Instagram Facebook X-twitter Linkedin
Science Fiction & FantasyRomanceNonfictionMystery & SuspenseFictionChildren's & YAYA FictionYASuspenseSocial ScienceScience FictionPopular FictionPop CulturePicture BookParanormal RomanceMemoirLiterary FictionChildren'sArts & Culture

Best Hispanic and Latinx titles of 2024 (so far)

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 to October 15) by reading one of these excellent books by Hispanic and Latinx authors.
Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 to October 15) by reading one of these excellent books by Hispanic and Latinx authors.
Previous
Next

Sign Up

Get the latest ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

All Mystery Coverage

Filter by genre
Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Nordic Noir

Review by Bruce Tierney

When The Keeper of Lost Causes hit stands in the U.K.—where it was titled Mercy—the London Times called author Jussi Adler-Olsen “the new ‘it’ boy of Nordic Noir.” (I wish I had said that. . . .) Other reviewers threw around adjectives like “gripping,” “impressive” and “atmospheric.” Let me add a few more: “chilling,” “unsettling” and “downright disturbing.” When cranky detective Carl Morck returns to work after an assignment that went deadly wrong—in part thanks to him—the last thing he expects is a promotion. To his surprise, he is put in charge of Department Q, the cold-case unit of the Copenhagen police department. One such case is the disappearance of Merete Lynggard, once a leading light in the Social Democrats, missing for five years and presumed dead. But she is not dead—far from it. Can Morck find her, and perhaps find a morsel of redemption in the process? All you fans of Scandinavian mysteries (in my opinion some of the finest suspense novels in contemporary fiction): Be sure to grab this book now that it’s on sale in the U.S. You’ll thank me.
 

When The Keeper of Lost Causes hit stands in the U.K.—where it was titled Mercy—the London Times called author Jussi Adler-Olsen “the new ‘it’ boy of Nordic Noir.” (I wish I had said that. . . .) Other reviewers threw around adjectives like “gripping,” “impressive” and “atmospheric.” Let me add a few more: “chilling,” “unsettling” and “downright disturbing.” […]
Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Pelecanos new novel

Review by Bruce Tierney

Fans new and old will celebrate George Pelecanos’ return to the ring with his latest novel, The Cut. A new Pelecanos hero has been brought into the fold, one Spero Lucas, a specialist in retrieving items deemed irretrievable by legal means. Lucas is an Iraq vet, world-weary at a young age and with a pragmatist’s view of the fine line of legality—a line he steps over with some regularity. Hired by an inmate to recover several packages of marijuana that have mysteriously gone missing, Lucas discovers that bent cops are in on the swiping of the drugs, not to mention the redistribution thereof. It goes without saying that they will pull out all the stops to keep Lucas at bay—murder included. You may want to keep a jargon dictionary on hand, as Pelecanos has perhaps the best ear in the business for contemporary street lingo, and he passes it on to the reader without editorial commentary. His writing is masterful, and The Cut deserves a place among his best work, which, as his legions of readers well know, is high praise indeed.

Fans new and old will celebrate George Pelecanos’ return to the ring with his latest novel, The Cut. A new Pelecanos hero has been brought into the fold, one Spero Lucas, a specialist in retrieving items deemed irretrievable by legal means. Lucas is an Iraq vet, world-weary at a young age and with a pragmatist’s […]
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Murder and mayhem around the globe

Review by Bruce Tierney

We have another cross-global collection this month, with mysteries from the U.S., Denmark, Canada and even Botswana! First up is Death of the Mantis, number three in the series featuring portly policeman David “Kubu” Bengu. Kubu’s debut adventure, A Carrion Death, earned author Michael Stanley (a pen name for two authors, Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip) the nod as our Top Pick a couple of years back. Both authors are old Africa hands, and their experience with the land and its people permeates every paragraph. This time out, Kubu is solicited by an old school chum to look into a murder case involving Bushmen, by nature a peace-loving group of folks quite disinclined to take a human life. Although Kubu is able to cast reasonable doubt regarding the guilt of the Bushmen, he decides that the case merits his continued participation, a choice that will put him, his staff and even his family in grave peril—and from a most unexpected source. Released as a trade paperback with a list price of only $14.99, Death of the Mantis is, without a doubt, Bargain Mystery of the Month!

