“Two of the big knocks against crime fiction,” according to writer Sam Wiebe, “[are] that it glamorizes the police and fetishizes female victims.” These are fair knocks, but also the very pitfalls that smart crime fiction exploits. For sharp practitioners, the genre becomes “a venue of tension where the justice system and the treatment of women is most criticized and debated.” Melanie Anagnos’ new novel Nightswimming joins this tradition. Set in 1979 Paterson, New Jersey, it works within familiar procedural rhythms while pulling apart the myth of institutional virtue.

A narrative strategy of ambivalence is often a sure bet in the realistic novel. Gustave Flaubert complained that Harriet Beecher Stowe, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, didn’t need to “make observations” about chattel slavery in the United States, she only needed to “depict it: that’s enough.” Flaubert’s observations still inspire writers and critics who argue the author should be a deity. On the other hand, we have the Bob Dylan of “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” directing the congregant when it’s time to withhold tears, and when it’s time to cry. In his new novel, The Sleepers, Matthew Gasda rolls the dice more on the French side.