Mystery
A CURIOUS BEGINNING by Deanna Raybourn
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Veronica Speedwell has no interest in becoming a mother of six. So she tells the Vicar’s wife after her Aunt Nell’s funeral. After all, with Aunt Nell gone, she no longer has ties in England and can immediately undertake another of her expeditions to the tropics, her bread and butter as a lepidopterist hunting rare butterflies. And while she’s abroad, she can engage in some healthy and commitment-free sexual release with a like-minded, anonymous man or two. Marriage to a boring English gentleman with a sizable brood of his own? Thank you, but no.
But before Veronica can embark on her expedition, she is assaulted by a thug and then rescued by a middle-aged German baron who claims to know her parents–of whom Veronica has no knowledge herself. The baron escorts her to London, leaving her in the care of a taxidermist and naturalist named Stoker. Before he can return for her, however, the baron is murdered. Fleeing for their own safety, Veronica and Stoker form a reluctant alliance to find the baron’s murderer and Veronica’s assailant–and on the way, discover a startling truth about Veronica’s parentage.
A suspenseful, action-packed mystery with a touch of romance, A CURIOUS BEGINNING starts off a series with a delightfully nonconformist Victorian feminist for a narrator and a surly but noble love interest/partner in slightly-criminal-criminal-investigation. Very fun read with plenty of thrills to keep you turning pages!
(Just FYI, Book 4 is my favorite.)
A SPY IN THE HOUSE by Y.S. Lee
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Mary Yang should have been hanged. She would have been–in fact–had the headmistresses of Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls not been interested in her promising skills and personality. Because more than an Academy, Miss Scrimshaw’s is a cover for a feminist spy ring called the Agency. And at 17, Mary (now under the pseudonym of Mary Quinn) is ready for her first assignment. She infiltrates the household of wealthy merchant as a companion for his vapid daughter in the hopes of finding clues as to the whereabouts of missing cargo ships. It is supposed to be an easy job for a beginning agent. But Mary and her supervisors didn’t count on the presence of a charismatic (and persistent) young man. Or on the fact that this particular job has a connection to Mary’s long-buried past….
A fun Victorian mystery with crossover appeal for teens and adults, A SPY IN THE HOUSE is the first in THE AGENCY series. Lee has a PhD in Victorian literature and culture, and her credentials show in her meticulous world-building. Recommend to readers who (like me!) enjoy a touch of romance in their mysteries.
MAGPIE MURDERS by Anthony Horowitz
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When an editor receives the final installment in famous author Alan Conway’s Atticus Pünd mystery series, she is immediately sucked into the story. A housekeeper has died falling down the stairs–a seeming accident. But when the wealthy estate owner is decapitated at the foot of the same staircase days later, it must be connected. Detective Atticus Pünd hadn’t intended to take any more cases since he learned he is dying. But the facts of the case are too strange to pass up. It seems everyone in the village had a motive for one or both murders, and yet none of the motives seem to explain all of the events. As the novel draws to a close and Pünd is about to reveal the murderer, the editor realizes that there is a chapter missing. She puts in a call to her boss, asking him to contact the author, and instead receives startling news: the author is dead–an apparent suicide. It turns out that he, like his character Pünd, was dying of cancer. But something doesn’t sit right about the author’s death, and as the editor searches for the final chapter of his manuscript, she begins to suspect that he may have been murdered, as well.
This intriguing double mystery reads a bit like an Agatha Christie. It is riddled with quirky suspects and red herrings–both in the framing story and the mystery “novel” within. I found the Pünd plotline more engaging at first, as it took me a little while to get into the framing mystery once the Pünd story abruptly ended. But it was a neat concept and definitely kept me reading to the end. I recommend it to fans of classic whodunit mysteries.
THE PERFECT COUPLE by Elin Hilderbrand
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The maid of honor’s body washed up on the Nantucket beach the morning of the wedding. It was the bride who found her. Needless to say, the wedding was canceled. Now it is up to the chief and his lead detective to interview the shell-shocked bridal party and figure out what happened. The simplest explanation, of course, would be that it was an accident. Girl has too much to drink, goes for a late night swim, washes up on the beach the next morning. But what about the abandoned kayak that belongs to the father of the groom? Why does the other bridesmaid seem so reluctant to discuss the MOH’s love life? Why was the bride on the beach so early in the morning carrying a suitcase? And where is the best man? As the investigation unfolds, it becomes clear that everyone has at least one secret and no one is as perfect as they seem.
A character-driven mystery, this novel will appeal to some mystery fans, but also realistic fiction fans who like some good old-fashioned family dysfunction. In the end, exactly what happened is less important than the complex web of relationships between the characters. A fast and enjoyable summer read!
THE WORD IS MURDER by Anthony Horowitz
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On the day that she visited the funeral home to arrange her own funeral, Diana Cowper was murdered. Author Anthony Horowitz might never have been aware of the somewhat unsensational murder of elderly mother of a relatively well-known actor if he had not been approached by Daniel Hawthorne, an abrasive former detective turned police consultant with an unusual proposition. Hawthorne suggests that Anthony shadow him on the case and turn the events into a murder mystery story, which Hawthorne is certain will be a bestseller, due not so much to the intrigue of the case but to Hawthorne’s particular brilliance as a detective. Although he is off-put by Hawthorne’s egotism and other personality flaws and fears that such a book would be difficult to sell, Anthony finds the circumstances of Diana Cowper’s death so unusual and engaging that he must know what happens to her. And unless he agrees to Hawthorne’s book, he might never find out how the story ends. As the investigation unfolds, Anthony learns more dark secrets than he ever expected about Diana, her son, and Hawthorne himself. But every time he thinks of quitting, the mystery spurs him on, until he begins to wonder if he, the writer, is destined to solve it himself.
This meta-literary mystery is a fun, suspenseful read with enough twists, red herrings, and maddening clues to keep you going to the very end. The meta-literary framing, along with the brilliant yet barely likeable detective, sets the story as a kind of modern Sherlock Holmes novel, although the characters of the detective and record-keeping assistant are far from Holmes/Watson clones. I suspect this mystery may not be for everyone, as the meta-literary format is somewhat unique and experimental, but personally, I loved it. I particularly loved the moments when theories I had ended up being theories that Anthony would pursue–and then later have scornfully debunked by Hawthorne. I recommend it to mystery readers who like character-driven novels and who are open to interesting framing devices.
THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins
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Rachel’s life fell apart before the divorce, really. It was the drinking. If she hadn’t been such a drunk would Tom have taken up with Anna? Maybe he wouldn’t have kicked Rachel out and taken his new wife and child into the house that used to be hers, the house she still passes every day on the train to London. To distract herself from looking at the home that used to be hers, Rachel focuses on a couple a few houses down who seem to be perfectly in love. She makes up stories about their perfect life together. But one day, she sees something that makes her wonder if their lives are so perfect after all. And the next morning, Rachel wakes bruised and bloody with no memory of the previous night except a vague certainty that she went to her old neighborhood. Even worse, she discovers that the woman she has been watching disappeared that same night. Despite warnings from the police, Rachel cannot help but begin her own investigation, trying to recover the memories of what she saw–or did.
This excellent thriller will soon be a film. Through the perspectives of the three main female characters, the mystery slowly unfolds with enough foreshadowing to allow readers to gradually solve it themselves and enough complications to make them second guess every one of their inferences. Even once my suspicions of what had happened were proven correct in the final chapters, I still wasn’t sure how it would end. Well-crafted, full of deeply flawed and suspicious characters, and impossible to put down, this is a must-read for thriller lovers.
ODD THOMAS by Dean Koontz
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Odd can’t help it that the dead communicate with him. They sense that he can see them, and often they tell him the stories of their deaths–which, for those spirits restless enough to stick around, were usually untimely and unpleasant. Odd is not a cop, and he has no desire to be. He is nothing more than the best short order cook in Pico Mundo. But sometimes he can’t help getting involved with apprehending a murderer or preventing a future crime. His gift just won’t allow it. And when a suspicious man comes to the diner surrounded by the shadowy spirits that usually gawk at mass-murder, Odd knows it is up to him to prevent an unthinkable tragedy, despite the warnings that his involvement may lead him down a path of incredible suffering.
Wow, was this novel great! It starts with a quick case to get you hooked and then moves into the slow-moving but incredibly suspenseful main plot. Do not mistake “slow-moving” for a negative qualifier. Odd is an unreliable narrator. He admits at the beginning that he is leaving out major details for the sake of the story. When he deviates from the main plot into quirky asides about particular ghosts, characters, the town, or himself, he both deepens the incredible character development and ramps up the suspense. In this case, the slow-broil is brilliant and ultimately very satisfying when so many little details come together in the end. And I have never read an adult mystery/thriller series with this level of character development. This is a new favorite for me!
I highly recommend the audiobook!
THE BONE GARDEN by Tess Gerritsen
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When Julia bought an old fixer-upper house in rural Massachusetts, she was looking forward to gardening–a relaxing project to keep her mind off of the divorce. But when she unearths a human skeleton which shows signs of premortem trauma, she finds herself getting swept up in a mystery that began in 1830s Boston. She meets Henry Page, an 89 year old man with family connections to her new estate, and they begin searching through boxes of old letters, many of them written by the famous Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Along with Julia, the reader begins to hear the story of seventeen-year-old Irish immigrant Rose Connolly and medical student Norris Marshall, the son of a lower-class farmer. While Norris, Wendell, and their fellow doctors try to discover the cause and treatment for a fever epidemic that claimed the life of Rose’s sister and many other recently pregnant women in the hospital, Rose tries to protect her late sister’s child from her abusive brother-in-law, Eben. Norris and Rose’s stories become intertwined when nurses and doctors from the hospital begin to be murdered and mutilated with a distinctive pattern of knife wounds. Norris and Rose are the only two people to have seen the murderer (a figure cloaked in black with a mask like a skull), but no one believes them, and due to their lower-class status and circumstantial evidence, they both become murder suspects. Meanwhile, it seems people besides Eben are after Rose’s baby niece. The key to the mystery may be found in an old locket that Rose pawned to pay for her sister’s burial.
If you like thrillers and find medical history interesting, then this is the book for you! Gerritsen weaves details about Victorian medical knowledge (or lack thereof), body-snatching surgeons, and the medical education system of the time into a suspenseful mystery plot. The present day plot is kind of cheesy, but only comprises a small fraction of the novel. Readers who like suspenseful forensic mysteries or historical fiction thrillers will likely enjoy this novel.
If you liked The Bone Garden as a historical mystery, you may be interested in The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale. If you liked The Bone Garden as a medical thriller, you might like the Lincoln Rhyme books by Jeffrey Deaver.
THE LOVELY BONES by Alice Sebold
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Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon takes a shortcut home from school through a cornfield where her middle-aged neighbor, George Harvey, is waiting. When she accepts his offer to show her his cool underground den, he rapes and murders her, disposing of her dismembered remains in a sinkhole. The story unfolds as Susie’s ghost watches her father, mother, sister and friends deal with the tragedy of her death and search for answers and justice.
This book wasn’t quite what I expected when I first read it. I thought the main thrust of the plot would be devoted to tracking down her killer and bringing him to justice. But it was much more subtle and complicated than that. It’s an upsetting story, but having Susie’s ghost as narrator lends a sort of peace to the story that it wouldn’t have had being told by the father or the detective. The reader knows from the start what happened, so the pressure for justice and the need for the characters to learn the killer’s identity isn’t quite the same as it would be if we needed that information as well. Also, while Susie is dead to the characters, she is very much alive to the reader. It is upsetting, to be sure, but it is not just another serial killer book.
THE EYRE AFFAIR by Jasper Fforde
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Literary detective Thursday Next lives in the strictly regulated police state of England and spends much of her life struggling under the shadow of crimes of her relatives–her fugitive time-traveling father and her dead brother who allegedly led an ill-fated charge of the Light Brigade that left England and Russia locked in the Crimean War for over a century. But when the manuscript of Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit is stolen by the elusive, murderous, and perhaps insane Acheron Hades, Thursday finds that her own work is almost more than she can handle. After killing several of Thursday’s comrades–and nearly Thursday herself–Hades kidnaps the detective’s uncle and steals his Prose Portal, a unique invention that allows a human to travel into a work of literature. The villain uses it as a means of extortion, kidnapping characters from the original manuscripts of classic works of literature and threatening to murder them–forever altering the literary work–if his monetary demands are not met. For Thursday, this case is beyond personal.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I found the literary allusions hilarious and loved the way they were woven into the plot and this sci-fi world. I also really liked the premise of her father’s work with the ChronoGuard of government time-travelers and wish we had gotten to see more of that. The rest of my book group had more ambivalent feelings about the book. Most enjoyed the literary allusions, but many disliked the sci-fi elements. I don’t think they were fans of sci-fi in general. It is worth noting, however–for any hard sci-fi fans out there–that there is not much description of the “sci” behind the “fi” in this one. Still, I would personally recommend it to anyone who likes quirky mysteries and classic literature. It’s a lot of fun!
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