THE ten thrillers not to miss this year include a James Bond spin-off starring Q, a follow-up to Frederick Forsyth classic The Odessa Files and the return of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series alongside the release of its Netflix film.
And the latest instalments of books adapted into Slow Horses starring Gary Oldman on Apple TV and the BBC’s Magpie Murders will excite their millions of fans.
Readers must wait until October for the launch of a new series featuring Ian Fleming’s gadget whizz Q from the Bond franchise.
Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre Books) will see Q ousted from MI6 and back living in his sleepy hometown of Wickstone-on-Water, where he feels compelled to investigate the mysterious death of childhood friend Peter Napier, a renowned quantum computer scientist.
The latest psychological thriller from Freida McFadden, whose previous novel The Housemaid is being adapted into a film starring Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, will start the year with a bang this month.
Her new novel The Crash (Poisoned Pen Press) sees heavily pregnant Tegan rescued from a blizzard by a couple in rural Maine when her car breaks down, but their offer of shelter in their cabin until the storm passes is not all it seems.
After a four-year absence Belinda Bauer makes a welcome return with the extraordinary The Impossible Thing (Bantam), next month.
This novel sees an “impossible” red egg stolen from a bird’s nest on the towering cliffs of Yorkshire in 1926.
And when 100 years later masked intruders tie up Nick and his mother in a remote cottage in Wales to steal a scarlet egg from its loft, he recruits friend Patrick to help hunt down a priceless collection of eggs lost to history.
Chris Chibnall, the creator of hit ITV crime drama Broadchurch, which starred David Tennant and Olivia Colman, will publish his debut novel in March.
Death At The White Hart (Michael Joseph) is also set in Dorset, with detective Nicola Bridge quitting a big city to return to the picturesque village of Fleetcombe and investigate the murder of a pub landlord whose body was staged with macabre relish on an isolated country road.
Fans of the fiendishly clever BBC series Magpie Murders will be delighted that Anthony Horowitz has penned a new novel in the series, out in April.
Marble Hall Murders (Century Books) sees Susan edit a third novel about the famous detective Atticus Pund, knowing she’s come close to being killed on both previous times she worked on books about him.
Jo Callaghan, who won the Crime Novel of the Year for her debut In The Blink Of An Eye at last July’s Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, for which the Express is the media partner, will release the third instalment of her series, also in April.
Human Remains (Simon & Schuster) reunites DCS Kat Frank with AI detective Lock when a headless, handless body is found on a Warwickshire farm.
One of the most exciting voices in American crime fiction, S A Cosby, will unleash King Of Ashes (Headline) in June, which has been described as “a Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic”.
Anyone gripped by the reboot of The Day Of The Jackal on Sky Atlantic will be thrilled by the long-awaited sequel to Frederick Forsyth’s acclaimed The Odessa Files.
The Revenge Of Odessa by Forsyth and Tony Kent (Transworld) will come out in August, with Peter Miller’s grandson Georg stumbling across evidence that the Odessa – a Nazi network intent on returning to power – has resurfaced.
The best modern British spy series returns after a three-year hiatus with Clown Town by Mick Herron (Baskerville) in September.
The ninth instalment of the Slough House series sees spymaster Jackson Lamb, portrayed by Oldman in Apple TV’s acclaimed adaptation, try to stop MI5 chief Diana Taverner from dragging the failed spies under his control into her latest scheme.
In the same month Pointless creator Richard Osman returns to his record-breaking Thursday Murder Club series, with the Netflix film version of his debut 2020 novel, starring Dame Helen Mirren, Celia Imrie, Pierce Brosnan and Sir Ben Kingsley, due out this year.
The characters they portray, Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim, will feature in the as yet untitled Thursday Murder Club 5 (Viking).