A moody and atmospheric murder mystery with a unique setting and magic system. This book does a great job representing anxiety and chronic illness without making them hurdles for the characters to overcome.
Allie Burns is a junior reporter at a Glasgow tabloid, investigating leads with her new pal Danny Sullivan and typing out copy at deadline. Well-paced and detailed, this journalistic mystery develops a great cast of characters and captures the era.
This debut mystery from the co-creator of the Deadpool comic book series is a wonderfully quirky whodunit, featuring one of the most likeable characters to solve a murder in many a moon. Andrea Stern was an up and coming FBI profiler when she became pregnant and chose motherhood over a career in law enforcement. After four children, and with a fifth on the way, she stumbles onto a crime scene at a local gas station and cannot resist investigating the shooting. She ties the current shooting with a fifty-year old murder that has been covered up for generations. Aiding Andrea in her investigation is Kenneth Lee, one of the youngest journalists to ever win the Pulitzer Prize, only to fall from grace for making up a story about big pharma in an effort to regain his fame. Suburban Dicks is a pleasant diversion and it was a perfect summertime read. Fabian Nicieza has created what I hope will be a continuing series, because I'm ready for more.
This is a deeply humanistic character study of a serial killer AND the people affected by his crimes. Readers know who the murderer is on page one and the other typical driving questions of who/what/when/where/why are all secondary in this book. Instead, Kukafka creates a fascinating portrait of several women who have to survive the aftermath of one man's actions. This is a wonderfully profound and empathetic thriller.
Cara Black has entertained us for over twenty years with her series featuring Aimee Ledue, a young, stylish PI who knows 1990's Paris inside and out. Who better to write a World War II thriller set in Paris starring young American widow Kate Rees who has been selected by the British and trained as a sniper with one goal: to assassinate Hitler on his brief, 3 hour stop in Paris.
If you love mysteries but also enjoy The Nightingale or The Alice Network, Cara Black has written a book for you!
There is a complex web surrounding the characters in "His & Hers" stretching back twenty years to the night five sixteen year-old girls went into the woods together and two of them came out changed forever. Now the sticky strings of the we have reached out and ensnared the grown women those girls have become. Ringleader Rachel Hopkins has been killed in the very same woods and on the scene is BBC presenter Anna Andrews, one of the five original friends, as well as DCI Jack Harper who also has reasons to want Rachel dead. Told in alternating chapters, "His & Hers" will keep you guessing until the very end.
An absolutely delightful read for fans of Alexander McCall Smith and Alan Bradley, where Queen Elizabeth must step in to solve a mysterious death at Windsor Castle when England's top investigators have failed. On the eve of the Queen's 90th birthday celebration, the Castle is full of guests, including a dashing young Russian pianist found dead in his guest room. Is it an accident, suicide, a jealous husband or Putin's secret agents? Only Her Majesty can solve this puzzling case!
Amari's adventure begins when she receives a package from her missing brother. Before he went missing, he nominated her for an elite summer camp with the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. She has a lot of catching up to do if she wants to fit in with her supernatural peers and solve her brother's disappearance!
Ruth Ware is the master of the contemporary locked room mystery and I would follow her anywhere. Murder amongst frenemies in an isolated cabin? Check. Disappearing woman overboard on a luxury yacht? Check. Mysterious happenings at a secluded Highland manor house? Check. So when she packed her bags to join a corporate retreat in the Alps, I threw warm clothes and my deductive reasoning in my suitcase to join her. Since we can’t travel in real life, it’s the next best thing. Just watch your back!
Popular opinion traces the dawn of the age of the psychological thriller to “Gone Girl” in June 2012, however, for me it began with S.J. Watson’s “Before I Go to Sleep” published a year earlier. A tale with a narrator so unreliable she herself doesn’t remember the facts of her life from day to day, coupled with a truly suspect domestic relationship, Watson’s debut lacked only the titular “girl” in it’s heralding of a new era. Now he returns with his third effort, the story of a small village with an inordinate number of missing girls and a filmmaker with a missing past who is as desperate to solve both puzzles as someone else is to keep both her and the dead quiet. Welcome back, S.J. Watson.
