One of popular music’s most prolific and creative composers, Elvis Costello has written songs in every conceivable genre: pop, reggae, rock, country, funk, soul and jazz, but also for full orchestras and string quartets. What you may not have noticed is that a surprising number of these songs are crime stories—not mere nods toward unsavory events featuring questionable characters, but complete tales of murder and violence told in verse.

In “Brutal & Strange,” contemporary masters of crime fiction dig into Costello’s catalogue for inspiration. The marriage of Costello’s themes and these award-winning authors’ creativity will seem an inevitable match when you experience the results. Whether it’s Meg Gardiner and “Complicated Shadows,” Catriona McPherson and “Tramp the Dirt Down,” Alex Segura and “I Want You” Mark Billingham and “Our Little Angel” or many other virtuoso interpretations, the stories match the composer’s high standards and suggest there’s even more stirring beneath the surface of his songs.