Remarkable protagonists and surprising settings make this collection of suspenseful stories stand out. 

★ The Shooting at Château Rock

Martin Walker’s wildly popular Bruno, Chief of Police series chronicles the adventures of Benoît “Bruno” Courrèges, chief of police of the fictional town of St. Denis in the Périgord region of southwestern France. Bruno loves horseback riding, basset hounds, truffles, fine wines, gourmet cooking, rugby and beautiful women, not necessarily in that order. In The Shooting at Château Rock, the affable but diligent policeman finds himself on the trail of some pretty nasty killers who are possibly connected to the Putin administration in Russia. Two parallel but interconnected real estate deals anchor the plot, one of them centered on a retirement village that is inexplicably bleeding thousands of euros every month, the other involving the palatial home of a former rock star whose son is enamored of a young Russian flautist with more than a passing connection to the aforementioned killers. Those who have read this column for a while know that Martin Walker’s books get reviewed often. This is because: a) they are consistently excellent; b) I really want to know Bruno, to eat at his dinner table with his charming and entertaining guests, to play fetch with his basset hound, Balzac; and c) I really want to be Bruno.

The Fire Thief

When the body of a teenage boy turns up on a lava beach in Maui, the initial assumption is that he had a surfing accident. That assumption is laid to rest after a shark’s tooth is discovered in the boy’s skull. It is quickly determined that the tooth is not there as a result of bad dental hygiene on the part of a sea predator. The boy was bludgeoned to death by an ancient Hawaiian war club, or a modern reproduction thereof, lined with shark’s teeth at the business end. The arrival of Detective Kali Ma¯hoe on the scene foreshadows one of the most compelling meldings of mystery and mythology since Tony Hillerman first put pen to paper in the Leaphorn and Chee series. As sightings of a legendary and malevolent faceless spirit mount, Kali must question her own long-held beliefs while remaining rooted in modern police procedures. Debra Bokur’s page-turning debut novel, The Fire Thief, covers all the bases I need in a mystery: individualistic lead, check; Hercule Poirot-level detection skills, check; plot-driven narrative that does not neglect other stylistic elements, check. It earns bonus points for depicting a lovely palm-ringed island destination, warts and all (high crime rate, the endless enmity of the haves and the have-nots). Even paradise has a seamy underbelly.

Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery

The summer of 1967 was the Summer of Love. If you were straight, it was a year promising unfettered experiences of the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll variety. If you were gay, however, you could be fired or evicted (or worse) if outed. The clubs you visited would routinely get raided. And so it comes to pass that lesbian ex-CIA agent Vera Kelly loses her lover and her job on the very same day. She isn’t going to get any sort of job reference, so after evaluating her highly particular skill set, she opts to open a private investigation agency in Rosalie Knecht’s second Vera Kelly book, Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery. Most callers assume Vera is the secretary; when they find out she is the lead (and sole) investigator, they hang up. But just as her financial situation is getting dire, she lands a client—a Dominican couple hoping to track down their missing nephew, the scion of a prominent Santo Domingo family. Vera bounces between the Big Apple and the Caribbean in search of answers, always staying one step ahead of the bad guys. And maybe, if she is lucky, she will save the life of a desperately ill child who has, up to now, been a pawn in a deadly political chess game. Knecht’s stylish mystery is impossible to put down and just begging for a third installment.

What You Don’t See

Cass Raines was once one of the few African American women on the Chicago police force, before she hung out her shingle as a private investigator. In Tracy Clark’s latest mystery, What You Don’t See, the take-no-guff PI finds herself serving as bodyguard/babysitter to Vonda Allen, a spoiled and decidedly annoying magazine publisher who has been receiving graphic death threats. When Cass’ assignment partner, Ben Mickerson, is badly slashed by a mystery assailant while accompanying Vonda to a book signing, Cass must delve into the personal history of her client in a frantic endeavor to ferret out a killer before they can strike again. Complicating matters is the fact that Vonda displays no desire whatsoever to help out; it would appear that whatever secrets she is guarding are more important to her than whatever danger she may be in. Subplots abound, as they do in real life, and Clark works them in smoothly, lending interesting, everyday challenges to a narrative that already has no shortage of excitement.

A sign-off to a beloved series, a not-so-accidental death and a sleuth who just might be the next Jack Reacher. 

★ The Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot

The latest Dr. Siri book by Colin Cotterill, The Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot, is the last in a quirky, fiendishly clever series that has long been one of my absolute favorites. It’s 1981, and Siri Paiboun, the former national coroner of Laos, has received a mysterious gift: the diary of a Japanese kamikaze pilot who was stationed with occupation forces in Laos during World War II. The diary is fascinating for many reasons, not least of which is the officer’s evident descent into madness as the journal unfolds. Written half in Lao and half in Japanese, the diary ends abruptly and is missing a half-­dozen pages—pages that may hold the key to the location of a gold fortune that mysteriously went AWOL as the Japanese beat their retreat from Southeast Asia. Furthering the intrigue, the notebook’s anonymous donor attached a note: “Dr. Siri, we need your help most urgently.” Although Siri, at his advanced age, is relatively unmotivated by hidden treasure, he and his wife, Madame Daeng, cannot resist a good mystery. And folks, neither can I. If this is indeed the final volume of the Siri series, he and Cotterill leave it on a high note. You cannot ask for more out of life than that.

Once You Go This Far

At first glance, Columbus, Ohio, doesn’t seem a likely candidate for the epicenter of private investigations, but there are certainly enough cases to keep PI Roxane Weary busy, as evidenced by Kristen Lepionka’s fourth novel about her, Once You Go This Far. The book starts with what appears to be an accident: A woman suffers an unfortunate, fatal fall from a park trail, and Roxane discovers the body during a morning hike. The daughter of the deceased woman thinks it was no accident and strongly suspects the victim’s ex-husband of having given his ex-wife the heave-ho in more ways than one. And who better to investigate than Roxane Weary, PI? It doesn’t take her long to find out that the ex is a real piece of work (not my first choice of descriptors, but hey, this is a family publication). That doesn’t necessarily make him a killer, however. Further muddying the waters is the victim’s connection to a cultish church, or perhaps a churchish cult, which in either case is a clear and present danger to both the resolution of the case and perhaps the safety of anyone who gets a bit too close to the group’s secrets. Read this one and see if it doesn’t send you scurrying in search of the previous three books in Lepionka’s series.

The Shadows

The Shadows is the second in a series by British author Alex North, set in the small (and fictional) English town of Featherbank, which was rocked by a bloody murder 25 years back and is now the scene of what may well be a copycat killing. Or worse, perhaps the new homicide marks the return of the original killer, who was never apprehended nor, for that matter, conclusively identified (although there was little doubt in anyone’s mind as to who the responsible party was). Paul Adams was friends with both the key suspect, Charlie Crabtree, and the killer’s victim. He has just made his way back to Featherbank to take care of his ailing mother, whom he has not seen in the intervening years. Although she is suffering from dementia, Paul’s mother is clearly frightened out of her wits about something, and her fear quickly becomes contagious. There are elements of the supernatural, or at least the not conventionally explainable, in the book, but more in the manner of John Connolly or T. Jefferson Parker than of, say, Stephen King. But it’s still probably not a good idea for late-night reading in a house with creaky doors. . . .

A Dangerous Breed

When Van Shaw receives a reunion invitation addressed to his dead mother, he hardly realizes it will be his stepping-off point to a whole new existence. Glen Erik Hamilton’s critically acclaimed suspense series returns with A Dangerous Breed. Van’s mother, Moira, lived a short but troubled life, leaving her young son to be raised by his stern yet criminally inclined grandfather. This upbringing put young Van in touch with some decidedly unsavory characters, a number of whom he nowadays counts as his closest friends. While doing a bit of sleuthing into his mom’s past, he stumbles onto information that hints at his father’s identity; it seems he could be a man well known in crime circles as someone not to be trifled with. Meanwhile, courtesy of one of his ne’er-do-well friends, Van is drawn into an extortion scheme that leaves him forced to choose between committing an act of domestic terrorism or watching several of his closest friends die slow and agonizing deaths. In best mystery fashion, nothing is quite what it seems, and as our hero begins to make some connections, he gets closer to an understanding that will place him directly in the crosshairs. If you’re a Jack Reacher fan, you’ll love Van Shaw. 

