Category: 20 Books of Summer

Book Review – Throw Away the Key by Jason M. Hough @crookedlanebks #20BOS26

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About the Book

Lars Bergman is no ordinary janitor. He’s the CIA’s locksmith. 

Formerly part of the CIA’s infamous Surreptitious Entry Team, Lars is now responsible for every padlock, safe, and secure door across the CIA headquarters. He’s never met a lock he couldn’t pick…except one, which he tried and failed to open during a botched mission in Warsaw at the end of the Cold War. 

Cruising toward retirement, Lars’s life is upended when a senior CIA official dies and he’s called upon to open the safe in her office. Inside the safe is a clue only Lars would notice, left by someone he’d worked with in his heyday. As he investigates, Lars soon realizes that his failed Warsaw operation has come back to haunt him and perhaps give him another chance at picking the one lock that’s ever eluded him. 

What Lars doesn’t realize is that what the lock is protecting could have dire ramifications for the organization he has spent his whole adult life safekeeping.

Format: Paperback (320 pages) Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Publication date: 14th July 2026 Genre: Thriller

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My Review

Cryptic clues – a photograph and a seemingly innocuous document – found in the safe of a deceased senior CIA officer whom Lars worked with many years before sets him on a trail that leads back to Warsaw, the location of a failed ‘off the books’ mission back in 1989. It’s a failure that’s stuck in his mind ever since because it involved one of the very few locks he was unable to pick and, worst of all, he left a trace of his attempt to do so.

Disguising his trip as a long overdue vacation, Lars sets out on a private mission to uncover the truth, weaving a trail across Europe aimed at covering his tracks so as not to attract the attention of his bosses. It means using the ‘tradecraft’ he learned while in the field all those years ago, such as how to spot covert surveillence. Along with his exceptional lockpicking skills, he has to use a good deal of ingenuity, constructing lockpicking tools out of virtually nothing, and his ‘sixth sense’ for when something’s not quite right.

There are some terrific set-pieces, including one in a Swiss bank that could have come out of a heist movie, and some narrow escapes. Lars is definitely a character you can’t help rooting for and I liked he was able to call in favours from people he’d helped over the years.

Eventually, the trail leads back to CIA headquarters and some dramatic scenes as a conspiracy years in the making is revealed. It’s here that Lars’ ingenuity really comes to the fore, proving that the weak points in any organisation’s security are usually at the back door and come with a High Vis jacket.

It’s clear the book is the result of extensive research, especially into locks and lockpicking. I’m not sure I could unpick a lock using the descriptions in the book but that’s my failing not the author’s. However I could bandy around terms such as ‘wiper tension bar’ and ‘shim’. And I now know there is such a thing as competitive lockpicking and that there’s an annual LockCon conference attended by lockpicking experts from across the world.

Throw Away the Key is a really entertaining, well-paced spy thriller. Think the love child of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Mission Impossible.

I received a digital advance reader copy courtesy of Crooked Lane Books. Throw Away the Key is book 8 of my 20 Books of Summer 2026.

In three words: Clever, compelling, pacy
Try something similar: The Scarlet Papers by Matthew Richardson

About the Author

Jason M. Hough (pronounced ‘Huff’) is the New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, including The Dire Earth Cycle, Instinct, and the near-future spy thriller Zero World, which Publisher’s Weekly said is “a thrilling action rampage that confirms Hough as an important new voice in genre fiction.”
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In a former life he was a 3D artist, animator, and game designer (Metal Fatigue, Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction, and many others). He has worked in the fields of high-performance cluster computing and mobile user interfaces, and is named as co-inventor on three patents related to mobile content and licensing.

He lives near Seattle, Washington with his family. When not writing, reading, or hanging out with his kids, he spends his time chasing espresso perfection (with mixed results), and taking long road trips in his electric car.

Connect with Jason
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Book Review – Murder at the End of the World by Akane Araki, trans. by Jesse Kirkwood #20BOS26 @PushkinPress

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About the Book

TWO MONTHS UNTIL THE APOCALYPSE. TWO WOMEN WITH NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE

An asteroid is hurtling towards Earth and the human race has just over two months to live. But twenty-three-year-old Haru, stargazer and chronic worrier, is still trying to pass her driving test.Then she finds a body in the boot of her car: a woman, stabbed and tortured. There’s a murderer on the loose. And it turns out that Haru’s driving instructor is an ex-cop with a manic devotion to justice.

So, despite the small matter of an impending apocalypse, the two women team up to catch the culprit regardless of the danger.

After all, the world’s not quite over yet…

Format: Paperback (336 pages) Publisher: Pushkin Press
Publication date: 2nd July 2026 Genre: Crime, Translated Fiction

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My Review

Trigger warning: Suicide

I’m not sure Japanese crime fiction and I are ever going to be best friends but I enjoyed this more than I did Butter. The question of what you’d do if you knew the world was ending in two months time is an interesting premise. In fact, that element probably engaged me more than the actual mystery.

Others may have different priorities but Haru has decided she wants to pass her driving test. She’s already passed the theory test but just needs a few more lessons with her driving instructor Isagawa. Obviously, no-one’s really going to worry if she’s got a licence or not but she has a journey in mind that she’d like to be confident about making. All that gets derailed when she and Isagawa discover a body in the boot of the training car. It’s not a pretty sight either but Isagawa doesn’t seem fazed and Haru soon discovers why. Encouraged by Isagawa, they set out to try to discover the culprit because the police are either unable or unwilling to investigate. They’re in the process of packing up like everyone else.

I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say there is more than one murder. In fact there’s no scarcity of dead bodies because many people have decided to take their own lives rather than wait for the asteroid to do it. The fact there’s no-one around to deal with the bodies brings a distinctly ghoulish aspect to the book.

Initially, there seems to be no connection between the victims. Haru’s and Isagawa’s task is made more complicated by the fact water and power supplies have failed, and there’s no mobile phone coverage. In the course of their investigation, Haru and Isagawa encounter other individuals who have stayed behind in what is forecast to be the impact zone of the asteroid, scavenging supplies of food, water and fuel from empty shops and warehouses. A few of these join Haru and Isagawa in the hunt for the person behind the killing spree. One of the puzzles is what the motive could possibly be. When most people are going to die in a few months anyway, why kill them now? I did actually guess the identity of the killer about two thirds of the way through the book.

I can’t say I ever warmed to Isagawa, especially as we see a quite different side to her at some points.

The aspect of the story that interested me most was people’s differing responses to the approaching apocalypse. Some, if they can afford it, have fled to countries further away from the impact zone although even that is unlikely to protect them from the disastrous environmental effects that will follow the asteroid strike. Many have decided to spend their remaining time with loved ones. Others are putting their faith in underground shelters or rather fantastical escape schemes. Some, as we’ve already learned, have decided to take things into their own hands and commit suicide. But with no-one around to enforce the rule of law, perhaps it’s possible to get away with anything?

Murder at the End of the World is an entertaining, if rather macabre, murder mystery peppered with black humour.

I received an uncorrected proof copy courtesy of Pushkin Press. Murder at the End of the World is book 6 of my 20 Books of Summer.

In three words: Quirky, intriguing, dark
Try something similar: The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stu Turton

About the Author & Translator

Akane Araki was born in 1998 in Fukuoka, Japan. She is a graduate of Kyushu University’s School of Letters. Murder at the End of the World is her first novel, and it won the prestigious Edogawa Rampo Prize. (Photo/bio: Publisher website)

Jesse Kirkwood is a literary translator working from Japanese into English. His translations include The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai, Tokyo Express by Seicho Matsumoto and The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa.