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Mystery & SuspenseSuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

A Victorian con artist embarks on her greatest scheme yet

Feature by Bruce Tierney

Loose Lips

I have sometimes thought that the most difficult thing for a writer to do well is to write a novel from the first-person perspective of a person with a different gender. A year ago, I reviewed Kemper Donovan’s The Busy Body, the first in his series about an anonymous female ghostwriter, narrated from her perspective. There was not a single clue suggesting that a male had penned the novel; it was that seamless. (Thankfully, I happened to read his bio before submitting the review, saving myself the embarrassment of erroneous assumptions.) That holds true as well for the second installment in the series, Loose Lips, in which our protagonist accepts a gig as a guest lecturer on a literary cruise. It is a quintessential setup for a locked-room mystery, as there is no escape route for the guilty party, save for a lengthy North Atlantic winter’s swim back to New York City. Moreover, while the admittedly amateur investigation into the murder of author and cruise organizer Payton Garrett proceeds, more bodies will join the first in the ship’s galley freezer, adjacent to the celebrity chef’s signature lobster thermidor. The murder weapon is straight out of Agatha Christie or perhaps the board game Clue, and the tone is tongue-in-cheek a la Knives Out—an observation I made in my review last year, and one that still holds true this time around.  

Dead in the Frame

Stephen Spotswood’s noir detective series starring Lillian Pentecost and Willowjean “Will” Parker hearkens back to Rex Stout’s iconic Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin series. A cerebral crime-solver ensconced in her New York City mansion, Lillian mirrors Wolfe. Will serves as her Archie Goodwin: irreverent chronicler of the stories, perpetrator of assorted quasi-illegal deeds in furtherance of the investigations and smart-alecky nemesis of New York’s Finest. The latest, Dead in the Frame, features a second narrator for the first time in the series, which up to now was related by Will. Lillian is keeping a journal in her jail cell, where she awaits trial for the murder of longtime foe Jessup Quincannon. Meanwhile, Will madly scrambles through 1947 New York City to unravel a seemingly airtight case against her friend/employer. Rounding out the cast are an up-and-coming evangelist whose wife is perhaps more mercenary than missionary, a lethal female security consultant and a corrupt cop who dangles the key to Lillian’s exoneration, albeit at a price. Lillian’s multiple sclerosis makes her stay in prison even more difficult, and the tone of her journal is somber and introspective; Will’s voice, by comparison, is sassy and no-nonsense, although punctuated with rueful humor throughout. Without giving away anything here, the murderer is just about the last person you would expect. Well, perhaps not as far back in the queue as Lillian Pentecost, but pretty darn close.

The Queen of Fives

Alex Hay’s The Queen of Fives derives its title from an age-old, five-step primer on setting up a con, briefly summarized thusly: 1) Identify the mark; 2) Intrude on the daily life of the mark; 3) Tempt the mark with an offer too good to be true; 4) Encircle the mark with new friends and gently sever ties with old friends; 5) Cement the payoff and make the getaway. Bonus points if you can pull off the entire scam in five days, which is precisely what seductive Quinn le Blanc, the titular Queen of Fives, intends to accomplish. Her target is a midlevel royal, the Duke of Kendal. The year is 1898; the setting, Victorian-era London. The basic plan is disarmingly simple: Lure one of England’s most eligible bachelors into marriage, then abscond with the family fortune. It will be the most ambitious score Quinn has ever embarked upon. If she can pull it off. And that is a big if. It can be argued that desperation is never a good companion when plotting out a con, and there certainly is an element of desperation at play here. Deep in debt, Quinn really needs a big score. It’s a recipe for things going awry, at the worst times, in the worst possible manners (and manors). P.S. Of all the books this month, The Queen of Fives is the one that just screams to be adapted into a TV series, one sure to appeal to period drama fans, particularly those who might enjoy a spot of larceny with their afternoon tea.

Open Season

Forensic psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD detective Milo Sturgis return for their 40th (!!!) adventure together in Jonathan Kellerman’s latest mystery, Open Season. The murder victim is a wannabe actor, funding the waiting period until her big break by serving as one of a bevy of glamorous attendees at various Tinseltown events. Her suspected killer is also a wannabe actor and occasional stuntman. But by the time suspicion falls on him, he has become a murder victim himself. They will not be the last victims, and as it will turn out, they are not the first either: Bullets from the rifle used to kill the stuntman match an earlier killing halfway across the country. What started out as a comparatively routine homicide investigation may be turning into a search for a serial killer, one who has stayed under the radar for years and who shows no signs of stopping any time soon. And then, as has happened often in the past, Dr. Delaware displays his gift for discerning patterns that nobody else has identified yet. Open Season is fast-paced, suspense-laden and boasts a true surprise ending, even for those who thought they had it figured out sooner. Like me.