The phrase “summer thriller” tends to conjure up a specific sort of book, but our favorites for the season run the gamut from meditative mysteries to relentless page turners.

★ The Girl From Widow Hills

Killer line: “My head swam in a sudden rush of understanding. I moved the branches of the bushes aside to be sure: the shape of a torso; arms; the back of a head.”

Arden Maynor was sleepwalking when a flash flood swept her away. The country breathed a sigh of relief when the 6-year-old was found—and on every anniversary of that day, the media’s spotlight has returned to Arden and her mother. In Megan Miranda’s The Girl From Widow Hills, we get to know the Arden of two decades later. Now 26, she goes by Olivia Wells and lives in North Carolina. She’s beginning to feel secure in her life’s rhythms, but one horrible night, she sleepwalks and awakens with a bloodied body at her feet. Is the looming 20th anniversary stirring up tamped-down trauma? Or is someone from the past trying to torment her anew? Step by suspenseful step, Miranda lays a path for readers to follow as Olivia tries to separate dreams and reality, fear and fact, with a tenacious local detective not far behind. The Girl From Widow Hills is a creepy, compelling portrait of a life forever warped by unwanted fame—a timely theme in this era of internet celebrity and the fall from grace that often follows.

—Linda M. Castellitto

The Mountains Wild

Killer line: “When I turned around, I could no longer see the road. We were all alone in the woods.”

Sarah Stewart Taylor’s simmering The Mountains Wild is the first entry in a new series featuring homicide detective Maggie D’arcy. A divorced mother living on Long Island, New York, Maggie felt called to become a detective after her cousin, Erin, vanished in the woods of Wicklow, Ireland, in the 1990s. At the age of 23, Maggie traveled there to look for Erin, but neither she nor the Irish Guards, the national police, could locate her. After Erin’s scarf is found by investigators searching for a different woman, Maggie returns to Ireland to do some sleuthing, reentering a maze of painful memories. Taylor moves nimbly through the decades, flashing back to Maggie’s earlier trip to Ireland and providing glimpses of her friendship with Erin. Featuring a memorable cast that includes cheeky Irish Guards, sinister suspects and a not-to-be-messed-with female lead, The Mountains Wild makes for perfect summer reading. Maggie is a first-class protagonist—an ace investigator and appealing everywoman with smarts and heart. Suspense fans are sure to welcome her to the crime scene.

—Julie Hale

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Sarah Stewart Taylor reveals the haunting events that inspired her debut novel.

Out of Time

For fans of: Thrillers by David Baldacci or James Patterson and ripping through the pages of a good FBI search.

Author and screenwriter David Klass turns the serial killer mythos on its head in his new novel, Out of Time, in which the killer is intent on saving humankind through his inconceivable deeds. The Green Man, so dubbed by the media and the FBI pursuing him, doesn’t kill for the sake of some insatiable, perverse sexual desire but out of an acute calling to save the environment. His terrorist acts are meant to call attention to climate change and heighten awareness of its adverse effects. But FBI data analyst Tom Smith—not exactly a memorable name, he admits, adding, “I didn’t choose it”—and a task force of 300 FBI agents only see a killer who must be stopped. So begins a fast-paced game of cat and mouse as Smith zeros in on the Green Man’s identity and tries to stop him before more lives are lost. Klass writes with terse, straightforward prose, alternating between Smith’s and the Green Man’s points of view to allow readers a close-up perspective of each character’s motivations and desires. The fun is in the thrill of the chase, and in that respect Klass delivers.

—G. Robert Frazier

★ The Mist

Killer line: “ ‘Oh, the nights here are something else,’ Erla said quietly. . . . ‘I hope you’re not afraid of the dark.’ ”

The Mist is the third and final book in Ragnar Jónasson’s electrifying Hidden Iceland series. These labyrinthine murder mysteries, set against the bleak backdrop of Iceland, feature Hulda Hermannsdóttir, detective inspector with the Reykjavík Police Department. It’s Christmas in 1987, and Erla and Einar Einarsson are preparing for the holiday. In their region of Iceland, winter days don’t begin to brighten until 11 a.m., brutal blizzards are a regular occurrence, and skiing is easier than walking or driving. In the midst of a pummeling snowstorm, a stranger named Leó shows up at the farm looking for shelter. Leó claims to have gotten lost during a hunting trip with friends, but Erla doesn’t believe his story. She’s frightened of him from the start, and her fears worsen after the electricity goes out, leaving the farmhouse in darkness. Two months later, Hulda is asked to look into a pair of murders that occurred at the farm. Jónasson turns up the tension to a nearly unendurable degree as the novel unfolds. His complete design isn’t revealed until late in the book, when the story’s multiple threads coalesce in a surprising conclusion. Masterfully plotted and paced, The Mist is atmospheric, haunting and not for the faint of heart.

