Nobody does unsettling murder mysteries in small, remote communities—where everyone knows each other and has lots of secrets—as well as Jane Harper . The setting for The Survivors, Harper’s fourth novel, is Evelyn Bay, a small (fictional) beach town on the island of Tasmania, where the ocean provides a menacing backdrop that pervades the story. Prepare to want to read this book in one sitting.
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☆ Shortlisted for the 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Awards
Set in a small Nevada town in the desert, The Distant Dead is beautiful, evocative and quite sad, with so many characters who can't escape their circumstances. Once you get into the story, it's hard to put down and you might even learn something about math and anthropology along the way.
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☆ Shortlisted for the 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Awards
The Missing American by Kwei Quartey is not only a pageturner but also an eyeopener. If you’ve always been curious about scam emails and who might be behind them, here’s what happens to a man who responds to one. The book is set in Ghana , which is a lot of fun to read about at a time when travelling is difficult.
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☆ Shortlisted for the 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Awards
The author of Before She Was Helen , Caroline Cooney, is an incredibly successful writer of books for teenagers . But, as she explains in a Q&A at the back of the book, having written more than 75 of them, she wanted to do something aimed at adults. This is such a lovely book, set in a retirement village, with an aged 70+ heroine. One nice aspect of it is the reflections on how attitudes have changed since the 1950s. "I grew up in the 1950s," Cooney writes, "Those days seem as remote now as ancient Egypt or Greece. I wanted to include details that people younger than I have trouble believing."
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Choosing to call this book The Therapist was a mistake, in our view, but it is still well worth reading. It's a mystery in the classic style of: a woman moves into an upmarket house with her boyfriend, strange things happen, she tries to figure out what's going on—while dealing with the internal turmoil of her own past and people thinking she's a fantasist. It's nicely done.
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If you like your mysteries set in snow, Shiver by Allie Reynolds is a good one. It's an Agatha Christie -style plot, but with more grit, focusing on a group of snowboarders who are friends and competitors. It's set in a French alpine resort and moves between the present and events of a decade ago. Creepiness and competitiveness are combined.
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“This is the follow-up to Osman’s likeable and funny first book The Thursday Murder Club which has been a fixture on bestseller lists since its 2020 release. This new murder mystery returns to the sleepy retirement village of Coopers Chase, where our septuagenarian sleuths have returned to the jigsaw room—only to find their peace shattered again when a ghost from the past sends one of their number a letter, many years after his supposed violent end. The Man Who Died Twice looks set to charm all those who loved Osman’s earlier book; I’ve heard the second Thursday Murder Club outing even better than the first.” Read more...
Notable Novels of Fall 2021
Cal Flyn ,
Five Books Editor
☆ Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Gold Dagger
City of Ghosts by Ben Creed—a pseudonym for writing duo Chris Rickaby and Barney Thompson—is set in Leningrad in 1951, and combines a classic detective setup with an exploration of how the Soviet Union at that time operated. There are lots of throwbacks to the Siege of Leningrad during World War II. There's also a strong musical theme, with part of the action stemming from events at the city's Conservatory, where the chief protagonist studied before he lost his fingers. If you enjoy the historical aspects of this book, you might also like Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad,
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☆ 2021 CWA Gold Dagger Highly Commended
In House of Correction , longtime writing duo Nicci Gerrard and Sean French (aka Nicci French), introduce us to Tabitha, a depressed, isolated young woman who has ended up in prison for murder she's pretty sure she didn't commit (although she can't remember exactly what happened that day). Join her as she embarks on her own investigation of who committed the crime—from behind bars.
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“It feels epic to me…It has a great story, and you can get lost in Soho, down in all the jazz clubs, with celebrities popping up. There are all these different elements, but then it all comes together like a big conspiracy. You’re trying to figure it out: Who’s the good guy? Who’s the bad guy?…It’s not a police procedural, but there’s a detective at the heart of it. It moves through World War Two, and by the time it got to the end, I was just in awe.” Read more...
The Best 1930s Mysteries
Louise Hare ,
Novelist
☆ Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Gold Dagger
Midnight Atlanta is the third in Thomas Mullen's Darktown Darktown and Lightning Men first, both of which also blend a thriller/mystery plot with American history of the civil rights era. Midnight Atlanta is set in 1956 and the activities of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Bus Boycott loom in the background. It's nicely done.
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by Yun Ko-Eun and Lizzie Buehler (translator)
☆ Winner of the 2021 CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger
The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-Eun (translated from Korean by Lizzie Buehler) is an entertaining novel about a travel agency that arranges trips to natural disasters. It's macabre, far-fetched and yet somehow completely believable.
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☆ 2021 CWA Gold Dagger Highly Commended
Blacktop Wasteland is a thriller more than a mystery, but deserves a mention because it was highly commended by the Crime Writers' Association in its 2021 Gold Dagger awards. The chief protagonist is Bug (real name: Beauregard), a car mechanic and hotshot driver, and your heart starts sinking early in the book as his efforts to stay on the straight and narrow falter under financial pressure—even as he tries to be a good husband, dad and businessman. Still, you quickly get sucked into the action and feel oddly empowered by him and just how smart and talented he is, rooting for him even as he commits heinous crimes.
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“Let’s just talk a moment about S.A. Cosby’s incredible voice and unforgettable characters. Don’t tell me for a moment Bug—or any of the other characters who grace these pages—are not real people. I refuse to believe it. They are too multi-dimensional, too flawed, sympathetic, and too perfectly human. And then there’s the story: gritty, dynamic noir by an author in complete command of his craft. As an author, I read mastery like this with equal parts awe and envy.” Read more...
The Best Thrillers of 2021
Tosca Lee ,
Novelist
🏆 Winner 2021 CWA Gold Dagger
We Begin at the End won the UK's most prominent mystery-writing award in 2021, the CWA Gold Dagger, so definitely deserves a mention. It's perhaps more the story of a man (a cop called Walk) and the people he cares about than a whodunnit. The style is quite particular, a bit repetitive and won't appeal to all. To take a typical paragraph: "Together they watched a trawler, The Sun Drift , Walk knew it, blue paint and rust, curved lines of steel and wire. It moved silent from where they were, no waves just the carve of its hull."
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🏆 Winner 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Awards
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is an incredibly touching story told through the eyes of Jai, a nine-year-old boy living in a basti or slum of an Indian city. It's an amazing book to read—you feel like you are living in the basti with Jai and his friends, experiencing the sights, the smells, the characters, including the corrupt police force. The mystery element is a minor part of the book, in the sense that there isn't really an 'aha' moment, but this book is definitely a must-read. Afterwards, it was hard not to click on some of the organizations that the author recommends that work with children from impoverished communities.
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☆ Shortlisted for the 2021 Edgar Allan Poe Awards
If you read mysteries for pure escapism, These Women by Ivy Pochoda is a tough one, with lots of drugs, streetwalking and seedy clubs. Set in LA , it's the story of a group of mostly marginalized women, a number of whom end up murdered. The beauty of the book is that it's really about them and their lives, and the mothers who mourn them, rather than the killer and the crimes. In terms of narrative structure, the story is told from each of these women's perspectives, which means you do have to adjust to the next narrator, but there's enough overlap that it doesn't break up the reading experience.
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“This isn’t your typical whodunnit. This is a haunting look at a community of women—not just the victims, but the family, friends and neighbors surrounding the victims—their circumstances, and the setting in which their stories take place. It hops between 1999 and 2014, and is that rare crime novel that compels not just by its plot, which advances with its shifting points of view, but by its insight into gender, privilege, and power.” Read more...
The Best Thrillers of 2021
Tosca Lee ,
Novelist
☆ Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Gold Dagger
The Postscript Murders by Elly Griffiths is the second book featuring Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur (the first was The Stranger Diaries
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The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood is a classic cosy mystery , set in the UK in the town of Marlow and featuring an elderly lady who is good at cryptic crossword puzzles and goes around town wearing a cape. The plotting is serviceable, but the main attraction of the book is the setting, opening with Judith (the main protagonist) swimming in the Thames, and this general feel of a rather nice life by the river in a pleasant English setting.
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Lightseekers by Femi Kayode is a novel set in Nigeria, in particular a small university town near the oil town of Port Harcourt. This setting is, in itself, really interesting, as we pick up little hints of the local history, the Biafran War, the tensions, the corruption and the feelings of the main protagonist—an investigative psychologist—as he adjusts to life back in Nigeria. Chillingly, the murders in the story are based on a real event, and the mystery investigated in the book is what might cause such horrific mob violence.
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