Plus, the latest cases of crime-solving duos Parker & Pentecost and Delaware & Sturgis in this month’s whodunit column.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

The Naming of the Birds

Review by Alice Cary

Pour a warm beverage and settle in with Paraic O’Donnell’s exceptional third novel, The Naming of the Birds, a thrilling gothic mystery set in Victorian London. The opening section takes readers to a dreary scene in 1872 that reads like a particularly Grimm fairy tale: A group of orphans survives a horrific fire at a place known as the Asylum, only to be secretly carted away to another horrifying institution, where they are given new names, called after birds. One of the children, a girl now called Nightingale, carries secrets from that fire, which “taught her things about the world’s secret nature and her own.” Nightingale has one friend there, a boy now called Finch, who tells her, “I talk to you because you’re the only one who might be able to make sense of it all.” 

After that chilling introduction, the action fast-forwards 22 years to 1894, where Scotland Yard Inspector Henry Cutter and his young partner, Sergeant Gideon Bliss, find themselves pursuing a skilled serial killer who seems to be targeting aging civil servants, some of them of high rank. Their murders have been achieved with assassin-esque meticulousness, and the victims are left in haunting, precisely arranged scenes that include the bones of children. 

Fans of O’Donnell’s previous book, The House on Vesper Sands, will welcome the return of Cutter and Bliss, along with their sidekick, Octavia Hillington, a vibrant, fearless and piercing journalist who helps them track down the killer. They form a particularly dynamic trio: Cutter is a crusty, grumpy, but determined detective; Bliss is sensitive and fearful, but equally dogged; Hillington is an undaunted Victorian change-maker. 

O’Donnell writes and plots with admirable precision, leading readers down a series of intriguing labyrinths to discover what exactly happened to those children back in 1872, and how that incident may be connected to these present-day murders. He is a master of big strokes and small, inserting touches of humor and insight without lessening the tension. He uses the bird theme judiciously throughout: They appear from time to time like eerie witnesses to the unfolding action. And there is a lot of big, glorious action as Cutter, Bliss and Hillington risk their lives to uncover these frightful truths. As Cutter tells his sidekicks, “We are going to see more than mere trickery. We are going to see the performance of a lifetime.” In the end, readers are left with all that and more, including weighty questions to ponder about the nature of justice and revenge.

The Naming of the Birds is a delicious, breathtaking romp that will have readers looking over their shoulders as they quickly turn its pages.

Paraic O’Donnell inserts touches of humor and insight without lessening the tension in his breathtaking gothic historical mystery, The Naming of the Birds.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical MysteryCozy Mystery

Inspector Gamache, John Rebus and Bruno Courrèges are back—and they’re all in top form

Feature by Bruce Tierney

A Grave in the Woods

The typically unflappable Bruno Courrèges is annoyed. While he was on medical leave, his position as chief of police was taken over by an overbearing new hire, and she has no intention of vacating it until he has been cleared to return to service. Moreover, she has lectured him regarding his general untidiness and inept record-keeping. For the time being, it is better for everyone concerned if Bruno beats a hasty retreat to somewhere else, anywhere else. So, for A Grave in the Woods, Martin Walker’s 17th installment in the popular series, Bruno is tasked with investigating (wait for it . . .) a grave in the woods. Three bodies are in the grave, all dating back to World War II: two German women and one man, an Italian submarine captain, oddly distant from his expected undersea context. Oh, and while we are on the topic of water, Bruno’s hometown of St. Denis—a sadly fictional village in the Périgord region of France—is bracing for an epic, climate change-fueled flood. The dams have held thus far, but it’s getting dicey. As Bruno digs deeper into the grave situation (sorry), questions dating back some 80 years are unearthed. Thus, there is perhaps more history than mystery in this episode of Bruno’s adventures, but there is nothing wrong with that. There is plenty of what readers come to St. Denis for: the food and wine; the camaraderie; and of course, Balzac the basset hound, surely one of the most engaging four-legged supporting characters ever to grace the pages of a mystery novel.

Midnight and Blue

Wow, you miss one book in a series, and the protagonist transforms from the number one cop in Scotland to a prison inmate. As Ian Rankin’s latest mystery, Midnight and Blue, opens, John Rebus is cooling his heels in the slammer. His crime: attempted murder, which is under appeal, but the wheels of justice are turning slowly. At first, he is incarcerated in the relatively safe Separation and Reintegration unit, where prisoners in danger (such as ex-cops) are assigned, but he is soon to be rehoused in the general prison population, in part thanks to a safe-passage guarantee from Edinburgh’s reigning crime lord, who credits Rebus for his ascent to the underworld throne. When a murder takes place in a nearby two-person cell, Rebus’ detecting instincts bubble to the surface, although he must be somewhat more circumspect than if he was out on the streets. In a parallel narrative, Rebus’ onetime colleague Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke is investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl, a case that will come to have a tangential—or perhaps more than tangential—connection with the aforementioned prison murder. Author Rankin is in top form as he reinvents his flawed hero by having him navigate an equally flawed milieu, in what must be one of the most original locked-room mysteries ever.

Murder Takes the Stage

One of my favorite plot devices for a mystery—or really any sort of novel—is the revisiting of a familiar tale through the perspective of a different character, such as Gregory Maguire’s retelling of the Cinderella story, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. Colleen Cambridge has mined this vein exceptionally well with her series featuring Phyllida Bright, housekeeper to Agatha Christie. This time out, the Christie entourage moves to London for Murder Takes the Stage, in which one of the author’s stories has been made into a West End play. Unfortunately, however, an actor whose surname began with the letter A turns up dead at a theater beginning with the letter A. Then, the body of an actor playing Benvolio is discovered at a theater beginning with a B. You can see where this is going, right? It’s a clever and delicious spin on one of Christie’s better known works, The A.B.C. Murders. Exactly one year ago, I opined that Cambridge’s previous installment in the series, Murder by Invitation Only, “straddles the line between historical fiction and intricate, Christie-esque suspense quite well, without the cloying cutesiness that can sometimes plague mysteries on the cozier side of things. And Phyllida Bright is simply a gem.” I stand by that assertion 100%.

★ The Grey Wolf 

An old legend tells of two wolves that battle inside each of us: a black wolf that represents anger, greed, arrogance, resentment, envy and ego; and a gray wolf that represents kindness, generosity, compassion, empathy, love and hope. Which one will win, you may ask? The answer is simple, yet profound: The one you feed. The Grey Wolf also serves as the title of Louise Penny’s 19th entry in her critically acclaimed series featuring Chief Inspector Gamache of the Sureté du Québec. The Grey Wolf is far and away Penny’s most ambitious novel to date, landing Gamache and his team squarely into the middle of ecoterrorism on a scale hitherto unimaginable in typically tranquil Canada. But as data begins to trickle in, it becomes apparent that the plot’s tentacles are farther reaching than anyone could reasonably have predicted, involving an order of Québécois monks who have taken a vow of silence, the highest levels of the Canadian federal government and even the Vatican. Equally troubling is evidence suggesting that key members of the Sureté may have been compromised, leaving the core team of Gamache, Beauvoir and Lacoste twisting in the wind as the stopwatch ticks away the minutes. The Grey Wolf is 432 pages long, and I read it in one sitting, because I could not put it down.

Plus, Colleen Cambridge gifts readers with another clever mystery starring Phyllida Bright, housekeeper to none other than Agatha Christie.
Mystery & SuspenseSuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

Andy Mills is back—with a case set in the world of 1950s queer booksellers.

Feature by Bruce Tierney

The Seventh Floor

In David McCloskey’s latest thriller, The Seventh Floor, the CIA team dedicated to eradicating moles is hilariously referred to as the “Dermatologists.” (I will never be able to unthink that.) There is no gentle introduction in this book, no setting of scene, no lulling the reader into a false sense of security. By the end of page six, a Russian agent is dead, having bitten down on his poison-filled Montblanc pen scant seconds before a team breaks into his office. A bit later, American agent Sam Joseph hangs upside down in a Russian black-ops site, pleading ignorance to a group of unbelieving interrogators. The heart of the matter seems to be that there is an extremely high-placed Russian mole in the CIA, with one team of facilitators dedicated to seeing that said mole remains securely in place, and a second team equally dedicated to ferreting them out. But this is the world of espionage, after all, and alliances are fluid at best and downright lethal at worst, with no handy brochure that lists true affiliations. The two main characters are Sam and Artemis Procter, the latter a no-nonsense CIA operational chief who irritates most people simply by walking into a room. Together, these two must navigate the minefields and expose the mole, or very likely die in the attempt. The Seventh Floor is not really about these heroes as much as it is about the process of flushing out a traitor, but it proves remarkably difficult to put down either way. PS, McCloskey knows whereof he speaks: He is a former CIA analyst who delivered classified briefings to congressional oversight committees, and he regularly wrote for the President’s Daily Brief, the top secret intelligence summary that appears on the desk in the Oval Office every morning. It shows.

Rough Pages

Lev AC Rosen’s Rough Pages is the third installment in his historical mystery series featuring gay detective Evander “Andy” Mills, a former San Francisco police officer who was outed and fired, and has now launched a private investigation firm serving the queer community in the City by the Bay. These postwar noir novels are set in the 1950s, when gay bashing was not only tolerated, but encouraged, even—or especially—by those sworn to “protect and serve.” Andy is drawn into a case involving the disappearance of Howard Salzberger, a bookstore owner who supplies a select clientele with queer books by subscription, and who may have run afoul of postal regulations prohibiting the distribution of “obscene materials.” At the center of the case is Howard’s missing notebook, which lists his subscribers: If the government gets hold of that, there will be hell to pay. The Mafia is also interested in obtaining the notebook, and among the mobsters, there is perhaps even less tolerance of queerness than there is by the government or general public. Rosen’s Evander Mills books are unsettling to read; like Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series, they unflinchingly depict historical—and in some ways, ongoing—discrimination against minorities. And like Mosley, Rosen takes his shots at the establishment by simply telling the day-to-day stories of marginalized people, the people who those in power tried to shove off into the shadows, but who persisted in living vibrant lives all the same.

