10 best crime and thriller novels of 2020 that you won’t be able to put down

If you love crime fiction and haven’t discovered Susie Steiner’s superb Manon Bradshaw series you’re in for a treat. Remain Silent is the third book and follows the story of Manon, a detective inspector in the Cambridgeshire police, after she discovers the body of a young migrant hanging from a tree in a local park.

There are no signs of a struggle and no indication that his death was anything other than a tragic suicide – except for a note pinned to his trousers, written in Lithuanian and saying “the dead cannot speak”. Manon is a larger-than-life character – often impetuous and chaotic but brilliant at her job. Steiner is a wonderful writer and her books combine compelling plots with astute social commentary.

Former criminal barrister Harriet Tyce soared up the bestseller charts last year with her first novel, Blood Orange. Now she’s back with her second book – and it’s equally addictive. Barrister Sadie Roper has moved back to London so her 10-year-old daughter Robin can go to the ultra-competitive school she attended herself. But as she tries to get Robin settled and navigate the fraught politics of the school gate Sadie has also started work as a junior brief on a case involving a male teacher and his teenage student.

As if that wasn’t enough to contend with, Sadie’s estranged husband is clearly up to no good and she and Robin are living in her dead mother’s house – a place that holds poisonous memories. With lots of twists and turns along the way, this psychological thriller, out on August 20, is impossible to put down.

Mark Billingham has built up a huge following for his crime novels starring detective inspective Tom Thorne – and rightly so. Cry Baby is a prequel to Sleepyhead, the first Tom Thorne Story, and sees the detective investigating the disappearance of a seven-year-old boy. It’s 1996 and two little boys are playing hide and seek in a London playground.

They run into the adjoining woods and to their mothers’ horror only one comes out. The case becomes even more sinister when two people connected to the missing child are found murdered in grisly circumstances. As always with Billingham’s books, this is a snappily-written and superbly-crafted read and we loved the 1990s detail – like video recorders, smoking in pubs and “yuppies” brandishing brick-like mobile phones.

Louise Candlish’s new novel is set in London’s docklands. Forty-something barista Jamie lives in a swanky house on the river with his partner Clare, a partner in a firm of estate agents. After they strike up a friendship with the charismatic Kit and his girlfriend Melia, Jamie and Kit start commuting to work together by riverbus.

But one morning Kit doesn’t turn up for the boat and an unknown passenger says they saw Kit and Jamie arguing the night before. Before he knows it, Jamie is in the frame for murder. He vehemently protests his innocence but what is the truth? Yet again, Candlish – who’s dubbed the queen of domestic noir – has produced a clever, pacy novel that we read in one sitting.

When it comes to writing thrillers with dizzying plot twists Jeffery Deaver is second to none. The Never Game is the first of a new series featuring enigmatic investigator Colter Shaw. He’s from a survivalist family and makes his living as “a reward seeker”, travelling around the country to solve crimes and find missing people. When a distraught father hires Shaw to find his teenage daughter, who’s vanished in the Silicon Valley, the case looks straightforward.

But when a second victim is kidnapped Shaw realises the crimes are connected to a sinister video game where victims are abandoned in the middle of nowhere with five random objects. If they want to survive they must use the objects to get out alive. This is an ingenious thriller with an unusual lead character. The follow-up, The Goodbye Man, is out in hardback now.

Sarah Vaughan’s third novel, Anatomy of a Scandal, is being turned into a six-part Netflix series, telling the story of a high-flying politician whose marriage unravels when he is accused of rape. Her fourth book, Little Disasters, focuses on the complexities and demands of motherhood and is equally enthralling.

Liz is a senior registrar in paediatrics at a London hospital and has always regarded her friend Jess as a woman with boundless patience, energy and love for her three young children – the perfect mother in other words. But when Jess brings her 10-month-old daughter Betsey into A&E one night Liz starts to question everything she thought she knew about her friend. An insightful story of every mother’s nightmare.

Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels have sold a staggering 100 million copies around the world – and we can’t get enough of them. In the 24th Reacher story the 6ft 5in ex-US army cop is on board a Greyhound bus when he spots an old man across the aisle. The man is fast asleep but he has a fat envelope of cash sticking out of his jacket pocket – and it’s clear that another passenger has spotted it too.

When the bus stops and the mugger makes his move Reacher rushes to the rescue. He discovers that the petrified pensioner owes thousands to loan sharks and before long he’s mixed up in a bitter vendetta between two deadly criminal gangs. Sentinel, the next Jack Reacher thriller, is co-written with Child’s younger brother Andrew and will be out in October.