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By Sam Wiebe

Harbour Publishing

Vancouver’s Sam Wiebe is at the forefront of a new(ish) kind of hardboiled crime novel that downplays the rampant cynicism, racism, and sexism (often verging into misogyny) of earlier writers like Mickey Spillane, replacing them with a sharp eye for social commentary. In his fourth novel featuring Dave Wakeland, the beleaguered private investigator catches a case that involves a group of guerilla terrorists killing rich landowners in the city. Vancouver’s housing crisis is ripe for critique; Wiebe delivers in a high-octane thriller that may stand as the best Wakeland novel yet.

Age of Vice

By Deepti Kapoor

HarperCollins

Deepti Kapoor’s sprawling second novel is an epic family saga, the family being the Wadi crime syndicate in India. Opening with a scene in which a Mercedes mows down a group of unhoused people sleeping rough, Kapoor’s narrative traverses decades and income brackets to tell a story of an impoverished youth named Ajay who becomes muscle for Sunny, the venal scion of the Wadis. Sunny is a brilliant creation: narcissistic, entitled, and embittered, he is one of this year’s most indelible fictional villains. And Kapoor’s novel, the first in a projected trilogy, is a highly ambitious postcolonial gangster thriller.

All the Sinners Bleed

By S.A. Cosby

Flatiron Books

Cosby’s novel, about a Black sheriff in small-town Virginia, is equal parts police procedural and piquant commentary on race relations in the American South. Taking as its premise the killing of a beloved white schoolteacher and the subsequent police shooting of the Black assassin, the novel traces a path of corruption and darkness as Sheriff Titus Crown wends his way ever closer to the ringleader of a cabal of child murderers. Tinged with Southern Gothic elements and gory set-pieces, Cosby’s novel is surpassingly dark but also possessed of a beating, bleeding heart at its core.

Pet

By Catherine Chidgey

Europa Editions

New Zealand author Chidgey sets her latest novel in a school at which protagonist Justine competes with her classmates for the attention of her enticing new teacher, Mrs. Price. A series of thefts at the school sets in motion a narrative of suspicion, betrayal, and ultimate violence. Written with grace and a knowing eye for social competition among young people, Chidgey’s novel is the definition of a slow burn: a psychological thriller that creeps up on its reader, lulling them into a false sense of security before unleashing chaos and bedlam. One of the year’s most satisfying reads.

The Quiet Tenant

Clémence Michallon

Alfred A. Knopf

A transplant to New York from Paris, Clémence Michallon has written a chilly and claustrophobic variation on the traditional serial-killer narrative. Michallon’s innovation is to focus not on the killer or the cops pursuing him but rather his victims, including one he has kept alive and confined to a room for five years. This is not a whodunit: we know the killer’s identity from the outset. What makes Michallon’s feminist spin on the genre so creepy is the disparity between the villain’s outward charm and what we understand of his true nature, especially as he moves ever closer to a woman he has met in his new place of residence. The novel’s fractured perspective and careful attention to pace make this one of the most unsettling debuts of the year.