—Julie Hale

 A Royal Affair

For fans of: Keeping calm and carrying on, drinking tea with a bit of fortification and maintaining a stiff upper lip until such time as a therapist can be seen.

In their second adventure, Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge would like nothing more than to get back to running their business, The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. But in Allison Montclair’s A Royal Affair, their reputation as crime fighters precedes them, so in addition to pairing off various lonely hearts, they’re also working for Lady Matheson, who herself works for the queen. Discretion is required as Gwen and Iris search for a cache of letters that could derail Princess Elizabeth’s engagement, and they quickly realize this is information that people will kill for. The balance Montclair strikes between humor and hard truths is arresting. Postwar England has raucous parties and a lot of can-do spirit, but the entire nation is still reeling—and rationing, for that matter. (Can a birthday party be any fun if the cake has “tooth powder frosting”?) Have faith, though: There’s not much that can stop this pair, and the climactic scene laying out the whodunit (and why) is like a maraschino cherry in a complex cocktail. Here’s to the return of these formidable women, and to many more chances to enjoy their company.

—Heather Seggel

★ The Distant Dead

Killer line: “It takes longer than you might think, for a man to burn.”

The small town of Lovelock, Nevada, is nestled in brush-dotted hills that crouch under unending blue sky—an eerie desert landscape that sets a tone of creeping dread in Heather Young’s The Distant Dead. Sixth grader Sal Prentiss goes to the fire station to report that he’s found a burned body while, in another part of town, social studies teacher Nora Wheaton is wondering why her colleague Adam Merkel hasn’t shown up to work. He’s a math teacher, and it’s Pi Day; surely he wouldn’t miss the opportunity to have math-­centric fun with his class? No one else seems very concerned, as the enigmatic Adam has always kept to himself and doesn’t engage in gossip, but Nora can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong. Alas, her instincts are validated when she learns that Adam is the victim Sal found. Young takes the reader back and forth in time as she unfurls the characters’ relationships and life paths, with all their secrets and hopes and disappointments. The suspense is slow and steady in this meditative, artistic take on the murder mystery. Young’s language is poetic, and her contemplation of the corrosiveness of suppressed emotion is both sympathetic and impatient in this unusual, compelling portrait of a people and a place.

—Linda M. Castellitto

Blacktop Wasteland

For fans of: Bullitt, The Fast and the Furious and gritty Elmore Leonard-style noir.

Beauregard “Bug” Montage thought he was out—out of the rackets and the crimes that dominated his early life. He opened his own garage, settled down with a loving wife and had several children. But the past and the demands of the present have a way of catching up with people. In Bug’s case, mounting expenses leave him with nowhere else to turn. So, when an old associate, Ronnie, approaches him about a job that could set everything right, Bug reluctantly agrees. Author S.A. Cosby quickly establishes Bug’s financial burdens and emotional dilemma in his new novel, Blacktop Wasteland and never lets up on the gas. The result is a high-­octane, white-­knuckle thriller that will have readers whipping through the pages at breakneck speed. Needless to say, not everything goes to plan. Bug and Ronnie’s “simple” heist of a jewelry store goes horribly awry in more ways than one. Bug’s skills as a wheelman—and the Plymouth Duster he inherited from his father—enable him and his crew to get away with their lives, but it’s not enough to keep greed, betrayal and vengeance from closing in at every turn. Cosby’s tightfisted prose fuels this story with heart-pumping (and often brutal) action that begs to be adapted for the big screen but never loses its compassionate edge.

—G. Robert Frazier

The latest from Louise Penny heads up our list of September's most thrilling suspense releases.