Death by Misadventure

To begin with, a small confession: While reading Tasha Alexander’s latest Lady Emily mystery, Death by Misadventure, I happened upon the word “snarky.” As her novels are written in the vernacular of the time (in this case, 1906), “snarky” seemed to me to be very out of place. So I Googled the word, only to discover that its first recorded usage was in the year (wait for it . . .) 1906. I should have known better than to doubt Alexander. Lady Emily relates the story in the first person: A high-society murder takes place in the shadow of Neuschwanstein Castle, a killing that has roots dating back a generation, to the days of the castle’s creator, Bavaria’s Mad King Ludwig. Death by Misadventure is an Agatha Christie-esque locked-room mystery, with the victim and the cast of potential perpetrators snowbound after an Alpine storm renders the roads impassable. Lady Emily will investigate the murder, as she has done in the 17 previous novels; she easily rivals Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote in terms of acquaintances lost to untimely and violent demise. As is typically the case with locked-room mysteries, there are secrets and motives galore, but good luck figuring out “whodunit” before the big reveal. I certainly did not.

★ The Drowned

In the 1950s, in a field adjacent to the rocky Irish coast, a Mercedes SL sits idling. The driver’s door is open, but no driver is in sight. A local outcast happens upon the car while walking his dog, and is in turn happened upon by the car owner’s distraught husband, who cries out that his wife has thrown herself into the sea. Thus begins John Banville’s atmospheric mystery novel The Drowned. The local constable, a lout and a drunkard with no love for the aforementioned outcast, is first to investigate, but the situation requires an altogether more delicate and thorough touch. So Detective Inspector St. John (pronounced “sin-jun”) Strafford is called in from Dublin to preside over the case. And where Strafford goes, it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that his colleague/adversary, pathologist and medical examiner Quirke, will not be far behind. As the investigation moves forward, Stafford and Quirke expose some troubling connections to an earlier case, a case that everyone thought had been solved, but now seems to have a few loose threads that require pulling. This is a book that deserves to be read slowly, not simply for the plotting and the characters (which are quite good in their own right), but for the sheer richness of the prose. The Drowned is genre fiction that rises to the level of full-on, capital L literature.

Lev AC Rosen’s critically acclaimed series has another win, plus new reads from Tasha Alexander and John Bancroft in this month’s Whodunit column.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

4 historical mysteries and thrillers that stray off the beaten path

List by the editors of BookPage
STARRED REVIEW
September 10, 2024

4 historical mysteries and thrillers that stray off the beaten path

Whether it’s an underexplored setting, a genre mashup or a distinct voice, these unique books will satisfy those looking for something a little different.
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Book jacket image for What Time the Sexton's Spade Doth Rust by Alan Bradley

What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust

In Alan Bradley’s 11th mystery starring preteen sleuth Flavia de Luce, the chemistry prodigy faces murder by mushroom and her own impending adulthood.
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Book jacket image for Agony Hill by Sarah Stewart Taylor

Agony Hill

With Agony Hill, Sarah Stewart Taylor kicks off a thoughtful, thought-provoking historical mystery series set in a time with shocking parallels to the present.
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Book jacket image for The Mesmerist by Caroline Woods

The Mesmerist

Caroline Woods exposes the plight of Victorian women and transforms history into an intricately plotted mystery in The Mesmerist.
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Book jacket image for The Phantom Patrol by James R. Benn

The Phantom Patrol

Billy Boyle breaks up a Nazi art smuggling ring in James R. Benn’s enthralling The Phantom Patrol, which will delight history buffs, art lovers and ...
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Whether it's an underexplored setting, a genre mashup or a distinct voice, these unique books will satisfy those looking for something a little different.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Flavia de Luce burst onto the cozy mystery scene in 2009, and now the precocious 12-year-old chemistry prodigy is back for the 11th time in bestselling author Alan Bradley’s What Time the Sexton’s Spade Doth Rust.

Once again, Bradley beckons readers into post-World War II England—specifically, Bishop’s Lacey, a hamlet in the countryside. Flavia roams the area on her bicycle, Gladys, searching for things to test in her home laboratory (ensconced in Buckshaw, the crumbling de Luce manor) and, lately, places to escape “pestilent little cousin” Undine, who’s come to Buckshaw after becoming an orphan.

Flavia, now an orphan as well, tends to the mansion with the help of two beloved adults: Dogger, handyman and helpmeet, and the estate’s housekeeper, Mrs. Mullet, who’s also been cooking for their neighbor Major Greyleigh, a former hangman who is found dead as the book opens. Alas, the police consider Mrs. Mullet the prime suspect because she accidentally served the major a dish of poisonous mushrooms directly before his demise.

Convinced of Mrs. Mullet’s innocence, Flavia resolves to solve the crime and clear the cook’s name. After all, she’s so important to her—and as a bonus, it’s yet another opportunity to test her sleuthing mettle: “I have to admit that I’d been praying . . . for a jolly good old-fashioned mushroom poisoning. Not that I wanted anyone to die, but why give a girl a gift . . . without giving her the opportunity to use it?”

