July’s Best Debut Novels

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CrimeReads editors select the month’s best debuts in crime, mystery, and thrillers.

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Greg Buchanan, Sixteen Horses
(Flatiron)

In a small coastal town in England, a local detective and a veterinary forensics expert are confronted with the disturbing, seemingly ritualistic killing of sixteen horses. When a pathogen is found in the soil where the horses were buried and people who came into contact with it fall ill, chaos and suspicion spread through the town like a virus. This is the gripping premise of Greg Buchanan’s brooding, searching debut, of the season’s most powerful novels. Buchanan has a swift, impactful storytelling style and Sixteen Horses looks to be the start of a promising career. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief

Carolyn Ferrell, Dear Miss Metropolitan
(Henry Holt and Co)

Carolyn Ferrell’s haunting novel of captivity and trauma is as lyrical as it is horrifying. Dear Miss Metropolitan tells the stories of three women held as sex slaves by a violent drunkard for over a decade, interwoven with narratives of their childhoods and their long path towards healing after finally gaining their freedom. Neighbors, nurses, and family all make their appearance as well, for a kaleidoscopic picture of fractured lives and the power of community. A gorgeous and essential work that earns its comparisons to Ivy Pochoda’s These Women and Emma Donoghue’s Room. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor

T.J. Newman, Falling
(Avid Reader / Simon and Schuster)

Newman’s debut, Falling, is about as intense and heart-pounding as suspense fiction can get. The story unfolds in the skies, as the pilot of a commercial flight learns that his family has been taken hostage and the kidnappers are demanding that he crash the plane. Newman, a former flight attendant, writes powerfully and with sharp observations about the closed confines of a packed airplane, bringing the many lives onboard into focus and ratcheting up the dread of what’s to come. This is sure to be one of the most talked-about books of summer. –DM

Willa C. Richards, The Comfort of Monsters
(Harper)

In Richards’ debut, a woman reckons with the loss of her sister thirty years before and probes her own role in the disappearance. Dee and Peg were young girls in Milwaukee in the summer of 1991, the same summer Jeffrey Dahmer and his heinous crimes cast a pall over the city. Peg went missing and local law enforcement, focused on the serial killer, let the investigation falter. Richards tells an engrossing story and brings to vivid life a city locked in paranoia and shock, blind to other crimes unfolding before its eyes. –DM

Rachel Donohue, The Temple House Vanishing
(Algonquin)

In Donohue’s debut, the cloistered world of an all-girls Catholic school atop a seaside cliff bursts open into a larger mystery when the new scholarship girl disappears, along with the art teacher who has gripped so many of the girls’ imaginations and suspicions. Decades later, a dogged reporter tries to piece together what happened at that school, and what became of the girl who vanished. Donohue deftly handles the shifting perspectives and slippery facts that keep the story moving breathlessly along toward a dramatic and unsettling conclusion. –DM

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