OCTOBER 2025 READING: NEW BOOKS BY VAL McDERMID, VASEEM KHAN and DAVID WHISH-WILSON

Three very different crime novels for your late October reading: a good cold case mystery, an interesting James Bond spin-off and a tough, gritty noir thriller by one of Australia’s best crime writers.

Val McDermid’s popular cold case detective DCI Karen Pirie, makes a welcomed return in Silent Bones, (Little, Brown, 23 October 2025), the eighth book in the highly entertaining series.

The book opens with the discovery of a body when a torrential storm causes a landslide on a motorway in Scotland. Karen and her Historic Cases Unit quickly identify the victim as journalist Sam Nimmo who had been the prime suspect in the murder of his fiancé when he disappeared eleven years ago. Meanwhile, in Edinburgh, new evidence reopens a closed case, and the accidental death of a hotel manager, Tom Jamieson, suddenly starts to look like murder. But what did Jamieson’s book club have to do with his demise?

Val is the queen of this sort of cold case mystery, and the story unfolds with clockwork precision. As usual, the plotting is clever and credible, and I really enjoyed how the two storylines gradually unwind and eventually touch on each other in unexpected ways.  As always, the mechanics of the cold case investigations ring true, and along the way to the surprising outcomes Val introduces the reader to an interesting cast of auxiliary characters.

There is not a lot of suspense, but Val’s writing is so engaging that it is very easy to keep on reading to find out what the outcome will be. The story is well supported by a strong sense of place and time, and Karen Pirie’s observations are always interesting. Regular readers of the series will also be affected by some developments in Karen’s personal life, which are handled sensitively and without intruding on the central storylines.

In all, Silent Bones is classic McDermid, with an engaging plot, a great cast of characters and believable investigative detail. Highly recommended.

Silent Bones is released in Australia and the United Kingdom on 23 October 2025. It will be released in the United States in December 2025.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an early copy of the book for review.

Vaseem Khan widens the James Bond universe with a semi-cosy crime novel that focuses on the activities of Major Boothroyd, better known as Q. Quantum Of Menace, (Bonnier, 23 October 2025), opens with Q back in his sleepy hometown of Wickstone-on-Water after being unexpectedly ousted from his role with British Intelligence. His childhood friend, renowned quantum computer scientist Peter Napier, has died in mysterious circumstances, leaving behind a cryptic note. The police seem uninterested, but Q feels compelled to investigate, and soon discovers that Napier’s ground-breaking work may have attracted sinister forces.

This is an enjoyable romp that falls somewhere between the spy thriller and the classic murder mystery. The pacing is slow to start with, but it picks up as the story progresses, and the ending produces some good thrills and a neat final twist. The setting of Wickstone-on-Water is well described and interesting, and the book covers a wide range of themes and social issues. The plotting is well thought through and quite elaborate, with a number of different strands and several suspects. There is also a neat sting in the tail.

Q is a fascinating character, and Khan nicely fleshes him out and gives him a good, complex backstory that plays a part in unravelling the murder of Napier. There is a rich supporting cast of interesting characters, and regulars from the James Bond books and films make brief appearances, including the man himself!

Overall, Quantum Of Menace is an enjoyable slice of entertainment with a good story, interesting characters and amusing dollops of humour.

Quantum Of Menace is released in the United Kingdom on 23 October 2025 and in Australia on 2 December 2025.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an early copy of the book for review.

Fans of tough, hardboiled, uncompromising crime fiction will greatly enjoy David Whish-Wilson’s O’Keefe, (Fremantle Press, 30 September 2025).

Off-the-books undercover operative Paul O’Keefe, who we last saw in Whish-Wilson’s previous novel Cutler under another name, is tasked with infiltrating a dodgy security company to get a handle on the massive influx of drugs making their way through Fremantle port in Western Australia. O’Keefe gradually gains the trust of the firm’s crooked boss, but finds himself morally compromised and caught between two warring gangs who want control of the drug trade.

The pace and the violence rarely lets up in this high voltage thriller. O’Keefe is a tough, credible character with more than his share of vices and demons, and Whish-Wilson does not whitewash him or make him too heroic. The rest of the cast are also painted in dark hues with few redeeming features, and I particularly liked the drugged-out former SAS soldier Madden, who shows some interesting sides as the book progresses.

The story weaves its way through some decent twists and turns, and the suspense is fuelled by a series of exciting set-pieces. Whish-Wilson makes good use of O’Keefe being constantly at risk of detection by the gang’s bosses, and the story builds to a nail biting and satisfying conclusion.

Suspenseful and evocative, with a sharp-eyed view of the current drug situation in Australia, this is gritty crime writing at its very best. Highly recommended.

O’Keefe was released in Australia on 30 September 2025.

Thanks to the publisher and the Canberra Weekly for a copy of the book for review.