The Profiler

"On the extremely sinister side is The Profiler by Helen Fields. Fields is the author of a series of novels featuring Edinburgh-based police detective duo Luc Callanach and Ava Turner. These are excellent, but quite tough in the awful crimes they revolve around. The Profiler is equally scary because of the technology mixed with corporate greed it depicts. As I read it, I couldn’t help thinking, ‘This isn’t happening yet, but it will…’ If you’re into more cozy crime, Nita Prose has a new book out featuring Molly, the star of The Maid . It’s called The Mystery Guest and I found it as delightful as the first. The audiobook, narrated by Lauren Ambrose, is really nicely done. In The Mystery Guest, a writer drops dead while visiting the Regency Grand hotel and Molly, now head maid, again falls under some sort of suspicion. On the subject of writers getting murdered, it’s worth mentioning that Jean Hanff Korelitz has published a sequel to The Plot , her 2021 bestseller. It’s called The Sequel with Anna, the villain (heroine?) of The Plot , as the main character. I haven’t finished it yet, but am enjoying it so far, propelled along (much like in The Talented Mr Ripley ) by not wanting the main character to get caught. Like The Plot , it is very focused on satirizing writers and the publishing world, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea. Finally, I should mention that while I read a lot of crime novels as they come out, I am a big fan of older books. New to me this year was Margaret Millar, and her book A Stranger in My Grave . Although it was published in 1960, this definitely qualifies as one of my favourite crime reads of 2024, not least because it’s so fascinating to be taken back to the California of nearly three-quarters of a century ago."