Author: Jamie Canaves

Hello mystery fans! I hope the week was good to you and you have a good book–or pile–to read!

From Book Riot and Around the Internet

Rincey and Katie talk news, recent releases, and books by Asian/Asian American authors in the latest Read or Dead.

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Sponsored by Hangman by Jack Heath, new from Hanover Square Press.

An addictive debut thriller starring an FBI consultant with a peculiar taste for crime and punishment…

A boy vanishes on his way home from school. His frantic mother receives a ransom call: pay or else. Enter Timothy Blake, an FBI consultant with a knack for solving impossible cases but whose expertise comes at a price: every time he saves a life, he also takes one. But this kidnapper is more cunning and ruthless than any he’s faced before. And he’s been assigned a new partner within the Bureau: a woman linked to the past he’s so desperate to forget.

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If you’re working your way through the Read Harder challenges Rincey has some suggestions for Read a Mystery by POC and/or LGBTQ Author. It’s also an excellent list of books if you’re just looking for a great mystery.

12 Mystery Novels for Fans of Literary Fiction

9 Scary Books Set In British Towns (Some mysteries included)

  You can hear an extended excerpt from Ruth Ware’s new book The Death of Mrs. Westaway. (Review here) (Ware’s other novels: The Woman in Cabin 10; In A Dark, Dark Wood; The Lying Game)

Three exclusive excerpts from the anthology Tiny Crimes: Very Short Tales of Mystery and Murder, edited by Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto.

You can read an excerpt from Bill Clinton and James Patterson’s The President Is Missing thriller on EW.

(Spoilers for the entire s1 of Killing Eve) Killing Eve and the Riddle of Why Women Kill: Villanelle insists on being taken at face value; to search for a noble motivation is to trap oneself in her psychological labyrinth.

Giveaway: Book Riot is giving away $500 (look at those zeros!) to the bookstore of your choice!

Adaptations and News

With the film adaptation for The Girl in the Spider’s Web releasing in November there will be a new three-part comic: The Girl Who Danced With Death. An all-new Lisbeth Salander adventure written by Sylvain Runberg, with art by Belen Ortega, will be in stores and digital devices in August.

John Malkovich has been cast as Hercule Poirot in The ABC Murders BBC adaptation. Inspector Crome will be played by Ron Weasley–whoops, I mean Rupert Grint.

The Dee Rees political thriller adaptation of Joan Didion’s The Last Thing He Wanted will star Anne Hathaway and be backed by Netflix.

Lamar Giles (Little Q&A) has an upcoming YA thriller and here’s the first look at the gorgeous cover for Spin!

And the cover reveal for J.T. Ellison’s Tear Me Apart.

Interview

Video interview with Jessica Knoll author of Luckiest Girl Alive and The Favorite Sister.

Watch Now

Streaming on Amazon: Picnic At Hanging Rock, adapted from Joan Lindsay’s novel, is a six-part miniseries set in the early 1900s in an Australian boarding school where a group of students disappear during a field trip. (Trailer)

On DVD: Red Sparrow, adapted from Jason Matthews’ novel, and starring Jennifer Lawrence tells the story of a Russian intelligence officer who is sent to make contact with a CIA agent in the hope of discovering the identity of a mole. (Trailer)

Kindle Deals

The Blinds by Adam Sternbergh is $1.99 which is a ridiculous deal for this excellent mystery! (review)

Dead Loudmouth (A Loon Lake Mystery #16) by Victoria Houston is $2.99 and one that made it onto my TBR list because of Liberty’s review so I just bought it.

AND it looks like you can pre-buy Mary Kubica’s upcoming thriller When the Lights Go Out for $2.99!!

