Category Archives: Mystery

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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The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels

by Anna

By Janice Hallett

I raved about Hallett’s The Appeal earlier this year, but I’m savoring this one even more! The Alperton Angels uses the same epistolary style of collected emails, texts, and memos, but whereas The Appeal was more cozy mystery, this is religious suspense thriller, which is absolutely my bag. The same style that worked so well to bring out the humor in small community theater works equally well at building brewing creeping dread.

The first page sets the premise: you have access to the following collection of documents, do you take them to the police or hide them away forever? And when I first started, I wondered, what on earth would lead me to cover up a brutal murder?! Well, the presence of the antichrist might… (that’s a teaser, not a spoiler). The documents are the collected emails, texts, and transcribed interviews of a true crime author researching her latest project: years ago two teenagers rescued a baby from a doomsday cult that claimed it was the antichrist and planned to kill it to save the world. The cult itself was then found dead by ritual suicide by the cops that responded to the teen’s emergency call. After the first rush of news stories, with some suspicious discrepancies, the story went quiet and the teens and baby seem to have disappeared.

Our central author is approached by her publisher to revisit the story, and to pique the public’s interest, find the baby, who would be turning 18 this year. As she follows the various leads, more and more isn’t adding up, and then a competing author joins the search as well. That’s about as much as I want to say; since the mystery goes in so many different directions, anything else could be mild spoilers. There were so many twists and turns at the end, it was getting a little ridiculous, but I loved every one of them!

Unexpected Night

by Anna

By Elizabeth Daly

This book is a trip — not exactly good by today’s standards, but very entertaining! First published in 1940, Daly is a contemporary of Agatha Christie, though not nearly as prolific or renowned. I was going to give Daly some extra credit for avoiding the n-word where Christy would absolutely have used it, but she follows up later with some blackface and different (less charged?) slurs, so I guess there’s that.*

The narrative structure and characters are certainly dated, but that was part of the charm for me. I was often kept guessing at the twists in plot, more because I don’t understand many of the lifestyles and character tropes of the time (why is everyone going out golfing the day after a suspicious death?!) than any planned surprise reveals, and occasionally I couldn’t understand what the characters were on about, with their contemporary slang. It adds a certain spice to the reading experience!

Unexpected Night introduces Daly’s primary detective, Henry Gamadge, an antique book verifier, who gets dragged into mysteries under the flimsiest of excuses. In this case, he is vacationing at a resort in Maine, coincidentally along with a casual friend of his, who’s family then becomes embroiled in the suspicious death. Like I said, Gamadge doesn’t have much of a connection, and I very much appreciated the variety of characters that were also puzzled at his involvement, including the long suffering sheriff.

Since this is her first published book and the first in the Henry Gamadge series, I’m guessing that some of the rougher narrative and character parts will get smoothed out, and I look forward to continuing the series.

*Well, I started the second novel in the series, Deadly Nightshade, and unfortunately it features depictions of “gypsies” so offensive I had to quit, so I guess that’s that.

The City Beautiful

by Anna

By Aden Polydoros

Published in 2021, Aden Polydoros notes in the afterward, “I wanted to write a book where the Jewish characters weren’t just passive victims, but where they fought back and rose above the people who wished to do them harm.” The political climate today is a little trickier, but it does feel like both Hamas and IDF are doing their best to erase the beauty of Jewish culture each in their own way. Polydoros, however, does a powerful job of capturing the complexity of Jewish immigrant experience, in this case in Chicago in the late 1800s.

The City Beautiful packs in a lot, actually – it is a YA historical fantasy murder mystery, tying together the historical realism of immigrant life in the Chicago tenements with Jewish folklore in an enthralling story. Years after a traumatic Atlantic passage and the death of his father, Alter Rosen is focused on staying out of trouble and earning enough money to bring his mother and sisters to America. The disappearance of young men in his neighborhood is common enough that he doesn’t pay it much heed until his roommate and unrequited crush is found drowned. When preparing the tahara, the ritual purification ceremony for dead, he is taken over by the other boy’s dybbuk, or vengeful spirit, and driven to uncover the murder in order to free himself and lay the spirit to rest.

He is assisted by friends and neighbors who all represent varied facets of Jewish and immigrant experiences, occasionally in conflict with each other. The novel captures how messy and uncontained life is, and by contrast how false and damaging stereotypes and propaganda are, even if they seem more easily digestible on the surface. At a more basic level, it is also an absolutely thrilling mystery and ghost story, and a sweet YA-appropriate romance.

Grave Expectations

by Anna

By Alice Bell

I guess I just really love the very specific premise of a real psychic, who finds it easier to pretend to be a fake medium, has to solve a murder mystery in an old English country estate, because I loved A House of Ghosts and I loved this one! Despite the obvious similarities above, Grave Expectations has a much lighter, quirkier tone, at least partially due to the modern setting.

30-something Claire has been ‘haunted’ by her best friend ever since Sophie was mysteriously murdered when they were both in high school. This has clearly been a mixed blessing for both Claire and Sophie, but they have settled into a relatively routine life at the novel’s start. Claire makes a basic living as a medium, using Sophie mostly just to eavesdrop and dig through personal items for information.