As Flavia questions locals, sneaks into crime scenes and conducts experiments, she realizes the murder is just the tip of a very strange iceberg looming over Bishop’s Lacey. Is the usually chatty, now oddly reticent, Mrs. Mullet hiding something? And some of the American soldiers still stationed at nearby Leathcote air base seem especially interested in the goings-on. Might they be involved? 

Bradley’s intrepid amateur sleuth is witty and whip-smart as ever, and Bishop’s Lacey remains both a colorful backdrop and a microcosm of a nation in transition, paralleling Flavia’s own trepidation at entering adulthood. A layered plot rife with dastardly deeds and shocking revelations makes for an intriguing and entertaining read, and nicely tees up the (one hopes) next installment in the irresistible Flavia de Luce series.

In Alan Bradley’s 11th mystery starring preteen sleuth Flavia de Luce, the chemistry prodigy faces murder by mushroom and her own impending adulthood.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

The Phantom Patrol

Review by Alice Cary

“I didn’t know anything about Gustav Klimt except that he liked naked ladies,” notes Billy Boyle, the narrator of The Phantom Patrol, the 19th entry in James R. Benn’s series of action-packed World War II mysteries. Billy has become involved with efforts to return the priceless sketch, a study for Klimt’s painting Water Serpents II, to its rightful owner after it was appropriated from a Jewish family in Vienna. 

Billy, a former Boston cop, is a detective on the staff of his “Uncle Ike”—none other than the famed General Eisenhower. Billy’s “older cousin of some sort” makes a brief appearance, commenting, “even a fella from Abilene can appreciate fine artwork.” (Newcomers to the series can easily jump in; Benn succinctly fills readers in with relevant bits of backstory.) Billy’s also trying to track down a violent network of Nazi art smugglers, and it turns out even bigger trouble is brewing: It’s the winter of 1944 and France has been liberated, so these thugs have little to lose. Just a few pages in, the bullets start to fly and the bodies begin to fall in Paris’ Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Billy eventually finds himself in Belgium’s Ardennes Forest in the midst of the Battle of the Bulge, traipsing through snow and cut off from communications. 

Benn excels at making history work in his favor. For instance, he includes J.D. Salinger and actor David Niven as fairly major characters—both of whom did indeed serve during WWII. Benn nimbly traverses between moments of absolute horror (the scene of a murdered family at their farmhouse, and the massacre of American GIs) to numerous lighthearted moments, understanding how desperately they were needed for those who endured war’s horrors. Niven, for instance, comments about a German posing as an American: “I should have known . . . The chap never asked for an autograph.” 

Fans of The Monuments Men and The Curse of Pietro Houdini will relish The Phantom Patrol, and newcomers to Billy Boyle’s investigations will be immediately intrigued and ready for more. The book’s art-related plot will appeal to a wide variety of readers, as will Benn’s snappy but detail-rich prose. History buffs, military enthusiasts, art lovers and thrill-seekers alike will all be enthralled with this enticing blend of high-stakes action and old-fashioned detective work.

Billy Boyle breaks up a Nazi art smuggling ring in James R. Benn’s enthralling The Phantom Patrol, which will delight history buffs, art lovers and thrill-seekers alike.
Mystery & SuspenseHistorical Mystery

The Mesmerist

Review by Alice Cary

At one point near the end of Caroline Woods’ lively historical thriller, The Mesmerist, a truly clueless, chauvinistic detective working a murder case announces, “I hardly need the advice of a couple of nosy old crones.” Unbeknownst to him, however, the women he has insulted have already solved the puzzle, and are busy meting out their own form of justice. Set in Minneapolis in 1894, the novel offers a Dickensian plot and cast of characters, prose rife with Victorian details and atmosphere, and even a ghost story, as it exposes the lack of autonomy many women dealt with during the era.

As in her previous novels, The Lunar Housewife (about CIA intervention in 1950s arts and letters) and Fraulein M. (set in 1930s Berlin), Woods transforms real-life aspects of history into an intricately plotted mystery. Her well-drawn, intriguing setting is the Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers, which Woods notes in her author’s note was “surprisingly progressive for its time, respectful and relatively compassionate toward not only unwed mothers, but also madams and ‘sporting women.’ ” Several of these real women appear as characters alongside Woods’ fictitious young residents who live in the institution.

Among the fictional heroines is May, a 24-year-old who is trying to chisel a respectable life for herself while her child is being raised by her brother and sister-in-law in Chicago. May becomes roommates with a new arrival at Bethany House, a mysterious, seemingly mute, pregnant young woman who goes by the name of Faith. The other residents fear that Faith is a mesmerist— someone able to hypnotize others—an ability that was much discussed at the time given the en vogue spiritualism movement. 

Faith and May gradually form an alliance, only to discover a dangerous web of lies surrounding both Faith’s origins and, increasingly, Bethany House itself. As May delves deeper, this amateur detective finds herself in the midst of plenty of action, including stranglings, gunfire and dripping blood.

