If you glanced over the books currently covering my desk, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to surmise that Georges Simenon (1903-1989) was the hottest property of the year. Although we’re still in the early days of publisher Penguin’s plan to reissue all 75 of that prolific Belgian writer’s slender novels starring French police detective Jules Maigret—in order, one per month, a project that will take more than six years to complete—the works are stacking up fast; June will bring the 13th installment, The Saint-Fiacre Affair from 1932. Meanwhile, Penguin has also decided to publish, annually, hardcover omnibus editions of Maigret titles, with the first (Inspector Maigret, set for release in early June) comprising four novels, one of them Pietr the Latvian, which introduced the brilliant, eccentric Maigret to readers in 1931.

Yet in this age when big-name publishing houses must compete with an increasing quantity of independent presses and print-on-demand ventures, this seeming torrent of Simenon volumes looks like a mere trickle of what’s available. When I sat down recently to list what I think are the most promising new crime, mystery and thriller novels due out in the States over the coming three summer months, I totaled up more than 120 titles. Those include Mark Billingham’s latest Tom Thorne tale, Time of Death (June), Michael Koryta’s Last Words (August), Sara Paretsky’s 17th case for Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski (Brush Back, July), Ken Bruen’s new misadventure for Galway ex-cop Jack Taylor (Green Hell, July), Stephen King’s Finders Keepers (June), Julie Heaberlin’s Black-Eyed Susans (July), another of Louise Penny’s cases for Inspector Armand Gamache (The Nature of the Beast, August) and Peter Lovesey’s 15th mystery to be solved by Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond (Down Among the Dead Men, July). For many folks, that’s a whole summer’s worth of reading right there.

“But wait,” as the toothy flacks boast in TV commercials, “there’s more.” Below are reviewlets of eight crime-based works that deserve your special attention between now and Labor Day, followed by a selection of other potential summer hits.

The Cartel, by Don Winslow (June):

The disastrous consequences of America’s lengthy “war on drugs” are shown in high relief in this sequel to Winslow’s 2005 thriller, The Power of the Dog. Once more we are thrust into the company of Art Keller, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) who has retreated to a life of bee-keeping—shades of Sherlock Holmes!—at a New Mexico monastery. What finally draws him back into the welter of Mexico’s drug-peddling conflicts is news that his old antagonist, Adán Barrera, leader of the Sinaloan cartel El Federación, has broken out of prison and is intent on re-establishing himself as a criminal kingpin. Yet the narcotics trade has changed since Barrera last enjoyed freedom; it’s now more militarized, media savvy and murderous. As Keller returns to active duty, resumes his vengeful pursuit of Barrera and manages to fall for a woman doctor committed to ending the drugs-fueled violence, competing traffickers speed headlong toward a bloody confrontation near the Texas border. Although Winslow’s story occasionally verges on being either pulpish or markedly earnest, it is persistently consuming. And heartbreaking at times.

Stay, by Victor Gischler (June):

Gischler initially made his rep helping to create the crime-fiction webzine Plots with Guns (defunct, at least for now) and penning eccentric novels such as The Pistol Poets and Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse. Stay is something different. It gives us David Sparrow, an ostensibly content “Mr. Mom” responsible for the upkeep of two mischievous young children while his wife, Amy, a deputy district attorney, goes off to New York City every weekday. Amy’s new assignment to prosecute crime boss Dante Payne, though, throws one hell of a kink into the Sparrows’ peaceful suburban existence. Payne intends to cause Amy and her loved ones trouble for defying him, but what he doesn’t understand (and Amy hadn’t known before) is that David Sparrow is an ex–Solo Ops officer fully capable of defending his family. Which is exactly what he’ll do, calling on some of his old Army pals to help take the pain to Payne. The action in these pages can be overblown and the implication that men are happier blasting weapons than scheduling play dates for their progeny is a tad clichéd. Yet Gischler’s humor makes this male fantasy yarn go down easy.

Broken Promise, by Linwood Barclay (July):

Given the troubles he habitually heaps upon them, one might think Barclay doesn’t care much for his fictional protagonists. Case in point: widowed reporter David Harwood, who in this twist-stuffed novel returns to his too-quiet hometown of Promise Falls, New York, hoping to make a fresh start with his 9-year-old son. However, on his very first day with the local newspaper, that publication shuts down, and Harwood is compelled to move back in with his aging parents. Really, how much worse can things get? This bad: after Harwood’s mother asks him to deliver some food to his cousin Marla, who has apparently not been doing well since a miscarriage took her baby, he finds the supposedly childless woman caring for an infant she claims was deposited on her porch by an “angel.” Knowing that something’s amiss (he is, after all, a trained journalist), Harwood sets out to determine where the infant belongs. But after learning that the real mother was stabbed to death, an energized Harwood focuses his attention on solving these mysteries—which might in fact be linked to a recently vanished nanny, a spate of attempted rapes and other ominous local events. A sequel to Never Look Away (2010), Broken Promise is also the first book in a new trilogy.

Little Pretty Things, by Lori Rader-Day (July):

Chicago writer Rader-Day won more than minor praise for her suspenseful “whydunit,” The Black Hour (2014), which is currently in contention for both Anthony and Barry awards, and won Best First Novel honors in the Lovey Awards race a few months back. This follow-up boasts a somewhat less knotty plot, but still impresses with its thoughtful characterizations and assured storytelling style. Here we encounter Juliet Townsend, who as a high-school student dreamed of becoming a track star, but 10 years on is serving out a spirit-snuffing purgatory half-cleaning rooms at a sordid Indiana motel. She’s surprised one day when her erstwhile athletic rival, Maddy Bell, checks in to that same lodging, sheathed in the trappings of success and anxious to share a libation with Juliet. Something is obviously not right with Maddy’s “perfect life,” but a still-jealous Juliet doesn’t probe for answers—until it’s too late. Her ex-classmate is found dead the following day, hanging from a balcony, and the cops figure Juliet was involved. To save herself, Juliet sorts through memories of Maddy, their friends and their respective roads not taken, trying to expose a killer as she makes peace with her past.

Clandestine, by J. Robert Janes (July):

It’s a red-letter year when a new World War II–era thriller from Philip Kerr (The Lady from Zagreb) closely precedes another fresh mystery, set during that same period, by Canadian author Janes. Clandestine finds unlikely partners Chief Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the French Sûreté and Detektiv Inspektor Hermann Kohler of the Nazi Gestapo being summoned to an ancient, crumbling Cistercian abbey in northern France to investigate a hijacked bank delivery van. The vehicle’s two male occupants are found shot some distance away, while the stacks of cash and black-market foodstuffs that were being transported have been ransacked—but only a suspiciously small quantity of each is missing. Equally bewildering is the discovery of a woman’s high-heeled shoes on the scene. Who was their wearer, why was she in the van and where has she gone? It’s October 1943, and the defeat of Adolf Hitler’s Germany seems inevitable. Yet St-Cyr and Kohler, together with Kohler’s two lovers in Occupied Paris, face multiple threats from Nazi officials as they struggle to knit the pieces of this puzzle together. Janes’ portrayal of war-torn France, with its rampant deprivations and Resistance fighters, lends his fiction an air of urgent realism.

Believe No One, by A.D. Garrett (July):

This sequel to Everyone Lies (2014) has Detective Chief Inspector Kate Simms of the Manchester, England, police force on a sabbatical of sorts in St. Louis, Missouri, sharing expertise with the police there while enjoying much-needed distance from Scottish forensics expert Nick Fennimore, with whom she has a complicated association. Meanwhile, Fennimore has arranged a speaking tour through the States, hoping at some point to meet up again with Simms. They’re finally thrown together for professional reasons, after clues suggest that a number of young mothers, murdered along Interstate 44 from Oklahoma to the Mississippi River, might have been victims of a serial killer. For Fennimore, this case has a strong personal element: his wife was murdered five years ago in similarly grisly fashion, and his daughter abducted—just like the children of those dead mothers dumped along the freeway. Margaret Murphy and forensic scientist Dave Barclay, who collaborate as “A.D. Garrett,” bring to their work enough suspense and human dimension to attract even someone like me, who’s generally bored with today’s superfluity of serial-killer thrillers.

The Darkest Heart, by Dan Smith (August):

Adding to the intriguing subgenre of crime fiction set in South America is this haunting story about a contract killer who dreams of self-improvement in the Brazilian backcountry. Zico is an efficient, emotionless hit man (“I didn’t know exactly how many people I had killed, but at least eleven of them had been close enough to blow their last breath in my face”) who’s sought an escape from memories of his sister’s slaying by leaving city life for the comparative tranquility of the Araguaia River (translated as “River of the Macaws”). He’s been thinking lately, though, that he would like to get out of the death-dealing biz, maybe create a more serene situation with his girlfriend, Daniella. But first his boss wants him to reduce the world’s population by one more person: an American nun and supporter of indigenous rights. The payoff would be handsome. The trouble is that even as Zico travels down the river in his friend’s decrepit boat, developing his plan to eliminate the nun, his mind is filled with aberrant doubts and he engages in a battle of egos with another passenger who is more like Zico than he’d like to admit. Smith (The Child Thief, Red Winter) delivers a noirish yarn with an often languid pace that serves to highlight its moments of adrenalized action.

Rubbernecker, by Belinda Bauer (August):

This stand-alone thriller made a hefty splash when it was released in Britain in 2013, being nominated for the Crime Writers’ Association’s Goldsboro Gold Dagger Award and subsequently winning the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Its tale focuses on Patrick Fort, a teenager with Asperger’s syndrome and—a consequence of his father having been killed in a hit-and-run accident when Patrick was only a boy—a quite prominent obsession with death. That fixation leads him to Wales’ Cardiff University, which accepts him into its anatomy studies program only to help fill a quota for disabled students, but where it’s hoped he can finally prove himself. While dissecting the seemingly normal corpse of a middle-aged man, Patrick becomes convinced that his subject was in fact the victim of homicide. Of course nobody agrees, and Patrick, already so used to being the odd man out, goes it alone once more to confirm his diagnosis and identify a murderer. Bauer (Blacklands, Darkside) does an excellent job here of portraying Patrick’s sometimes funny quirks and weaving into her main plot scenes from a hospital ward, where a self-centered nurse tests the limits of neglect and a comatose patient rises from unconsciousness.

Also worth checking out: The Ways of the World, by Robert Goddard (June); The Kill, by Jane Casey (June); The Devil’s Game, by Sean Chercover (June); The Nightmare Place, by Steve Mosby (June); Timetable of Death, by Edward Marston (June); Brutality, by Ingrid Thoft (June); Ice Cold, by Andrea Maria Schenkel (June); Second Life, by S.J. Watson (June); Badlands, by C.J. Box (July); The Devil’s Share, by Wallace Stroby (July); The Redeemers, by Ace Atkins (July); From Bruges with Love, by Pieter Aspe (July); Sympathy for the Devil, by Terrence McCauley (July); So Nude, So Dead, by Ed McBain (July); The Fraud, by Brad Parks (July); Crush, by Phoef Sutton (July); Woman with a Secret, by Sophie Hannah (August); Head or Hearts, by Paul Johnston (August); In the Dark Places, by Peter Robinson (August); When Somebody Kills You, by Robert J. Randisi (August); The Patriarch, by Martin Walker (August); No Other Darkness, by Sarah Hilary (August); No Hard Feelings, by Mark Coggins (August); The Bangkok Asset, by John Burdett (August); and Off and Running, by Philip Reed (August).

J. Kingston Pierce is both the editor of The Rap Sheet and the senior editor of January Magazine.