And Finally My Week In Reading

I read Liz Nugent’s Lying In Wait in one sitting and the level of cruelty was cranked to a level of high that my brain needed to be bathed in unicorns immediately after. It starts by revealing a crime and then follows the characters affected in different ways. If you like crime novels where you know a train wreck is coming and enjoy “that was forking cruel as fork” don’t miss this one. (TW revenge porn/ and a heads-up that a character experiences constant fat shaming throughout the book)

Started Sheena Kamal’s It All Falls Down (July 3), which I’ve been looking forward to since I really enjoyed The Lost Ones (review). So far Nora Watts is still her same difficult self except she no longer trusts her lie detecting abilities. I’ve been having a hard time putting it down because Watts is an interesting character. (TW suicide)

 

Picked up All These Beautiful Strangers by Elizabeth Klehfoth (July 10) thinking I’d just read the first page and ended up inhaling half the book. It’s prep school secret society + a mother that disappeared during her daughters childhoods + family secrets and it’s ringing all my bells. (TW suicide/ domestic abuse/ rape)

 

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. And here’s an Unusual Suspects Pinterest board.

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

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hi mystery fans! I’ve got a witchy girl, tarot card reader, and an FBI investigator for you this week!

The Craft Meets Veronica Mars Is As Awesome As It Sounds! (TW suicide)

Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson: Mila Flores is naturally having a hard time since her best friend’s death. The problem is that she’s certain Riley didn’t take her own life, but no one believes Mila. Instead, they think she’s refusing to accept her best friend’s death. But Mila is head-strong and won’t let it go so she conjures up a spell in hopes of bringing back Riley to find out what really happened. And that’s when things really take a turn because Mila isn’t an experienced Wiccan, and not only does she bring Riley back but she also brings back two recently dead girls who she really didn’t like. And they’re all going to be around for seven days until the spell ends. Hopefully they can all work out their issues and come together to solve who exactly murdered them… A fun, smart, and excellent read with a great lead.

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Sponsored by Penguin Teen

Quiet, shy Elyse can’t believe it when she’s cast as the lead in her high school’s production of Romeo and Juliet. But when someone at rehearsals starts to catch her eye–someone she knows she absolutely shouldn’t be with–she can’t help but be pulled into the spotlight.

Austin native Gabe is contemplating the unthinkable–breaking up with Sasha, his headstrong, popular girlfriend. She’s not going to let him slip through her fingers, though, and when rumors start to circulate around school, he knows she has the power to change his life forever.

Gabe and Elyse both make the mistake of falling for the wrong person, and falling hard. Told in parallel narratives, this twisty, shocking story shows how one bad choice can lead to a spiral of unforeseen consequences that not everyone will survive.

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Would You Pretend To Be Someone Else For An Inheritance?

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware: Hal has been struggling since her mom’s death. While she took over her mom’s tarot card reading business it hasn’t been enough to pay the rent, and now she’s in way over her head after a bad loan. That’s why when a letter clearly wrongly addressed to her arrives, she decides to pretend to be someone else. If there really is an inheritance awaiting the person the letter was meant for, maybe it’ll save her. And so she makes the trip to Mrs. Westaway’s mansion and decides to use her tarot card people reading skills to pretend she’s the person the letter was meant for. At first her fear is that she’ll be discovered, but there’s just something off about this family and maybe she’s made a grave mistake… A good suspenseful mystery novel with a character I was rooting for from the beginning.

Great Atmospheric Procedural (TW domestic violene)

A Sharp Solitude (Glacier Mystery #4) by Christine Carbo: FBI investigator Ali Paige knows better than to investigate a case not assigned to her–especially, since the suspect is Landon, her daughter’s father. And yet, she can’t stop herself. She’s quickly lying to her partner and doing seriously questionable things in order to prove the investigation is focusing on the wrong person. Told in alternating POV between Ali and Landon, you get to watch Ali try to prove his innocence while slowly watching Landon’s life up until the photographer he was accused of murdering is killed. I really love procedurals like this that give you a good look into a case but also the personal lives of the characters–especially when there is an interesting job involved like Landon’s, who uses a dog for finding animal scat in the woods for scientific research. (The series is linked only by setting so it reads as a standalone. If you’re curious about the previous book in the series, The Weight of Night, I reviewed it here.)

Recent Releases

The Fourth Monkey by J.D. Barker (Paperback) (For fans of serial killer arcs on procedural shows–full review) (I don’t remember the TWs but there are, think horror movies.)

