Procedural, Thriller, and Historical Mystery 🔪

Hello mystery fans! I hope you and yours are safe and healthy, and you’re doing as best as can be expected right now. I’m going to keep trying to find you escapes in the form of mystery books, and I got three for you this week: the third in a great procedural series; a historical mystery for Agatha Christie fans; and a thriller that veers into pandemic territory for those of you out there who I keep seeing turning to Station Eleven and apocalypse books.

Trail of Echoes (Detective Elouise Norton #3) by Rachel Howzell Hall: I really enjoy this series, which follows homicide detective Elouise “Lou” Norton in L.A. (If you want reviews for book 1 and book 2.) This time around Lou gets taken back to the building she grew up in when a thirteen-year-old girl is found dead at a park. Sadly, there’s a pattern of talented young girls who are disappearing, and soon someone is taunting investigators.

Lou is snarky, determined, refuses to take crap, and will not stop until she figures out who is responsible. You get the personal aspect of a case that hits close to home for the detective, her working with her new-ish partner Colin Taggert, her relationship with her boss, her awesome friendships, and her trying to date. Hall is very skilled at bringing to life communities that home different races and ethnicities while giving them many different voices. If you’re a fan of police detective procedurals, you should definitely pick this series up! (TW rape, statutory/ discussion of suicide, attempts)

Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing (Profesorowa Szczupaczyńska #1) by Maryla Szymiczkowa (Pseudonym for Jacek Dehnel and Piotr Tarczyński), Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Translator): This is a great mystery, especially perfect for fans of Agatha Christie. Zofia Turbotynska is a 38-year-old woman living in 1893 Cracow, Poland. She’s married to a university professor who should thank her for all the help with his career, but she’s a woman living in a time when she can’t really do much, so she’s desperately bored. Until a woman goes missing from a nursing home and she decides to use her love of mystery novels and her intelligence to solve the case. Of course she can’t tell her husband or the mother superior in charge of the nursing home, so all of her questionings and sleuthing will be done in secret.

Turbotynska is a fun, witty, very opinionated character, and the book reads like a nod to Agatha Christie that is infused with interesting history! (TW mentions infertility/ discussions of addiction/ past domestic abuse mentioned)

The Red Lotus by Chris Bohjalian: If you’ve been with me awhile, you know I prefer to pick up my crime books knowing as little info about them as possible, which is what I did in this case. And I recommend it, but also will note this caught me by surprise taking a turn into pandemic territory (whoopsie!), but it’s a really good thriller and I listened to the audiobook in a day regardless. Alexis and Austin are a recent couple who have taken a trip to Vietnam so that Austin can do a cycling tour and most importantly pay respect to where his father died during the war. Alexis, an ER doctor in the U.S., is waiting for his return back from cycling when she realizes something is wrong. He should have already been back. Or he would have called. Soon Austin is missing, Alexis is back to work in the U.S., the FBI are trying to figure out what happened, and Alexis learns that maybe Austin was never truthful with her…

This is one of those books that takes you into really interesting places, like the E.R. and on cycling tours, as you slowly learn what is really happening in relation to the mystery–all as the tension keeps ramping up!  (TW MC has history of self-harm, details/ mentions murder suicide, details/ ER stories recounted/ recounts past war scenes)

And here’s Book Riot’s continued COVID-19 Updates from the Bookish World.

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See 2020 upcoming releases. An Unusual Suspects Pinterest board. Get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

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