Monday, April 01, 2024

Eight top dark science mystery novels

Nova Jacobs has an MFA from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and is a recipient of the Nicholl Fellowship from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Jeremy. She is the author of The Stars Turned Inside Out and The Last Equation of Isaac Severy.

At CrimeReads Jacobs tagged:
eight dark science gems: some are recent, some prefigure the dark academia craze entirely—all use science to underpin the murkier aspects of human nature.
One title on the list:
The Distant Dead, Heather Young

When a high-school math teacher is found dead in the most gruesome manner imaginable, a colleague sets out to unravel his shadowy former life as a mathematician and university professor. What she uncovers is the story of an academic forced into small-town exile by an unspeakable secret that has pursued him to his grave. Young merges concepts from number theory with an examination of family dysfunction, the opioid crisis, and the private desperations of a desert town, ultimately drawing a painful divide between the promises of higher education and the realities of an addiction-devastated America. The novel’s conclusion is a calculated emotional hammer blow.
Read about another title on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue