Category: Unusual Suspects

For fans of family secrets, MCs returning home, and MCs that are writers! Yara Gibson comes home to Palmdale, California to host the party for her parent’s wedding anniversary. Things take a strange turn when Yara’s mom’s estranged friend suddenly starts texting Yara that there is something important she has to tell her. Except before she does, she’s found dead! Now there’s a key to a cabin with an unsolved mystery from the ’80s…

For fans of procedurals, North England, and the show Vera! Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope is tasked with investigating a group of friends. Decades ago one of them died and the remaining friends have gotten together since on Holy Island, where they met 50 years ago. And now one of the friends is dead and even though it is presumed a suicide at first, Vera quickly goes into murder investigation mode. Secrets and suspects there are plenty… If you’d like to start at the beginning, pick up The Crow Trap.

Akashic’s noir series are great for readers looking to be immersed in a place and looking to discover new crime authors. The latest collection is edited by Gary Phillips with fourteen stories set in South Central Los Angeles. Some of my favorite authors included in the anthology are Steph Cha, Tananarive Due, and Naomi Hirahara–and I look forward to discovering more new-to-me writers!

For fans of Laurie R. King (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes / Kate Martinelli series) she’s back with a new standalone! An estate in California is being renovated when a skull is found–dundundun. But it’s far from an easy case for Inspector Raquel Laing being that 50 years ago the estate was a counterculture commune filled with people. And looking at the past brings up that at least three people disappeared from the commune…

Here’s a pandemic lockdown mystery for readers who did not just yell “too soon!” and are looking for a psychological thriller. Imani and Philip Banks’s family live in Brooklyn Heights and have a great life when the pandemic lockdown begins and Philip’s restaurant closes. Their temporary solution is to rent out the extra room in their townhouse. It seems like a win for all, especially the new tenant Tonya Sayre. Tonya is a struggling actress, mother of a teen, and afraid of her child’s father. But as soon as Tonya is late on payment, the Banks start thinking she must be a con artist and soon Imani is even convinced she killed a neighborhood family…

If you want a fun crime book, run to this one. Deanna Raybourn is an automatic read for me since I adore her Veronica Speedwell series and I love seeing her create something totally different while also keeping her fantastic humor. This is the story about a group of women assassins that were trained in the ’70s. You get their past stories along with their current story: now in their 60s, they are taking a cruise together only to discover there is a hit out to kill them — rude! Naturally a group of smart and trained assassins are going to fight back! This is smart, fun, and funny and a great book to curl up with if you love cheering for a group of women to kick ass.

If you’re looking to start a new cozy mystery series, here you go! Madison Montgomery comes into a three-part inheritance from her great aunt: a house, a bakery, and a giant English Mastiff. She’ll just have to move to New Bison, Michigan, which she’s down for considering she just had a public disaster she’d like to forget. What she doesn’t realize is she’ll not only need to get to know this small town, a new business, and taking care of a dog, but also solve a murder when the Mayor is murdered and the knife has Madison’s fingerprints on it…

The author of The Feather Thief is back with another work of narrative nonfiction! What culminates in the largest settlement in U.S. history from a citizen environmental suit started in Seadrift, Texas in the late 1970s. Vietnamese refugees arrival in the small fishing town angered the white fisherman which escalated into a self-defense shooting that put an even bigger target on the Vietnamese community, including from the KKK which promised violence if they didn’t all leave. And if that wasn’t enough, it’s all intersected with water pollution from companies and the ties of environmental justice and racial justice.

Johnson’s The Feather Thief was my first narrative nonfic that I was like “this can’t possibly be as interesting as it sells itself to be” and let me tell you it was super interesting. That book put me on the path of true crime books that were fascinating and led me to Patrick Radden Keefe‘s nonfiction so The Fisherman And The Dragon‘s audiobook (narrated by David Lee Huynh) is high on my TBR list. Especially since I love reading and watching docuseries about events in history that were never given the attention they deserved.

