Crime Fiction Grab Bag No. 10

It's time to reach into the crime fiction grab bag to see what's newly published or coming shortly.

Bruce DeSilva, the winner of the 2011 Edgar Award for best first novel (Rogue Island), has written a follow-up novel entitled Cliff Walk, which once again features the protagonist Liam Mulligan, who is an old-school investigative reporter at a dying Providence newspaper. It is billed as a hard-boiled mystery, and Mulligan investigates corruption, kickbacks, and the sex industry in Rhode Island.

Award-winning author Loren D. Estleman has written a biographical novel entitled The Confessions of Al Capone. It is billed as a well-researched and intimate portrait of the legendary Scarface and his inner circle after his release from prison in 1941. Capone was suffering from the neurological effects of untreated syphilis and, aside from his occasional periods of lucidity, spent his last years ranting and rambling as he awaited his own death.

Bill Pronzini has written another in his “Nameless Detective” series entitled Nemesis. The detective must work to clear Jake Runyon and save the agency's reputation after they become the target of a vicious legal vendetta.

Kevin Egan has created a thriller entitled Midnight involving a conspiracy to temporarily conceal the death of a New York County Courthouse judge.

On the Canadian crime fiction front, see Margaret Cannon's reviews in The Globe and Mail at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/summer-entertainment/murder-in-montreal-and-other-new-crime-fiction-worth-a-look/article12283137/.

And on the other side of the Atlantic, see reviews of recent crime fiction in The Telegraph at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/crimeandthrilerbookreviews/. This issue contains an interview with Mark Billingham on his latest novel, The Dying Hours, as well as an article on William McIlvanney, the Scottish novelist generally regarded as "the father of tartan noir".