Category Archives: Mystery

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

by Rebecca

The Thursday Murder Club
by Richard Osman
2020

This book is absolutely brilliant! Not to be a complete stereotype but: it made me laugh and it made me cry and I loved it!

It’s set in a retirement community and Osman really makes brilliant and full use of that setting and the implications. It’s not just a fun setting (although it is that too); this is a location where every main person has at least seven decades of experience and time to have accumulated skills, friends, secrets, sorrows, and perspective. Every character is a Character! Current events can and do connect to mysteries that have long gone cold but the people involved are still around and making decisions based on those old situations.

The mystery is also full of twists and turns and so many red herrings and I fell for every single one of them. There were no obvious false starts; every path led somewhere, it just wasn’t necessarily to where I, or the investigating characters, thought they were going.

The murder mystery(ies) are obviously the main plot line, are fascinating, and keep the novel cohesive, but another amazing brilliance of this book is the way the investigation shows a whole set of different communities, how they interacted with each other and also how they changed through time. And the characters are all so wonderful and delightful! (With one glaring exception, but they get what’s coming to them! And were still written absolutely brilliantly.)

An Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good by Helene Tursten

by Rebecca

An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good
by Helene Tursten
translated by Marlaine Delargy
2018

This is a delightful little book of five short stories starring Maud, the titular elderly lady who is up to no good. She’s like Miss Marple’s nemesis in a series of cozy noir mysteries.

In her late 80s, Maud has lived her whole life in the same apartment in Gothenburg, Sweden because there was a clause in the sales contract for the apartment building that her father’s children could live there rent-free for as long as they’d like. Maud has enjoyed living there her whole live (much to the dismay of the housing association board) and has saved up enough money to travels extensively in her retirement. She also saves by being casually criminal whenever the opportunity arises. As an apparently frail little old lady, Maud is generally treated well except when she’s condescended to. As an actually quite fit and capable little old lady, Maud sometimes decides that when she is not treated well, then that person should be removed from this life and goes about making that happen.

What’s particularly interesting about this book is that the narration isn’t on her side. She isn’t an anti-hero or a vigilante. She’s a killer who gets away with it by playing into society’s biases about little old ladies.

In addition to the stories themselves, I also got a kick out of the afterward/about-the-author section which described how Tursten is the author of two detective series, but she was getting burnt out writing about honest people supporting the law. Instead, she was inspired to write a story about someone on the opposite side of the law. And thus Maud came into being.

How Lucky

by Anna

By Will Leitch

Man, it is my season for finally getting around to reading novels by authors that founded beloved defunct websites. Will Leitch co-founded Deadspin, and while he often wrote about sports, he was so clever and witty that I read all his posts anyway. Anyway, I was very much looking forward to reading a mystery by him, and it only took me four years!

I love an unlikely detective, and this was specifically recommended to fans of The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Night-Time, which was one of my first of the genre. In this novel, protagonist Daniel suffers from spinal muscular atrophy (SMA, described as similar to infant ALS), with a predicted lifespan of 21 years tops, though he is beating the odds in his early 20s and living independently though with round-the-clock assistance. He can’t speak verbally or move without his wheelchair, but still participates in more of life than many of us, which becomes a clear theme of the novel.

While sitting on his porch each morning, he regularly sees a young college student walking to class, and when one morning she gets in a car and then disappears, he appears to be the only witness. He is promptly dismissed by the police in the face of his disability, and his two closest friends jump in to help him continue to get his statement heard. This brings him to the attention of the kidnapper, which really ramps up the suspense.

The crime itself is fairly straight-forward, and is secondary to showcasing a number of socially-marginalized characters and how much they contribute to society as a whole. The end takes a startling swing toward high action, which felt a little jarring, but I’m not sure that wasn’t intentional as well. If at times the theme felt a little blunt, it is definitely a message that is needed more and more today: that everyone can contribute to our society in large and small ways, and that you get out of life what you put into it.

Unsatisfactory Cozies

by Anna

Only the Cat Knows by Marian Babson

Yeah, yeah, I know… I didn’t particularly like the earlier book I read, but just like that one, I was suckered into the premise. After a suspicious fall puts his twin in critical conditional, a renowned ‘female impersonator’ takes her place in the strange rich guy’s compound where she lives and works. The whole cast of weirdos all hanging on to an enigmatic millionaire is very reminiscent of Elizabeth Peters’ excellent Summer of the Dragon, and this book suffers by the comparison.

As I found in the first book, Marian Babson lacks the key charm necessary to write a standout cozy mystery, though her plots are fun enough. The bare bones are there, but a lot more goes into a decent cozy than the average reader (or writer, I guess) realizes. The end, too, felt fairly abrupt, just wrapping up with the nearest available weirdo being the culprit without much setup, and the happily ever after for the rest of the characters felt fairly unearned as well.

A Deadly Walk in Devon by Nicholas George

Maybe it’s me or maybe it’s 2025, but cozy mysteries are taking an increasing amount of suspension of disbelief, and I may have reached my limit. I already have to accept that the police are concerned with justice and safety in this fantasy world (at least this particular protagonist is already retired), but also that murder is always wrong. Hear me out: maybe if someone is an absolute nightmare to be around at all times, when they eventually push someone too far, that’s just natural consequences.

So, I’m already struggling to believe that our protagonist is a good guy, though he is sympathetically written, and now I have to convince myself that the main investigation is even worth doing. Nicholas George is a capable writer, but this is a steep uphill demand. Overall the majority of the book felt like following a basic outline for a cozy mystery with all the boxes checked off in order, though the end took a bit of a dramatic turn. I’m guessing that George will find a more natural flow in later books, though I’m not invested enough to see.

To Catch A Cat

by Anna

By Marian Babson

For such a charming cozy premise, this mystery is surprisingly grim and nasty, which is not necessarily a pan but definitely a surprise. Within the first ten pages, 11-year-old Robin has been dared to steal a neighbor’s prized cat but while in the house, witnesses the husband brutally beat his wife to death. I guess I’d expected more of a ‘closed door’ mystery, where all the violence is off-screen so to speak, but it’s really quite explicit. We continue to get intermittent chapters from the husband’s unhinged viewpoint, which are unpleasant and I imagine would be very triggering to anyone experienced in any sort of domestic abuse situation.

At the same time, Robin is staying with his aunt and her less violent, but still verbally abusive boyfriend, and honestly, this novel is not very generous to any sort of post-pubescent male characters. Individual scenes are darkly funny, but the overall situation is grim enough that it is hard to fully enjoy the mystery. Robin is, at best, severely neglected by the variety of self-centered adults around him, with his only real comfort and companion being this cat that he has successfully smuggled out of the murder house.

All the adults are fairly useless in general, with the only real support and help coming from other children and teens. The several divergent plot strands come together in a neat (and fairly quick, at less than 200 pages) ending, and like any decent cozy, it all concludes satisfactorily, though disconcertingly so, considering everything everyone has been through.

Manners and Monsters

by Anna

By Tilly Wallace

I’d run across a couple different recommendations for this book, and the premise is fascinating! Set in a fantasy England in the early 19th century, a biological weapon created in the Napoleanic wars has turned several hundred members of the English aristocracy, primarily women, into zombies of a sort. Honestly, the worldbuilding is so clever, this is more of what I would have liked to see in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! The aristocracy, being the elite, have made it a whole song and dance, with a whole new set of ridiculous etiquette around their living-dead members.

When the etiquette is broken quite violently with a zombie-esque murder (missing brains, of course) at a grand ball, chief investigator Viscount Wycliff, on the fringe of haute ton himself, must pry into secrets of the various ‘unfortunates’ in attendance. In order to ruffle as few feathers as possible, he is accompanied by Spunky Heroine™ Hannah, the unassuming daughter of a surgeon specializing in undead ailments. And here’s where the novel lost me a little.

I generally liked Hannah, but both protagonists are fairly flatly written: Wycliff is brusque to the point of insulting, while Hannah pines for love at least half a dozen times throughout the book. The two are very clearly destined for each other, which wouldn’t bother me if they didn’t seem like an exceptionally bad match. I’d be reading along, enjoying the general zombification of the Regency era, and then their personal interactions would be a sour note. Romance really is trickier to write than people realize!

An additional big kudo to author Tilly Wallace, though: she sells all of her books directly through her website, tillywallace.com, where you can pay and promptly download an epub file. As someone trying to cut my very last tie to amazon (those pesky self-published ebooks), I very much appreciated this, and hope that more self-published authors follow suit!

more graphic novels

by Rebecca

It is all too easy to buy a whole bunch of really cool graphic novels from either Small Press Expo or Toronto Comic Arts Festival, be absolutely delighted with them all, and then go home and get distracted from actually reading them, in part because there are so many and where do I even start? (It turns out collecting books and reading books can be two separate hobbies!) But I don’t want to forget about these in my ever-growing to-read pile, and so here are another three graphic novels that I acquired, read, and enjoyed.

She Walks With The Giant
by John V. Slavino
2022

This is a beautifully illustrated book with gorgeous vistas set in a post-apocalyptic world in a fantasy ancient Asia. The girl is an orphan in a ghost town who first sees the giant robot appear, and decides (much to the giant robot’s dismay) to follow along. The first part of the book is an exploration of the world as it is, while the second part is an exploration of the history that brought it to this point, where the giant came from, and how there’s no real escape from being part of that history.

Skip to the Fun Parts: A Guide to Cartoons and Complains about, the Creative Process
by Dana Jeri Maier
2023

Admittedly I bought this with the expectation that this would be something of a guide to the creative process written by a published graphic novel writer/artist despite the clear strike-through of those exact words, and it’s decidedly not that, but I still found it remarkably reassuring and comforting, and also extremely funny and with a few good ideas thrown in. It felt comforting to see someone successful face some of the same issues I am with energy vs inspiration, and still persevering with good humor.