Woods nicely develops relationships among her characters while ably illustrating the plight of Bethany House’s inhabitants. The Mesmerist does an admirable job of transforming history into mystery, championing the rights of women and illustrating how many of these same battles continue to be fought today.

Caroline Woods exposes the plight of Victorian women and transforms history into an intricately plotted mystery in The Mesmerist.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

Charlotte Vassell’s mysteries are served with a side of ruthless class satire

Feature by Bruce Tierney

★ Death on the Tiber

In 2013, Lindsey Davis, the author of the Marcus Didius Falco mysteries set in ancient Rome, embarked on a new series featuring Falco’s daughter, Flavia Albia, who learned the sleuthing craft at her father’s knee. In the 11 years since, Davis released the same number of well-crafted puzzlers, but her 12th installment, Death on the Tiber, represents a series high mark. As the story opens, the body of a woman is discovered floating in the Tiber River, setting off a gang war the likes of which Rome has not seen in quite some time. The victim was a British woman named Claudia Deiana, who had traveled to Rome in search of the man she believed to be her husband, Gaius Florius Oppicus, a previously exiled Roman mobster who has ostensibly returned to the fold, eager to resume his nefarious activities. Flavia is intrigued by Claudia and the manner of her death, and worms her way into the official inquiry—albeit quite unofficially. There is no dearth of suspects: the anonymous but exceptionally effective assassin from a rival gang; Florius Oppicus’ actual wife in Rome, or someone doing her bidding; and any number of opportunists looking to sow some chaos in the underworld. This is easily the most entertaining of the series to date. Flavia Albia is smart, independent, snarky and brutally funny, while the supporting characters are eminently relatable. Pro Tip: Davis begins the book with a list of characters, major and minor. Don’t gloss over it. It is very helpful for keeping the many characters straight; it’s also absolutely hilarious.

★ The Lost Coast

Clan Kellerman, I gotta say wow, just wow: I cannot recall another family of novelists quite so prolific and uniformly excellent. The Lost Coast, the fourth collaboration between pere et fils Jonathan and Jesse, finds PI Clay Edison conducting a routine investigation into the assets of the recently deceased Marisol Salvador. It does not stay that way long, as each newly unearthed discovery leads Clay deeper into the rabbit hole as he uncovers a series of cons that date back decades and continue, unabated, to the present day. His client bails upon seeing the complexity of the situation—and realizing the unlikelihood of a satisfactory resolution to the case—but Clay is intrigued and carries on pro bono. He journeys north to a mysterious California seaside community called Swann’s Flat, which is anything but flat: It’s borderline inaccessible even by four-wheel-drive. The residents are an odd lot; there are only 13 of them, and all but three or four are trouble waiting to happen. Problem is, neither Clay nor the reader can readily identify who falls into which camp. Clay eventually enlists the aid of Regina Klein, a PI who had once been involved in a peripheral part of the case, and who shares his curiosity. (An aside: I hope we see her again; she is potential series-star material.) Of all the Clay Edison books, this one is easily the most suspenseful—don’t miss it.

★ Murder at the White Palace

One of the more unusual professions for a mystery protagonist has to be running a lonely hearts club, but that is basically the job held by Gwen Bainbridge and Iris Sparks, the amateur but very talented sleuths of Allison Montclair’s Murder at the White Palace. The milieu is postwar London, circa 1947, and the holiday season is coming up. The pair decide to throw a New Year’s Eve party, but the venue situation is grim: All the large halls that survived the Blitz are booked solid. Iris, however, has connections; Her gangster boyfriend, Archie Spelling, owns a nightclub that, with any luck, will be renovated in time for their New Year’s bash. But repairs on a war-damaged wall unearth (or rather, “unbrick”) a dead body. Turns out the dead man was one of a group of suspects in a major crime against the mob, and although it happened before the war, there are those who would still like some answers as to where the swag from that crime ended up.  And others would equally like to keep that answer buried deep in the past. Which faction will outmaneuver the other, and how many people will die in the process? This is a terrific series, one that rockets to the top of my reading list whenever a new installment arrives, and Murder at the White Palace continues that tradition in fine fettle.

★ The In Crowd

Floating bodies seem to be a running theme this month, first in the Tiber, and now in the Thames in Charlotte Vassell’s police procedural thriller The In Crowd. This body, discovered by a rowing team out for their weekend exercise, is that of Lynne Rodgers, a suspect in an unsolved £10,000,000 embezzlement case. Fastidious DI Caius Beauchamp (pronounced the French way, “Bo-shom,” never “Beecham”) gets tapped by a prominent politician to take point on the investigation, although it is unclear what the politician’s motivation may be. Meanwhile, across town, an attractive young milliner named Callie is helping out with preparations for her friend’s high-society wedding. That she will meet Caius will come as no surprise to anyone who ever reads mysteries, but the interplay between the two moves the narrative forward in unexpected ways. Vassell skewers the ruling class and their pretensions exceptionally well, and you will cheer every time one of them receives their comeuppance. There is comedy, there is suspense and the dialogue is witty and incisive. And I didn’t guess the ending, always a plus for me.

