Young adult crime fiction delivered some of its sharpest, most provocative titles in 2020, and six years later, those novels remain essential reading for anyone who wants to see what the genre can do when it refuses to talk down to its audience. This curated list highlights seven standout YA crime novels from that year, selected for their sophisticated plotting, authentic character voices, and willingness to tackle the messier corners of justice and morality that traditional YA sometimes sidesteps.
These aren’t sanitized mysteries with tidy endings. The 2020 crop brought us teen detectives grappling with police corruption, …
Hardboiled Detective Fiction Volume 1900: When the Genre Found Its Voice
Hardboiled detective fiction emerged not in 1900, but in the gritty pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, when writers like Dashiell Hammett and Carroll John Daly stripped away the genteel puzzle-solving of Victorian mysteries and replaced it with violence, moral ambiguity, and cynical private eyes navigating corrupt American cities. If you’re searching for “Volume 1900,” you’re likely looking at a collected anthology or retrospective series examining the genre’s roots, because the hardboiled style as we know it simply didn’t exist at the turn of the twentieth century. What readers enjoyed in 1900 were …
Why Canadian Detective Series Are Redefining Crime Fiction Right Now
Canadian detective series offer something the genre desperately needs: a fresh perspective rooted in sprawling landscapes, complex cultural tensions, and the kind of moral ambiguity that thrives in long winters. These aren’t American procedurals transplanted north. The best Canadian crime novels understand that a detective series set in Montreal faces completely different pressures than one in rural Saskatchewan, and that Indigenous-settler relations, bilingualism, and regional isolation create narrative possibilities you won’t find elsewhere.
Start with the heavyweights who’ve built devoted followings over decades…
Thrillers For The Pandemic Era
Pandemic-related thrillers are extremely popular during these coronavirus times. This guide provides the best titles of the sub-genre to get readers started.
From Stephen King to José Saramago, these novels range across different contemporary and classic styles.
I Am Legend
In Richard Matheson’s I am Legend, the entire world has been transformed into vampires and Neville is the last man standing. All the vampires are hungry for his blood.
Neville hunts during the day and creates a fortress in the night. For how long will he survive the war for his blood?
The Plague
The author of The Plague …
Canada’s Most Intriguing Crime Novels
4. John McFetridge – Black Rock (2015)
Black Rock is the first book of the series of Eddie Dougherty. Set in the city of Montreal, in 1970, it is centered around a wannabe-detective named Eddie Dougherty, and a young cop. The 1970s were a turbulent time in Montreal, featuring police kidnappings, bombings, strikes, and protests. McFetridge loves minimalist descriptions and humorous, tongue-in-cheek dialogue.
3. Peter Robinson – Innocent Graves (1996)
The wealthy and powerful man’s daughter has been murdered. Banks investigates the case and discovers that there…
September 2020: The Most Intriguing Thrillers
September 2020 has gifted us with some of the most intriguing mystery, crime, and thriller books ever. Our top picks include The Sleeping Nymph, Next to Last Stand, as well as Mistletoe, Moussaka & Murder.
The Sleeping Nymph – Ilaria Tuti
This sequel is centered on Superintendent Teresa Battaglia. Teresa returns to the Italian force to work on a cold case of a murder investigation. The results from DNA analysis revealed a painting with particles extracted from the heart of a human.
Before Teresa has fully cracked the case, another murder takes place, and a human heart has been extracted displayed as a warning …
Female Crime Writers To Watch Out For
Ausma Khan
Ausma Khan is the British-Canadian author of the Rachel Getty series. The series is based in Toronto, featuring a Muslim detective and his partner who are entangled in crimes of a vulnerable post 9/11 world.
Khan earned her doctorate in the law of international human rights. She believes that the world is a very political place for minorities and discusses these themes in her books. She intentionally features minorities as the leads in her novels, bringing readers into seeing the world from their eyes.
Janet Kellough
Kellough is a note-worthy author who began with one book that turned into a …
How A Woman Becomes A Lake – Marjorie Celona
This novel is that and melancholy. It opens up in Washington State. Officer Côté discovers Vera Gusey’s abandoned vehicle beside a frozen lake.
Vera had called to inform the station of a boy who was lost. Before she finished the call, she was cut off, and now she had mysteriously disappeared.
The story is artful and filled with tension. It follows the father of the boy and Vera, and the pieced revelation of the mystery is tragically grim.
Celona explores Vera’s fate and the effect it had on all the characters. It focuses on abstract problems such as the duty to those who have died versus the loyalty that …
Last Impressions – Joseph Kertes
Tragicomically tender is a phrase that astutely describes the Last Impressions. Kertes resounds themes that have remained constant during his career.
How do you get over the past? How do you make history right again? How does a family overcome grief, especially when everyone is determined not to speak of it?
Last Impressions is centered on a survivor of the Holocaust, Zoltan Beck. Beck is determined to enjoy his old age and put the past behind him. He longs to preserve his children from the darkness of their past – unfortunately, the past keeps looming above them.
The past trauma easily bubbles to the surface, with …
Never Forget – Martin Michaud; Translated by Arthur Holden
Never Forget is accessible and unique, armed with continuity that is so pivotal for crime writers creating a series. The series increases in intensity, mystery, and perils with each novel, of which Never Forget is the third book of its series.
Never Forget is centered on Victor Lessard. Lessard is a police detective. He investigates the murder of a nameless female, and the story pans out with a homeless man with two wallets, and a cryptic threat to a lawyer.
The story gives hints of the backstory unobtrusively piquing the reader’s interests without providing a distraction from the propulsive happenings in the main narrative…