We have another cross-global collection this month, with mysteries from the U.S., Denmark, Canada and even Botswana! First up is Death of the Mantis, number three in the series featuring portly policeman David “Kubu” Bengu. Kubu’s debut adventure, A Carrion Death, earned author Michael Stanley (a pen name for two authors, Michael Sears and Stanley […]
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Sorry

Review by Bruce Tierney

If there is a mystery premise more original than Zoran Drvenkar’s Sorry—sorry, I cannot bring it to mind. Four German 20-something borderline losers come up with an idea for a business venture: If you have done somebody wrong, and you are too timid, too busy or too removed from the situation to effectively apologize, you can hire their agency to do it for you. The name of the agency: Sorry. They will charge you an exorbitant fee, and they will make amends on your behalf. Their clients include businesses, the lovelorn and, most recently, a brutal killer who nailed his victim to a wall with long spikes through her hands and forehead, leaving the mess for the Sorry personnel to clean up. The killer has done his homework: He knows all of the skeletons in the Sorry closets, and he is quite confident that he can manipulate the staff into doing his bidding—repeatedly. Sorry changes perspective from chapter to chapter, giving the reader unusual first-person insight into the characters and their motivations, with a wild card outsider perspective unrevealed until the very end. Dark, demented, radical and grotesquely humorous, Sorry upends every convention of modern fiction craft, and brilliantly. Indeed, Sorry might well be the Mystery of the Year!

 

If there is a mystery premise more original than Zoran Drvenkar’s Sorry—sorry, I cannot bring it to mind. Four German 20-something borderline losers come up with an idea for a business venture: If you have done somebody wrong, and you are too timid, too busy or too removed from the situation to effectively apologize, you […]
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

NO ORDINARY MURDER

Review by Bruce Tierney

Glasgow Detective Inspector Alex Morrow, last seen in Still Midnight (2010), returns in Denise Mina’s latest police procedural thriller, The End of the Wasp Season. Heavily pregnant with twins, Morrow is basically counting down the days until her maternity leave. She is looking forward to not having to deal with her dim-bulb boss on a day-to-day basis, not having to endure the petty bickering of her underlings and not having to think about anything unrelated to the two growing presences in her belly. Then Sarah Erroll is murdered, and Morrow’s world careens off in directions she could not have begun to imagine. No ordinary murder, this one is unusually savage: The woman’s face has basically been obliterated, stomped past recognition by not one, but two pairs of matched sneakers, identical but for the sizes. To make matters worse, the shoes broadly match those worn by the children of Morrow’s girlhood friend, a good-time girl fallen on hard times. Complicating the story even further is the suicide of a wealthy businessman—which may be connected to Sarah’s death. Mina excels at describing the minutiae of police work, inexorably leading to the solution of the crime, as well as the convoluted but exceptionally believable interpersonal dealings of the cops and criminals alike. Read one Mina novel, and you’ll be back for more.

 

Thomas Enger, already a legend in his native Norway, seems destined for similar acclaim on American shores. His debut novel, Burned, features disfigured investigative reporter Henning Juul, just now returning to work after the fire that destroyed his apartment and his good looks, and took the life of his young son. Juul doesn’t have to wait long to find himself back in the thick of things: It falls to him to look into the murder of a young woman who was buried to her neck in an Oslo public park, then stoned to death. It has the look of a Middle Eastern Sharia punishment, and indeed, the girl’s boyfriend is a Pakistani native; at first blush, he appears to be a very good fit for the murder. Or is he just a good fit for a frame? Enger forces his readers to confront their own (often well-hidden) prejudices, all the while delivering a gripping narrative that begs comparison to Stieg Larsson. A capital-B Bonus: This book is $15—possibly the best $15 you’ll spend on a mystery this year! By the way, you heard it here first: Enger is also a talented composer, with several movie themes to his credit; his tunes are evocative of Philip Glass or Amethystium. Check out his website at thomasenger.net and have a listen.

Glasgow Detective Inspector Alex Morrow, last seen in Still Midnight (2010), returns in Denise Mina’s latest police procedural thriller, The End of the Wasp Season. Heavily pregnant with twins, Morrow is basically counting down the days until her maternity leave. She is looking forward to not having to deal with her dim-bulb boss on a […]
Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

Thrills and chills from Europe

Review by Bruce Tierney

Arnaldur Indridason, the Icelandic author best known for his popular series featuring Reykjavik’s Inspector Erlendur, returns with a stand-alone thriller, Operation Napoleon. This tale of murder and intrigue has roots in wartime Berlin, half a continent (and half a century) away from the Icelandic glacier where the main plot will commence. The backstory, explained in a few introductory pages, is this: In 1945, a German bomber hastily repainted with American markings crashes in a snowstorm. Oddly, there are both German and American soldiers aboard. The glacier swallows up all traces, and there the story remains—frozen in time—for 50-some years. Credit global warming for bringing the airplane once again to the surface, thus stirring up the ashes of perhaps the biggest scandal in history, a secret that could potentially launch World War III. Leaning decidedly toward the thriller side of the thriller/mystery continuum, Operation Napoleon will nonetheless engage suspense devotees who, I guarantee, will be surprised and moved by the final twist.

Arnaldur Indridason, the Icelandic author best known for his popular series featuring Reykjavik’s Inspector Erlendur, returns with a stand-alone thriller, Operation Napoleon. This tale of murder and intrigue has roots in wartime Berlin, half a continent (and half a century) away from the Icelandic glacier where the main plot will commence. The backstory, explained in […]
Mystery & SuspenseFictionSuspense

The Witch Elm

Review by Mari Carlson

With cunning psychological prowess, Tana French’s first standalone crime novel after six Dublin Murder Squad mysteries plumbs the recesses of our darkest thoughts.

In Dublin, on an almost-Halloween evening, Toby Hennessy, his girlfriend and his cousins are hanging out at Ivy House, Uncle Hugo’s grand abode, asking each other, “What’s the worst thing you ever did?” The game is a way of tiptoeing around how each of them may be connected to the discovery of a skull in the wych elm tree in the Ivy House garden.

The macabre discovery is not the only recent misfortune in the Hennessy family. Uncle Hugo has a brain tumor, and Toby nearly dies when he’s attacked in his flat, possibly in connection to a scandal at the art gallery where he works. The plot surrounding the skull comes into focus through Toby’s murky lens of pain, frustration and the medications required after this tragic combination of events. Toby has always been lucky, a handsome charmer who can talk his way out of scrapes and befriend just about anyone. But who is he if his luck has run out?

French rips open the chasm between Toby’s before and after, viscerally describing his fear as “dark, misshapen, taloned, hanging somewhere above and behind me waiting for its next moment to drop onto my back and dig in deep.” Add to Toby’s troubles his worried girlfriend and sensitive, conniving cousins, and it becomes apparent that The Witch Elm is about more than the crime behind the skull; it is about what happens when a great upheaval cracks open life’s shell and reveals one’s true potential.

With this thorough search into the criminal mind, French reaffirms her place as one of our finest crime novelists. Her characters become as familiar as family yet as unpredictable as strangers, creating a chilling sense that everything could shift at any time.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

With cunning psychological prowess, Tana French’s first standalone crime novel after six Dublin Murder Squad mysteries plumbs the recesses of our darkest thoughts.

FictionThrillerDebut Fiction

Who is in my house?

Review by Annie Peters

In Our House, Fiona Lawson returns home from a long weekend, only to discover movers unloading a van full of another family’s belongings into her tony Trinity Avenue home. Stranger still, her belongings and those of her two sons have vanished, and this new family insists they own the house, although Fiona never put it on the market. From this unsettling scenario, British author Louise Candlish proceeds to masterfully spool out the complicated series of events that led Fiona and Bram, her estranged husband with whom she shares the home in a “bird’s nest” co-parenting arrangement, to reach this shocking moment.

