HOLIDAY READING: NEW 2026 CRIME NOVELS by TESS GERRITSEN, C. M. EWAN and JORDAN HARPER
While travelling on holidays, I have been catching up on books that I missed earlier in the year, including a couple of books that I was unable to readily get in Australia, as well as the new novel from Tess Gerritsen.
Eye Spy (Pan) by C. M. Ewan is a great holiday read, especially if you are travelling by train.
The story opens in Paris with Mark and his young daughter, and older stepdaughter, waiting to board the Eurostar. While playing a game of ‘Eye Spy’, Mark’s four-year-old daughter alerts him to a ‘Bad Man’. Initially embarrassed, Mark shrugs it off, but then he notices that the man is on their train with a suspicious-looking suitcase and that he is sitting ominously close. As his suspicions increase, Mark comes to realise that events from his past are coming back to cause havoc in the present.
Eye Spy is a twisty, clever story that gradually builds the tension as the train rockets towards its destination. Ewan skilfully weaves together several plot strands, including increasingly worrying social media posts and text messages, until the story comes together in dramatic fashion over the short, sharp final chapters.
The opening sections are a little slow, but the uncertainty about what is happening keeps the reader interested and invested. The confined, claustrophobic nature of the Eurostar also helps to build the suspense, and the events occurring outside train add to the intrigue. The characters are well sketched, and Mark is quite credible, although annoyingly weak willed and wimpy at times.
In all, Eye Spy is a good fun read that made training around Europe a bit more enjoyable.
The title of Jordan Harper’s latest novel, A Violent Masterpiece (Faber), perfectly describes the contents within.
A Violent Masterpiece is a dark, gritty tale that provides a no-holds-barred look at contemporary Los Angeles and the current corrupt state of America. The book follows on from Harper’s award winning Everybody Knows, and even includes some of the storylines and characters from that book.
It starts out following three very different characters who operate on the fringes of LA society. Each night Jake Deal captures the horror of the city on a livestream that is eagerly consumed by his blood-hungry subscribers. Meanwhile, Doug Gibson is a street lawyer trying to fix the system one case at a time. His decision to take on the case of a repulsive, rich abuser, however will have consequences that he could not foresee. In the shadows, Kara Delgado is working for a private concierge company – a make-a-wish foundation for the terminally rich. When Kara’s best friend Phoebe goes missing, she soon finds herself in the worlds of both Jake and Doug.
Thematically and stylistically, A Violent Masterpiece is similar to Everybody Knows, with the different, and very flawed, protagonists pursuing their own separate paths, until dark forces push them together. The story crackles with tension and dark images of the abuse of power, and the suspense steadily mounts before violently exploding in the final chapters. Harper’s believable depiction of LA and the power dynamics in America is hard to read to at times, but the narrative pull of the story drags you along to the bloody conclusion.
A must for fans of tough fiction and neo-noir.
Tess Gerritsen’s The Shadow Friends, (Thomas and Mercer, 25 August 2026), has already been released in the United States, but is not due for release in Australia and the United Kingdom until early 2027.
I had the chance to read it while travelling and thought that it was an enjoyable addition to Tess’s Martini Club series.
As with the first two books in the series, The Shadow Friends revolves around a tight-knit band of former spies, known as the Martini Club, who have retired to a peaceful coastal town in Maine. Their quiet existence is once more interrupted, however, when a renowned disease expert and Russian defector dies mysteriously during a local global affairs conference that one of the group, Ingrid Slocum, was running. The murder on the same day of a waitress at the conference hotel, further complicates matters and Ingrid starts see chilling links to a disastrous mission that nearly killed her three decades ago.
Desperate to uncover the truth, Ingrid is drawn back into the game by a magnetic ex-CIA colleague, who convinces her to join him in the search for the truth around what really happened on that fateful mission. Meanwhile Ingrid’s frantic husband, and the other members of the group, try to track down Ingrid, but find that their efforts are being thwarted by a dangerous foe who does not want the truth to come out.
The Shadow Friends is good fun. The pace is brisk, and the story unfolds in an engaging manner that showcases Tess’s considerable expertise as a veteran of the genre. The plot is interesting, with the requisite turns and surprises, and the story has the right mix of action, reflection and credible background detail. The members of the Martini Group are always good company and their interactions with each other and the long suffering local police chief are entertaining. There is also nice dollop of suspense and an unexpected ending.
In all, another enjoyably light spy story by Tess Gerritsen that will keep you well entertained.