William Shaw, an award-winning pop-culture journalist, does a standout job with his debut novel, She’s Leaving Home. This British crime thriller has a compelling whodunit plot staged in ’60s London, rampant with racism, sexism and an ever-growing counterculture of groupies clinging to the belief that love is all you need.

After a disreputable act of cowardice, Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen has one chance to regain face in his police squadron. Breen takes the murder case of an unidentified woman found near Abbey Road Studios, believing the victim to be a Beatles fan who frequently camps outside. Many of his colleagues are unsympathetic, wanting to call the case as it is, but Breen suspects there is more to the story.

He is joined by Helen Tozer, the first woman on his detective staff. Her tomboyish nature and brash characteristics at first unnerve Breen, who is more traditional, but their seemingly conflicting natures perfectly complement each other. Breen brings years of policing and detective methodology to the table, while Tozer, a Beatles junkie herself, empathizes with the younger generation. As the investigatory duo get closer to solving the case, they soon find themselves caught between intergenerational quarrels, racial tensions and political revolutionaries.

Shaw’s dialogue is well developed and his period detail is razor sharp, immersing the reader in the tumultuous era of swinging London with immediately relatable characters. She’s Leaving Home is the first installation in a trilogy of cultural thrillers, so keep an eye out for this dynamic duo. Whether you’re a Beatles fan or a mystery lover, this book comes highly recommended.

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but it can also make the mind grow suspicious. That’s what happens in Laura Lippman’s insightful new mystery, After I’m Gone, when the wealthy, charming Felix Brewer chooses to escape his shady past by simply disappearing. While Felix makes a clean getaway, it’s not so easy for his widow, daughters and mistress to pick up the pieces of the schemes and dreams he has left in his wake.

Award-winning mystery writer Lippman nimbly poses the elaborate riddle of Felix’s disappearance by asking confounding questions at every turn. Why did he set up his mistress, stripper Julie Saxony, with her own business, but neglect to leave anything for Bambi, the wife he claimed to love above all else? Why has he never contacted his adult daughters? And most unanswerable of all, why was Julie murdered 10 years after Felix skipped town? And by whom?

Underlying everything is the question of just how far the characters will go to protect themselves and each other. With her signature attention to her characters’ inner lives, Lippman develops several plausible, and sympathetic, suspects. We get to know every one of these women—and a few men—through seamless flashbacks and the unfolding of complex family dramas. Gradually, we realize that every character has something huge to hide.

After I’m Gone winds up with surprising revelations on several fronts, not just the hunt for a murderer. As we learn the truth about everybody’s whereabouts on the day Julie was murdered, we keep thinking we’ve surely spotted the killer, but Lippman proves us wrong many times before the actual culprit comes forth. The last 50 pages fly by as we race to work out what really happened after Felix has gone.

Martha Grimes—an official Grand Master crime writer—has returned. After the author was “let go” from her longtime publisher, Knopf, she responded with a best-selling novel, Foul Matter (2003), that tackled (and tore apart) the publishing industry. Now in a sequel, The Way of All Fish, Grimes continues to eviscerate the rapidly changing publishing world with her quick wit and colorful cast of characters.

The Way of All Fish opens with novelist Cindy Sella having a very bad year. She’s paralyzed by debilitating writer’s block and is being sued by her former agent, L. Bass Hess, who will stop at nothing to ruin Cindy. While the lawsuit doesn’t have much basis (Cindy fired Bass long before he represented her most recent novel), it could drain her of all her time, energy and finances.

Enter hit men/amateur literary critics Candy and Karl, who first made their appearance in Foul Matter. Readers unfamiliar with that story might initially be put off by the speed with which Grimes dives back into its world. But it doesn’t take long to be amused by these Mafioso men, whose mission is not to snuff out Hess but to drive him to the point of insanity.

Still, The Way of All Fish isn’t just a takedown of a money-grubbing bad guy. It’s a clever romp from the Florida Everglades through the galleries in Soho all the way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Whether Grimes is concocting hilarious scenes featuring the stoner crowd of novice writers, alligator wrestlers and junkyard managers that Cindy happens to befriend, or characterizing nitpicky authors analyzing every minute detail of their contracts (including the font size!), this novel is a madcap mystery packed with delight. Perhaps what’s most enjoyable is the author’s rampant criticism of the stereotypical days of publishing, when two-martinis lunches were the norm. “All of this lunchtime drinking,” Grimes ponders. “How did people manage to work?”