2022 was a decent year for mystery books. We track new books in the genre throughout the year as they were published, adding them whenever we think they're worth reading. On this list, we've also included books that have been nominated for prestigious mystery book awards, like the Edgars in the US and the Dagger Awards in the UK. The shortlist for the Edgars was announced in January, and the Dagger shortlist unveiled in May. Bear in mind that these are the best books of the previous year, rather than the very latest—with the advantage that they're already likely to be in paperback.
This list is part of our best books of 2022 series; our best mystery books of 2023 list is also beginning to get underway.
No One Will Miss Her
by Kat Rosenfield
***Shortlisted for the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards***
No One Will Miss Her is an excellently plotted mystery. It’s also incredibly touching with a heartwrenching main protagonist. We’ve put it at the top of this list because so far it’s our favourite of the mystery books we’ve read this year.
The Ink Black Heart
by Robert Galbraith
The Ink Black Heart is the sixth book in Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike series, one of our favourite crime fiction series. The plot revolves around a cartoon and an online game based on that cartoon, and London’s Highgate Cemetery plays a key role in events (if you’ve never visited, you should: both Karl Marx and Douglas Adams are buried there, amongst hundreds of graves and ash trees growing all over the place. All in all, an ideal setting for a murder). The book is long, and it’s for readers who enjoy living daily life with the two main protagonists, Strike and Robin, as they go out about running their detective agency, rather than a pacy thriller you rush through at speed to find out whodunnit. As we’ve noted previously, this is a series where character development is important and while you can read each of the books as standalones, it’s best to start at the beginning with The Cuckoo’s Calling. The audiobook narrator for every book in the series so far, Robert Glenister, is excellent.
Reputation
by Sarah Vaughan
Before adding a book to this list, we often think about it for a few weeks, to see if it sticks with us. Reputation does. It's a book about what it's like to be a female politician, and so is significant not just as a good read, but for its insight into the price paid by women to participate actively in a democracy. It's scary and depressing and helps question what's important in life—even if the answer is uncomfortable.
Razorblade Tears
by S.A. Cosby
***Shortlisted for the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards***
***Shortlisted for the 2022 CWA Gold Dagger***
If you loved S.A Cosby's last book, Blacktop Wasteland, you'll enjoy this one. The characters are different, but the chief protagonists are again ex-cons, sucked back to the dark side by circumstances beyond their control. You, the reader, will again wish them well as they commit gruesome murders. As a mystery, however, this latest book, Razorblade Tears, is much more satisfying: it's driven along not only by memorable characters but also by the plot.
“Razorblade Tears is a moody Southern thriller with fast-paced action, the story of two men—one black, one white, both ex-cons—who team together to solve the murder of their sons, who were married to one another. It’s a gritty tale that looks into questions of race, poverty, and other bias through the lens of both violence and compassion.” Read more...
Tosca Lee, Novelist
The It Girl
by Ruth Ware
We’re Ruth Ware fans here at Five Books so it’s not a huge surprise we’re including her latest, The It Girl, on our mysteries of 2022 list. It’s set in a fictional Oxford college and involves the murder of a student. The story is told through the eyes of her roommate and best friend, ten years on and now married to the boyfriend of the murdered girl. The how and who of the murder is possibly a little quick to become clear to the reader—leading to a slight frustration with the main character—though the why remains a surprise.
The Maid
by Nita Prose & narrated by Lauren Ambrose
***Shortlisted for the 2023 Edgar Allan Poe Awards***
The Maid by Nita Prose falls into the cosy mystery genre, though it has an edge to it that makes it extremely memorable. It's set in a boutique hotel in New York and the narrator is the guileless and perfectionistic Molly, who cleans rooms there. The audiobook of The Maid is outstanding, chosen by AudioFile magazine as one of its best books of the year.
“The Maid is set in a boutique hotel in Manhattan. The protagonist is Molly the maid, who tells the story. There is a crime, Molly is blamed and we have to figure out what the truth is. Lauren Ambrose is the narrator. She is an American actress who I don’t think has done a lot of audiobooks, but she really gets the character of Molly. Molly is an excellent maid; she gets everything right every time and is very precise. That’s very important to her because although it’s not specified, Molly is somewhere on the autism spectrum. Everything has to be in its place and that’s how she gets through her work and her life. There is a slight speech pattern that Lauren gives Molly that is so subtle and so beautifully articulated. I have no idea how she invented this voice but it is perfect for reflecting the psychology of the character. You really feel you are listening to someone whose whole life has to be in the details done the same every time and that if anything goes awry then you’re off kilter. It’s just brilliantly done. The Maid is also a very good mystery, with lots of red herrings, lots of misdirection. You’re really rooting for Molly to be exonerated.” Read more...
Robin Whitten, Journalist
The Shadows of Men
by Abir Mukherjee
***Shortlisted for the 2021 CWA Gold Dagger***
The books in Abir Mukherjee's Wyndham and Banerjee series are set in India in the last decades of the Raj. In this book, Gandhi is in the background and communal violence in the foreground, but like all the books in the series, The Shadows of Men is very lighthearted in tone. India's first elections had taken place a few years before, in 1920. The two main protagonists, Sam Wyndham and Surendranath Banerjee, are based in colonial Calcutta but in this book also travel to Bombay. If you like your mysteries set in the past but not too heavy, this series is ideal. The Shadows of Men is the fifth book in the series, if you want to start at the beginning, the first is A Rising Man.
