Speaking of Mysteries: Recent Episodes
Speaking of Mysteries
“There is nothing more frightening than the secrets our loved ones keep from us,” says Robert Crais about Elvis Cole’s latest case in The Big Empty. Traci Beller, an influencer known as The Muffin Girl, hires Elvis to find out what happened to her father who went to the outskirts of Los Angeles ten years... Read more »
Sharon Short first heard the story of Great Aunt Ruth—the inspiration for Aurelia Escalante, the protagonist of Trouble Island—right before her wedding when she was gifted Aunt Ruth’s ring, which she’s wearing in her photo. When Sharon’s soon-to-be sister in law suggested a trade for another family heirloom, Sharon’s response was to decline because, “What’s... Read more »
In Gathering Mist, the ninth installment in Margaret Mizushima’s engaging series featuring Deputy Mattie Wray and her K-9 partner, Robo, both Mattie and Robo find themselves seconded from the Colorado Rockies to a search-and-rescue operation in the forests of Washington State’s Olympic peninsula. A nine-year-old boy—the son of a movie star—is missing from a remote... Read more »
At the beginning of Fortunate Son, Andrew Bridgeman’s debut thriller, Ben Danvers thinks his biggest challenge is giving a presentation to the executives at his company. Then he finds he isn’t who he grew up thinking he was—and people want to kill him
There’s a blizzard on its way—and not just the snow and ice kind—in Cold Trail, the fourth installment in Taylor Moore’s series featuring Garrett Kohl. Someone is blowing up natural gas facilities and it may—or may not—have something to do with the ecological demonstrators who have shown up. Oh, and environmental activists are the only... Read more »
Renowned Sherlockian, Les Klinger discusses Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell, with Nicholas Meyer, his sixth”edit” of a heretofore undiscovered manuscript by John H. Watson M.D. The stakes are always high, but especially so in tracking down the Zimmerman telegram. Should it not be intercepted the consequences could be nothing less than Great Britain’s... Read more »
Everyone needs more Will Trent in their lives. In This Is Why We Lied, Karin Slaughter’s 12th Will Trent mystery, Will and his bride Sara Linton are off on their honeymoon at the off-the-grid McAlpine Lodge. It’s an idyllic setting—until the screams start when the manager of the lodge is brutally murdered
Tom Straw’s The Accidental Joe: The Top Secret Life of a Celebrity Chef, blends murder, mirth, high-stakes espionage, gastronomic highs and lows and killer locales for an appetizing thriller that launches a new series featuring peripatetic bad boy chef Sebastian Pike and his CIA handler Cammie Nova. Tasty, indeed Photo of Tom... Read more »
Fans of Don Winslow are—understandably—in denial that City in Ruins is his final crime fiction novel. But if it’s true, if Don has put away the keyboard to devote himself to political activism, City in Ruins, the third and final installment of his Danny Ryan trilogy, just might prove that he saved the best for... Read more »
In Past Lying, the seventh novel in Val McDermid’s series featuring Karen Pirie, the action—or restriction thereof—is in and about Edinburgh during lockdown in Spring 2020, as Karen and her team investigate whether or not a partial manuscript found in the papers of a recently deceased crime fiction writer is a roadmap to the disappearance... Read more »
Crime fiction fans rejoice: with The Spy Coast, Tess Gerritsen launches a new series featuring retired CIA Maggie Bird and her fellow former intelligence officers, all of whom now reside in Purity, Maine. And, while members of the Martini Club—as the ex-spooks call themselves—may be retired from active duty, their combined skills are formidable. And... Read more »
In The Last Applicant, Rebecca Hanover’s debut adult thriller, a parent desperate to secure her son’s admission to an exclusive Manhattan private school, in Rebecca’s words, “goes there” and stalks the school’s admissions director. To tell you anymore would spoil any one of the many twists and turns the story takes Photo... Read more »
The stakes couldn’t be higher for Junie Lagarde, the protagonist in The Beautiful Risk, Lynn Hightower’s new thriller. Her dog Leo—who, as Junie’s hearing dog, is much more than a pet—survived the plane crash in the French Alps that killed her husband. Nothing will stop Junie from finding Leo and looking into the plane crash... Read more »
In a case of Herculean wordsmithing, Denise Mina is scheduled to publish two novels on August 1, 2023: The Second Murderer, which continues the story of Raymond Chandler’s immortal Philip Marlowe; and Three Fires, the story of the late 15th century Florentine Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola—he of the original Bonfire of the Vanities—that has resonance... Read more »
Not to put too fine a point on it, but having two titles published on the same day is a Herculean authorial accomplishment. But such feats of wordsmithing are not surprising to fans of Denise Mina, whose two titles The Second Murderer, a Phillip Marlowe novel, and Three Fires, the story of 15th-century Dominican friar,... Read more »
Sheriff Titus Crown, the protagonist in All the Sinners Bleed, S.A. Cosby’s recently published thriller, is not a man to be trifled with. He’s a man who, when he ran and—surprising himself, won—the election for sheriff “had made a choice to live in a no-man’s-land between people who believed in him, people who hated him... Read more »
Fans of Robert B. Parker’s extensive crime fiction universe, rejoice! Alison Gaylin is continuing the story of PI Sunny Randall, in Robert B. Parker’s Bad Influence. And in Bad Influence, Sunny—who’s never had a digital footprint —jumps into the world of social media with both feet when she’s hired to protect two Instagram influencers and... Read more »
In Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows, black-bag publicist Mae Pruett doesn’t worry about the truth, only The Story, because whether you call what she does picking up the pieces or placating The Beast, what she does is a nasty business. And Mae is great at it Photo of Jordan Harper ©Brian Hennigan
Part domestic suspense, part espionage thriller, Alma Katsu’s Red London—the follow-up to Red Widow—is all tension. Mildly disgraced CIA agent Lyndsey Duncan is working to rehabilitate her reputation by taking an assignment in London sussing out a potential Russian defector, until she’s loaned out to MI6 in an effort to befriend the wife of a... Read more »
Cara Black took a break from her book tour to talk about Night Flight to Paris, the follow up novel to Three Hours in Paris, which introduced us to Kate Rees, the Oregonian sharpshooter whose considerable skills are put to work by England during World War Two. Clandestine work can often go sideways as it... Read more »
While some things have changed for Margaret Mizushima’s protagonist Sheriff Deputy Mattie Wray—for one thing, Mattie has changed her last name from Cobb, the name of the man who kidnapped her, to that of her birth father—in Standing Dead, other things remain the same. People are turning up dead in the mountain forests surrounding Timber... Read more »
There is a decided “down the rabbit hole” sensation to City Under One Roof, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Iris Yamashita’s debut crime fiction novel. When body parts wash up on the shore adjacent to the city-in-one-building, three female narrators—with varying degrees of unreliability—escort us over, under, sideways and down through the Davidson Condominiums, the one-stop shop,... Read more »
There’s nothing like a high school reunion to trigger buried memories—and make you question them. For example, did Cassie Fitzherbert—now a London police officer—kill a fellow student in high school? Bleeding Heart Yard, Elly Griffith’s newly published crime fiction novel, opens with Cassie asking herself if it’s possible to forget if you killed someone…Three unreliable... Read more »
In her just-published stand-alone thriller, Mother, Daughter, Traitor, Spy, Susan Elia MacNeal transforms the very real story of mother and daughter Grace and Sylvia Comfort—who risked their lives to infiltrate Nazi strongholds in Los Angeles during World War Two—into a story of treason and sedition that is a chilling as it is prescient ... Read more »
Four women, who happen to be sixty-something professional assassins, are celebrating their recent retirement in Deanna Raybourn new crime fiction novel, Killers of a Certain Age.The Killers of the title—Billie, Natalie, Mary Alice and Helen—are looking forward to pursuing all the things that being on-call for “The Museum,” as they called the organization who contracted them... Read more »
All Paris Peralta wants in Things We Do in the Dark, Jennifer Hillier’s new suspense novel, is to live a quiet life. Well, as the saying goes: make a plan and the gods laugh. Paris is arrested for her husband’s murder and even she has to admit it doesn’t look good, she’s found next to... Read more »
It’s been twenty long years, but Glaswegian auctioneer extraordinaire Rilke is back with his merry band of pranksters in The Second Cut, Louise Welsh’s follow up novel to her remarkable The Cutting Room. The times may have changed—tech-savvy Rilke is now meeting men on Grindr instead of in pubs—but remarkably, Rilke, Rose, Anderson and Les,... Read more »
In Winter Work, Dan Fesperman’s new thriller, it’s the winter of 1990, the Berlin Wall has fallen and the fall of East Germany has ignited a feeding frenzy among competing—think C.I.A.—and complementary—think K.G.B—intelligence agencies. And for the East German operatives who will soon be out of work, it’s a matter of who is buying and... Read more »
In his debut novel, An Honest Living, Dwyer Murphy takes readers on an odyssey through time and space in turn-of-the-21st-century New York City, complete with its own Ulises, who just happens to be a Venezuelan poet. Along this journey with nods to past noir novelists such as Ross Macdonald and Raymond Chandler (think mysterious beautiful... Read more »
The last thing Hudson Miller, the protagonist in It Dies with You, Scott Blackburn’s debut crime fiction novel, wants to do is return to his hometown of Flint Creek, North Carolina. But when his father is shot and killed, it’s the first thing he has to do Photo of Scott Blackburn ©Ross Fletcher... Read more »