Plus, standout new titles from Lindsey Davis, Allison Montclair and Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman in this month's Whodunit column.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

Agony Hill

Review by Lauren Emily Whalen

Summer, 1965: The weather’s hot, the Vietnam draft is ramping up and there’s a new detective in the sleepy town of Bethany, Vermont. But a mysterious fire and the resulting death of a volatile resident will change this New England burg forever. Sarah Stewart Taylor’s Agony Hill kicks off a historical mystery series set in a time with shocking parallels to the present, and features a vibrant cast of characters led by handsome but haunted Detective Franklin Warren.

Warren, a former Bostonian looking for quiet refuge, has barely unpacked when his new assignment with the state police starts with a bang. Up on Agony Hill, Hugh Weber’s barn just burned down—with Weber inside it. As Warren soon discovers, Weber’s public drunkenness and frequent angry letters to the local newspaper made the New York transplant a Bethany outcast. Weber left behind his much younger wife, Sylvie; the mother of his four (soon to be five) children, Sylvie is a sensitive soul that many misperceive as simple. Does she know more about the fire than she’s telling Warren? What about the mysterious man in the woods on the hill, or Weber’s estranged brother, who’s come to town with an ax to grind? And then there’s the personal tragedy Warren still can’t shake; will this affect his ability to solve a death that may or may not have been homicide?

Taylor, who’s been nominated for an Agatha Award and the Dashiell Hammett Prize, is the author of two mystery series: Sweeney St. George, which is set in New England, and Maggie D’arcy, set on Long Island and in Ireland. Agony Hill is an excellent start to her first historical series. Warren is a thoughtful, complex protagonist, experiencing a new chapter in a tiny town rife with secrets. He is surrounded by fascinating folk, including nosy neighbor (and former spy) Alice Bellows and his fresh-faced colleague “Pinky” Goodrich (so nicknamed for his tendency to blush). Taylor’s strong sense of place and community sets Agony Hill apart, and the mystery of Weber’s fiery demise is resolved in a way that’s both satisfying and thought-provoking.

With Agony Hill, Sarah Stewart Taylor kicks off a thoughtful, thought-provoking historical mystery series set in a time with shocking parallels to the present.
Mystery & SuspenseThrillerSuspenseNoirMysteryHistorical MysteryCozy Mystery

The 17 best mysteries & thrillers of 2024—so far

List by the editors of BookPage
STARRED REVIEW
June 17, 2024

The 17 best mysteries & thrillers of 2024—so far

The biggest takeaways from our case notes? The police procedural is enjoying a surprising renaissance, and thrillers of all modes are flourishing.
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The biggest takeaways from our case notes? The police procedural is enjoying a surprising renaissance, and thrillers of all modes are flourishing.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

A Ruse of Shadows

Review by Carole V. Bell

Have you ever wondered about the aftermath of a great detective’s big case or how the damage reverberates among the grieving families of murder mysteries? In Sherry Thomas’s irresistible eighth Lady Sherlock mystery, A Ruse of Shadows, Charlotte Holmes solves several interlocking puzzles, bringing justice to characters who were collateral damage in previous installments in the series.

In the beginning, things look bleak for the inimitable Miss Holmes, the real genius behind the celebrated consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. Charlotte is a person of interest in the murder of Lord Bancroft Ashburton and, as one of the last people to see the victim alive, she faces questioning by two of Scotland Yard’s finest: upright Inspector Treadles and retired Chief Inspector Talbot. It’s a sticky wicket for both Treadles and Charlotte: She is the adored partner of the victim’s brother, Lord Ingram Ashburton (“Ash”), who happens to be Treadles’ friend as well. Charlotte also recently cleared Treadles from a false murder indictment.

As a result of Charlotte’s investigative efforts, the formerly powerful Bancroft had been exiled to Ravensmere, “a cushioned facility for sensitive prisoners,” for selling the Crown’s secrets. And yet, just weeks prior to his death, Bancroft summoned Charlotte and coerced her into tracking down his missing henchman, Mr. Underwood. Multiple murders and twists ensue as friends, foes and loved ones of earlier victims return and plot strands get brilliantly tied together in a case that serves as a culmination of everything that’s occurred in the series so far. 

The twists are creative and compelling; it’s always rewarding to watch Charlotte’s mind work and see how she wrests control from men who would use her. But her emotional journey alongside Ash is the real centerpiece of the novel. Now divorced, Ash is finding his way in his newly unconventional life. While cushioned by his gender, wealth and privilege, he has still become a social anomaly: “the Upper Ten Thousand was not accustomed to recently divorced men at their social functions and his presence had caused some tongues to wag.” He’s taking cues from his unorthodox better half, who is unlikely to ever want to marry, but Ash still worries about his children’s reputations. Yet, this is the happiest readers have ever seen the couple. Their relationship blooms in intimate moments, culminating in the series’ most satisfying scenes ever. With Ash and Charlotte’s flame burning higher and hotter, A Ruse of Shadows is an unmissable high point in a joyfully original historical mystery series with a romantic twist.

