It's still early in 2022, but quite a few mystery books have already hit the shelves. We'll continue to look out for new mystery books throughout the year and add them whenever we think they're worth reading. We'll also be adding books that have been nominated for prestigious mystery books 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 is normally 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
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.
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.
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).
Razorblade Tears
by S.A. Cosby
***Shortlisted for the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards***
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.
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.
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.
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 Ink Black Heart
by Robert Galbraith
Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike books are one of our favourite crime fiction series, and we’ll be counting down the days until the 6th instalment is published in August. As we’ve mentioned previously, this is a series where character development is important and while you can read them as standalone books, it’s best to start at the beginning with The Cuckoo’s Calling.
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 Christie Affair
by Nina de Gramont
If you’re an Agatha Christie fan (as many of us are), you may want to know about this book, an imagining of what happened to her during her famous 11-day disappearance in 1926, at the time of her breakup from her first husband, Archibald Christie. The Christie Affair mingles facts we know with fiction about what we don’t. It isn’t an edge-of-your-seat mystery (after all, we know Agatha remarried and lived to 85), but it’s an episode it was interesting to learn more about.
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).
