Autumn 2021 brought big-name thrillers: Michael Connelly's The Dark Hours, and two novels co-written by former occupants of the White House, Bill Clinton's The President's Daughter with James Patterson, and Hillary Clinton's State of Terror with Louise Penny. If you have read those, or would rather not, here are five alternatives with justice at their centre.
1. The Judge's List, John Grisham (2021)
Grisham returns to Lacy Stoltz, an investigator for Florida's Board on Judicial Conduct, who is approached by a woman convinced that a sitting judge is a serial killer. It is a story about who investigates the powerful when the usual checks fail.
2. The Cold Cold Ground, Adrian McKinty (2012)
The first of McKinty's Sean Duffy novels, set in 1981 during the hunger strikes. Duffy is a Catholic detective in the RUC, distrusted by many on both sides. McKinty's Belfast is grim, funny and precise about the period.
3. The Twelve, Stuart Neville (2009)
Published in the US as The Ghosts of Belfast. A former paramilitary killer, released under the Good Friday Agreement, is haunted by the people he murdered and begins to take revenge on those who gave him his orders. A dark novel about the debts left unpaid by peace deals.
4. Thirteen, Steve Cavanagh (2018)
Eddie Flynn, a former con artist turned New York defence lawyer, takes on a celebrity murder trial and realises the killer may be on the jury. Cavanagh, a Belfast-born lawyer, writes courtroom scenes with real knowledge of how trials work.
5. Bluebird, Bluebird, Attica Locke (2017)
Darren Mathews, a Black Texas Ranger, investigates two killings in a small East Texas town. The novel won the Edgar Award for best novel in 2018 and deals directly with race, law enforcement and who gets justice.
Why thrillers?
Good crime fiction is often about institutions: police forces, courts, governments, and the people inside them who either protect or betray the public. Two of these five are set in the Northern Ireland of our timeline, and they capture the atmosphere of distrust that the inquiries later tried to unpick.