The Accidental Mistress (Justice Hustlers #3) by Aya de Leon (Series I love about women who steal from crappy rich men to fund their women’s health clinic.)

Shelter in Place by Nora Roberts

AND Book Riot is still giving away $500 to the bookstore of your choice!

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. And here’s an Unusual Suspects Pinterest board.

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

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hello mystery fans! Killing Eve‘s season finale is this Sunday and it’s all I can think about! I just know they’re going to leave a major cliffhanger and waiting a year for Season 2 is going to be really difficult.

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Sponsored By Wicked River by Jenny Milchman

Six million acres of Adirondack forest separate Natalie and Doug Larson from civilization. For the newlyweds, an isolated backcountry honeymoon seems ideal…and adventurous. But just as Natalie and Doug begin to explore the dark interiors of their own hearts, as well as the depths of their love for each other, it becomes clear that they are not alone in the woods. As they struggle with the worst the wilderness has to offer, a man watches them, wielding the forest like a weapon. He wants something from them more terrifying than death. And once they are near his domain, he will do everything in his power to make sure they never walk out again.

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From Book Riot and Around the Internet

Vanessa Diaz makes a case for why you should be reading the Flavia De Luce mystery series.

Not Your Grandmother’s Detectives (Or maybe they are, I don’t know your Nana.)

5 Page-Turning Mysteries Starring Indian Detectives

Agatha Christie: world’s first historical whodunnit was inspired by 4,000 year-old letters

25+ YA Mystery Series To Read

Giveaways

Book Riot is giving away $500 to the bookstore of your choice! Oh, the books you can buy!

And you can still enter to win 5 Megan Abbott books! Here’s my “I Just Read Every Megan Abbott Novel (And You Should, Too)” post in case you wanted to know why Abbott’s work is amazing.

Watch that, Read This

Claws season 1 (10 episodes) is now streaming on Hulu, and if you like crime novels/shows it’s a must-watch. Set in Florida, you have a group of women working in a nail salon who are all struggling in life in a different way and involved in some way in criminal activity while friends. The acting is excellent, the story is great, the characters are amazing. It’s smart, dramatic, funny, and thrilling. 100% recommend watching before season 2 starts June 10th on TNT.

And a great series to read if you want more fantastic women, friendships, and criminals is Aya de León’s Justice Hustler series. It starts with Uptown Thief and follows a group of women running a women’s clinic in New York who fund said clinic by robbing rich men who are not good people–it’s as awesome as it sounds. The sequel, The Boss, changes main character but keeps the series focused on heists and awesome women fighting for women’s rights.

True Crime

The Staircase Will Be Your Next True Crime Obsession

Oxygen has 3 new shows for true crime fans.

Toronto Is Hosting A Huge True Crime Film Festival This Summer

Kindle Deals

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti is $1.99 (Literary mystery high on my TBR–All The Books review)

Hollywood Homicide by Kellye Garrette is $5.99 (Funny amateur sleuth trying to solve a hit and run for the reward money– Full review)

 

My Week In Reading Was Fantastic!

I have been DYING to read My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite since I heard about the book sale and it was not only as good as I wanted it to be but BETTER. (Nov 13, Doubleday Books) (TW domestic/child abuse/ rape)

(TW rape/ suicide/ cutting) Amber Tamblyn’s Any Man novel uses poetry and prose to highlight male victim’s of a female serial rapist as they struggle to deal with the attack and the way our society treats rape victims. Pretty powerful read with plenty to think about.

Death Notice by Zhou Haohui, Zac Haluza (Translator) was a great read about a vigilante playing a cat-and-mouse game with the police as they try and save his victims who he believes need to pay for their sins. (TW suicide/ rape)

I listened to the audiobook of The Good Son by You-jeong Jeong which is a whydunnit psychological suspense that slowly reveals the characters life as flashbacks build after he wakes up covered in blood… (TW stalking/ suicide)

If you’re looking for a new cozy mystery series I enjoyed Abby L. Vandiver ‘s Secrets, Lies, & Crawfish Pies. Starring a New York medical examiner who moves back to her small Texas town and ends up solving the case of the murdered man in her aunt’s funeral home. (The pre-order kindle price is $2.99!)

And great reads I think will be big books this summer Social Creature by Tara Isabella Burton (perfect for fans of Green Girl + Paulina & Fran + Gillian Flynn/Megan Abbott) (TW suicide/ rape) and The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas about a girl who investigates 3 separate incidents that killed cheerleaders, one being her sister. (TW suicide/ statutory rape/ sex offender)

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. And here’s an Unusual Suspects Pinterest board.

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

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hello mystery fans! I’ve got three books this week that could not be more different from each other if that had been my goal. AND Book Riot is giving away $500 (look at those zeros!) to the bookstore of your choice! Enter here, you lucky people!

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Sponsored by The 49th Mystic (Beyond the Circle Series #1) by Ted Dekker.

Some say the great mystery of how one can live in two worlds at once died with Thomas Hunter many years ago. Still others that the gateway to that greater reality was and is only the stuff of dreams.

They are wrong.

In the small town of Eden, Utah, a blind girl named Rachelle Matthews is about to find out just how wrong.

So begins a two-volume saga of high stakes and a mind-bending quest to find an ancient path that will save humanity. The clock is ticking; the end rushes forward.

Ready? Set?

Dream.

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Mean Girls + Adam Silvera Breakup/Relationships + Whodunnit + A Bit of a Horror Movie Body Count! (TW: rape)

White Rabbit by Caleb Roehrig: This felt like a mashup between a bit of a YA coming-of-age with a whodunnit mystery being solved by an amatuer sleuth. Rufus Holt is having a hard time: he still hasn’t gotten over his ex-boyfriend, his dad is a terrible person, his mom is struggling to pay the bills, and his step-sister needs his help to prove she isn’t a murderer. Trying to solve a murder is hard enough as a teen that has no training in sleuthing, but it’s even harder to do with your ex-boyfriend (who you’re clearly not over) and for your step-sister (who isn’t very nice and comes from the family that pretends you don’t exist because they’re rich and you’re not). But Rufus has to help because his sister dangles the carrot of money in front of him, which he needs to help his mom. And so did Rufus’ step-sister murder her boyfriend and now she’s playing Rufus? Or did someone else kill Fox? Either way, Rufus is gonna be kicking a hornet’s nest when he starts investigating… A good mystery with a horror-ish feeling, that has a great main character to follow as he struggles through family, relationship, and anger issues.

Dark Nonfiction About A Brazilian Hitman (TW: child rape/ torture)

The Name of Death by Kléster Cavalcanti, Nicholas Caistor (translator): This is for people who like dark crime reads because I’ll admit I felt sick by the end of it. This is not a book about a psychopath who wanted to kill people so he became a hitman. Instead, it’s about a teen boy living in a village in the Amazon in Brazil who doesn’t understand electricity because he’s never seen it. A teen boy who looks up to his uncle, unaware that his uncle is a terrible person. The book takes you into Julio Santana’s life, as he reported it to journalist Klester Cavalcanti, from his first kill at seventeen–for his uncle–to his time in the military fighting communists. Towards the end of the book, Santana pulls out the book where he kept the information on all of his kills and some of the stories of specific murders are revealed, including how his wife discovered what he really did to make money, to an accidental murder, and the time he was arrested. While Santana looks back with regret, wishing he’d gone a different route–and still hopes to be forgiven by God–it is impossible not to think of all the victims and how easy the choice is to not kill someone. It was sad, interesting, and awful to see the reasons people choose to hire a hitman, and the way people move the line of what is right or wrong to fit their greed and agenda. (I could have done with much less pages of male gaze losing-my-virginity story.)