If 99 Miles From L.A., P. David Ebersole’s debut crime fiction novel, sounds like it should be the title of a song, that’s because it is. Written by Hal David and Albert Hammond—and sung by everyone from Hammond to Julio Iglesias to Art Garfunkel (a decidedly disturbing version)—it’s Johnny Mathis’s take that inspired Ebersole, and... Read more »
When Kaveri Murthy, the recently married headstrong young woman in The Bangalore Detectives Club—Harini Nagendra’s debut historical crime fiction novel that takes place in 1921—witnesses the aftermath of a murder at a club where the cream of Indian society can socialize with members of the British Raj, she does what’s in her nature to do:... Read more »
Aimée Leduc is back in Murder at the Porte de Versailles, the 20th installment in Cara Black’s arrondissement-specific series that takes place in November 2001, in a fraught post-9/11 Paris. This time Aimée is racing around the 15th arrondissement, a residential part of Paris that, Cara explains, is where you move after you finish your... Read more »
In The Echos, Jess Montgomery’s fourth installment of the Kinship mystery series, Sheriff Lily Ross has an unimaginable amount on her plate. Or should we say, plates? It’s July 4th, 1928, and Lily is dealing with the security for the new amusement park when a murder of a young woman, who may or may not,... Read more »
Is there any location riper for noir than a small town high school? Except maybe the heart of a teenager? Stewart O’Nan’s new noir novel Ocean State, isn’t so much a “whodunit” as a “why-dunit” story of the murder of a teenage girl and the ripples the crime and its aftermath cause in a small... Read more »
From the lush improbability of the Hotel Bel-Air’s Swan Lake to the wild and weird of Death Valley, it’s no wonder LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan is feeling both personal and professional whiplash. People are turning up dead in L.A. and secrets are escaping from the desert and it’s her job—along with fellow LAPD Detective Remy... Read more »
Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Suran Banerjee are back in The Shadows of Men, the fifth installment in Abir Mukherjee’s series set in post-World-War I Calcutta. Banerjee has found himself in a spot of bother, in that he’s been accused of murdering a Hindu scholar in a same-as-it-ever-was story of political and religious tension as... Read more »
Alison Gaylin opens The Collective, her latest thriller, with a quote from Euripides’ Medea, “Hate is a bottomless cup; I will pour and pour.” Meet Camille Gardner who, five years after the death of her daughter as the result of a violent sexual assault, is living at the intersection of grief, anger and vengeance. It... Read more »
Syria isn’t the only thing aflame in Damascus Station, David McCloskey’s debut thriller set against the ongoing conflict: McCloskey’s protagonist, CIA officer Sam Joseph, has fallen for a source, strictly forbidden, but the heart wants what the heart wants. Only, when it comes to the CIA “F-ups happen to good officers. Deception does not. You... Read more »
In Road of Bones, James R. Benn’s 16th installment of his Billy Boyle series of World War II mysteries, Billy is off to the USSR, where gaslighting is a way of life, a map cannot be found for love or money, and Night Witches take to the skies to silently rain terror on Germans fighting... Read more »
From the outside looking in, Paloma’s life in My Sweet Girl—Amanda Jayatissa’s debut thriller—seems charmed. Adopted from a Sri Lankan orphanage at age twelve, Paloma has grown up with loving parents surrounded by affluence in San Francisco. Now, at 30, Paloma is grappling with events from her past and dealing with ghosts, some more real than... Read more »
In Striking Range, Margaret Mizushima’s seventh installment in her Timber Creek K-9 mystery series, Timber Creek County Deputy Mattie Cobb braves ice storms and murderers while looking into the death of a young woman and the kidnappers of the woman’s newborn
At the start of Karen Cleveland’s new thriller, You Can Run, it’s just a normal day for CIA reports officer Jill Bailey, who postpones approving a new intel source to take a break and log into the video stream from her son’s daycare. Only he’s not there. To get him back Jill must do “just... Read more »
Enola Holmes shares many of her much older brother Sherlock’s skills and she brings them to bear in maybe her most challenging case so far, Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche, the latest installment in Nancy Springer’s delightful series. Because back in the day in Victorian England, a husband, father, or, for that matter, a... Read more »
Eight volumes in, Speaking of Mysteries co-founder Les Klinger talks about the astounding series of vintage mysteries that he edited, wrote introductions for and annotated for The Library of Congress Crime Classics. The choices may not be household names—in the homes of crime fiction fans, that is—but all them are significant for the quality of... Read more »