The Pineapples of Wrath
by Catherine Lamontagne-Drolet
2018

A friend who wasn’t particularly interested in graphic novels was curious to try one out and asked for a recommendation, so we asked her what genres she generally read, since graphic novels come in all genres. At which point she asked for a cozy mystery and Anna and I were both stumped. Graphic novels do come in all genres… but that was a rare one! However, we persevered and found a cozy mystery graphic novel: The Pineapples of Wrath, which is hilarious and adorable and has quite the body count as Marie-Plum, bartender and mystery-reader, determines that her elderly neighbor was murdered and if the police won’t investigate, then she will! The setting is a fictional little-Hawaii neighborhood in Québec, Canada, and it is just as ridiculously touristy as you can imagine and maybe a bit more.

A Dreadful Splendor

by Anna

By B. R. Myers

This is apparently the author’s first adult novel after a slew for young adults, and I have to admit that I’m not convinced it is fully aged up. Genevieve, the teenage protagonist, is very Feisty™ in a particularly young adult way (i.e. with all the common sense of a young adult). She is confident and sassy in situations that she would probably be better suited just observing or even fading into the background, and then acquiescent at times when she should really take a stand. She jumps to a number of fairly obviously wrong conclusions, which she then has to apologize for, which always makes me cringe.

All of that out of the way, the plot is a quite juicy gothic mystery surrounding the tragic death of a beautiful young heiress. Genevieve, raised as a scam medium under the tutelage of her mother, has been brought in to contact her spirit by two different men at cross purposes, one to set the other’s mind at ease, and the other to uncover a murderer. Once in the classic gothic sprawling estate of decaying wealth, she begins to experience strange occurrences that test her skepticism. I love a false medium/real ghost scenario!

While the writing continued to read juvenile to me, with a lot of the sort of repetition one offers to younger readers to make sure they are following along, the plot really did hold up all the way through. I was full of guesses but had no solid predictions of the final reveal, and felt it held up in a suitably melodramatic way.

Mystery Comics

by Anna

A friend asked me for a recommendation for a graphic novel to introduce her to the medium, which is always a fun challenge. She stumped me, though, when I asked her preferred genre, and she said ‘cozy mystery’! I would have previously thought that graphic novels covered pretty much all genres, but I couldn’t think of a single cozy mystery. I sent her Jason Little’s Shutterbug Follies, which I would classify as more of a quirky mystery than cozy (a fine distinction), while I did a deeper dive through my library stacks.

The Good Asian by Pornsak Pichetshote and Alexandre Tefenkgi

This is very much noir, and not cozy, but is also super interesting! Starting with him stuck in an immigration detainment camp, Edison Hark is a Chinese police officer working in San Francisco in 1936. Tracking down the missing Chinese maid of a millionaire family takes him through all levels of society. The author and artists capture classic noir perfectly in both narrative and style, and weave in an impressive amount of historical detail. My only complaint is a common one with graphic novels, that is was just too abridged. The characterizations and plot felt rushed to the point that I had some trouble keeping track of the investigation, which certainly blunts the suspense and reveals a bit. Even with the compression, volume 1 ends on a cliffhanger with no solution yet in sight.

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Comics written by women

by Anna

I ran across a thread on Twitter listing out comics and manga by women, and there were a number I hadn’t heard of, so I promptly went on a hold spree on my library’s website.

The Good

Sleepless by Sarah Vaughn and Leila del Duca

Ooh, this was a delight! The beautiful illustrations and realistic dialogue work together to draw the reader into this diverse Renaissance-type world of heraldry, politics, and magic. Lady Pyppenia or “Poppy” is the beloved though illegitimate daughter of the late king, trying to find her place in the court once her uncle takes the thrown. Her sworn knight, Cyrenic, is one of the ‘sleepless,’ guards who have magically sacrificed their need for sleep in order to offer around-the-clock protection, and the only one she can trust when assassins come for her.

The world building is expansive enough that it reminds me a bit of Game of Thrones, though much more family friendly, of course. The variety of fantasy cultures borrow elements from Europe through the Mediterranean and down into North Africa, represented with different fashions, manners, and magic, and all trying to navigate the various political alliances. At the same time, it is an intimate look at the relationship between a young woman in a precarious position of power and the man that serves her. The first volume ends on a cliffhanger, and the second picks up immediately, so get them together if you can.

Black Cloak by Kelly Thompson and Meredith McClaren

Another phenomenal story! I knew it was likely to be a good one for me from the various raves describing it as fantasy shot through with noir mystery/police procedural. There’s not much better way to my heart, and it is excellently done.

Set in a futuristic fantasy world, where elves, dragons, and humans all jostle for political power in the last standing city, Black Cloak balances the writing and illustrations beautifully in its “show, don’t tell” approach. When two bodies wash ashore from the mermaid lagoon, our protagonist, a ‘black cloak’ cop, must investigate. The world-building unfolds with the mystery as the bodies lead to secrets through all levels of the society.

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