Candlish tells a large part of the story through a podcast called “The Victim,” which Fiona narrates, and through a Word document written by Bram, both in retrospect. The podcast and Word document give the reader the opportunity to hear Fiona’s and Bram’s differing perceptions of the events as they unfold. This narrative structure also allows the reader to feel the full weight of the characters’ emotions, from Fiona’s initial utter perplexity to Bram’s almost fatalistic resignation, and to discover the deep-rooted origins of their relationship’s complexities. Allowing the reader to plumb these depths gives the plot real plausibility. What seems outlandishly far-fetched at first slowly becomes uncomfortably conceivable and makes this novel nearly impossible to put aside.

Candlish is the author of 12 novels, and she makes her U.S. publishing debut with Our House, a frightening journey that will leave readers wondering if this could happen to them. The novel is a clear demonstration of Candlish’s considerable skill as a writer, and is sure to garner a new throng of fans here in the States.

In Our House, Fiona Lawson returns home from a long weekend, only to discover movers unloading a van full of another family’s belongings into her tony Trinity Avenue home. Stranger still, her belongings and those of her two sons have vanished, and this new family insists they own the house, although Fiona never put it on the market. From this unsettling scenario, British author Louise Candlish proceeds to masterfully spool out the complicated series of events that led Fiona and Bram, her estranged husband with whom she shares the home in a “bird’s nest” co-parenting arrangement, to reach this shocking moment.

Thriller

Mother, come home

Review by G. Robert Frazier

Nine-year-old boys can have active imaginations. Left alone, without a mother or father and in the care of a doting but well-meaning housekeeper, that imagination can easily reach extremes, from incredible fantasy to irrational terror. Such is the case for the impressionable Samuel Clay, who yearns for his mother constantly and can recite the exact number of days she has been gone to the United States, in Stephen Giles’ intensely gripping thriller, The Boy at the Keyhole.

Only the occasional handwritten postcard stamped from America provides evidence that Samuel’s mother is alive and well. But the randomness of her communiqués—which Samuel tracks on a map using pushpins and yarn to denote each city his mother is in—baffles him to no end. The fact that his housekeeper, Ruth, keeps the postcards locked away in his mother’s room further confounds him. Despite Ruth’s assurances that his mother will return to their English estate once she has completed her business overseas, Samuel grows more and more distrustful of her. When his young schoolmate, Joseph, suggests Ruth may be up to something far more nefarious—that she may have killed Samuel’s mother and buried her in the basement—Samuel’s fear and desperation plunge to new depths. Ruth’s stern manner toward him, coupled with their dwindling finances, ramps up his suspicions that she had his mother killed to avoid being fired. Convinced that Ruth is lying to him, Samuel boldly sneaks into his mother’s room to steal one of the letters and makes a stunning discovery. Samuel ultimately confronts Ruth in a frantic, pulse-pounding conclusion.

Giles, who is the author of the popular Ivy Pocket children’s series of books, has written a slick psychological thriller. His debut adult novel is sure to fire up readers’ own imaginations.

Nine-year-old boys can have active imaginations. Left alone, without a mother or father and in the care of a doting but well-meaning housekeeper, that imagination can easily reach extremes, from incredible fantasy to irrational terror. Such is the case for the impressionable Samuel Clay, who yearns for his mother constantly and can recite the exact number of days she has been gone to the United States, in Stephen Giles’ intensely gripping thriller, The Boy at the Keyhole.

FictionThriller

A daughter uncovers a modern-day spy story

Review by G. Robert Frazier

Red, White, Blue, the new novel from screenwriter Lea Carpenter, is an intriguing, albeit challenging, read. Intriguing in that it revolves around a woman’s exploration into her father’s life—and death—as a CIA operative. Challenging in its narrative structure, which briskly alternates between two points of view over a series of short, nonlinear chapters. But for lovers of spy novels, it’s more than worth the read.

Carpenter carefully details the life of CIA operative Noel, from his training and his exploits within the agency to his ultimate death in an avalanche in the Swiss Alps. His daughter, Anna, who has always believed her father to be a New York banker, learns of his secretive profession by way of an encounter with an unnamed associate, who provides her with a series of recordings and videos about the man she only thought she knew.

As Anna reflects on her relationship with her father, she becomes immersed in the inner workings of the government agency and her father’s role in it. Readers learn along with Anna about the CIA’s secret training facility, the Farm, where future agents learn lessons in espionage. Subsequent sections detail interrogation techniques by polygraphers. And all of it slowly builds to a grander puzzle.

For Anna, coming to grips with her father’s past and his activities is emotional and moving, while at the same time intense and mysterious. The snapshot-like style of the novel takes some getting used to, and readers would be advised to read as much of the book in one or two sittings. Long pauses away from the novel may only serve to kill momentum and possibly sow confusion. Carpenter, who wrote the screenplay for this summer’s action-thriller Mile 22 about the CIA’s Special Activities Division, is well-versed in the shadowy world of espionage as well as adept at crafting an emotional page-turner.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Go Behind the Book with Lea Carpenter.

Red, White, Blue, the new novel from screenwriter Lea Carpenter, is an intriguing, albeit challenging, read. Intriguing in that it revolves around a woman’s exploration into her father’s life—and death—as a CIA operative. Challenging in its narrative structure, which briskly alternates between two points of view over a series of short, nonlinear chapters. But for lovers of spy novels, it’s more than worth the read.

YA FictionYAThriller

A surefire crossover hit

Review by Sarah Welch

BookPage Teen Top Pick, September 2018

When Sadie was 6 years old, her sister Mattie’s arrival provided her life with purpose. So when Mattie is found dead 13 years later, Sadie is destroyed—and determined to bring her sister’s killer to justice, no matter the cost. Sadie’s car is soon found abandoned, and her surrogate grandmother, having given up on the authorities, begs investigative radio reporter West McCray to look into her granddaughter’s case. While West is reluctant to get involved with Sadie’s story (“Girls go missing all the time,” he says), he soon becomes obsessed with finding the 19-year-old and wants to help bring her home before it’s too late.

In the highly anticipated Sadie, Courtney Summers delivers a hard-hitting look at the depth of a sister’s love. Summers confronts drug abuse, abandonment and child sexual abuse head-on as she tells the dark story of Sadie’s desperate attempt to avenge her sister and West’s desperate attempt to find her.

Summers’ narrative alternates between Sadie’s first-person perspective of her journey and the script of West’s “Serial”-like podcast as he traces her steps, and both are riveting. Summers’ sharp prose—filled with raw emotion, gritty detail and almost-tangible suspense—will break readers’ hearts over and over for Sadie and just about everyone she encounters on her mission.

Sadie is a gripping, visceral thriller that is at once difficult to fathom and impossible to put down.

 

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When Sadie was 6 years old, her sister Mattie’s arrival provided her life with purpose. So when Mattie is found dead 13 years later, Sadie is destroyed—and determined to bring her sister’s killer to justice, no matter the cost.

FictionThrillerDebut Fiction

Baby Teeth

Review by Arlene McKanic

It seems that more and more books, films and TV shows feature relationships between mothers and children who despise each other and seek each other’s slow death. In Zoje Stage’s debut novel, you can’t blame put-upon Suzette Jensen for wanting to be free from her monstrous daughter, Hanna. Indeed, by page five you’re praying for the little horror to eat it in the worst way possible.

What’s less clear is why Hanna hates her mother so much. What could Suzette have possibly done to Hanna, 7 years old when our tale opens, to fill her with such psychotic rage? On top of this, Hanna’s dad, Alex, is so love-blinded that he refuses to see how utterly atrocious Hanna is.

