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Page Modified: December 10, 2009

Crime Fiction First Novels 2001

 

A list featuring selected first novels (mostly hardcover) in the mystery, suspense, thriller and crime fiction genres. This list may not be comprehensive. First novel information is collected from a variety of sources. More additions to the list are coming soon! Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted.

More First Fiction lists (novels and short story collections).

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Mystery, Suspense, Thrillers & Crime Fiction First Novels: 2001

• Scent of Murder
  Author: Alwyn, Cynthia G.
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN:031226559x
  A trainer of search dogs must utilize her canines' abilities like never before when a series of children start disappearing in Sacramento.

• The 25th Hour
  Author: Benioff, David
  Publisher: Carroll & Graf $ 24 ISBN: 0786707720
  PW
  Wall Street speculators, the Manhattan downtown club scene, Russian gangsters, immigrant neighborhoods; all the elements in the urban turf of this finely crafted contemporary crime novel wed danger with excitement and possibility. They're among the rewards lost by Monty Brogan on his last day "out" with his two friends before entering prison for seven years.
  

• Open Season
  Author: Box, C.J.
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399147489
  Kirkus Booklist
  Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden -- especially one like Joe who won't take bribes or look the other way---is far from popular. When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. - Publisher marketing.
  

• Sympathy for the Devil
  Author: Chambers, Christopher
  Publisher: Crown $ 23 ISBN: 0609608495
  This new series introduces Angela Bivens, a smart and sexy FBI agent whose passion for justice takes her from Washington's worst neighborhoods to the tony gathering places of the city's African-American elite.

• Red Hook
  Author: Cohen, Garbriel
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312274580
  A stunning debut that combines the mystery and action of a first-rate police thriller with a deep and sympathetic picture of one man's futile effort to escape his past. A Minotaur First Edition Selection.

• About the Author
  Author: Colapinto, John
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25 ISBN: 0060194170
  Booklist
  Cal Cunningham dreams of writing an autobiographical novel until his roommate beats him to the punch and pens a page-turning work based on Cal's life. When an accident removes the roommate from the scene, Cal appropriates the book and is propelled to success--until he discovers that someone knows his secret.
  

• Fatal Legacy
  Author: Corley, Elizabeth
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312283814
  When the director of Wainwright Enterprises dies in a suspicious accident, his will throws everyone into turmoil. It's up to Chief Inspector Andrew Fenwick to get to the bottom of it.

• Reef Dance
  Author: Decure, John
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312272979
  

• Company: the Story of a Murderer
  Author: Edge, Arabella
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0743213424
  Kirkus
  A crazed apothecary turns murderous when the ship he is traveling on sinks, leaving the survivors stranded at his mercy.
  

• Third Person Singular
  Author: Erickson, K. J.
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 031226669
  PW
  

• Killer Stuff
  Author: Fiffer, Sharon
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312278187
  Recently been laid off from her PR job, separated from her husband, and facing a midlife crisis, Jane Wheel makes ends meet by foraging for antiques at suburban Chicago estate sales. When she stumbles upon the body of her neighbor Sandy, Jane finds herself as the prime suspect. With the help of her best friend and a Chicago police detective, Jane goes after the truth.

• Closing Time
  Author: Fusilli, Jim
  Publisher: Putnam $ 23.95 ISBN: 0399147934
  PW
  

• Shooting Dr. Jack
  Author: Green, Norman
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25 ISBN: 0060188227
  Three young men's lives speed toward a collision course with violence on the mean streets of New York in this tough and bracing thriller.

• Equivocal Death
  Author: Gutman, Amy
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316381950
  In this electrifying thriller, first-time author Gutman catapults readers into a world of deception, legal maneuvering, and murder. Just out of Harvard Law School, Kate Paine is on the fast track at Samson & Mills, the nation's most powerful law firm. Assigned to assist the charismatic managing partner in a high-profile sexual harassment case, she can hardly believe her good luck. But with the brutal murder of Madeline Waters, a beautiful female partner, Kate's carefully constructed world begins to collapse.

• The Jasmine Trade
  Author: Hamilton, Denise
  Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 074321269x
  A former "Los Angeles Times" reporter brings to life the city's vast Asian community in a hard-edged thriller teeming with murderous intentions, emotional dislocation and sexual exploitation.

• Catskill
  Author: Hayes, John R.
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312281536
  Kirkus
  On the eve of World War II, a small Catskill mountain town is rocked by the death of a local woman when a dilapidated farmhouse packed with refugee Jews is fired upon by three young men with rifles. Former politician Martin Collins investigates, and finds violent tensions seething below the surface of the entire town.
  

• Crimes of War
  Author: Hogg, Peter
  Publisher: St Martins $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312269544
  LJ
  The 1999 winner of the Robertson Davies/Chapters Prize, Crimes of War is a riveting novel of the hidden lives of two men: a Nazi war criminal and the investigator who tracks him. "An extraordinary historical fiction that leaves many unsettling questions in the reader's mind long after the last page is turned".-- Quill & Quire (Canada).
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars & World Wars Stars

• Pipe Dream
  Author: Jones, Solomon
  Publisher: Villard $ 13.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0375756604
  Booklist Kirkus
  Debut novelist Jones plumbs the depths of the drug world as four addicts are pursued for a murder they didn't commit. The story winds through the streets of Philadelphia as the four struggle to escape not only from the police but from the hungers that have all but swallowed them whole.
  