When a young Afghani boy survives a massacre, undercover DEA Agent Garrett Kohl—the protagonist in Down Range, former CIA-analyst-turned-operative Taylor Moore’s debut thriller—takes him home to the Texas Panhandle to keep him safe. And while the Taliban may be thin on the ground in Texas, they aren’t the only threat to Kohl, Kohl’s family—and the... Read more »
In Jeff Abbott’s aptly-named new crime fiction novel An Ambush of Widows, (ambush is the collective noun for widows) two men with no apparent connection to each other are shot and killed in a warehouse in Austin, Texas. Coming from two different directions—literally, philosophically, and socio-economically—their two widows, Kirsten and Flora, must join forces to find... Read more »
In The Hollywood Spy, the tenth installment in Susan Elia MacNeal’s World War Two-era series featuring spy-code breaker-bomb defuser, Maggie Hope, Maggie has decamped to Hollywood with her close friend Sarah Sanderson, who is going to film a movie choreographed by George Balanchine. It’s a Busman’s Holiday, however, as there are Nazis everywhere. Oh, yes,... Read more »
As if going to the funeral of your sister—someone from whom you are occasionally estranged—isn’t bad enough, getting a posthumous email from her during the service accusing her now widower, Theo—the scion of the wealthy Thraxton family—of murdering her, is certifiably creepy. So opens Her Last Breath, Hilary Davidson’s latest mystery, for Deirdre Crawley. Secrets and... Read more »
In Castle Shade, Laurie R. King’s 17th Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes crime fiction novel, the couple is asked by Queen Marie of Romania to investigate a threat made against her daughter, which requires Russell and Holmes to travel to Castle Bran in Transylvania. What could go wrong?
Early in Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot, protagonist Jacob Finch Bonner encounters a student in his writing class who claims he has a can’t-miss story. The student was right—sort of. Upon learning of the student’s death—and determining that the book was never written—Jacob, um, appropriates the plot. What could be the harm of using an... Read more »
Being a professional thief with a skill set that includes safecracking and lock picking does not preclude you from being a patriot, or so protagonist Ellie McDonnell finds out in Ashley Weaver’s A Peculiar Combination, when she’s asked to ply her trade for Britain’s war effort in World War Two Photo of Ashley Weaver ©Amelia... Read more »
All the World’s a Stage in Death of a Showman, Mariah Fredericks’ fourth installment of her series featuring lady’s maid Jane Prescott. After returning from what can only be called a working trip to Europe with her employers Louise and William Tyler, Jane finds that being involved with a new theatrical production with former beau... Read more »
In The Consequences of Fear, the 16th installment of Jacqueline Winspear’s addictive series featuring detective and frequent intelligence asset Maisie Dobbs, it’s October 1941: Europe has succumbed to Nazi occupation and the outcome of Maisie’s new case, involving a murder that a 12-year-old message-runner witnesses, has the potential to upend the British war effort ... Read more »
Sheriff Lily Ross returns in The Stills, the third installment of Jess Montgomery’s series that takes place in 1920s Prohibition Era Southeastern Ohio. Trouble is, um, brewing and Lily couldn’t be busier: violations of the Volstead Act are everywhere—Lily’s best friend has rekindled her still; Lily’s own mother is reconstituting dried grapes and letting them... Read more »
Isabel Lincoln is gone. Did she leave of her own volition or was she âdisappearedâ by, maybe, her jerk of a boyfriend? And whereâs the labradoodle? Thatâs what Grayson Sykes, the protagonist in Rachel Howzell Hallâs latest thriller, And Now Sheâs Gone, is determined to find out    Â
In The Red Horse, Captain Billy Boyleâthe inimitable protagonist of James R. Bennâs remarkable series of mysteries set in World War Two Europeâis sent to a secret hospital in the English countryside where he can recover from a psychotic break brought on by an overdose of amphetamines. If only recovery was his only task, because... Read more »
Dr. Lucas Page, the protagonist of Under Pressure, the second in Robert Pobiâs series, is the ultimate hyphenate: An astrophysicist-best-selling author-university professor-former FBI agent and world-class misanthrope. To say Lucas Page does not suffer fools gladly is an understatement of infinite proportions. But someone, or a gaggle of someones, is blowing up parts of New... Read more »
In The Less Dead, Denise Minaâs new crime fiction novel, after the death of the mother who adopted her, Dr. Margo Dunlop wants to find out about her birth mother. Itâs possible Margo finds out more than she might want to know. After all, familiesâeither by blood or by choiceâare complicated⦠  Photo of... Read more »
Roland Ford returns in THEN SHE VANISHED, the fourth installment in T. Jefferson Parkerâs series about the Fallbrook, CA-based private investigator. This time around, Roland is tasked with finding the wife of a California State Assemblyman who has gone missing. But was she taken or did she leave? And then there are the bombings⦠ ... Read more »