A new year is upon us, and there’s only one way to kick off 2022 here on CBTB: by celebrating some of the outstanding crime books that the year has in store for us!! To ring in 2022, I’m thrilled to share my picks for most-anticipated crime books releasing in January, February, and March 2022! As always, there are way too many crime books I’m excited about this year for me to put them all into one blog post, so I’ll be divvying the year up into a few different “most-anticipated” lists for you to peruse. Today I want to focus on crime books I’m particularly excited about that will be published in the first three months of this year—and boy oh boy, there are a lot of them. From the return of CBTB favorite authors (Lars Kepler! Camilla Sten! Stephanie Wrobel! and so many more!!) to the release of international crime books I’ve been online-stalking ever since I first heard of their publications overseas, from serial killer thrillers and cult stories to seafaring suspense and private investigator mysteries, there’s a little bit of something for everyone on today’s list. 2022 is already shaping up to be another outstanding year for new crime fiction, and I can’t wait to embark on a new year of crime fiction exploration with you all!
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CBTB's Most-Anticipated Early 2021 Crime Books
A new year is upon us, and it’s bringing with it some very exciting new crime, mystery, and thriller releases to devour! In today’s blog post, I’m rounding up my most-anticipated crime fiction releases publishing between January and March 2021. A few of these books I’ve already been fortunate enough to read, and the others are all on my TBR list as we head into the new year! From new psychological thrillers to suspense novels with horror movie-worthy plots to Nordic Noir and more, the first few months of 2021 have so many thrilling reads in store for us, and I hope this list will help you find a new book (or two, or three!) to look forward to in the coming months!
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Book Review: THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE by Katrine Engberg
Danish crime writer Katrine Engberg broke onto the scene in the US in 2020 with her debut crime novel THE TENANT, the first in a new series about two Copenhagen-based police officers, Jeppe Kørner and Anette Werner. This week, Kørner and Werner are back in THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE, the second installment in Engberg’s crime fiction series—and what a fantastic installment it is. There’s something particularly exciting as a reader about following an up-and-coming author’s career and seeing their growth and development, and THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE is proof positive that Katrine Engberg is on an upward trajectory. While I enjoyed her debut novel THE TENANT, I loved THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE, and would highly recommend this engaging, inventive Danish crime novel for fans of Nordic Noir and police procedurals. In THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE, the quirky personalities of Engberg’s protagonists are once again front and center, and this time, the pair find themselves operating independently of one another. With Anette Werner on maternity leave, Jeppe Kørner finds himself assigned a new partner with whom he must tackle a series of disturbing crimes that seem tied to a local Copenhagen hospital. But Anette isn’t one to be left behind, and she sets out to conduct her own off-the-record investigation into these very same murders. As she and Jeppe close in on the truth at the heart of a complex web of intrigue, they discover shocking abuse of power at an institution that is meant to help, not harm. THE BUTTERFLY HOUSE is an engaging, fresh take on Nordic Noir, a procedural brimming with personality, eccentric characters, and plenty of mystery and intrigue.
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Nordic Noir November: Spotlight on Danish Crime Fiction
Happy Sunday, readers, and welcome back to our weekly spotlight on Scandinavian crime fiction! If you’re new to CBTB, every Sunday this November, I’ll be spotlighting crime fiction from a particular Nordic country. We’ve already explored Norwegian crime fiction and Swedish crime fiction, and this weekend, it’s Denmark’s turn! Denmark is home to two bestselling crime writers whose work helped introduce me to the Scandinavian crime fiction genre, writers who remain some of my favorites to this day,, and it’s also home to a number of up-and-coming crime writers whose novels are shaking up the genre, and delivering truly gripping and inventive stories. Today I’ll be walking you through my personal favorite Danish crime writers, and giving you tips for where to start with their work! I’ll add the same disclaimer here that I’ve had on my last couple Nordic Noir blog posts: this list is by no means an exhaustive rundown of all the Danish crime writers out there, simply a guide to my personal favorites, which I hope will help you embark on your own journey discovering their work!
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CBTB’s Guide to Early-2020 Nordic Noir
Scandinavian crime fiction is my personal favorite crime fiction subgenre, and a staple of Crime by the Book—and luckily for all of us who adore it, 2020 is going to be a fantastic year for new releases in this category! Today I’m rounding up the Scandinavian crime fiction that belongs on your to-read list early this year, including both books I’ve already read and covered here on CBTB, and titles that I haven’t yet dug into, but which are on my personal TBR list. The books included in this post have US publication dates that fall between January and April 2020—which means that some of them are already on sale, and some are releasing very soon! From new installments in beloved series to exciting debuts, there’s a little something for every Scandinavian crime fiction fan releasing early this year. Dive into this list and fill your TBR with all the gritty, gripping storytelling that Scandinavian crime fiction has to offer.
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