Claire and Sophie are very reluctantly drawn into a murder investigation by a recent ghost, and their apathy is only matched by their ineptness, which makes for some really excellent comedy. Oddball members of the deceased’s family, both living and dead, join in the investigation, adding to the general hilarity. Halfway through, I was already hoping this is the start of a series.

I was snorting and giggling along, and was completely blindsided (in a good way) by the surprising pathos of the crisis point, when the author gives us a peek into the much more realistic trauma of two women struggling to come to terms with one of their unnatural deaths. I’m only a little ashamed to admit that I teared up. …And then we were back to slapstick reveal and denouement, poking fun at many of the traditional murder mystery tropes! I would have expected it to have felt uneven; it was jarring, but in a really skilled way that used the precarious balance of comedy and drama to strengthen the impact of each.

Christmas Stories

by Anna

As I get older, I find I have to work a little harder to generate a holiday spirit among all the daily life stressors and nonsense, so I like to gear up with some seasonal reads:

The Haunting Season: Eight Ghostly Tales for Long Winter Nights

I bought this because it includes a Natasha Pulley story about Keita and Thaniel from her Watchmaker of Filigree Street series, which I adore. The general reader reviews are mixed, with many readers saying that Pulley’s story was the weakest since it doesn’t stand alone if you aren’t familiar with the characters. Being well familiar with the characters, though, my experience was the opposite: I very much enjoyed Pulley’s story, always happy to get more of Keita and Thaniel, but was disappointed in the other stories.

Perhaps it was because I was already familiar with Pulley’s characters, but they were the only ones that I actually liked. Most of the other stories featured either selfish or delusional characters, I suppose to ‘justify’ the hauntings one way or another? The plots also seemed overly complicated and obtuse, so each story ended just as I felt like I was starting to get a feel for it.

Sentenced to Christmas

By Marshall Thornton

Marshall Thornton writes the most ridiculous rom-com and cozy mystery plots featuring a cast of hilarious dirtbag characters, and I get a real kick out of his books. As befits the title, the plot of this book is absolutely ridiculous: arrested for burning down the patriotic Christmas tree in front of a conservative talk radio station, our protagonist Gage is sentenced by a crackpot judge to spend Christmas with the prosecuting assistant district attorney (his own defense attorney being Jewish) in order to “learn the true meaning of Christmas.”

The thing about Thornton, though, is that his dirtbag characters then often react with more realistic cranky befuddlement, and it is consistently laugh-out-loud funny. Only one thing stops me from wholeheartedly recommending this: Gage’s friend and assistant is introduced as non-binary, and that being a point of contention with their family, especially around the holidays. Unfortunately, Thornton presumably forgot, and uses she/her pronouns for them for a chunk of the middle of the book. I am confident that it is an unintentional writing error, and amazon reviews mention that some editorial errors have been fixed, so hopefully this is no longer a caveat.

The Appeal

by Anna

By Janice Hallett

Ooh, this book is so good, I started recommending it when I was only halfway through — and I was already halfway through after staying up far too late on the first day of reading. Told entirely through emails, texts, and memos, I never thought I would audibly gasp (and giggle) so many times at the contents of an email!

The communication is primarily among a small community theater group, who become increasingly unhinged under the stress of trying to raise money for an experimental cancer cure for the director’s grandchild. Nothing is quite as it seems, and my speculations and allegiances shifted with each new message. There’s not much more to say without getting into spoilers, and so much of the fun of the book is watching it all unfold, so I’ll keep this short.

One reassurance: though the tagline says “One Murder. Fifteen Suspects. Can You Uncover the Truth?” it does not in fact make you, the reader, solve the mystery, which had been a slight concern of  mine — the book ties up all loose ends very nicely (that said, Kinsey and I had slightly different interpretations of the final ending).

Miss Aldridge Regrets

by Anna

By Louise Hare

I have very mixed feelings about this book. The central mystery is fiendishly clever, slowly revealed with each chapter and interspersed with short narratives from the unnamed murderer, which tease the identity and motive. Having witnessed the murder by poison of her boss in a London nightclub, Miss Lena Aldridge jumps on the offer of a role in a Broadway musical, accompanied by a first class ticket on an ocean liner to New York. She is reluctantly pushed into companionship with a wealthy family shortly before the patriarch dies by poison, and (minor spoiler) she seems perfectly positioned to take the fall for it.

For much of the book, I was on the edge of my seat, since it seemed impossible that Lena would be able to extricate herself from such a clever trap, especially since, as the murderer describes her on the first page, “She may have possessed both common sense and ambition, but from what I’d learned about her, she rarely used the two together.”

As the book went on, I wasn’t that confident that Lena possessed much common sense, actually. She is sympathetic but not particularly likeable. She sort of drifts through life, drinking far too much, thinking of herself when she should be thinking of others, and thinking of others when she should be most concerned with herself. She is caught completely off guard by the end reveal, and unfortunately so was I, since it was a solution that I’d already dismissed as being both too obvious and nonsensical.

Basically, the end fell so flat that it soured the rest of the book for me. Because I’d been previously so engrossed in the events, the finale was even more of a disappointment. There were also themes of racism, colorism, sexism, and classism woven throughout, but they became so heavy handed in the ending that they reminded me of, not even freshman 101 classes, but the dorm discussions in afterhours that we thought were so deep. Perhaps I’m just getting jaded as I get older.