Gritty Crime Fiction Novels You Can Cut Your Teeth On
Expect morally gray detectives, unreliable narrators, crooked cops, and criminals who are as real as they are horrifying. Expect cities that feel alive. Expect stories that hit like a strong right hook. Whether you’re new to the genre or looking to toughen your literary palate, these gritty crime fiction reads are a proving ground. Read them with the lights on if you must. Just don’t expect to come away unscathed.
Renee Ballard works the midnight shift in Hollywood. It’s a frustrating job for a once up-and-coming detective, but it’s no accident. She’s been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor.
But one night Ballard catches two assignments she doesn’t want to part with. First, a prostitute is brutally beaten and left for dead in a parking lot. All signs point to a crime of premeditation, not passion, by someone with big evil on his mind. Then she sees a young waitress breathe her last after being caught up in a nightclub shooting. Though dubbed a peripheral victim, the waitress buys Ballard a way in, and this time she is determined not to give up at dawn. Against orders and her partner’s wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night.
As the investigations intertwine, Ballard is forced to face her own demons and confront a danger she could never have imagined.
As the investigations intertwine, Ballard is forced to face her own demons and confront a danger she could never have imagined.
Now, the war is over and a new generation of Kauls vies for control of Kekon’s bustling capital city. TWhen a powerful new drug emerges that lets anyone—even foreigners—wield jade, the simmering tension between the Kauls and the rival Ayt family erupts into open violence. The outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones—and of Kekon itself.
Alex Cross is a homicide detective with a Ph.D. in psychology. He’s a tough guy from a tough part of town who wears Harris Tweed jackets. But he also has two adorable kids of his own, and they are his own special vulnerabilities. Jezzie Flanagan is the first woman ever to hold the highly sensitive job as supervisor of the Secret Service in Washington. And Alex Cross and Jezzie Flanagan are about to have a forbidden love affair-at the worst possible time for both of them. Because Gary Soneji, who wants to commit the “crime of the century,” is playing at the top of his game. Soneji has outsmarted the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police. Who will be his next victim?
When a young man is abducted and his kidnappers threaten to broadcast his beheading live on the Internet, the slow horses see an opportunity to redeem themselves. But is the victim really who he appears to be?