Great Character Driven Crime Novel

The Lonely Witness by William Boyle: I can see why people get frustrated with characters that don’t react/respond in situations the way a reader would, but for me I think we most likely won’t react the way we think we will in extreme situations. Also, I don’t find it interesting to watch characters behave like me. I enjoy reading the exploration of “But why would you do that?!”–and that was certainly the main character Amy. Living in a Brooklyn neighborhood, Amy has reduced her life after her girlfriend left her. She’s donated her time to the church and offers communion to elderly residents at their homes. It’s on one of these visits where the trouble begins: Mrs. Epifanio thinks her caretaker’s son murdered his mom, and that’s why she hasn’t shown up and he’s been coming instead with his mom’s key and rummaging in Mrs. Epifanio’s bedroom. Amy ends up trying to help Mrs. Epifanio by following the son, and finds herself witnessing a crime and opening the door to danger. A good crime novel that explores loneliness, regret, forgiveness, and whether we can ever make ourselves small enough to avoid the world, and our past, from hurting us again.

Recent Releases

Monday’s Not Coming by Tiffany D. Jackson (Great YA mystery about a girl who won’t give up looking for her best friend.)

Cult X by Fuminori Nakamura, Kalau Almony (Translator) (Japanese mystery about cults that is high on my TBR list.)

Paper Ghosts by Julia Heaberlin (TBR: just downloaded the audiobook.)

The House Swap by Rebecca Fleet (TBR: domestic suspense.)

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. And here’s an Unusual Suspects Pinterest board.

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

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hi mystery fans! We’ve got a special edition of Unusual Suspects so we can gather around and blow out 159 candles for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday. Over on Book Riot, we’ve dedicated the day to Sherlock, Doyle, and mysteries (*throws confetti) with excellent posts from Sherlock Holmes Escape Rooms to Spiritualism and Fairies, and you’re gonna want to check them all out here.

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sponsored by The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton.

The most inventive debut of 2018, this clever, mind-bending murder mystery will leave readers guessing until the very last page.

One of Stylist Magazine’s 20 Must-Read Books of 2018.
One of Harper’s Bazaar’s 10 Must-Read Books of 2018.
One of Marie Claire, Australia’s 10 Books You Absolutely Have to Read in 2018

 

At a gala party thrown by her parents, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed. Again. She’s been murdered hundreds of times, and each day, Aiden Bishop is too late to save her. Doomed to repeat the same day over and over, Aiden’s only escape is to solve Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder. However nothing and no one are quite what they seem.

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I didn’t actually read Doyle’s work until my 30s, when I found my mom’s copy of A Treasury of Sherlock Holmes from 1955. I did what I always do when I randomly come across a book: I stopped what I was doing and read the first page. Before I knew it, I’d read A Study in Scarlet and understood how these two characters are still beloved.

If you’ve never read Doyle’s work, you can download almost all of his novels and short stories in different formats for free here: The Complete Sherlock Holmes Canon

If you’re an audiobook fan, LibriVox (also free) has a bunch of selections here. And my personal favorite is the entire collection narrated by Stephen Fry, who also has a little introduction before each piece: Sherlock Holmes. It’s perfect if you’ve always wanted to reread the works.

My favorite reimagining out of all of the reimaginings that I’ve read goes to Sherry Thomas’ Lady Sherlock series. It’s delightful, kickass, brilliant, and equally excellent in print and in audiobook. It starts with A Study in Scarlet Women and I hope the series goes on for-EV-er.

 

 

Another series I love that nods at Sherlock Holmes is Joe Ide’s IQ series. It’s a modern PI in East Long Beach who uses his intelligence and deduction skills to take on cases. He also has a somewhat sidekick named Dodson–which sure does seem to rhyme with Watson.

 

And I’m looking forward to reading the upcoming Conan Doyle for the Defense: The True Story of a Sensational British Murder, a Quest for Justice, and the World’s Most Famous Detective Writer by Margalit Fox (June 26, Random House). It tells the true story of when Doyle, already known for his Sherlock writing, used his own deduction skills to work on a case of a wrongly convicted man.

Well, that’s it for me today so now back to our regularly scheduled programing. Happy deducing!

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. And here’s an Unusual Suspects Pinterest board.

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

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hello mystery fans! We have made it to the weekend and if you don’t work weekends I hope you have nice plans. I am hoping for one day–just one–of no rain so I can finally dip a toe in the pool while playing the don’t-drop-the-book-in-the-water game.