A Ruse of Shadows is an unmissable high point of Sherry Thomas’ Lady Sherlock, a joyfully original historical mystery series with a romantic twist.
Mystery & SuspenseThrillerMysteryHistorical Mystery

Walter Mosley is still doing it better than almost anyone else

Feature by Bruce Tierney

The Last Murder at the End of the World

In Stuart Turton’s post-apocalyptic thriller, The Last Murder at the End of the World, the world as we know it came to a cataclysmic end some 90 years back, when a malevolent insect-infested fog engulfed the globe, killing everything in its amorphous path. Only a handful of survivors on a remote Greek island are still alive. The leader of the island is an older (17 decades’ worth of older) woman named Niema, who developed the means to keep the fog at bay, albeit too late for everyone in the world save for the island’s 122 villagers and two of her fellow scientists. And there they sit, living out the peaceful existence that somehow eluded humanity in all the millennia leading up to the end times. But there is trouble in paradise, as the narrator (a disembodied female voice eerily reminiscent of HAL the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey) lets the reader know from early on. The unthinkable is about to happen on the island—a murder, the resolution of which is key to saving the island from the fog, which has begun to penetrate the defenses that Niema set up all those years ago. If you like some sci-fi with your murder, or conversely, some murder with your sci-fi, you have come to the right place. It’s a locked-room mystery expanded to island-sized dimensions, with a narrator who may be putting a finger on the scale that will determine the continuing existence of humankind: Y’all ain’t seen nothin’ like this before.

The Last Note of Warning

Call it the Jazz Age, the Prohibition era, the Roaring ’20s; whatever you call it, it’s Vivian Kelly’s golden ticket to the naughtiness and revelry denied by her strict Irish upbringing before she emigrated to America. Her venue of choice is the Nightingale speak-easy, where she works pouring drinks for the high society clientele. The Last Note of Warning marks Vivian’s third appearance in Katharine Schellman’s popular series, in which atmosphere doubles as a character and murder abounds. This time out, the murder hits rather closer to home: The prime suspect is none other than Vivian Kelly herself, the damning evidence being wealthy businessman Buchanan’s dried blood on her hands. Luckily for her, some well-placed friends come to her rescue, but the best deal they can broker puts Vivian in the unenviable position of having to serve up the real killer within seven days’ time. The mystery grows, um, mysteriouser when Vivian starts to suspect that someone intentionally framed her for Buchanan’s death. And heaven knows there is no shortage of shady types hanging around the Nightingale. The characters are colorful, the story is deliciously well-spun and the ambiance will make you wish that you too had been a-struttin’ in the Jazz Age.

★ When We Were Silent

Auspicious debut alert: Fiona McPhillips’ When We Were Silent is the strongest first novel I have read in ages, right up there with Attica Locke’s Black Water Rising, my go-to example of first-timer excellence. If you attend Dublin’s prestigious Highfield Manor private school, the first thing you learn is “What happens at Highfield stays at Highfield,” even if it involves episodes that border on the unspeakable. Louise Manson is haunted by one such episode, even though it’s been nearly 40 years since her time at the school. By most measures, she didn’t really belong at Highfield. She was working class, inhabiting the same hallowed halls as the elite by virtue of a scholarship, not old money and familial connections. And she was not there for the prestige: She was there to exact revenge for her best friend’s suicide and to take down those she deemed responsible. Not to give away anything here, but this endeavor did not go too well. Spectacularly badly, in fact, and decades later Louise is still dealing with the fallout. But now in the modern day, thanks in part to that unwritten Highfield code of silence, she may have a second chance at retribution—or she may face fallout that far surpasses that first time around. When We Were Silent is not always a comfortable read, but you didn’t come here for comfortable, did you?

Farewell, Amethystine

Easy Rawlins is 50?? How the hell did that happen? When we think of him, we think of a young Denzel Washington from the film Devil in a Blue Dress, adapted from the book that introduced Walter Mosley’s iconic private investigator to the world way back in 1990. But hey, even Denzel is past 50 now. As Farewell, Amethystine opens, the 50-year-old Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins of 1970 is, by comparison to his younger days at least, less the firebrand and more the respectable businessman. That said, when a gorgeous young Black woman with a sad story enters his office, an event that has taken place with some regularity over the years, he can still be coaxed into action, and it is a fair bet that he will acquit himself much as he did in his younger days. Amethystine Stoller is missing one husband, and she appears convinced that Easy Rawlins is the go-to guy to find him. Which, of course, he does in short order, but the husband is sadly quite dead. Normally, Easy would tap his cop buddy, Melvin Suggs, to give him a hand with the parts of an investigation that only the police have access to. But at the moment, Suggs is in the wind with problems of his own. Do those problems include another beautiful woman? Well, yes. And will those disparate story lines have some points of connection? Seems likely. And will Mosley wrap it all up better than pretty much anyone else in the field? A resounding yes on that.

The iconic author’s latest Easy Rawlins mystery is another winner, plus our mystery columnist crowns the best new thriller writer since Attica Locke.

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