“Why was the onus always on the weak when it was the strong that had the liberty to act? Why were the weak obliged to be so brave when the strong had license to behave like such cowards?”
So asks DI Lucia May in A Thousand Cuts (originally published in the UK under the title Rupture), the debut novel from author Simon Lelic. May is the detective charged with investigating the seemingly open and shut case of a shooting at a North London comprehensive school (the equivalent of an American public high school) that leaves five dead, including the gunman. The investigation that unfolds is not so much a whodunit as a whydunit, as it is clear from the outset that the shooter was one of the school’s teachers, Samuel Szajkowski, who opened fire during a school assembly killing three students and a fellow teacher before turning the gun on himself.
Szajkowski, a young man new to both teaching and the school, is described by students and faculty alike as having been somewhat of a misfit, odd and aloof, who never quite found his footing at the school. This, however, does not seem to DI May to be sufficient explanation for Szajkowski’s murderous outburst, and her interviews with students and faculty indeed uncover a truth which is much more sinister.
Lelic reveals the events which led up to the shooting through chapters that alternate between DI May’s first person perspective and monologues from various people – students, parents, faculty – involved with and affected by the tragedy. The monologues are meant to represent transcriptions of interviews taped by DI May during the course of her investigation, but they omit May’s side of the conversation. It’s an interesting technique, one which lets the reader imagine what was said by May to elicit certain responses, to feel almost as though they were the one asking the questions.
Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell is the first book since Minette Walters’s The Shape of Snakes that genuinely took my breath away. On the surface there is absolutely nothing pretty about the world in which 16-year-old Ree Dolly lives. The people of her community in the backwoods of the Ozark mountains are multiple generations into an existence of poverty, violence and drug addiction; a place where the primary source of income has evolved from making moonshine to cooking crank.
Primarily known for his deft touch in combining horror and comedy, Dweller is Jeff Strand’s second ‘serious’ novel, following the Bram Stoker Award nominated 
It takes serious balls to begin a book with your protagonist deliberately putting a bullet into his own head, but that’s exactly how Vincent Zandri kicks off his high-octane new thriller Moonlight Falls. Richard “Dick” Moonlight, you see, is not your typical protagonist. In fact, he’s seriously screwed up. As one character tells him, “You fell off the tree of fucked-up-weird and slammed every branch on the way down.” Fucked-up-weird notwithstanding, it’s the fragment of .22 bullet left in his brain following his book opening suicide attempt that forces Moonlight’s retirement from the Albany police department. 
One of the surprise sensations in the publishing industry last year was Quirk Classics’ Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a mashup which re-imagined Elizabeth Bennet as romantically jaded martial arts expert up to her eyes in zombies, also known as ‘dreadfuls’. Though railed against by some Jane Austen purists as sacrilege, adding zombies to such a well known, if intimidating, classic arguably exposed it to a new audience of readers who otherwise may well have never read it (in any form). Such success obviously called for a follow up, right?
Exit Strategy by Michael Wiecek is easily one of the most engaging, intelligent thrillers I’ve read in quite some time. The book gets off to a roaring start with a brash daylight assault on an internet company called Blindside that leaves eight people dead and the office destroyed. The killers, dressed as postal workers, unfortunately make the mistake of leaving two witnesses: Molly Gannon, a real postal worker (and former Military Police officer) who was in the building on her delivery route, and Blindside employee Jeb Picot, who was in the building, but out of the office, at the time of the assault. 
Mr. Clarinet, the debut thriller from author Nick Stone, introduces Max Mingus, an ex-police officer/P.I. recently released from prison after serving 7 years for manslaughter. Unable to return to work as a P.I. in Miami, Max is persuaded to take a missing persons case in Haiti involving the disappearance of the son of one of the country’s wealthiest families.
Blackman’s Coffin is the first book in a new series from Mark de Castrique, author of the outstanding ‘Buryin’ Barry’ series. Blackman’s Coffin introduces us to Sam Blackman, a former Chief Warrant Officer in the Army’s Criminal Investigation Detachment who, having lost part of his left leg in Iraq, is currently rehabbing at a V.A. hospital in Asheville, N.C.
Traveling while on leave after being injured in the line of duty, Chicago cop Konstantin Slovo finds himself drawn into the investigation of a serial killer who is preying on children in a small Maine town, first by being picked up as a suspect, then being grudgingly consulted by the local PD.
