Mystery

Somewhere far away from earth, six crew members wake aboard a spaceship bound for a new colony. As clones, the crew members are accustomed to waking up in new bodies, usually with their memories intact. This time, though, decades of memories are missing. And worse, someone has murdered the old bodies of the crew members. Without any record of what happened and why, the crew must fight to solve a murder in which they are all prime suspects, even to themselves.

Six Wakes is a locked-room murder mystery that takes place on a generation starship. If that sounds awesome to you, then you will

In The Forgotten Girls, Detective Louise Rick returns to the area she grew up in for a fresh start. As the new head of the Missing Persons Department, she finds that her familiarity with the terrain makes things easier, however, confronting people from her past is tougher than she expects.

While reading, you get an inkling that there may be more than one mystery to be solved. True to Scandinavian crime fiction, this book doesn't shy away from tough subjects or gory details.

My mystery book group read this title and had mixed feelings: some wished Rick had done a little more police work

An anonymous call comes in to the Stonybatter police station, instead of the emergency line in Dublin. The caller says that a woman may have fallen and hurt inside her own home. When police arrive, all the doors are locked and they find Aislinn Murray dead, but not from a fall. The case gets passed on to the Murder Squad. Detectives Conway and Moran have the case handed to them by their boss, just as they are looking to clock out and go home. Antoinette Conway is the only woman on the squad, and isn't well liked, she's brusque, confrontational, and keeps to herself. She's immediately

Don’t let Twenty-eight and a Half Wishes mystery classification fool you. This book is a perfect blend of mystery and romance with just a touch of fantasy.

Rose Gardner has had the gift of second sight her whole life, although her mother has convinced her it’s proof that she’s evil. When she sees her first ever vision of herself, and she’s dead to boot, her reaction sets a chain of events in motion that she’s powerless to stop. Just as she’s powerless to stop the advances of her handsome, but secretive, neighbor Joe.

When Rose’ mother takes her place in the vision, and she becomes a suspect

Wanna hear a ghost story? A fabulous tale about sisters, secrets, family, fire, death, and ghosts?

I'm not usually a fan of scary or horror stories, but The Thirteenth Tale is a mystery with many twists and turns that I find quite intriguing and just a little spooky. Follow biographer Margaret Lea as she discovers the true past of reclusive author Vida Winter. Piece together the hints and secrets as she reveals her extraordinary existence. Is Vida Winter who she says she is? Who set fire to the house? Is there really a ghost?

Notes: I listened to this book and the narration is very well done

Antoinette Conway and her partner, Stephen Moran, are rookies and outsiders on the Dublin Murder Squad. Just as they're about to finish up their night shift, the boss gives them another dud case: Aislinn Murray has been reported dead via an anonymous call to a local police station. It was obviously her boyfriend, with whom she had a dinner date planned. Open-and-closed. So why does the boss put a senior detective, Breslin, on the case to watch over them? And why does his help seem more like obstruction?

While mysteries, Tana French's novels defy the most basic genre conventions. For example

An open-and-shut domestic murder case turns out to be much more than Antionette Conway or Stephan Moran bargained for when assigned Aislinn Murray’s case. Beautiful Aislinn is found dead in her perfectly decorated home, alone, with the doors locked. Her boyfriend Rory Fallon has a dinner date at Aislinn’s that night but she never answers the door or his many calls.

Each of French's books revolve around a different detective in the Dublin Murder Squad. The Trespasser is told from Conway’s point-of-view. As the only woman, and therefore an outsider in the squad room, it is hard to gain respect

In Don't Look for Me, private investigator Amos Walker is hired to track down a missing wife. He has no solid leads, so he starts at the herbal remedies store that she frequented. All of a sudden, people are tailing him and people are dying! Raymond Chandler once said that when he didn’t know what to do, he would send a man through the door with a gun in his hand. I get the sense that Estleman's approach is the same.

Estleman holds true to the private eye formula, and he plots well, but I think he tries too hard when it comes to dialog. Nonetheless, I enjoyed his latest effort. 

In Laura Lippman's latest mystery, Wilde Lake, Luisa Brant is the newly-elected state's attorney for Howard County, Maryland, and she has some big shoes to fill. Her father held the position and was greatly admired (to the extent that any politician can be) during much of her childhood, and Luisa has just beaten out her mentor for the role in a hotly-contested election. Eager to prove herself worthy of her new position, she decides to personally act as the prosecutor in the first murder case that comes across her desk. The seemingly-straightforward killing of a single woman in her apartment by

Laura McHugh's second novel does not disappoint. Set in Keokuk, Iowa, this novel tells the story of Arden Arrowood, who has inherited her family's stately old home, where she hasn't set foot since she was a child. Arden's grandparents have owned the house and held it in a trust for years, keeping it maintained and intact. Now that her father has passed away, the house is Arden's. Her mother doesn't think it's a good idea to move back, but Arden can't resist. She's stuck, and she has no way to move forward without starting at Arrowood - the house her sisters disappeared from so many years ago

