December Criminals

Yolanda Vance, a lawyer whose firm got raided and was hired by the FBI, quickly learns she’s wanted for undercover work she’s not trained for because the FBI wants to infiltrate a teen activist group they’ve labeled as extremist. Vance ends up taking the assignment and her own views are challenged as she gets to know the group’s members, falls in love, and learns her life is in grave danger… I’m a big fan of de León and will continue looking forward to her work. (Review) (TW drug overdose, talk of addiction/ brief past mention of child-on-child attempted sexual assault)

Here’s a historical mystery with a little steampunk. In 1958 there are secret tunnels below London, and deep below the city you will find Miss Brickett’s Investigations & Inquiries–a team of detectives solving the crimes that Scotland Yard has been unable to solve. Okay, how do I go work for them?!

The third in the British procedural series that follows Detective Constable Cat Kinsella, who starts the series off with wondering if her father is responsible for the missing teenage girl case from almost two decades prior…Now she’s got a serial killer case and her superiors are still unaware that her family isn’t the most up-and-up bunch.

A new entry into the anthology noir series from Akashic Books. These are great to pick up for crime readers who want to find new authors to follow. “The stories that you will read in this collection highlight all things Accra, everything that the city was and is—the remaining vestiges of colonialism, the pride of independence, the nexus of indigenous tribes and other groups from all over the world, the tension between modernity and traditionalism, the symbolism and storytelling both obvious and coded, the moral high ground, the duplicity and deceit, the most basic human failings laid bare alongside fear and love and pain and the corrupting desire to have the very things you are not meant to have.“

This is the sequel to Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders (Review), which followed an amateur sleuth during WWII, Air Raid Warden Poppy Redfern. Now, in 1942, she’s a scriptwriter at the London Crown Film Unit. When her film project has her witness the death of a female fighter pilot, which is labeled an accident, Poppy puts on her sleuth cap again.

I actually didn’t know this was the start to a series when I read it but I assume now that it’ll follow more cases picked up by Zara Kaleel: a former barrister who currently works for Artemis House as a sexual violence advisor. This is a legal thriller that follows an entire rape case, from accusation through to the end of the legal process. (Review) (TW rape/ brief mention and details of past suicide attempt/ brief female to male partner abuse/ ableism and bullying/ brief recount of past animal cruelty/ addiction/ Islamophobia/ anti-Semite trope comment)

If you’re looking for a Swedish procedural, here you go. Fifteen years ago Detective Inspector Embla Nyström’s best friend Lollo disappeared. Now she’s just received a call from her, meaning she must still be alive. But then a man is found murdered and it’s the man Nyström remembers having seen Lollo last with…

This is the sequel to Death in the Family (Review), which is a mystery set on a remote island where a family member is missing and the two detectives are now trapped on the island during a storm with the family full of secrets. Now Senior Investigator Shana Merchant is back, but this time it’s her past that takes center stage, as her abductor (previous to the first book) has shown up again…

This isn’t connected on Goodreads as a sequel but it’s the same character, Killian Delaney, from Seven Crows, so I assume this is the sequel. Delaney is one of those characters that is seriously tough and takes no shit and will fight to save anyone she loves. And now she’s a part of the Network, which is “a group of well-funded individuals who help the weakest among us.”