Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Seven novels that explore real estate swindles

Wil Medearis is the author of Restoration Heights.

At CrimeReads he tagged seven favorite novels that explore crooked land deals, including:
Tana French, Broken Harbor

It’s fun to imagine which current authors will one day be admitted into the canon of crime fiction. There are plenty of talented names in contention, but Irish writer Tana French is a shoe-in. Like Chandler and Ellroy and so many other greats of the genre she weaves unflinching social scrutiny into every aspect of her twisty, unpredictable plots, and has invigorated a genre—in her case the police procedural—with fresh insights and expansive possibilities. Broken Harbor begins with the murder of a family in an unfinished luxury development of the same name, and as the Dublin Murder Squad pieces together the events that led to their death the book assembles a portrait of unchecked greed and the raw exploitation of a family’s desire to live a better life. America’s sins turn out to be Ireland’s too, and no one working today is better at turning those sins into a compulsively addicting read than Tana French.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue