Agent Sayer Altair is finding her feet again after a major loss, and things are getting back to a new, if shaky, normal when she’s called in on a case that makes no sense at all. A teenage girl has been killed, and her body left posed on a Washington, D.C., monument, along with several figurines and a message in blood. When Sayer’s team learns the girl was kidnapped with a busload of classmates on a STEM field trip, it becomes a race against the clock to figure out the mind of this killer and find the other missing kids. Ellison Cooper’s Cut to the Bone is never content with one twist; this book is a high-speed, high-stakes labyrinth of reverses and double crosses.

While reading, you can almost feel Cooper’s delight in the traps she lays. From the outside, Sayer and her colleagues are trying to locate the killer and decipher his reasoning; inside the bus that was hijacked and hidden, the surviving girls use teamwork and tech skills to try and save themselves. But nothing is simple in this story, from the ancient Egyptian rituals being reenacted in the killings to the anonymous person who is following Sayer and intervening at critical points in the case. Sayer is also getting calls from a person who’s the subject of a psychopathy study, and who knows too much about Sayer’s life and work (a subplot that may prove a bit melodramatic for some readers). And the resolution is all-out chaos, a scramble of revelations that make it hard to tell who is truly dead or alive.

Occasional moments of rest, when we learn about the neuroscience behind psychopathic behavior and how it differs from psychosis, are as gripping as the field work and chases, if not more so. The whip-crack pacing and constant sense of being pulled toward multiple leads make for compulsive, blow-through-your-bedtime reading, and if you think it doesn’t end with a bang and a half, think again. Cut to the Bone is a wild ride, creepy while still being a lot of fun.

Set in Ireland and America, Sarah Stewart Taylor’s slowly simmering The Mountains Wild is the first entry in a new series featuring homicide detective Maggie D’arcy. A divorced mother of one living on Long Island, Maggie earned her investigative bona fides by solving a case involving a notorious serial killer that the FBI couldn’t crack.

Maggie originally 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 police force, the Gardaí, could find her.

Decades later, Maggie remains haunted by her cousin’s disappearance. After Erin’s scarf is found by investigators searching for a woman named Niamh Horrigan, Maggie returns to Ireland—and reenters a maze of painful memories—to do some sleuthing. The authorities fear that a serial killer is at work and that Niamh may be latest his hostage.

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

Upon arriving in Dublin, Maggie meets up with her old friend Roly Byrne, a good-natured detective inspector, and becomes a temporary member of his investigative team. Together, they race to connect the pieces of the intricate mystery behind Niamh’s disappearance. The case becomes even more complicated when Maggie gets involved with former flame Connor Kearney, who was friends with Erin and may know more about her disappearance than he let on when he was originally questioned.

Taylor takes her time in unspooling the strands of the mystery, keeping the reader on edge all the while. Through transportive details of Dublin pubs and the Wicklow wilderness and a wonderful command of Irish history, she fashions an immersive setting for the narrative, which moves nimbly through the decades, flashing back to Maggie’s first trip to Ireland and providing glimpses of her friendship with Erin.

Featuring a memorable cast that includes cheeky Irish Gardaí, 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 will welcome her to the crime scene.

The Mist is the third and final book in Ragnar Jónasson’s electrifying Hidden Iceland series, which features Hula Hermannsdóttir, detective inspector with the Reykjavik Police Department. Like its predecessors, The Darkness (2018) and The Island (2019), Jónasson’s latest is a labyrinthine murder mystery set against the bleak backdrop of Iceland.

It’s Christmas 1987, and Erla and Einar Einarsson, who run a farm in the highlands—“the edge of the inhabited world”—are preparing for the holiday. In their part 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. The two receive few visitors and don’t have a television.

In the midst of a pummeling snowstorm, a stranger named Leó shows up at the farm looking for shelter. Leó claims to have become 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. As Erla tries to find out what Leó is after, the novel moves headlong toward a terrifying climax.

Two months later, Hulda, recently returned from personal leave after a tragedy involving her teenage daughter, is asked to look into a pair of murders that occurred at the farm. Although she struggles to keep her emotions in check, Hulda moves into detective mode, bringing her brisk, efficient investigative style to a sinister crime scene. But the circumstances at the farm are more complex than they appear, and Hulda soon discovers that the murders may be linked to the disappearance of a young woman named Unnur.

Jónasson turns the tension up to a nearly unendurable degree as the novel unfolds. His complete—and complex—narrative design isn’t revealed until late in the book, when the story’s multiple threads coalesce in a surprising conclusion. With this no-frills thriller, he continues to map Iceland’s outlying regions and to develop Hulda’s character, adding a new chapter to her story that followers of the series will savor. Masterfully plotted and paced, The Mist is atmospheric, haunting and not for the faint of heart.

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.

Young, an Edgar Award nominee for her first book, 2016’s The Lost Girls, has crafted a story that begins with a horrific discovery and expands to explore the weight of familial obligation, the far-reaching devastation of drug addiction and the ways in which guilt and boredom can curdle into something much more sinister. And so: 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, not least because the enigmatic Adam keeps 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.

It’s incomprehensible; what enemies could he possibly have? He’s been very kind to Sal, teaching the boy chess at lunchtime and helping him navigate a hard life with his taciturn uncles on an isolated ranch outside of town. Nora’s not confident the relatively inexperienced police will be able to solve the case, and she’s also been feeling unfulfilled, due to a dream deferred: she went to college for anthropology but left early to care for her argumentative alcoholic father. She decides to investigate Adam’s death, and Young shuttles 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—the author’s language is poetic, and her contemplation of the corrosiveness of suppressed emotion is both sympathetic and impatient: When will people learn? This is an unusual, compelling portrait of a people and a place where the future always seems impossibly far away.

The sixth in Deon Meyer’s Detective Benny Griessel mysteries, The Last Hunt, splits its time—and chapters—between Griessel’s investigation of a murder aboard a luxury train and the recruitment of former revolutionary Daniel Darret to assassinate a corrupt South African president. The result is mystery, intrigue and riveting suspense.

Griessel and his seemingly always cynical (and somewhat humorous) partner Vaughn Cupido, both members of the elite South African Hawks police unit, are tasked with solving the gruesome murder of an ex-cop with the unusual name of Johnson Johnson, only to see their efforts stymied along the way by corruption. Meanwhile, Darret’s retirement as an apprentice furniture maker in France is upended when an old associate is killed by Russian spies who then set their sights on Darret, even as he takes up his friend’s cause.

The complex plot loses a bit of immediacy when Meyer switches from one storyline to the other, but after a few chapters it promptly sweeps you along again. Part of the fun is trying to discern how the two stories will connect and in anticipating the action-packed finale.

A resident of Stellenbosch, South Africa, Meyer handles the intricate plotlines with superb skill, proving why he is an internationally acclaimed, prize-winning author of 12 thrillers. The action alone is enough to keep you reading, but Meyer gives us multifaceted characters who are just as interesting. Griessel and Cupido share a camaraderie clearly built on their previous adventures together, though you don’t have to read the previous stories to appreciate it. When they’re not exclusively focused on the case at hand, their banter about how Griessel should propose to his girlfriend provides welcome relief. Darret, meanwhile, is tormented over leaving a life of calm and relaxation, having been thrust back into his former life.

Whether you’re in it for the mystery or for the action, The Last Hunt delivers on both counts.

Sunshine Vicram is one of those characters who is destined to win a cult following. Irreverent, intrepid and harboring secrets of her own, she won’t disappoint fans of Darynda Jones’ previous heroine, Charley Davidson. Jones shifts away from the paranormal in A Bad Day for Sunshine, which begins a new series—but her signature humor and suspense remain.

The town of Del Sol, New Mexico, is an idiosyncratic blend of quirky, lovable characters and well-kept secrets. Sunshine returns to her hometown after being elected sheriff, only to have a teenage girl vanish on her very first day. Eerily, Sybil St. Aubin had premonitions of her own kidnapping and mailed Sunshine a letter detailing her abduction prior to her disappearance. But that’s not the only twist: Sunshine herself was kidnapped as a teenager, a secret she and her family have been keeping to this day.

As the search for Sybil brings Sunshine’s repressed memories to the surface, it also introduces the reader to the diverse cast of characters populating Del Sol—from rooster thieves to former Dixie Mafia members to a mayor who wants Sunshine gone. We also meet Sunshine’s teenage daughter, Auri, who is an aspiring detective herself. As Sunshine investigates the disappearance, Auri canvasses her high school for information on the missing girl, giving us two detectives instead of just one.

Jones has a real talent for balancing suspense with laugh-out-loud humor, never losing the tension from either. Sunshine’s past is grim, as is the truth about Auri’s father, yet the book never feels bleak. The humor, sometimes absurd (like a basket of cursed muffins), never detracts from the gravity of the case Sunshine is investigating. It’s a delicate balancing act, and it’s pulled off with aplomb.

Jones opens the door for future romantic subplots as well, from Sunshine’s former crush turned distillery owner, to a U.S. Marshal on a manhunt of his own, to an FBI Agent assigned to assist in the case. With its wit and suspense, A Bad Day for Sunshine is a one-night read that left me craving the next installment in the series, especially after its truly surprising final reveal.

Fans of Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Clare Fergusson/Russ van Alstyne mysteries will be delighted to learn the Episcopalian priest and her police chief husband are back in Hid From Our Eyes.

In this ninth installment of the New York Times bestselling and award-winning series, Spencer-Fleming takes a long view of the dark side of human nature via characters who investigate three unsolved murders that span decades and haunt the lives of the residents of Millers Kill, a small town in upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains. Each murder victim was a pretty young woman clad in a pricey party dress, found in the middle of the road with no indications of who or what caused her death.

In the present day, Russ van Alstyne is the police chief tasked with solving the latest murder; in 1972, he found a victim’s body during a motorcycle ride and became a person of interest in the ultimately unresolved case. It’s fascinating to move among the various time periods, meeting Russ when he was an angry just-returned-home Vietnam veteran and then again when he’s a calm and driven policeman. Spencer-Fleming tracks the frustrations of the law enforcement and medical professionals stymied by a lack of clues, witnesses, technology or some combination thereof. Flashbacks and flash-forwards are understandably tricky, especially among multiple eras, but Spencer-Fleming handles them with skill and ease, using secrets and revelations alike to ramp up the suspense and create a chain of investigation and mentorship among the police chiefs of each successive generation.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Julia Spencer-Fleming on exploring questions of faith and mentorship.

She also writes with compassion for those who struggle, whether with PTSD, financial strain or, like Clare, finding a satisfying balance between nervous new motherhood and a demanding job (while maintaining sobriety and pitching in as a dogged amateur sleuth, to boot). Hid From Our Eyes lets readers spend time inside the marriage of two beloved characters and follow along as they race against time to solve a confounding murder case that is threatening Millers Kill’s sense of unity and safety. The author also explores PTSD among returning veterans, small-town politics, class conflict, gender identity, religion and more in this multifaceted exploration of community and crime in a small town.

Hid From Our Eyes is an exciting return to a beloved series, as well as an intriguing entry point for readers new to the world of Russ, Clare and Millers Kill.

Gytha Lodge’s sophomore thriller delivers an opening worthy of Hitchcock: Aidan is Skyping his girlfriend, Zoe, late at night when he sees someone enter her apartment. Helpless, he listens to the struggle that ends Zoe’s life, but Aidan isn’t willing to reveal himself to the police.

Like Lodge’s first novel She Lies in Wait, Watching From the Dark untangles the victim's complex personal relationships by alternating between the months before the murder and the investigation afterward. Zoe is a dynamic and compassionate woman, the glue that holds her dysfunctional friend group together. Struggling with everything from PTSD to narcissism, Zoe’s friends are occasionally manipulative and controlling. She is their support system and caretaker, and so when she becomes embroiled in a love affair that leaves her with less time for her friends, she begins to see the cracks in their one-sided relationships. Even her romance is fraught, though, as Aiden is secretive and dishonest with Zoe.

Lodge balances out all of this drama with the calm, steadfast demeanor of her series lead, DCI Jonah Sheens. Even as Zoe’s life unravels, Sheens’ constancy keeps the procedural aspect of the novel moving along smoothly, assuring the reader that the villain will eventually be revealed from among the ensemble cast.

The beauty of Lodge’s writing is her ability to juxtapose the careful sleuthing of a police procedural against an emotional deep dive into the lives of her characters.  Zoe is not just a body and a point of focus for Lodge’s male detective; rather, she is granted a complex identity. In a genre that often commodifies the bodies of dead women, the care given to Zoe’s character feels especially important.

As the novel wraps up, secrets are revealed and characters exposed for who they really are, the reader can fall back on Sheens’ reliability in an atmosphere where no one is trustworthy. Lodge’s autopsy of complicated friendships and love affairs feels occasionally tragic, but the justice that Sheens and his team deliver is eminently satisfying.

The crime scene is the stuff of nightmares: A blood-drenched bed in a posh, pristine home on a family’s private island. Worse yet, the victim is missing. Called to the scene in the midst of a ferocious storm, Senior Investigator Shana Merchant’s partner on the case challenges her assessment of the case and asserts a theory that the victim may be injured but alive. Death in the Family is a dark and stormy mystery that sets doubt and certainty against one another for up-all-night reading.

Author Tessa Wegert’s debut is impressive in its scope. The Sinclair family is packed with suspects, and their confinement in foul weather makes for short tempers and lots of juicy misbehavior. But on top of that classical, Christie-like foundation, there’s the matter of Shana’s personal history. We learn over the course of the novel that she was abducted by a serial killer when she worked for the NYPD, a trauma from which she may not have fully recovered. Her new job in the rural Thousand Islands region is not supposed to include the depravity this case confronts her with. Both Shana’s partner and her fiancé question her judgement, and her behavior at times makes their concerns seem entirely reasonable.

As Death in the Family draws to a close, the Sinclair matter is resolved, but we’ve barely pulled back the curtain on Shana’s past. It’s enormously frustrating to close a book knowing you have to wait for the next installment, but it speaks to how finely this debut is engineered. Death in the Family marks a bold beginning to an addictive new series.

It begins with a femur. When a couple detour off their hiking trail in the Georgia hills and find the weathered leg bone, and then more female remains, it seems likely to be the work of a known predator. But an ever-growing group of investigators discovers there’s more to this laid-back community than just one notorious monster. When You See Me is most frightening when it shows us the boogeymen we meet and interact with every day.

Lisa Gardner’s latest novel once again unites Sergeant D.D. Warren and Flora Dane, the survivor of a brutal abduction who has repaid some of that abuse in the years since. They make a good team, especially since only one is bound to obey laws. Flora and Keith, her maybe-boyfriend who adds tech skills to the team, investigate the small town near the burial site with Warren and FBI Speical Agent Kimberly Quincy. Chapter narration alternates between Warren, Flora, Quincy and a young, mysterious figure who is unable to speak; for her, this is anything but a cold case. When her story intersects with the investigation, the stakes and tension ratchet up quickly.

When You See Me is most frightening when it shows us the boogeymen we meet and interact with every day.

Warren, Dane and Quincy struggle to square the folksy demeanor of people they interview with what appears to be a fairly long, dark history of criminal behavior. It’s hard to know who to trust when talking to people well-trained in the art of people-pleasing to ensure repeat business. Meanwhile, the one person desperate to tell the truth and exact justice has lost her voice entirely. The twists and turns keep peeling veils off an evil nobody wants to look at head-on, and it all culminates in a breakneck final act. The forensic analysis of shallow graves can unearth a lot of clues, but When You See Me also looks at the ways evil is handed down from one generation to the next. It’s a mystery that will keep you up late at night, haunted by the events within its pages.

It’s almost impossible to properly summarize The Tenant; the careful plotting ensures that the mystery unfolds deliberately, with surprises regularly woven into the narrative. Reading it feels like watching a puzzle slowly come together before your eyes.

Set in Copenhagen, The Tenant follows detectives Jeppe Kørner and Anette Werner as they investigate the brutal murder of a young woman, Julie Stender. Adding a grisly twist to the case, Julie’s face was mutilated before her killing, a fact that chills both detectives. But it’s Julie’s relationship with her landlady, budding crime novelist Esther de Laurenti, which makes her murder truly bizarre—the young woman was killed in the same manner as the victim in Esther’s unpublished manuscript.

The Tenant operates with two ensemble casts: the tenants of Esther’s building and the detectives on the Copenhagen police force. While Kørner and Werner lead the charge to bring a killer to justice, it takes a plethora of characters to get the novel to its thrilling conclusion. The intensity of the relationships between characters realistically reflects the irritations and idiosyncrasies of people who live and work together. Unlike many other crime-solving duos, Kørner and Werner occasionally grate on each other’s nerves, never quite settling into anything other than a bristly professional relationship. Similarly, the people moving in and out of Esther’s orbit have their own secrets and agendas, giving the impression that no one can be trusted.

Despite its darker elements, The Tenant is a police procedural, not a thriller, and readers should prepare for a mystery that takes its time unfolding. This a positive thing; the easy pace lets the horror of Julie’s murder sink in. Author Katrine Engberg’s English-language debut is the first in a gritty, unflinching procedural series that has received multiple awards in her native Denmark. Readers will be left craving the translation of Kørner and Werner’s next adventure.