We’ve been asking some of our favourite authors to tell us what their favourite summertime reads are, you can see L. Marie Adeline’s here and Terry Fallis’ here, and our newest edition is Ben H. Winters, author of the amazingly, awesome Last Policeman Trilogy! Read on for Ben’s summer picks and your chance to win them all, plus his complete series!
Make sure to read all the way to the bottom – there’s a contest just waiting for you to enter for a chance to win The Last Policeman, Countdown City and World of Trouble along with all of Ben H. Winters summer picks!
Some thoughts from Ben
It would be facetious of me to suggest that in the summertime I read mostly mysteries, because I read mostly mysteries most of the time. But there is something about those beach trips, those lazy weekend afternoons, that invites giving oneself over to the pleasure of a twisting plot and a dark secret and a good satisfying thrill. Here are some favorties, new and old.
Shovel Ready by Adam Sternberg
I love to discover new authors, and recently had a hell of a time with a creepy dystopian noir called Shovel Ready, by Adam Sternbergh. It’s a novel about a destroyed, forlorn New York, in the aftermath of an attack, but its heart is one man trying to make sense of his life.
Spademan used to be a garbage man. That was before the dirty bomb hit Times Square, before his wife was killed, and before the city became a blown-out shell of its former self. Now he’s a hitman.
In a near-future New York City split between those who are wealthy enough to “tap in” to a sophisticated virtual reality, and those who are left to fend for themselves in the ravaged streets, Spademan chose the streets. When his latest client hires him to kill the daughter of a powerful evangelist, he must navigate between these two worlds—the wasteland reality and the slick fantasy—to finish his job, clear his conscience, and make sure he’s not the one who winds up in the ground.
The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh
Another very worthy debut is from my fellow Midwesterner, Laura McHugh, whose thriller The Weight of Blood has won all sorts of attention for its evocative Ozark setting, and for its careful layering of dread.
The town of Henbane sits deep in the Ozark Mountains. Folks there still whisper about Lucy Dane’s mother, a bewitching stranger who appeared long enough to marry Carl Dane and then vanished when Lucy was just a child. Now on the brink of adulthood, Lucy experiences another loss when her friend Cheri disappears and is then found murdered, her body placed on display for all to see. Lucy’s family has deep roots in the Ozarks, part of a community that is fiercely protective of its own. Yet despite her close ties to the land, and despite her family’s influence, Lucy—darkly beautiful as her mother was—is always thought of by those around her as her mother’s daughter. When Cheri disappears, Lucy is haunted by the two lost girls—the mother she never knew and the friend she couldn’t save—and sets out with the help of a local boy, Daniel, to uncover the mystery behind Cheri’s death.
The Ripley Series by Patricia Highsmith
When I’m in a mood reread favorites, my favorite favorite is Patricia Highsmith’s astonishingly wicked Ripley series. The first and most famous is The Talented Mr. Ripley, but all of the sequels have their own delights.
Three classic crime novels by a master of the macabre appear here together in hardcover for the first time.Suave, agreeable, and completely amoral, Patricia Highsmith’s hero, the inimitable Tom Ripley, stops at nothing–not even murder– to accomplish his goals. In achieving for himself the opulent life that he was denied as a child, Ripley shows himself to be a master of illusion and manipulation and a disturbingly sympathetic combination of genius and psychopath. As Highsmith navigates the mesmerizing tangle of Ripley’s deadly and sinister games, she turns the mystery genre inside out and takes us into the mind of a man utterly indifferent to evil.
A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell
I am a great fan also of Ruth Rendell, and though it’s hard to pick one novel to recommend from her vast catalog, I’ll go ahead and suggest A Sight for Sore Eyes.
In traditional fairy tales the handsome prince rescues the beautiful princess from her wicked stepmother, and the couple live happily ever after. But in Ruth Rendell’s dark and damaged contemporary universe, innocent dreams can turn into the most terrible nightmares.
The Maltese Falcon by Raymond Chandler
Last but certainly not least…noir aficionados often name Raymond Chandler as the genre’s godfather, but personally I’m fonder of Dashiell Hammett. I think The Maltese Falcon is that rarest of birds: a masterpiece that truly lives up to its reputation.
A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.
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