★All the Devils Are Here

Louise Penny’s latest novel featuring Québec homicide inspector Armand Gamache, All the Devils Are Here, takes place in Paris, the City of Light, where he’s awaiting the birth of his granddaughter. On the agenda are reunions with his son, Daniel; daughter, Annie; Annie’s husband, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, once Gamache’s second-in-command; and Stephen Horowitz, Gamache’s nonagenarian godfather, a billionaire activist who has made a lot of enemies over the years. One of those enemies turns up early in the story, deliberately running the elderly man down at a Paris crosswalk as Stephen’s friends watch in horror. Gamache and Beauvoir investigate the attempted murder, which local authorities are writing off as a simple hit-and-run, and there is much more afoot than meets the eye (please pardon my mixed metaphor). Beauvoir’s new corporate job seems to have been offered to him as a result of intervention by Stephen, and Daniel has a potentially shaky investment linked to a man who now lies dead on the floor of Stephen’s Paris pied-à-terre. Being Gamache and Beauvoir, they persist and prevail, in a sense, but not without taking some very serious hits along the way. Penny’s books are always a cause for celebration, and this one is superb in every regard.

The Red Horse

During World War II, soldiers who experienced “shell shock” (the condition we now call PTSD) were often remanded to mental hospitals for treatment. James R. Benn’s new Billy Boyle novel, The Red Horse, proves that rehabilitation was not always the featured item on the menu at such institutions. After a particularly harrowing set of adventures (chronicled in 2019’s When Hell Struck Twelve), Billy and his friend Kaz have been sidelined in the Saint Albans Convalescent Hospital: Billy with uncontrollable shaking and daytime nightmares, and Kaz with a faulty heart valve. The pair jumps into the fray once again when Billy witnesses what appears to be a murder—two men in the clock tower engaging in some sort of argument or struggle, culminating in the death plunge of one and the disappearance of the other. A couple of additional homicides erase any lingering doubts Billy may have had about whether the first was an accident or deliberate. But there are forces at play in Saint Albans that seek to interfere with his mission, particularly when he happens upon clues that involve an enigmatic logo of a red horse. As is always the case with Benn’s books, the painstaking research is evident, the story crackles with life, and the overlay of fictional characters onto very real historical events is seamless. If you are new to the series, welcome; there are 14 more to keep you busy after you finish this one.

The Killings at Kingfisher Hill

Author Sophie Hannah made a name for herself with clever, dark and intricately plotted standalone thrillers. Then in 2014, she was authorized to pen a series of novels featuring Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective made famous by Dame Agatha Christie. It is no small undertaking to follow in the footsteps of Christie, but Hannah nails it in her latest, The Killings at Kingfisher Hill. The tone is pitch-perfect, the mystery aspect is as convoluted as anything ever crafted by Hannah’s predecessor, there are more red herrings than you would find at a Swedish breakfast buffet, and the diminutive mustachioed Belgian detective has never been cannier. This time around, Poirot is summoned to an English estate to look into the murder of Frank Devonport, a country gentleman. The alleged killer (Helen, fiancée of Frank’s brother, Richard) has confessed, but there is considerable doubt in the mind of her betrothed regarding her guilt. She will be hanged soon if no exculpatory evidence is unearthed. Who better to have on the case than Poirot, right? I am rarely a fan of series reboots, but Hannah’s work is first-rate. Poirot lives.

One by One

Speaking of Christie, the legendary writer was known for her “locked-room” mysteries, a subgenre of suspense fiction in which the perpetrator could not have entered or exited the crime scene without detection, and yet somehow a crime was committed. Ruth Ware’s latest work, One by One, updates this device. There’s no stodgy English manor house here but rather a gorgeous, luxurious and very isolated chalet in the French Alps playing host to a millennial corporate retreat. The merrymakers are the founders and employees of emerging social media platform Snoop, an application that allows you to track the digital music listening preferences of your favorite celebrities and your circle of friends, with the caveat that they can track yours as well. When one of the group’s members goes missing after an afternoon of skiing, a snowstorm and avalanche do double duty in isolating the already remote chalet—and then the guests start dying, one by one. Read this back to back with Christie’s And Then There Were None, and you will witness the evolution of a literary form over the space of eight decades as Ware proves she’s more than deserving of all those comparisons to the Queen of Crime.