• The Earthquake Bird
  Author: Jones, Susanna
  Publisher: Mysterious $ 22.95 ISBN: 0892967420
  Kirkus
  A haunting first novel set in Tokyo, The Earthquake Bird reveals a murder on its first page and takes its readers into the mind of the chief suspect, Lucy Fly, a young vulnerable English girl living and working in Tokyo as a translator.
  

• Acid Test
  Author: LaManna, Ross
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 19.95 ISBN: 0345439929
  An action-adventure that rockets around the globe, Acid Test introduces diabolical medical research and the peril of nuclear warfare for an exciting amalgam of political intrigue and military action.

• The Mind Game
  Author: MacDonald, Hector
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 24.95 ISBN: 0345440226
  LJ
  When Ben Ashurst agrees to participate in a study of the biology of human emotions for his charismatic Oxford tutor, he can't begin to imagine what lies ahead. With a luxury resort on a beach in Kenya as the site of the experiment and his beautiful new girlfriend along for company, it seems the perfect way to spend the Christmas holidays. But paradise starts to lose its luster when, without warning, Ben finds the experiment veering from abstract scientific theory into terrifyingly real danger.
  

• Study in Death
  Author: McDowall, Iain
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 21.95 ISBN: 0312278683
  

• The One That Got Away: Emma Price
  Author: Rand, Naomi
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24 ISBN:0060199385
  In the engrossing first novel of a new mystery series, an appealing female investigator discovers a deadly connection between two disparate murder cases.

• Listen to the Shadows
  Author: Reah, Danuta
  Publisher: Morrow $ 25 ISBN: 0060199644
  This unnerving psychological thriller pits detectives against a so-called "monster" in a park that only a small child claims she can see.

• The Music of the Spheres
  Author: Redfern, Elizabeth
  Publisher: Putnam $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399147632
  Kirkus
  

• Deadly Nightshade
  Author: Riggs, Cynthia
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312272529
  Ninety-year-old Victoria Trumbull, a lifelong resident of Martha's Vineyard, hears an altercation from a dock. She then finds a body floating in the harbor. With her granddaughter, the harbormaster, and other eccentric New England characters, Victoria manages to get in a good bit of detective work.

• The Up and Comer
  Author: Roughan, Howard
  Publisher: Warner $ 23.95 ISBN: 0446526665
  In this hip, mordantly funny tale, Philip Randall's self-satisfaction takes a deadly turn when a prep school classmate appears with an eye on Philip's bank account and telling photos of Philip and his mistress together.

• Grift Sense: Tony Valentine
  Author: Swain, James
  Publisher: Pocket $ 23.95 ISBN: 0743406222
  Kirkus
  With a knack for sly sucker punches in the tradition of Elmore Leonard, Swain makes the scene with a comic, crackerjack debut mystery set in Las Vegas, the first in a series starring ex-cop Tony Valentine.
  

• Bone House
  Author: Tobin, Betsy
  Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0743201965
  Booklist LJ
  Gothic, elegant and suspenseful, Bone House vividly evokes seventeenth-century rural England. It is the tale of two women. One is Dora, a prostitute - her death affects everyone in the village. The other is a chambermaid - her quest to uncover the truth about the prostitute's mysterious life and death leads her to a terrible discovery and the beginnings of a future. Sensual, sophisticated, and fiercely compelling, this is an enormously assured debut. - adapted from the jacket copy.
  

• The Dying Ground
  Author: Tramble, Nichelle D.
  Publisher: Villard $ 13.95 ISBN: 0375756531
  Set in 1989, Maceo Redfield, a former rising baseball star and current college dropout, is told his best friend from childhood, Billy Crane, has been murdered. As Maceo tries to learn more about Billy's murder, he's pulled more and more into Billy's world.

• Concrete Desert
  Author: Talton, Jon
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 0312269536
  Booklist
  Summer in Phoenix gets a lot hotter when unemployed history professor David Mapstone returns home to discover a world of danger and corruption.
  

• Blood
  Author: Traxler, Patricia
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 24.95 ISBN: 031227484x
  Part suspense page-turner and erotic novel about four people whose lives are intertwined during one year at Radcliffe College, this literary debut details how desire can become jealously, then obsession, and finally murderous rage.

• The Gripping Beast
  Author: Wadley, Margot
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 21.95 ISBN: 0312272545
  American Isabel Garth comes to Scotland's Orkney Island, an ancient area where witches still may reside, to illustrate her father's notebooks. As she arrives, a young "witch" named Thora warns her to leave. Sensing danger, Isabel is puzzled by the behavior of two men who seem to be following her, and by a rash of accidents that plagues her.

• Sharkman Six
  Author: West, Owen
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743205421
  A gripping debut novel of modern war written by a former marine captain who has experienced it all firsthand.

• Dr Mortimer and the Aldgate Mystery
  Author: Williams, Gerard
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 22.95 ISBN: 031226920x
  In a mystery as dark and sinister as the East End alleys of Victorian London, Dr. James Mortimer meets the captivating Lavinia Nancarrow. The girl is being held a virtual prisoner by her guardian, and Mortimer must discover why.

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