Four crime books on my August radar

This was easily my most anticipated release of the month. I love the Washington Poe series for its investigations, dark humour and character dynamics—although Tilly Bradshaw is, and probably always will be, my favourite. A new Poe and Tilly case does not need much more persuasion to reach the top of my list.

Suspicious deaths and threatening messages draw the Clarendon Lexicographers into a literary mystery shaped by language. The possibility that definitions, etymology and wordplay might help unravel a murder investigation immediately caught my attention. It sounds clever without losing the central promise of a proper mystery.

Thirty years ago, an entire family vanished from an isolated mountain home, leaving bloody footprints and no clear explanation. When a skeleton is uncovered, the town’s new police chief must reopen the past and work out what happened inside that house. The cold case, remote setting and missing-family mystery make this exactly the sort of premise I find difficult to resist.

When one of Susan Turner’s team is murdered while working undercover, the investigation forces two detectives from earlier R. C. Bridgestock books into the same new series. Their real-life policing experience was what first attracted me, while the fresh starting point means I can try this case before deciding whether to explore the earlier books.