Get lost in a sensational German thriller, an Agatha Christie-esque historical mystery and more in October's best mysteries.

The Orphan’s Guilt

John Rust, by all accounts an amiable lush, has just been stopped (yet again) for erratic driving. This could be the ticket that costs him his driver’s license, so he hires a shrewd defense attorney. The defense is centered on extenuating circumstances, in that the defendant’s brother, who never recovered from a brain injury suffered in childhood, has just died. Rust was his brother’s only caregiver and, save for his battle with the bottle, is considered to be a saint by all who know him. The defense of a DUI might not seem like the sort of storyline that would engage a reader for several hundred pages. No worries on that count, though, because Archer Mayor’s The Orphan’s Guilt, the 31st installment in the popular series featuring Vermont homicide investigator Joe Gunther, explodes into an investigation of a decades-old corporate scam in which millions of dollars disappeared; the unearthing of a cold case of child abuse with modern-day ramifications; and a murder or two for good measure. All avid mystery readers know the old adage “follow the money.” You’ll need to be on your toes to follow the money this time, and what it leads to is downright lethal.

A Pretty Deceit

Anna Lee Huber’s fourth mystery featuring intrepid English intelligence agent Verity Kent, A Pretty Deceit, opens near a World War I battlefield in Bailleul, France. Still numb from the news of her husband’s death in combat, Verity delivers a message to a field commander and, moments later, the command post is hit by a mortar shell and blown to bits. In the next scene, she is blithely motoring in the Wiltshire countryside a year and a half later, riding shotgun in a new Pierce Arrow roadster expertly driven by her husband. Wait a minute. Um, didn’t he die? Turns out not; communications were not always accurate in those times, and thanks to that, Verity has a new lease on life. Her contentment will not last long, though. While visiting a titled auntie who has fallen on postwar hard times, Verity finds herself on hand for the immediate aftermath of what may be a homicide on the estate grounds. Combine that with priceless heirlooms gone missing, a disappeared staff and a ghost sighting or two, and you have the makings of a historical mystery to delight fans of Agatha Christie or Daphne du Maurier. 

Back Bay Blues

The first time readers met Andy Roark, in Peter Colt’s 1982-set noir thriller The Off-Islander, he was a cop. Not anymore. He is also no longer a soldier deployed to Vietnam, although he carries strong influences from both professions into his new gig as a private investigator. Three years have gone by since the events chronicled in The Off-Islander, and now Andy returns for his sophomore appearance in Back Bay Blues. Despite the passage of time, his connection to Vietnam has only grown stronger. He has befriended Vietnamese refugees in Boston who fled their country by sea after the fall of the South Vietnamese government. So it is natural for him to enter into the investigation of the murder of a Vietnamese journalist, Hieu, whose death has been dismissed by police as a mugging gone wrong. But Hieu’s associates strongly suspect that he was on the verge of exposing the criminal leanings of the powerful anti-Communist group known simply as the Committee, a move that is not (and in Hieu’s case, was not) conducive to long life. As Andy becomes more and more drawn into the case, he demonstrates to both himself and the reader that although you can take the man out of Vietnam, you cannot take Vietnam out of the man.

★ Dear Child

Fourteen years ago, Munich college student Lena Beck disappeared. Now she has apparently been found, having escaped the newly deceased madman who kept her under lock and key in a remote cabin along the Czech border. When her overjoyed father meets her at the hospital, however, he is shocked to discover that this woman is not his Lena. The woman’s young daughter who escaped the woods with her, however, is a dead ringer for Lena, and a hastily administered DNA test confirms that the child is indeed Lena’s daughter. So what happened to Lena? The investigation in Romy Hausmann’s debut thriller, Dear Child, which is already a sensation in her native Germany, moves along in fits and starts, jumping between the perspectives of the young girl, Hannah; the grieving father, Matthias; and the mysterious woman called Lena, who is not the Lena of happy endings, at least not for the Beck family. And the one person who could tie up these disparate and conflicting narratives is, well, dead on the cabin’s living room floor, his head bashed in by a snow globe. I didn’t even try to figure out whodunit. I just kept turning pages, wondering what the hell was going to happen until I had finished the book in one sitting, in the small-numbered hours of the late night.