February 2023 Crime Fiction Critic Book Reviews
Looking for entertaining crime fiction books to read in 2023? Browsing the countless new book releases lists can be fun, but it takes time away from actual reading. Here at Crime Fiction Critic, we enjoy reviewing books as much as we do reading them. We share with readers each month our opinions on some of the best recently released books and those coming soon. Our reviews cover the full gamut of crime fiction sub-genres – suspense, thrillers, mysteries, and police procedural. Without further ado, here are the books we reviewed in February 2023.
Our Top Pick This Month
While we read many excellent and entertaining books this month, Malibu Burning by Lee Goldberg, our top pick for February, deserves special mention.
For a professional criminal and a relentless arson investigator, fear and revenge spread like wildfire in an incendiary thriller by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Goldberg.
As the most devastating firestorms in Los Angeles’ history scorch the hills of Malibu, relentless arson investigator Walter Sharpe and his wild card of a new partner, Andrew Walker, a former US marshal, suspect that someone set the massive blazes intentionally, a terrifying means to an unknown end. While the flames rage out of control, master thief Danny Cole pursues his brilliant scheme, unaware that Sharpe and Walker are closing in. Read the Review>>
Other February Reviews
For fans of Jason Bourne and Jack Reacher…
27 Days is a taut and topical political thriller narrated in laconic noir fashion by veteran LA PI Nick Crane. In the spring of 2019, Nick is on the run in the Pacific Northwest, pursued by a cabal of wealthy right-wing power brokers and domestic terrorists (the Principals) led by Marguerite Ferguson and Desmond Cole. Nick has clashed with Marguerite and her crew in the past, and she wants him abducted so that she can personally “close his eyes forever.” Read the Review>>
Despite the angry scars she carries from her childhood training, Zoe Lorel has reached a good place in her life. She has her dream job as an elite operative in an international spy agency and she’s found her one true love. Her world is mostly perfect—until she is sent to abduct a nine-year-old girl.
The girl is the only one who knows the riddle that holds the code to unleash the most lethal weapon on earth—the first ever “invisibility” nanoweapon, a cloaking spider bot. But Zoe’s agency isn’t the only one after the child. And when enemies reveal the invisibility weapon’s existence to underground arms dealers, every government and terrorist organization in the world want to find that little girl. Read the Review >>
Brazil. Rio De Janeiro. 1962. A time of dramatic political, social, and cultural clashes. Here, at the nexus of high society and low, style and street, pop music and passionate crime, a young tabloid photographer will do anything to get ahead – even protect a killer.
Beto Santera, raised on the struggling side of Rio, has just wrangled his first press photographer’s card. He has big dreams, small chances, and a chip on his shoulder. Beto is desperate to get ahead as a photographer but is scrambling to make ends meet. But his luck changes when he photos Sergio Fontes von Imperial, of a powerful Rio family, leaving the murder scene of a popular Brazilian star. Read the Review>>
A woman’s investigation into her family’s murders uncovers lies, secrets, and dangerous truths in a heart-wrenching novel of suspense.
When she was thirteen years old, Samantha Newsom’s family was murdered and their Catskills farmhouse set ablaze in an unsolved crime that left nothing behind but ashes.
Twenty-two years later, Sam is pulled back to her hometown of Carney, New York, under the shadows of the grim tragedy she’s never forgotten or forgiven. Authorities mishandled the evidence, false rumors were seeded about her family, suspects yielded nothing, and the case went cold. Not anymore. Read the Review>>