These types of setups always get my full attention: Sarah Ellis passes out in a bar bathroom so Saraswati “Sara” Bhaduri, who works in the bar, helps her into a rideshare only to discover later that they got into the wrong cars and were taken to the other’s home. Which would be an annoying drunk inconvenience but this is a crime book, so Sarah Ellis ends up murdered where Sara Bhaduri lives and that’s gotta put Bhaduri on edge…

I love remote mysteries! And this one is a whole family meeting up for Nana’s 80th birthday, stuck on an island, and one by one they start to die– mwahahaha. For me remote mysteries need a good balance of being invested enough in the characters to want to read and not enough that you “care” that they’re gonna probably all die, and Feeney pulled that off. We get to watch the family and all their drama and secrets as someone is murdering them–can you figure out who and why before there possibly isn’t anyone left? I found this fun, and also love that I think half of readers are going to enjoy the ending and the other half are going to be mad (not for problematic reasons). Stephanie Racine does a great narration if you need an audiobook to get sucked into.

(TW brief fatphobia/ past child abuse/ drugging without consent/ vet mentions stories of animals in cruel conditions/ statutory kiss, gropping/ mentions past suicide/ mentions past accidental child death/ suicide)

Amaya no longer lives in her home country, Sri Lanka, but she sure is going back when she learns that her ex best friend is marrying her ex boyfriend. Her mission, which she chooses to accept: stop the wedding. The problem? The bride to be goes missing and Amaya is a suspect…

(TW brief self-harm, cutting scene/ recounts partner abuse/ mentions past statutory)

Sequel to Pieces of Her! We’ve got an unsolved murder mystery from the ’80s: Emily Vaughn ends up dead on prom night because of a secret. Now US Marshal Andrea Oliver is sent to protect a judge receiving death threats, but really she’s thinking about solving Vaughn’s murder…

A new historical (Regency-era) mystery series! Lady Abigail Worthing and Stapleton Henderson are fighting neighbors until Abigail finds Juliet, Stapleton’s wife, dead on her property. Which is a problem on its own but Abigail has enough against her to know this will lead to finger pointing at her. And while she has an alibi, it’s one she cannot give since it would cause her too much trouble. So when Stapleton offers her another alibi, it makes sense that the two with the most to lose may find a way to work together to figure out what happened.

If you’re looking for a page-turning procedural series, this one is for you. It’s the second book in the series and it starts at the end of the first book dealing with the aftermath (so if you like to not have a book spoiled pick up Gone For Good). If you don’t however care about that, you can start here and not be lost — you’re given all the info you need. Annalisa Vega is a detective, daughter of a retired cop, and not in many people’s good graces. Her ex-husband is also currently her partner — they don’t hate each other, and I love this dynamic. A new case is assigned to them which is just baffling: a cop was murdered in his sleep with his own gun while his wife was there but she was unharmed and can’t identify the person because they were in scuba gear. It sounds too far fetched to be real and Vega has her work cut out for her. If you like messy personal lives of detectives you root for and fast paced mysteries, here you go. Bonus: I enjoyed the audiobook narrator, Kelsey Navarro.

(TW domestic violence/ mentions past suicide, no detail/ parent with Parkinson’s/ sexual harassment and stalking stories)

For fans of past mystery and coming of age stories! Anna Xu is a university freshman so school and everything related should be taking up all her time, except seven years ago her childhood babysitter went missing as a sophomore at the same university. So naturally she’s going to solve the case! Which is difficult enough but she has way more stress on her plate considering her parents’ bakery now has competition and the son of the competing bakery is also in school with her. How will he fit in with everything already going on in her life?!

(TW sexual assault) This is one of those books with a setup that immediately hooked me: Twenty-three year old Cassie Quinn gets a phone call that her younger brother Billy has been arrested for raping his girlfriend. Quinn immediately knows it’s a lie. