives of a dead man whose phone contained her details, a stylist who might be an FBI agent, an enigmatic heiress on the same cruise and the men swirling around Elinor. All of them learn not to take her keen observation skills lightly.
This art-infused tale’s light touch is animated by its moving observations on marriage, ageing and friendship, as Muriel eases into the grace of time-earned wisdom. Elegantly folding Muriel’s insights into her deft plotting, Lippman’s produced a perfect summer read.
