History, mystery and legend collide in The Night Hawks, the atmospheric and intense 13th entry in British author Elly Griffiths’ bestselling series starring forensic archaeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway.

Ruth has recently returned to the Norfolk fens, leaving behind a job at Cambridge University as well as her ex-boyfriend Frank Barker. She’s now head of archaeology at the University of North Norfolk, complete with a lovely large office and employee David Brown, who seems to love dismissing her authority almost as much as he loves going on digs. Another constant presence at the digs are the Night Hawks, a group of licensed metal detectorists who are excited at the prospect of buried treasure at nearby Blakeney Point beach. Alas, while the eventual discovery they make there is notable, it’s not in the way they’d hoped. Certainly, a hoard of Bronze Age artifacts is an excellent find, especially with a very old skeleton in their midst—but nearby, they also find the much more recent corpse of a man with a tattoo that resembles the mythical Norfolk Sea Serpent.

As special advisor to the local police, Ruth is called to the scene by Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson, who is the father of her 10-year-old daughter, Kate. She and the police have just begun to unravel the bodies’ and artifacts’ origins when there is another gruesome discovery: the presumed murder-suicide of a married couple at a remote farmhouse that locals believe is haunted by the Black Shuck, a harbinger of death in the form of a huge black dog with frightening red eyes. Even stranger, the Night Hawks discovered this tragedy as well, and the investigators begin to wonder if the group, rather than simply stumbling across crimes, is somehow involved in them.

Like the seaweed that lays in messy heaps on the rocky Norfolk beach, the interplay among Griffiths’ appealingly varied characters becomes ever more tangled as the story progresses, making for an intriguing mix of secrets, loyalties and ulterior motives. The Night Hawks will delight longtime fans and new readers alike with its spooky-beautiful setting, layered mysteries and authentically complex relationships.

The advertisement is simple and honest: “Teacher wanted at the edge of the world.” And for Una, the main character of Ragnar Jonasson’s The Girl Who Died, it is the perfect enticement to leave her drab life behind and start a new chapter.

The “edge of the world” is actually the isolated fishing village of Skálar, located on the northeastern tip of Iceland. But with her father recently passed away, no job and no love interest to keep her in the larger city of Reykjavík, a season away is just the thing Una needs for a complete reset.

At first, the idyllic community of just 10 people, including two young girls whom Una is hired to tutor for the year, seems like something out of a storybook. It’s not long, however, before the remoteness of the community and the tight-lipped nature of its residents begin to weigh on her, forcing her to question if she’s made a serious mistake. When she begins to see a young girl’s visage in the residence where she’s staying and hears the ghost girl singing an old lullaby, things take on an even more ominous tone.

The mystery of what exactly is going on in Skálar will hook Jonasson’s readers as much as it does Una, and the author expertly builds intrigue and suspense with each passing page. The sudden death of one of Una’s students during a Christmas musical and the disappearance of a mysterious stranger in town further complicates things. And when Una begins asking too many questions, the locals turn the tables and leave her to wonder if her alcoholism has her jumping at shadows.

Known for his grittier Dark Iceland series of crime thrillers, Jonasson opts for a more moody, surreal tone in The Girl Who Died. While the novel, translated from Icelandic by Victoria Cribb, lacks his usual pileup of bodies and violence, the slow-building sense of dread and unease Jonasson creates more than compensates.

Who among us—perhaps after binge-watching “Murder, She Wrote” or finishing yet another murder-mystery novel—hasn’t thought we’d be passable crime-solvers, if ever called upon to ferret out clues or mull over motives?

In Elly Griffiths’ The Postscript Murders, a motley and charming trio of amateur sleuths gets their chance for the saddest of reasons: Their friend, the intelligent and gregarious Peggy, is found dead in her home. Healthcare aide Natalka discovers 90-year-old Peggy in her armchair, where she liked to look out the bay window at her Shoreham-by-Sea, England, neighborhood and seafront. There is a notebook, binoculars and mystery novel by her side, as well as a business card that reads, “Mrs. M. Smith, Murder Consultant.”

That surprising job title seems even stranger when Natalka, Benedict (coffee shop owner and ex-monk) and Edwin (retired after many years at the BBC) sort through Peggy’s extensive collection of crime novels and realize the vast majority are dedicated to her. What, they wonder, does “Thanks for the murders” mean?