Soon enough, it becomes clear there is no answer, for Stage’s real subject is the conundrum of evil itself. There’s simply no reason for loving, gentle, organic veggie-eating, granola-crunching progressive parents who live in an eco-friendly house to produce something like Hanna. For these two benighted bobos to wonder where they went wrong as parents is as ridiculous as Cesar Millan wondering why he can’t bring the werewolves in Tolkien’s Silmarillion to heel. It’s sad and frustrating to watch the Jensens rush from pillar to post, trying to get other good-hearted folk to help their daughter, when it’s clear there is no hope.

Yet what else can they do with this child whose one and only goal is to kill her mother? What can the reader do? Hanna’s chapters conjure a sickened incredulousness in the reader. Hanna is not so much a character as an abyss; her mind is so warped and inhuman that you even fear for her big, cuddly Swedish bear of a dad. Because of this, her parents’ ultimate solution can be only temporary, as are all “victories” over evil. Don’t be surprised if there’s a sequel to Baby Teeth before long.

It seems that more and more books, films and TV shows feature relationships between mothers and children who despise each other and seek each other’s slow death. In Zoje Stage’s debut novel, you can’t blame put-upon Suzette Jensen for wanting to be free from her monstrous daughter, Hanna. Indeed, by page five you’re praying for the little horror to eat it in the worst way possible.

FictionThriller

A haunting tale of revenge

Review by G. Robert Frazier

The plot of David Joy’s third novel, The Line That Held Us, is simple: A man accidentally kills another man and tries to cover it up with the help of a friend, while the murdered man’s brother seeks vengeance on them. The complexity of the novel comes in Joy’s evocative language, his unforgettable characters and how he weaves themes of family, friendship and justice throughout this darkly engrossing Southern crime noir.

Blood is spilled and revenge is inevitable in David Joy’s darkly engrossing third novel.

The novel’s bleak chain of events evokes memories of Joel and Ethan Coen’s Fargo, in which one ill-advised decision leads to another, and each new lie spirals out of control. Joy presents Darl Moody, a stereotypical Southern-by-the-grace-of-God country boy, whose hunting expedition in the backwoods of North Carolina goes awry when he shoots and kills Carol Brewer, another local yokel who was scavenging the forest for ginseng. Realizing what he’s done and not wanting to risk facing the law, Darl enlists the aid of lifelong best friend Calvin Hooper to secretly bury Carol’s body.

After Carol’s brother, Dwayne, discovers his brother is missing, it’s only a matter of time before he uncovers the truth. Of course, Dwayne has his own sense of justice—one that doesn’t involve the police—and neither Darl nor Calvin can escape his wrath. Calvin, meanwhile, wrestles with his sense of loyalty to Darl and his guilty conscience.

The law ultimately gets into the fray, but far too late to keep the impending violence at bay and the body count from stacking up.

Joy has been heralded for his ability to craft a powerful sense of place in his previous novels (Where All Light Tends to Go and The Weight of This World). He does so again in The Line That Held Us, bringing the Appalachian region and lifestyle to life. But it is his unforgettable characters and their moral dilemmas that will stay with you in the end.

 

This article was originally published in the August 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The plot of David Joy’s third novel, The Line That Held Us, is simple: A man accidentally kills another man and tries to cover it up with the help of a friend, while the murdered man’s brother seeks vengeance on them. The complexity of the novel comes in Joy’s evocative language, his unforgettable characters and how he weaves themes of family, friendship and justice throughout this darkly engrossing Southern crime noir.

Want more BookPage?

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Sign up now

Trending Mystery & Suspense

FictionThriller

Paul Tremblay

There’s no going back in this apocalyptic home-invasion thriller

more info

Praised by horrormeister Stephen King, Paul Tremblay’s shocking new novel, The Cabin at the End of the World, is an often graphic account of one family’s ordeal when their vacation is shattered in a cult-like home invasion. We asked Tremblay about the book’s origins, its dark path and his inner fears that helped forge the novel.

read more
All Mystery

Author Interviews

More Interviews

Recent Features

All Features