February’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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Brendan Slocumb, The Violin Conspiracy
(Anchor Books)

Generally, I avoid hype. Plenty of buzz books (that is an industry term) are not that buzzy when you look beyond the blurbs and the cover art. Slocum’s book, however, is something I cannot hype enough. The story of an African-American violinist whose beloved and valuable Stradivarius is stolen delves into the world of art theft and the world of classical music and comes up with something that feels fresh and original. This is Slocum’s first novel and I hope not his last. –Lisa Levy, CrimeReads Contributing Editor

Calla Henkel, Other People’s Clothes
(Doubleday)

Reading this book is like going to a Berlin nightclub and staying out dancing till 4 AM only to keep partying afterward. Except in the unending party of Other People’s Clothes, one of the party hosts ends up dead. Calla Henkel is based in Berlin and runs a “bar, performance space, and film studio called TV in Berlin” which should make anyone reading this book feel very cool by proxy. In Other People’s Clothes, two exchange students obsessed with the Amanda Knox trial start a weekly shindig in their luxe apartment, only to have things go terribly, irrevocably south. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor

Kiare Ladner, Night Shift
(Custom House)

Debut novelist Ladner has darkness in her bones. Night Shift, a story of a female friendship gone not quite wrong but somewhat strange. Is Maggie in love with her coworker Sabine, a woman whose secrets are not quite hidden by the nights they work alongside each other, exchanging lies and confidences. Night Shift has atmosphere to spare, and the unstable friendship at its core is rendered with the right amount of moodiness. –LL

Jane Pek, The Verifiers
(Knopf)

This is that rare combination of techno-thriller and traditional mystery. What would you pay to know that the guy on that dating app was bonafide? Claudia, who’s been recruited to verify identities at a “referrals-only dating agency”, now knows—and that answer is, a lot. But what happens when the clients aren’t the only ones lying? When Claudia’s client vanishes, she goes down an ugly rabbithole into the nature of truth, and the truth of corporate malfeasance. –MO

Caroline Frost, Shadows of Pecan Hollow
(William Morrow)

This is a truly great year for Texas crime novels, and Shadows of Pecan Hollow is no exception. Janet Finch, the author of White Oleander, describes this one as “Badlands meets Paper Moon” which is really all I need to want to read it. Split between the 70s and 90s, Shadows follows Kit Walker as a runaway preteen who ends up on the lam with a sociopath, carving their way through gas stations as they road-trip across the country. Twenty years later, Kit has a daughter and a respectable life, but when her conman reenters her life, she’s not sure if she can believe he’s changed—or if she even wants him to. –MO

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