The trio runs their theories by Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur, whom Griffiths fans will remember from 2019’s Edgar Award-winning The Stranger Diaries. Here, Kaur reluctantly considers the trio’s speculation about Peggy’s demise, ultimately partnering with them when a literary festival in Aberdeen, Scotland, becomes the site of additional untimely deaths and other assorted dangers.

Griffiths’ strong sense of place—the sea is sparkling yet unsettling, Aberdeen’s cliffs beautiful yet unforgiving—provides a rich foundation for a cleverly constructed story with complex, memorable characters. Each is granted multiple turns to share their innermost thoughts, from feverish yet fearful interest in their detective work to poignant musings on years past. Through them, the societal tendency to underestimate the elderly is examined and defied time and again.

The Postscript Murders is a cozy bibliophile’s delight of a mystery that turns writerly research and acknowledgments into fodder for pivotal plot points, offers a tongue-in-cheek peek at the publishing business and pays tribute to friendships that transform into chosen families.

When rookie Boston police detective Ellery Hathaway and FBI profiler Reed Markham see missing 12-year-old Chloe Lockhart’s cellphone lying in a trash can at the edge of Boston Common, they know she’s been kidnapped. It was highly unlikely she could had simply given her nanny the slip, and what tween would abandon their phone? With this new certainty, a busy street carnival on a sunny day becomes a crime scene and Joanna Schaffhausen’s Every Waking Hour begins.

Chloe’s wealthy, busy parents (Teresa, a surgeon, and Martin, a financier) are delirious with worry. They kept her under strict surveillance and are terrified as well as confounded that their efforts were all for naught. Their hypervigilance stems from residual trauma: Twenty years ago, Teresa’s young son from her first marriage was murdered alongside their housekeeper, and the killer has not yet been caught.

Ellery can relate to this maelstrom of emotions more than most. She was kidnapped and tortured by a serial killer at age 14, and Reed was the young agent who rescued her. After reuniting many years after Ellery’s horrific experience, Reed and Ellery began dating, and they struggle to find equilibrium as romantic partners and workmates. Reed’s ex-wife ensures their co-parenting is contentious, Ellery has been diagnosed with PTSD, and Chloe’s case is reopening old psychic wounds even as the duo rush to find the girl before her captor completely unravels.

While Chloe’s disappearance kicks off the race-against-time detective work that propels the book—Schaffhausen is skilled at building delicious and inexorable tension—the relationships that are affected by her kidnapping give the book a special resonance. Trauma underpins so many of the characters’ reactions and decisions in Every Waking Hour, and Schaffhausen addresses it with fascinating detail and great empathy, drawing on her background in neuroscience and Ph.D. in psychology.

It all makes for a compelling countdown to a surprising resolution (several of them, really—there are numerous intriguing threads for reader-sleuths to follow). This book is the fourth Ellery Hathaway title, and the gasp-inducing goings-on in its final pages are sure to prime fans for yet another skillfully crafted, suspenseful installment.

The first known mystery novel by an African American writer returns to print, transporting readers to 1930s Harlem.

Eighty-nine years ago, in 1932, a 35-year-old African American physician and writer named Rudolph Fisher published The Conjure-Man Dies: A Harlem Mystery, the first known crime novel by a Black American. Fisher died only two years later, when he was still tragically young, so we will never know what later works might have secured his place among golden age mystery writers. On its own, however, this trailblazing work of fiction is notable for its depiction of Harlem’s African American society and culture in the 1930s. Its characters are exclusively Black and, most significantly, so are its crime-­solving police detective, Perry Dart, and his forensics expert physician sidekick, John Archer. 

One of the first Black men in the police force to be elevated to detective, the assured and perceptive Dart admits that “in Harlem one learns most by seeking least—to force an issue was to seal it in silence forever.” The mystery unfolds largely through his dogged and wily interrogation, and the plot is marked by a number of unexpected twists, particularly one halfway in when, after African psychic and “conjure-man” N’Gana Frimbo has been murdered and sent to the medical examiner, his body disappears, calling into question the very nature of the crime they’ve been investigating.