Jim Brodie conveniently runs an antique business in San Francisco and a security company in Tokyo. He also speaks Japanese and is a martial arts expert. When a family is gunned down in San Francisco, Brodie is hired by the brother of the victim to find out who did it. The reader learns that Brodie lost his wife, who was Japanese, in a suspicious fire and that the same kanji (Japanese language character) was left at the scene of each crime. When the Japanese linguist he hired to research the kanji doesn’t return, Brodie and his assistant follow his path to a certain village where death and

Back in the 50’s many of the rivers that salmon swam up were dammed to create cheap energy for the surrounding communities. The Indian villages were against changing the countryside and they also used salmon fishing as a way of making a living. The Dalles Dam is now 50 years old with a commemoration during the month that Cal Claxton moves to Oregon.

Cal Claxton, a retired Lawyer from the Prosecutors office in Los Angeles, has retired to Oregon. Cal blames himself and his fast track lifestyle for the suicide of his wife and he’s now trying to recover from the loss. His small pension, plus

Detective Robicheaux finds a body floating in the bayou while he's on vacation. While out of his jurisdiction, he feels some responsibility to make sure that things are taken care of. Unfortunately for him, his persistence has ruffled all the wrong feathers, but he doesn't know whose or why this should be. As Robicheaux looks for more information, he is further entangled into a seedy web of crime. Sorting through all those threads seems to just bring more trouble, and less understanding. First, Robicheaux finds that he has been targeted, which is OK by him. But his contact with an FBI agent

After Tanya Dubois finds her husband's dead body at the bottom of the stairs she decides to run. Not because she's guilty, but because she is living under an assumed name and hiding from the past. She needs a new identity and the only way to get one is to call the man she's hated for 15 years. Roland Oliver has connections and money, two things Tanya needs. His reason for helping her? He has secrets of his own. "I want a clean identity, a name that's prettier than my own and if possible, I'd like to be a few years younger." Thus, Amelie Keen is born. 

Through a succession of events, Lutz

Flynn Berry's Under the Harrow is a murder mystery turned inside-out, where "Whodunnit?" is overshadowed by "How do you process tragedy and loss?" It's a dark, haunting ride, with a few twists you may not see coming. (I didn't.)

When Nora goes to an English village to visit her sister, only to find her brutally murdered, she immediately decides to investigate the murder herself, despite the police doing everything they can to solve the murder. What Nora doesn't realize, but what quickly becomes apparent to the reader, is she's in no psychological state to do this. The book flashes back and

What a fun novel! There's a lot of double dealing, a lot of humor at everyone’s expense and a lot of action!

Neal Graham is hired by his father to hide the mistress of a man who is the other half of a famous television couple, who purport to be happily married. When the mistress decides to end the relationship, the man refuses to take no for an answer and she brings charges of rape. She goes into hiding until the trial and Neal is charged with babysitting her. The television husband’s business partners start looking for her and it is not to bring her flowers!

Cambodia Noir is a full tilt boogie from the get go!

Will Keller is a photographer for a Cambodian newspaper and has lived in Cambodia for nine years. He has a drug and alcohol problem and just doesn’t care. 

When a fellow reporter on staff goes missing, her sister comes to Cambodia to look for her. Unsuccessful, she offers the job to Will, who takes the job and begins the search. Let the fun begin! Everybody has a history and not everybody is who they say they are. Seeley does an excellent job of conveying atmosphere and building suspense. I enjoyed every page.

Family secrets are kept well-hidden until a modern day detective uncovers clues to solve a 70 year-old mystery of a little boy’s disappearance. Alice Edevane is an introspective, long-time crime writer who crafts perfect stories for her readers. However, Alice cannot reveal the secrets she’s kept surrounding the disappearance of her youngest brother Theo at a Midsummer’s Eve party at the Loeanneth Estate in 1933. Sadie Sparrow is a Detective Constable with London’s Metropolitan Police who is embroiled in a scandal after leaking information to the press about the Met’s mishandling of a missing

Imagine always being in second place - one step behind the same person over and over again. Juliet Townsend was that second place person to friend Madeleine Bell all throughout high school. They ran track together and Maddy was always the star while Juliet stood to the side. Ten years later, she is still second place to Maddy, although she doesn't realize it until Maddy comes waltzing into the Mid-Night Inn looking as beautiful and pristine as ever. Embarrassed, Juliet agrees to meet with her to talk through some issues from their past. Juliet, however, can't seem to figure out why Maddy has

I really enjoyed this book! This is Howie Carr’s second novel and I am as impressed with this one as I was with the first. In what could be a nod to Hemingway, he titled this novel “Killers”, although Hemingway’s short story is “The Killers.” The author employs two alternating narrators to very good effect. One is Bench McCarthy, a businessman/killer who runs his own show but answers to Sally Curto, head of the local crime organization. Bench and Sally are under attack and they don’t know why.  The other narrator is Jack Reilly, a private investigator hired by political forces trying to find

Have you ever wanted to run away and become someone else? When we meet Tanya Dubois at the beginning of The Passenger, she has just discovered her husband lying dead at the bottom of the stairs. While he appears to have fallen, Tanya knows that the police will still take a good hard look at her before deciding whether it was an accident, and she can't have that since her current identity won't stand up to close police scrutiny. So Tanya writes a note declaring her innocence, packs a bag, and stops at the nearest ATM to withdraw as much cash as possible on her way out of town.