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Sponsored by The Crossing by Jason Mott, new from Park Row Books.

Twins Virginia and Tommy Matthews have been on their own since they were orphaned at the age of five. Twelve years later, the world begins to collapse around them as a deadly contagion steadily wipes out entire populations and a devastating world war rages on. To avoid the draft, they set out in search of a new beginning. Armed with only a pistol and their fierce will to survive, the twins must navigate the dangers and wonders of this changed world as they try to outrun the demons of their past.

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From Book Riot and the Internet

Samantha Irby’s By The Book is probably my favorite one so far. She talks about thrillers and is smart and hilarious (as always): “I was rooting for her to die the entire time.”

In ringing all my bells: On the Annotated podcast Jeff and Rebecca look into the real life eleven day disappearance of Agatha Christie in 1926. And for all the wins the episode is titled The Original Gone Girl. <– (still laughing)

Now if you want to fall down a Christie disappearance rabbit hole: Drunk History did a Drunk Mystery episode where they also looked into Agatha Christie’s disappearance. AND of course there is the recent biography Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life by Laura Thompson.

25 Short Thrillers and Mysteries You Can’t Even Pretend You Don’t Have Time to Read

In this episode of Get Booked Amanda and Jenn answer listeners questions with book recs (like they always do) and there are quite a few mystery/thrillers. AND Rincey and Katie talk fun mysteries, recent news/releases, and what they’re reading on Read or Dead.

10 Murder Mystery Comics!

AWESOME GIVEAWAYS: You can win 1 of 10 copies of The Fact of a Body! (Fantastic true crime memoir–all the trigger warnings– review here) AND you can win FIVE Megan Abbott novels–and you want to because she’s fantastic!

Adaptations and News

Sharp Objects (Gillian Flynn adaptation starring Amy Adams) has an official HBO premier date: July 8th, 9 p.m.

There’s an update to Sisters in Crime’s Eleanor Taylor Bland Award: “They have opened the award up to writers of color who have either self-published or traditionally published one or two books.” More info here.

New Nancy Drew coming our way and it’s feminist, has multiple characters of color, and gay characters–including George. Nancy Drew #1 will be out in June and is created by Kelly Thompson and Jenn St-Onge–and of course it’s already on my pull list. (If you’ve never dived into reading comics because you don’t even know where to begin with buying them here’s a great guide.)

Elementary has been renewed for a 7th season and I am so glad it didn’t end up in the network’s graveyard–which is super full this year! (If you’re a fan of procedurals I can’t recommend this one enough! New episodes are currently playing on CBS and you can binge the previous 5 seasons on Hulu.)

Dan Chaon’s Ill Will (Lit mystery– review) and Samantha Schweblin’s Fever Dream (Psychological suspense– review) are both nominees for The 2017 Shirley Jackson Awards.

And Bouchercon announced the nominees for the Anthony Awards and there are tons of great books on this list: The Last Place You Look (Review); Bluebird, Bluebird (Review); She Rides Shotgun (Review); The Dry (Review)–speaking of The Dry, it also won best crime and thriller for the British Book Awards.

In USA Network’s The Sinner season 2 news: Carrie Coon has been cast to play Vera a mysterious woman. The first season was an eight episode adaptation of Petra Hammesfahr’s novel and the network decided to continue with new material so it will now work as an anthology. I loved Coon in FX’s Fargo season 3 so this just became a must-watch for me.

True Crime

(From late last year) How One Woman’s Digital Life Was Weaponized Against Her: “But the most frustrating thing was how hard it all was to explain or prove. Courtney was beginning to feel trapped in a world of anonymous abuse. She didn’t know if she would be able to convince anyone that what she believed to be happening was real.” This story is terrifying, has ridiculous amounts of gaslighting, and had it been a novel readers would have abandoned it for being too much.

See a clip from What Haunts Us, a true crime documentary (on Starz and currently in limited theatrical release) that investigates a high school senior class that had multiple graduates commit suicide.

Kindle Deals

Karin Slaughter’s Pretty Girls is $2.99

Ben H. Winter’s The Last Policeman Trilogy (dystopian mystery) is $5.97 for ALL three books–OR $1.99 each: The Last Policeman; Countdown City; World of Trouble.