The narrative itself is typical of the wider genre during this period, heavy on explicatory dialogue and a bit short on action. Still, Fisher’s way with description is commanding. “Out went the extension light,” he writes. “The original bright horizontal shaft shot forth like an accusing finger pointing toward the front room, while the rest of the death chamber went black.” Likewise, the banter among his ragtag cast is both musical and, at times, extremely amusing. “You’re an American, of course?” Dart asks one suspect. “I is now,” she responds. “But I originally come from Savannah, Georgia.” The memorable Harlem denizens that people the novel include a self-proclaimed (i.e., unlicensed) private eye, a dimwitted numbers runner, that haughty Georgia churchwoman and Frimbo’s mortician landlord. 

With its sharp Harlem rhythms and abundance of wise-talk, one can easily imagine the jaunty black-and-white film that Hollywood might have made of this novel, had Hollywood been interested in making films centering authentic Black characters during the early 20th century. The novel was, however, turned into a play two years after Fisher’s death. If you’re interested in more of Fisher’s writings, this book also includes Fisher’s last published story, “John Archer’s Nose,” which reunites Dart and Archer. This story hints at what might have come to pass for this Holmes and Watson pairing had its creator not died of cancer, which he likely developed from his professional experimentation with X-rays at his private practice as a radiologist in New York.

Falling in and out of print over the years since it first appeared, The Conjure-Man Dies is now happily welcomed back to its rightful place both in the history of crime fiction and the wider canon of Black literature.

P.J. Tracy (the mother-daughter author team behind the Monkeewrench mysteries) begins a new series set in Los Angeles with Deep Into the Dark, a thriller that flirts with the fantastical while staying grounded in the all-too-real. Detective Margaret Nolan is working to find a serial killer who primarily attacks women, but a male murder victim leads her to Sam Easton, who may have taken revenge on the dead man for beating up his friend, Melody. Sam is an Army veteran whose tours in Afghanistan left him visibly scarred and diagnosed with PTSD. He could have committed the crime in a blacked-out rage, but Margaret sees things in Melody’s past that raise alarms as well. All the while, the killer shows no signs of slowing down.

Tracy introduces a lot of characters and story threads early in the going and then doesn’t stop adding them, which keeps the tension elevated. Sam has a series of encounters that feel like dangerous premonitions, but he’s acutely aware that combat trauma could be influencing his thinking. Stretches of downtime, in which characters just try to process what’s going on, feel very real. Sam and Melody both work at a bar; the tedium of repetitive work and their parallel efforts to build new lives and avoid attention make them a sympathetic if unreliable pair. And Tracy’s dry humor and the irony of such grim crimes occurring in sunny Los Angeles lend a grittiness to the story.

The conclusion is a neatly timed, highly visual set piece that’s going to be killer in the inevitable movie adaptation. But even this feels like it has a sly wink to it, incorporating film tropes, such as the heroine with a twisted ankle, into a fight for survival in which a screenplay figures heavily. The layered storytelling and empathy offered to every character make Deep Into the Dark not just a hard-to-put-down thriller, but one that leaves the reader with much to think on, with no easy answers in sight.

The perfect read for winter's extra-dark nights, The Wicked Hour takes readers back to the Salem-inspired town of Burning Lake, New York, where every Halloween night culminates in the burning of effigies of witches and over-the-top celebration. This Halloween, it also leads to the murder of Morgan Chambers, a talented young violinist.

It’s necessary to read the first book in the Natalie Lockhart series, Trace of Evil, to fully grasp the events of The Wicked Hour. A police detective, Natalie is still traumatized from the events of the prior novel, where she solved a heartbreaking cold case that changed her view of the Burning Lakes community. Natalie has isolated herself from her family and from her boss, a man she’s fallen in love with. She spends her time renovating her old home and throwing herself into her work.

When Morgan Chambers’ body is pulled from a dumpster, Natalie is heartbroken to see the young woman discarded like trash. As she works the case and delves deeper into the highly competitive world of professional music, she remembers a missing persons case close to her heart. Natalie’s teenage friend, Bella, was also a talented violinist who disappeared. Like Morgan, Bella was being crushed under the pressure to succeed in a world that demanded constant sacrifice and competition. Unlike Morgan, Bella was deemed a runaway, but now Natalie is questioning that explanation.