Before You Knew My Name
by Jacqueline Bublitz
***Shortlisted for the 2022 CWA Gold Dagger***
Before You Knew My Name is a touching story set mainly in New York's Upper West Side. The author Jacqueline Bublitz is from Australia/New Zealand, so it's a little bit of an outsider's perspective. The focus of the book is violence against women and it's a little bit more than just a crime novel.
Blackstone Fell
by Martin Edwards
Blackstone Fell is by Martin Edwards, a leading expert on the 'golden age' of mystery writing, the period between the two world wars when escapism was the order of the day and reading a mystery book all about solving a clever puzzle. This book is written very much in that genre, even featuring a locked room mystery (though that's not the main plot). Set mainly in Yorkshire, it does read like it was written in the 1930s and even has a 'cluefinder' at the end, a device popular during the golden age and alerted the reader to the clues they should have picked up on while reading the book. It's the third book in a series featuring Rachel Savernake as the crime solver, Gallows Court and Mortmain Hall are the first two books in the series.
Five Decembers
by James Kestrel
***Winner of the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards***
Five Decembers is a mystery set in World War II, starting off in Hawaii just before Pearl Harbor. The main protagonist is a Honolulu Police Department detective, who ends up travelling to Wake Island, Guam, Hong Kong and Tokyo in his search for the perpetrator of two brutal murders. Though many books feature World War II, it’s interesting to have the war in Asia as the backdrop, including the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945.
Sunset Swing
by Ray Celestin
***Winner 2022 CWA Gold Dagger***
Sunset Swing is the fourth and final novel in Ray Celestin's City Blues Quartet, intertwining the history of jazz and the mob across six decades and each set in a different American city: New Orleans, Chicago and New York. Los Angeles in 1967 is the backdrop for Sunset Swing and one of the main characters is on leave from service in the Vietnam War to find her brother. Another wants to leave town to set up a vineyard. Louis Armstrong makes an appearance. Overall, the plot is slightly disjointed and the book does not work well as a standalone read. Like a few other mystery books on this list, it may be worth starting with the first book in the series, The Axeman's Jazz, to appreciate this one.
The Paris Apartment
by Lucy Foley
If you haven't read any Lucy Foley before, they're always good, pacy mysteries, somewhat similar in structure and style. The Paris Apartment is a good one. Part of the attraction is that it's set in Paris. The two main characters (siblings) also feel more real or perhaps are more touching than in her previous bestsellers (The Hunting Party, The Guest List).
The Unwilling
by John Hart
***Shortlisted for the 2022 CWA Gold Dagger***
This is one of two books on the 2022 Gold Dagger shortlist set in the Vietnam War era. John Hart is a good writer and The Unwilling draws you in. You will connect with the main characters, two brothers, and want to read on to find out what happens next. That said, the plot has a disconnected feel, almost as if it's two books instead of one. If you haven't read John Hart before, it might be worth turning to some of his earlier books, like Down River, first.
How Lucky
by Will Leitch
***Shortlisted for the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards***
How Lucky by Will Leitch is a mystery told in the voice of a young man with spinal muscular atrophy or SMA, who is confined to a wheelchair and heavily dependent on others to stay alive. It's very touching and life-affirming and it was not a surprise, at the end of the book, to find out that the author was inspired to write it from knowing a young boy suffering from the genetic condition.
Dead of Winter
by Anders de La Motte
Dead of Winter is a mystery by Swedish crime writer (and former police officer) Anders de la Motte, set in Skåne, the southernmost part of Sweden. The book divides between the present and events in 1987, when a fire ends up killing Laura, the main protagonist’s, best friend. It’s a nice evocation of a rural region—a place of lakes and forests—and it has a reasonably good plot.
The Second Cut
by Louise Welsh
It’s taken a couple of decades, but the protagonist of The Cutting Room is back. Rilke is a middle-aged auctioneer in Glasgow, who enjoys hooking up with other men on Grindr. A friend gives him a tip about a house clearance, is found dead the following day, and the story unfolds from there. The author, Louise Welsh, is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow and the book is on the literary end of mystery-writing. As the author of Trainspotting put it in his interview with us, “to my mind she is not really a crime writer. She is a very serious literary writer working in crime”
The Trawlerman
by William Shaw
***Shortlisted for the 2022 CWA Gold Dagger***
The Trawlerman is a mystery set on a beautiful piece of Kent coastline near Dungeness nuclear power station. The book is part of a series featuring a police officer called DS Alexandra Cupidi, who combines a tough job with being a single parent to a teenage daughter. In terms of plot, the book does work as a standalone. However, it is hard to feel very invested in the characters or their lives—Cupidi is recovering from PTSD—so it may be worth exploring the first book in the series, Salt Lane, before trying this one.
The Venice Sketchbook
by Rhys Bowen
***Shortlisted for the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards***
The Venice Sketchbook by Rhys Bowen is a work of historical fiction (or possibly historical romance) set in both the present and the lead up to World War II. We’ve included it because it’s been shortlisted for an Edgar, but it’s not really a mystery in the classic sense of having you guessing whodunnit. The plot revolves around a woman learning more about the past life of her recently deceased great aunt, with most of the action taking place in Venice (aka La Serenissima).
