I very carefully didn’t call this “American Writers” because one of my chosen five is, in fact, Irish. But his books are set in the US, and have a very American-crime feel, so he’s in the right place.

The Books

1. City of Fear by Alafair Burke: when blonde and beautiful 19-year-old Chelsea Hart is found murdered, one of the first on the scene is Detective Ellie Hatcher. She and her partner JJ Rogan quickly home in on the city boys Chelsea was clubbing with the night she died, and soon arrest one of them for her murder. But Ellie isn’t sure they have the right guy – Chelsea’s murder is very similar to the deaths of three girls more than five years ago. Her decision to investigate pits her against her police colleagues and throws her into the sight of a psychopath. As events escalate, Ellie is in a race against time to solve these murders – with her job and her life on the line.

2. The Monkey’s Raincoat by Robert Crais: The first Elvis Cole novel sees the private investigator looking into the disappearance of a no-good husband and his young son.It soon becomes apparent that this is more than a jerk kidnapping his son: Ellen Lang’s husband is found dead, with no sign of the boy. Elvis will need all of his skill – and that of his sociopath sidekick Joe Pike – to solve the case before he becomes too personally involved. And when it turns out that the man to blame is one of California’s biggest drug lords, it looks like Elvis is in way over his head.

3. Blindsighted by Karin Slaughter: Sara Linton serves double duty as pediatrician and coroner in the small Georgia town of Heartsdale, the latter role bringing her into frequent contact with her ex-husband Jeffrey. After a lunch with her sister Tessa at the diner she's been eating in all her life, Sara discovers Sibyl Adams, a blind professor at the local college, bleeding profusely in a toilet stall after being viciously attacked. Sara tries her best to save her but Sibyl dies. She was the twin sister of Lena Adams, Jeffrey's best detective. The initial evidence indicates a ritualistic murderer who will continue to kill. After more women are found murdered, a chapter in Sara's past that is still being written converges in a finale that leaves Heartsdale unalterably scarred.

4. The White Road by John Connolly: In South Carolina, a young black man faces the death penalty for the rape and murder of Marianne Larousse, daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the state. It's a case that nobody wants to touch, a case with its roots in old evil, and old evil is private detective Charlie Parker's speciality. But Parker is about to make a descent into the abyss, a confrontation with dark forces that threaten all that Parker holds dear: his lover, his unborn child, even his soul... For in a prison cell, a fanatical preacher is about to take his revenge on Charlie Parker, its instruments the very men that Parker is hunting, and a strange, hunched creature that keeps its own secrets buried by a riverbank: the undiscovered killer Cyrus Nairn. Soon, all of these figures will face a final reckoning in southern swamps and northern forests, in distant locations linked by a single thread, a place where the paths of the living and the dead converge: the White Road.

5. No Time For Goodbye by Linwood Barclay: On the morning she will never forget, teenager Cynthia Archer awakes with a nasty hangover and a feeling she is going to have an even nastier confrontation with her mom and dad. But when she leaves her bedroom, she discovers the house is empty, with no sign of her parents or brother. In the blink of an eye, without any explanation, her family has simply disappeared. Twenty-five years later Cynthia is still haunted by unanswered questions. Now married with a daughter of her own, Cynthia fears that her new family will be taken from her just as her first one was. So she agrees to take part in a TV documentary revisiting the case, in the hope that somebody somewhere will remember something – or even that her father, mother or brother might finally reach out to her. Then a letter arrives which makes no sense and yet chills Cynthia to the core. And soon she begins to realise that stirring up the past could be the worst mistake she has ever made...


Notable Points

- The main character becomes a target and ends up in a life-threatening situation in all five books.

- Surprisingly, the last book’s main character isn’t a detective (private or otherwise) but instead is Cynthia’s husband, and is a high school writing teacher. I liked that. Was a nice change.

- Only two of them use humour to contrast the grim storyline (Crais, and Burke to a lesser extent). I think, but might be proven wrong, that British authors are more likely to use humour in their books.

- American writers are grimmer than British ones. Of this I’m nearly certain. Serial killers are a) more likely and b) more horrific.


A few more things: John Connolly is a halfway point between horror and crime. I liked that, although I think I would have liked it less if I didn’t have a strong male around the house. Alafair Burke is great. Her story has a very real feel to it, and as a former assistant DA (I think it was) she clearly knows a lot about criminal procedures, which is a nice find in crime fiction. Karin Slaughter is very appropriately named. Robert Crais isn’t really my bag, although I liked the very noir feel of the book.

I bought the second Karin Slaughter book. It’s incredibly grim so far. But I can’t say I wasn’t warned.


The next part of my project is British Crime Writers (modern). I’ll be reading Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Quentin Jardine, Mark Billingham and someone else yet to be named. Findings in a month or two.