As she drives

When little Bella went missing four years ago, seemingly disappearing into thin air from her front yard, all of England was on the lookout for the precious two year old. As The Widow opens, we meet Jean Taylor, whose husband, Glen, has just been killed in a freak accident. Now that Glen is dead and she is newsworthy again, Jean has been hiding in her house from the reporters who have started camping out on her front walk. In the past Jean and Glen did everything they could to ignore the reporters who hounded them when Glen was accused of Bella’s kidnapping and murder, and again when he was

It’s not often that you open a book to find the main character quoting author James Crumley. But Ken Bruen is clearly a student of the genre; references to the history of hard-boiled fiction keep dropping, which is a very nice treat for the reader. 

Jack Taylor, a functioning alcoholic, has been kicked out of “the Guards” (Irish National Police) and now makes his living as a private detective. The story is set in Galway and begins when Boru Kennedy, a young American, comes to Ireland to research his thesis on Beckett. But, with Jack’s help, Boru becomes sidetracked by Taylor’s pursuit of a

A mother has missed getting back on her train, leaving her sleeping child alone onboard. Now someone has taken the child off of the train near Stockholm, snatched from under the nose of the train staff, who were supposed to be looking out for her. What caused the mother to leave the train for so long in the first place, and how could the staff have missed the girl leaving?

Frederika Bergman is relatively new to the Stockholm police force. She is an analyst who has joined the special investigative team of star detective Alex Recht. No one is sure if Frederika is cut out for police work

Say what you will about David Lynch’s 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Dr., the film is a puzzle of strange, overlapping characters and storylines that at once confound and intrigue. Is it a portrayal of Hollywood as a Machiavellian embodiment of sinister control and corruption masquerading as entertainment? A knotty and deliberately confusing mishmash of pointless narratives and characters lost in some Californian noir fever dream? One of the best films of the last twenty or thirty years?  

The Criterion Collection’s brand new edition of Mulholland Dr. is a godsend for fans who’ve waited a very

The Sundown Speech is the twenty-fifth Amos Walker novel by Loren D. Estleman, and he still has it.  He has set the story in Ann Arbor, a useful change of scenery for our private detective, who is usually based in Detroit. A married couple has invested money in a filmmaker’s latest venture, and they think they have been swindled. They hire Walker to get their money back, but when Walker investigates, he finds the filmmaker dead. Estleman has plenty of fun with the college town culture of Ann Arbor, and you’ll have plenty of fun with the characters, sparkling dialogue, and plot of this novel.

There will be two lies, [the coyote] says. Then there will be the truth. And that will be the hardest of all.

And what lies they are. Even more so, as the coyote promises, the lies exposed by the truth. Nothing will be the same.

Not ever.

And that's not even to mention the small surprises and little white lies along the way.

For all that she can remember of her nearly 18 years, Shelby has enjoyed a quiet, stable life. She and her mom live in a simple house, do simple things. She is homeschooled. They have a routine that never changes. And she has little contact with others. Shelby knows

A coworker turned me on to this 1953 Edgar Award-winning suspense novel, and I'm glad he did. Otherwise, this gem may never have crossed my path, as I do not habitually read suspense novels and tend to pick up recent publications. A Kiss Before Dying is fabulously twisted. Author, Ira Levin, offers a look inside the mind of a psychopathic college student hell-bent on marrying into a wealthy family and he will stop at nothing to achieve his goal. I could see his odd idiosyncrasies and his malicious, self-serving plotting and I wanted to scream “Run!” to his unknowing victims. With many well

In Career of Evil, Cormoran Strike and Robin are in a slump - they've not had much work lately. They only have two paying cases at the moment, both rather tedious surveillance jobs. Although postponed, Robin and Matthew are still planning to be married. When a motorcycle courier is waiting with a box at the office for Robin, she assumes it's an order of wedding cameras. It's not. It's a severed leg. Immediately, Strike can think of three people who would send him a leg. The police take note, but pursue their own leads, leaving Strike to investigate on his own time and dime. He goes into

Alix's exclusive school is targeted by an anonymous group of vandals who turn out to be radical activists out to get her father, putting her and her family in danger. The group claims that Alix's powerful father helps corporations that knowingly allow innocent victims to die in order to make enormous profits from unsafe products cover up their wrongdoings, and they want her to help blow the whistle on his misdeeds.

This is an exciting, high-tech mystery-thriller in which orphaned activists go after the corporations that have contributed to the deaths of their families.

This is a character