Though both Trace of Evil and The Wicked Hour are tightly paced thrillers, The Wicked Hour keeps the spooky setting of Burning Lake and its Halloween celebration as a backdrop to murder, with less of a focus on the occult than series readers may expect. Instead, The Wicked Hour is a carefully plotted procedural that invites readers to examine each clue along with Natalie. As those clues come together and the novel progresses toward its climax, readers will be rewarded with a suspenseful and memorable finale.

Serial killer Christopher Masters terrorized London in 2012 with a string of abductions and murders. His final victim, Holly Kemp, was never found, but eyewitness testimony placed her in connection with Masters. Six years later, Holly’s body is discovered near Cambridge. It should be easy work for Detective Constable Cat Kinsella and her partner to tie up this loose end and close the case once and for all. From this simple premise, the artfully paced Shed No Tears merely follows the clues, and things go from surprising to shocking.

Readers familiar with Caz Frear’s series know that Cat Kinsella comes from a family involved with organized crime. Her significant relationships are held together with a complex web of lies, so even the true-to-life scenes of normal work camaraderie are shot through with tension. Frear adds a layer of complication by introducing a Detective Chief Inspector who worked the original Masters case and takes a interest in Cat’s career trajectory. Cat wants to please her new mentor, but her dogged commitment seems to be having the opposite effect. Frear affords real respect to the dull, often repetitive nature of investigation, so each revelation feels earned and adds to the suspense.

It’s possible to read this book without having read the rest of the series, but you’ll just end up wanting to start from the beginning because these characters are a pleasure to discover; even incidental roles are fleshed out enough to feel real. Cat works hard to undo some of her family legacy but keeps making choices that tie her ever more firmly to her past. That combination allows her to empathize with victims and the accused alike, which is a real asset on the job. It forces her to keep an open mind, even to unsettling possibilities. (It also helps that she can ask her father about doings in the criminal underworld—not that she’s guaranteed a straight answer.) The story follows her calm, methodical approach, and Frear’s tight control of the reins keeps the tension high. Shed No Tears grabs the reader and doesn’t let go.

San Francisco’s Fabian Gardens is a funky, desirable neighborhood at the heart of Susan Cox’s second Theophonia Bogart mystery, The Man in the Microwave Oven. People of all demographics inhabit its low-rise buildings and enjoy the private park through which the life of the neighborhood flows. Dog walks, gardening get-togethers, friendly chats and pointed arguments all take place on the benches, along the pathways and amid the flowers.

Lately, neighborhood gossip’s focused on one thing: a developer’s mission to put a high-rise in their quirky neighborhood, an endeavor championed by local resident Katrina Dermody. Katrina isn’t well-liked, to say the least. She’s a brash, rude lawyer, prone to fits of rage and unrepentant blackmail attempts. When she’s murdered, no one is really surprised—not even Theo, who discovers Katrina’s battered and bloody body.

Alas, this isn’t even the worst thing that’s happened since Theo moved to Fabian Gardens a year ago, as per Cox’s The Man on the Washing Machine (2015) with its murders and other felonies. Although Theo and her cohorts found relative peace after those wild goings-on, she’s still feeling immense stress because of her big secret. She fled her native England after a family tragedy that drew relentless paparazzi attention and has been keeping her identity secret from her neighbors, friends and boyfriend ever since.

Katrina’s murder adds a new urgency. She threatened blackmail just before her death, and Theo wants to know exactly what Katrina (and the murderer) might’ve learned about her. A former paparazzo herself, Theo uses her skills to solve the mystery, which becomes exponentially more complex when she learns her grandfather is a former spy and a viable murder suspect.

Cox keeps the story moving breathlessly along, mixing suspense and humor with a dash of fascinating old-school spycraft as Theo strives to unearth the truth about what’s happening in her own backyard . . . and her friend’s microwave (Warning: it’s gruesome!). The Man in the Microwave Oven is an entertaining, often outright funny mystery that winningly combines traditional and modern methods of crime-solving, ponders whether it’s ever acceptable to lie and warmly conveys the value of friendship and family even as dead bodies turn up all over town.