Six top Garden State crime novels

Kimberly Giarratano is an author of mysteries for teens and adults. Her debut novel, Grunge Gods and Graveyards, won the 2015 Silver Falchion Award for Best YA at Killer Nashville. A former librarian, she is currently an instructor at a SUNY Orange County Community College and a reviewer for BookPage. She is also the chapter liaison for Sisters in Crime.

Born in New York and raised in New Jersey, Giarratano and her husband moved to the Poconos to raise their three kids amid black bears and wild turkeys. While she doesn’t miss the Jersey traffic, she does miss a good bagel and lox.

Her new novel is Death of A Dancing Queen.

At CrimeReads Giarratano tagged a few favorite Garden State crime titles, including:

Line of Sight by James Queally

Ever since getting sacked from his newspaper job, Russell Avery has been working on behalf of Newark’s less-than-finest police officers, getting them out the scrapes they manage to find themselves in — such as stealing seven grand from a crime scene. It’s not noble work, and Russell knows it, but he needs to pay the bills somehow. When his friend, a social justice activist, asks him to look into the police shooting of a low-level drug dealer, Russell is hesitant to get involved. After all, the Newark PD isn’t anyone he wants to get on the wrong side of, especially when the police chief threatens to pull Russell’s private investigator license. That only means there is something to expose. Eventually, Russell begins investigating the shooting deaths of two Black and Latino teenagers, setting off a domino of events that include riots, protests, and violence. Can Russell stop his beloved Newark from going up in flames? Like all great hard-boiled heroes, Russell gets thrown out of bars, beaten up, and tailed as he attempts to make sense of two senseless deaths. Action-packed, Line of Sight is gritty and poignant as it explores the hazy space of policing and abuse of power in a beleaguered Newark. As Russell explains to his cop buddy, “This isn’t cops and robbers. There’s some truth to your anger and some truth to theirs.” Author James Queally, a crime reporter in California, once covered crime and police for the Star-Ledger in New Jersey. His experience doesn’t just lend authenticity to Russell Avery, but Queally’s journalist background means the narrative is tightly paced and efficiently-written. Every sentence is meaty and lean, with a bit of wry humor. There’s a second book, All These Ashes, to read next, and you will want to.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue