The best crime and thrillers of 2013 Guardian

''This year has seen a bumper crop of first novels. Norwegian By Night by Derek B Miller (Faber), winner of the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey Dagger, is the funny, moving and gripping story of cantankerous 82-year-old widower and ex-marine Sheldon Horowitz, uprooted from his native New York to Oslo, who finds himself on the run with the six‑year-old son of a murdered neighbour and the ghosts of his past. Equally original and convincing as a character is Mollel, the Maasai-warrior-turned-policeman protagonist of Richard Crompton's debut, The Honey Guide (Weidenfeld & Nicholson), which is set against the background of Kenya's 2007 general election and the subsequent eruption of ethnic violence. Also set in Africa, MD Villier's first novel, City of Blood (Harvill Secker), is both a touching coming-of-age story and a vivid picture of the Johannesburg underworld..''

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