48 New and Upcoming Mysteries & Thrillers

If you’re looking to start a new procedural series, this is your book. I’m a huge fan of Zehanat Khan’s Rachel Getty and Esa Khattak detective series so I was thrilled to see that she had a new series and devoured this book. Set in a Colorado town, a teen from a Syrian Muslim refugee family is murdered and her body positioned in the mosque. Assigned to the case are Detective Inaya Rahman and Lieutenant Waqas Seif, two very different people who may have more in common than they think, which they’d realize if Seif were to stop keeping his personal life so close to the vest. You get the detectives’ personal lives, and past lives, as they focus on trying to solve a difficult case made even more difficult by a town unwelcoming to immigrants, unsolved missing girls cases, and a motorcycle gang.

(TW teen boys attack teen girl to rip her hijab off/racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia/police brutality stories/brief mention of past mother death from cancer/brief mention of past domestic abuse, not graphic/brief recount of groping, not graphic/mentions stalking/scene inside a meat packing plant)

For fans of procedurals, multiple POV, plenty of suspects, and a forced detective pairing. This is one of my favorites this year, and it reminded me of Bad Sisters in that the dead dude was a crappy person so there are plenty of suspects in people who wished him dead. Rhys Lloyd is found dead on New Year’s Day and being an ex-celebrity and current developer selling to wealthy outsiders, he has a fair bit of enemies in his small town. DC Leo Brady of Cheshire Major Crimes and Ffion Morgan who is with the North Wales Police are forced to work together to solve the murder as we also get to see the lives of various community members leading up to the murder.

If you’re in the mood for a good murder mystery that sinks you into a small town, pick this one up. I’m super glad it’s apparently going to be the start of a series.

(TW mentions past overdose/mentions violence towards sex workers/sexual harassment/misgendering/teen sexual assault by adult/past father cancer death, not detailed/mentions miscarriages, no details/attempted rape/lesbophobia/secretly drugging child to sleep at night)