Creator of Thuglit Todd Robinson’s ROUGH TRADE, the second novel in his Anthony-nominated Boo and Junior series, about two Boston bouncers who agree to scare off a coworker’s ex-boyfriend, but when the man is later found dead they must uncover the truth about his murder by facing down crooked cops, crazed guard dogs, a rival security crew and the Irish mob to Jason Pinter at Polis Books by Stacia Decker.
Publishers Weekly: Clarke (the Assassin’s Curse series) brings novelty and delight to steampunk Antarctica in this complex and lovely mystery. Eliana Gomez is the first female PI in Hope City, a domed city originally built to support an amusement park full of steam-powered automatons, and she wants nothing more than to emigrate to warmer climes. When recently widowed Lady Luna, an heiress with a secret, asks Eliana to recover some stolen documents, the fee is too good to turn down, even though it puts Eliana in the path of Hope City’s biggest crime boss and at odds with her boyfriend. With robots from the amusement park evolving their own intelligence and agendas, freedom fighters agitating more openly for Antarctic independence, and the increasing unreliability of the power supplying heat and light to the city’s main dome, Eliana’s need for a hasty departure quickly becomes urgent, even as the tasks required become riskier. The worldbuilding will sweep readers away, and the entertaining and compelling cast of characters will make excellent company on the journey.
McBride came to prominence with his debut novel, the wonderfully titled Frank Sinatra in a Blender. This, his second novel, comes fully noir, and is one of the finest accounts of how meth has spread across the Midwestern states like some bubonic plague. Demons from its use and the characters’ own demons fuse into an epic blend of one of the darkest, most humorous noirs of the past decade. Gasconade County as depicted here rivals James Ellroy’s Los Angeles for the sheer scope of its compassion and corruption.
RT Book Reviews: With an engaging, diverse cast of characters, a pace that almost never lets up and more than a little of Wendig’s signature humor, Zer0es contains absolutely no dull moments. While Chance Dalton occasionally ventures into “Gary Stu” territory, these hacker heroes have layers, filling those few quieter scenes with a rewarding emotional complexity. And don’t worry, Luddites, even if you don’t know a thing about technology, you’ll still find this book to be an unbelievably thrilling ride.
Scott Reardon’s debut The Prometheus Man, about a CIA team put together to take down a genetically engineered soldier gone rogue, and another book, to Wes Miller at Mulholland Books in a mid-six-figure deal by Stacia Decker.
The Guild of Saint Cooper is a wistful, elegiac and far-reaching cosmic dystopian novel set in Seattle and its suburbs.
Shya Scanlon is a major talent, rightfully compared to other reality-bending masters like Philip K. Dick and Haruki Murakami. His narrative moves toward an ending that is either apocalyptic or some grand and alien resurrection, leading readers on a wild ride as gorgeous and layered as Russian nesting boxes, provoking as many questions as answers in the end. “A road like a Möbius strip that led to the underside of itself, until you traveled it again to arrive where you’d begun.”
A group of co-opted hackers discovers a secret government experiment gone terribly wrong.
Prolific sci-fi novelist and games enthusiast Wendig (Under the Empyrean Sky, 2013, etc.) whips up a Matrix-y bit of old-school cyberpunk updated to meet the frightening technology of the modern age. This is an ambitious, bleeding-edge piece of speculative fiction that combines hacker lore, wet-wired horror, and contemporary paranoia in a propulsive adventure that’s bound to keep readers on their toes.
An action-packed yet cerebral thriller that lives in that murky nexus between today and the future.
Publishers Weekly: Wendig (Blackbirds) piles on the thrills and chills in this fast-paced near-future novel about human frailty and inhuman ambition. Five American hackers grabbed by the Feds are given a choice: a jail sentence, or a job working on a secret NSA program run by the mysterious Typhon. Now the hackers need to figure out Typhon’s true identity and motivation, preferably before Typhon is done using them. Wendig wields the tools of suspense and tension with skill. His large cast of characters is entertaining, the moments of horror are sharp and chilling, and the story races to a breathless conclusion. This is a promising opening to a new series for SF thriller fans.
Toronto Star: The Machine Awakes is the second installment in Adam Christopher’s Spider Wars trilogy, telling a stand-alone story set in the same universe as last year’s The Burning Dark.
As things begin it seems something’s stirring on the moons of Jupiter, and it’s not those pesky Spiders again. Meanwhile, things aren’t going well on Earth either, as the Fleet Admiral has just been assassinated after being overthrown in a coup. But which of the many conspiracies out there is responsible?
It’s up to the Fleet Bureau of Investigation to get to the bottom of all this, and Special Agent Von Kodiak is the man for the job. Expect a really entertaining space opera with all the fixings from a young writer who is hitting his stride.
Boston Globe: This novel, the fourth in the Stevens and Windermere series, is a police procedural with the pulse of a thriller, a page-turner that lifts you up at chapter one and hurls you forward. Tightly plotted events unfold from the point of view of the sisters, the special agent, and the bad guys as stakes rise and evidence leads investigators from Montana to Manhattan.
The prose is clean and clear, and Laukkanen knows when to pull the camera back and let the reader’s imagination take over. In a pleasant twist, this thriller with strong, flawed, and fully fleshed out heroes and villains presents its female victims as equally three dimensional — and resourceful as well.
Read the Boston Globe‘s full review of The Stolen Ones here.
At Publishers Weekly, Ken Bruen included Matthew McBride’s A Swollen Red Sun in his list of 10 Best Noir Novels.