I cannot think of a mystery protagonist who harbors more secrets or confronts more ethical challenges than Detective Catrina “Cat” Kinsella. In her first adventure, Sweet Little Lies, Cat investigated a case in which her father figured prominently and perhaps not entirely innocently. Cat knows the whole story now, but she has been remarkably stingy about sharing the details with anyone, least of all her superiors at the London Metropolitan Police. In Caz Frear’s sequel, Stone Cold Heart, the parallels to Cat’s previous case are unmistakable: a charismatic yet somehow sinister suspect; a pair of killings years apart with similarities worth noting; and a cast comprised of members of an extraordinarily dysfunctional family, each with ample reason to shift blame onto the unlikable suspect. As Cat delves into the investigation, she begins to believe that the suspect may be the victim of an elaborate frame. On the other hand, said suspect is a seriously bad guy (even if not a murderer), so why should she exercise extreme measures to release this predator into the wild again? You will guess who did it, but you will be wrong.

“Do not use the word gripping,” I admonish myself when writing this column each month. This is not a directive I arrived at easily, having already (ab)used that word 12,587 times before, give or take. I’m going to bring it out of retirement this month, however, for Aoife Clifford’s Second Sight, which is indeed—wait for it—gripping. Lawyer Eliza Carmody represents what the townspeople of Kinsale, Australia, consider to be the wrong side of a class-action suit against an electric company they deem responsible for starting a fatal bushfire. Complicating matters, Eliza is a Kinsale hometown girl, thus fully rendering her persona non grata with a broad swath of the population. When the police unearth a cache of human bones near a historic homestead called the Castle, Eliza cannot help but remember the disappearance of her best friend, still unsolved, shortly after a party at the Castle more than two decades ago. Now is as good a time as any to relaunch the investigation. Second Sight is a thematically rich study in fragile memories and outright duplicity. And yes, it is utterly gripping.

Isaiah Coleridge may have gone legit as a private investigator, but his past life as a mob enforcer dies hard. When he’s hired to investigate a killing that mimics a prior hit, his former bosses expect results—and failure to please them is not an option. Coleridge digs in, but what he finds is not typical mafia tit-for-tat but something much darker. Black Mountain is a thriller that gets uncomfortably close to pure evil and lets you breathe in the stench.

Laird Barron (Blood Standard) doesn’t spare his half-Maori hero much. The story opens with Coleridge taking a bullet while defending himself against a pair of thugs, but he can be tender if guarded with his girlfriend and her young son. When Coleridge follows the trail of what turns out to be a serial killer, it leads him into a labyrinthine world of sophisticated weapons that can debilitate with sound or light, though they’re being used by someone who is also masterful with a knife.

The ugliness of the human condition contrasts with the gorgeous Hudson Valley, and Coleridge’s country shack is a refuge from the people who so often cross his path. His office, though, is a noir gem straight out of Hammett or Chandler, right down to the smoky glass in the door, and he has run-ins with a showgirl cut from similar cloth. After a harrowing showdown as the chase concludes, there’s a scene so tender it nearly induced whiplash. For all the darkness in Black Mountain, it has a hero who burns bright.

Flora Dane, the tough-as-nails survivor of a traumatic kidnapping, is back in Never Tell, the twisty new thriller from the always reliable Lisa Gardner.

For the unfamiliar, Flora leapt into readers’ hearts in Gardner’s 2016 bestseller, Find Her. In Never Tell, Flora, though still haunted by the abuse she endured while captive to Jacob Ness for 472 days, is working as a confidential informant for the Boston Police Department. But when businessman Conrad Carter is shot dead at the alleged hands of his wife, Evie, Flora’s past trauma comes racing back. Flora dimly recalls having met Conrad once before, in the company of her previous tormentor. But how Conrad and Jacob were connected—and what, if any, role Conrad had in her abduction—remains a mystery.

Gardner gives plenty for readers to ponder as Flora’s ordeal is only part of the myriad mysteries and surprises in store in her latest novel. There’s also Evie to consider—turns out, she’s an enigma as well. Over a decade ago, the now-pregnant teacher was implicated in the shooting death of her father. Evie escaped prosecution as the death was ruled accidental, but she’s an even stronger suspect in her husband’s shooting. Evie, though, contends she found Conrad shot in the office of their suburban home and only shot Conrad’s laptop computer after seeing a collection of sordid pictures he kept on it.

Gardner’s favorite recurring police detective, D.D. Warren, who previously investigated Evie’s father’s death, has a difficult time believing her innocence this time. It’s only after Flora reveals her possible connection to Conrad that D.D. begins to suspect there may be something more lurking behind both shootings and Flora’s kidnapping.

Told in emotionally gripping chapters from each character’s perspective, Never Tell is layered with the type of mystery, surprise and suspense that Gardner is rightfully acclaimed for.