 

 

Some of The Galleys I Got My Hands on This Week:

Amber Tamblyn’s Any Man which is about a woman who preys on men and is written in a blend of prose and poetry.

Kate Morton has an upcoming historical fiction mystery (The Clockmaker’s Daughter) and I remember enjoying a few of her previous books for the atmosphere and mysteries so looking forward to this.

Kara Thomas’ The Cheerleaders sounds like it can be the awesome summer thriller.

Cult X by Fuminori Nakamura, Kalau Almony (Translator) because I never say not to a Japanese crime novel.

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. And here’s an Unusual Suspects Pinterest board.

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

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hello mystery fans! I recently read a delightful memoir about a secretary who worked for MI5 in her late teens and I decided to recommend some true crime books for readers who shy away from the nonfiction crime section because of too much violence.

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Sponsored by Poisoned Pen Press

In the second book in the Somebody’s Bound to Wind Up Dead Mystery series, Allie and Tom now reside in a rented nine-thousand-square-foot lakeside mansion and have started the T&A Detective Agency to solve “mysteries of the heart” by using Tom’s lottery winnings. Their first case is funny with lots of sparkle and includes a sinister, twisty plot. Fans of romantic, comic mysteries will be delighted.

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Delightful Spy Memoir!

Mi5 and Me: A Coronet Among the Spooks by Charlotte Bingham: Most spy novels/films are dark, and at the very least, thriller-ish. This memoir is not that, in a completely surprising and delightful way. Charlotte Bingham was summoned into her father’s office when she was 18 and he revealed to her that he worked for MI5 as a spy. That was the first bomb he dropped. The second being that he was forcing her to work for MI5. Since this happened in England in the 1950s and Bingham was not 21 yetm she was forced to do as her parents said. Unlike me–who would have been thrilled to discover this news–Bingham became quite amusingly dramatic and tried to literally catch pneumonia to get out of the job. Her health remained in tact, and the book follows as she works for MI5, lives in a house regularly visited by spies, and wishes that communism would just stop so there would be no need for her father’s job and he could just be a normal wealthy father like her friend’s dads. This honestly read like a British comedy series to me and I adored every second of it–and it really should be turned into a series.

More Spying, But This Time: “Welp, That Didn’t Work Out!”

The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee: This is a true story about a man who’d spent his life feeling like he had to prove his intelligence and ends up coming up with an ill-advised plan as a response to feeling suffocated by his life. I was really interested in how the book shows what the FBI process really is when they suspect a traitor amongst them–spoiler: not what TV/film shows. And no, no one jumped from one roof building to another to get away. I also loved the puzzle solving and the bits about the history of codes.

Especially For Bibliophiles!

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett: This was super interesting for me in the details about rare books and the people Bartlett got to know, like a bookstore owner obsessed with stopping book thieves. The main thief in question is John Charles Gilkey, who it seems steals rare books because of his love of books–I suspect he just feels entitled to the things he wants more than anything. The “detective” is really a bookstore owner, Ken Sanders, who takes it upon himself to play detective and catch book thieves–if you’ve ever worked retail you know how frustrating it is to deal with merchandise loss. Gilkey and Sanders make for a great cat-and-mouse narrative–that really happened.

Recent Releases

A Howl of Wolves (Sam Clair, #4) by Judith Flanders (Currently reading: A witty, murder mystery starring an amateur sleuth dating a Scotland Yard detective.)

The Favorite Sister by Jessica Knoll (Author of Luckiest Girl Alive –listen to excerpts from the audiobook here)

Pairing a Deception (A Sommelier Mystery #3) by Nadine Nettmann (Cozy mystery)

Odd Numbers (Hanne Wilhelmsen #9) by Anne Holt, Anne Bruce (Translator) (Paperback) (Great, dark Norwegian procedural series.)

Mister Memory by Marcus Sedgwick (Paperback) (Historical fiction mystery)

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. And here’s an Unusual Suspects Pinterest board.

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

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