RECENT READING MAY 2025: NEW BOOKS BY JOHN CONNOLLY, ALEX NORTH, JOHN McMAHON AND PRESTON & CHILD

My early May 2025 reading has been dominated by four very different books, three of which have a touch of otherness about them.

John McMahon’s Head Cases (Harper Collins) came out earlier in the year, but I only just got to it.

I heard John speak at Bouchercon in Nashville last year, where he said that early reviewers were comparing Head Cases to Mick Herron’s Slow Horses books. It is not a comparison that I can see, apart from some tenuous links around the use of a small group of misfits to solve a crime, but regardless, Head Cases is an enjoyable and entertaining read that certainly kept me happily engaged.

The story revolves around Gardner Camden, an analytical FBI agent with an affinity for riddles, puzzles, and codes. It makes him the perfect fit for the Patterns and Recognition (PAR) unit of the FBI, a team of five brilliant, but misfit, agents who are usually confined to the office. Gardner is fanatical about his work and justice, with his only outside interests being his seven-year-old daughter and the occasional visits to his elderly mother. When a serial killer from one of his solved cases, presumed to be long dead, is found murdered, Gardner is sent into the field. Then another killer is found dead in similar circumstances, and Gardner and his team realise that they have a different type of serial killer on their hands.

Head Cases gets off to a strong start and McMahon keeps the brisk pace going for most of the book. There are plenty of twists and turns and the book builds to a suspenseful and unexpected conclusion. Gardner’s team are an interesting and engaging ensemble, and McMahon wisely does not overplay their skills and abilities.

The rationale behind the killer’s actions is well thought out and it is clever how McMahon interweaves agency politics and ambitions into the story. I am not usually a fan of books about brilliant serial killers, but this one works well and I look forward to further stories about Gardner and the Patterns and Recognition unit.

I have long regarded the books by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, both their joint and solo efforts, as some of the finest pieces of escapist fiction that you can find. Over time I tired a bit of their books about FBI Special Agent Pendergast, but I have really enjoyed their more recent series about archaeologist Nora Kelly and FBI Agent Corrie Swanson.

Bad Lands, (Grand Central Publishing, 3 June 2025), is the latest entry in the series and it is another fun read full of sharp characterisations, interesting dollops of information and an entertaining plot that becomes wilder as it goes along.

In the New Mexico badlands, the skeleton of a woman is found. The victim apparently walked into the desert, shedding clothes as she went, and died in an agony of heatstroke and thirst. Two rare artifacts are found clutched in her bony hands: lightning stones used by the ancient Chaco people to summon the gods. Agent Swanson is assigned the case and she brings in archaeologist Nora Kelly to offer technical advice. When a second body is found, exactly like the first, the two realise that the case runs deeper than they imagined. As Corrie and Nora pursue their investigation into remote canyons, haunted ruins, and long-lost rituals, they find themselves potentially confronting a dark power from the past.

This is not a race-along thriller, like Preston’s recent Extinction, but is a moderately paced tale that keeps the reader interested through its intriguing central conceit and the uncertainty about where it is all heading. Swanson’s investigation gradually reveals an unsettling web of craziness and two evocative journeys, one into a remote part of Mexico and the other across a barren landscape ruined by gas fracking, help to drive the story along and increase the suspense. The background information and conjecture about the demise of the Chaco people is fascinating and the final climax is spooky and very bloody. A thoroughly enjoyable read.

Bad Lands is released in the United States on 3 June 2025 and in Australia in August 2025. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy of the book for review.

John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series certainly has some staying power! The twenty-second book in the highly acclaimed series, The Children Of Eve (Hodder & Stoughton), was released on 8 May 2025 and offers the usual mixture of crime, astute social observation and mild supernatural elements.

Wyatt Riggins, the boyfriend of rising Maine artist Zetta Nadeau, has gone missing, leaving behind a cell phone containing a single-word message: RUN. Private investigator Charlie Parker is hired to find out why Riggins has fled, and from whom.

Parker discovers that Riggins, an ex-soldier, has been involved in the abduction of four children from Mexico: three girls and a boy, all belonging to the cartel boss Blas Urrea. Except Urrea’s family is safe and well in Mexico, which means the abductees cannot be his children. Yet whoever they are, Urrea wants them back, and has dispatched his agents to secure them, even if it means butchering everyone who stands in their way. One of those agents is Eugene Seeley, a clever, ruthless solver of other men’s problems. The other is an unknown woman, who has strange powers and tastes.

This is another absorbing and evocative tale by Connolly that steadily draws the reader in and keeps them interested. The basic premise of the story is smoothly established through a series of well described vignettes and a good sense of unease is present from the beginning. The pacing is a little leisurely, as Connolly takes his time expanding the story arcs and establishing the role of the various players, but the quality of the writing and the unexpected directions of the plot keep you engaged. As usual, Connolly brings a poet eye to his writing and there are some truly evocative images.

All the characters are richly described, with even minor ones being given deep backgrounds, and it is nice to catch up with members of the regular cast, especially the deadly Angel and Louis. Even the darkly amusing Fulci brothers make a guest appearance. Unfortunately much of the action occurs without Parker’s involvement and he is largely peripheral to the main plot. As usual, there is more than a touch of the supernatural, with hints of dark things coming for Parker in future books.

The Children Of Eve is not the best of the recent Parker books, but it is still a very fine novel and an engrossing read.

The Children Of Eve was released on 8 May 2025 in Australia. Thanks to the publishers and the Canberra Weekly for an advanced copy of the book for review.

Dark crime author Steve Mosby made a spectacular re-entry into the crime writing ranks in 2019 with his first novel under the Alex North nom de plume, The Whisper Man. The book was a bestselling hit across the world and was followed up by two equally creepy books, The Shadow Friend and The Half Burnt House. We now have a fourth book, The Man Made Of Smoke, (Michael Joseph, 8 May 2025), which continues in the dark tradition of its predecessors.

The plot is a typically intricate merging of timelines and multiple characters by North, but primarily revolves around psychiatrist Dan Garvie.

As a boy, Dan witnessed a crime involving a notorious serial killer and has been haunted his entire life by what he saw after he and his family made a stop their way back from a day out. Dan silently watched as a killer, who will become known as “The Pied Piper” and later “the man make of smoke”, led a frightened boy away. Dan was too frightened to do anything at the time to help the boy. Guilt, shame, remorse never leaves Dan. Since that day, Dan has carried his quilt like an imaginary sack on his back everywhere he goes. He can’t put down this heavy burden and has become a criminal profiler who seeks justice for victims.

His father, John, who was a police officer at the time, has spent many years looking into the case. This had become a heavy burden for him as well. When Dan is informed that his father has died under suspicious circumstances, he returns home and in the process encounters his darkest fears.

The Man Made Of Smoke is a slow burn of a crime novel. North takes his time setting up the various threads of his story in the opening sections, but the pace picks up in the second half as the plot goes down some very dark paths. The characters are well developed and memorable, and the book builds to a powerful and moving climax.

There is a strong sense of unease from the creepy opening through to the haunting final pages, and it is certainly the type of book that will have you looking worriedly over your shoulder as you read. Recommended.

The Man Made Of Smoke was released on 8 May 2025 in the United Kingdom and in Australia on 19 May 2025. Thanks to the publishers and the Canberra Weekly for an advanced copy of the book for review.

For those who are interested in North’s earlier books as Steve Mosby, here is a link to my review of one of my favourites, Black Flowers, from 2011: https://murdermayhemandlongdogs.com/throwback-thursday-black-flowers-by-steve-mosby-alex-north-2011/