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Let’s herald in the new year with a report on the first crime novels publishers have lined up for us in January. And it all begins with a look back on the extraordinary career of one of the boldest voices in 20th century crime writing – that of Patricia Highsmith. If you’ve read Ripley and Strangers on a Train, now get ready for a collection of her short stories. There are also big new releases from names like Chris Hammer and Patricia Cornwell, plus historical crime fiction, a debut, a first taste of Uruguayan crime fiction and something a little bit different as well.
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Isolation. Lockdown. Restrictions. Pandemic. Plandemic. Recession. You don’t need me to tell you that 2020 wasn’t a year brimming with positives. With the challenges we’ve all faced, it’s been difficult to enjoy the darker crime novels that I normally read in quite the same way, so I’ve read fewer books in 2020 than in any year since we started Crime Fiction Lover. Still, I was able to discover the American rural noir author Tom Bouman, as well as the new Icelandic writer Eva Björg Aegisdóttir, and picked up some great crime reads even though I went at a slower pace.
Global Streaming as part of a generalized movement online
The biggest story in television this year was the rise of the streaming services, with Disney+, HBO Max, Apple TV+, and NBCUniversal’s Peacock joining what was already the crowded field of Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. This followed a monopolistic wave of mergers and consolidations that included: AT&T buying Time Warner with Warner Bros. and HBO; the cable network Comcast buying the NBC network with Universal film studios and becoming principal owner of Sky, the most popular European satellite network; and Disney buying the Fox Production Company and Fox studio and catalogue and becoming principal owner of Hulu.
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Debut authors have had quite a battle on their hands this year. With bookshops closing in lockdown and festivals being cancelled all over the place, it’s been hard to get their work out to the reading public. But Crime Fiction Lover has your back, debutants – and we’ve sifted through our 2020 reviews list to come up with the best of the bunch.
5 – The Hunted by Gabriel Bergmoser
Aussie crime writing is going from strength to strength and to prove it, there are two Antipodean authors featured in this selection. First up is Gabriel Bergmoser, a YA writer whose first foray into adult crime fiction is a cracker. This tale of feral goings-on in the Australian outback grips from the first page, and is not for the faint-hearted, but The Hunted is a thrilling, bloody and totally gripping read that has already been snapped up by the movie-makers. Bergmoser is a name to look out for! Read our review here.
The Conne
rs begins its new season with the extended family jobless and unable to pay the rent, and
Superstore recounts the effects of the coronavirus on its essential workers caught between a company more concerned with profits than workers’ safety and customers hoarding supplies that are in too short supply.
This is the second season for
Mystery Road (BBC in the UK and Acorn in the U.S.), a series based on an Aboriginal cop, Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen), a character already established in two previous films. The mystery road that Jay travels is the wide-open country of Australia’s great and impoverished North, populated by its Indigenous and everywhere now the subject of a land grab by the Anglo tenants of its overcrowded cities looking for a property bargain. Season one centered around the death of a ranch hand in one of these towns and illustrated the monopoly on power a ranch owner exercised on the surrounding land and peoples.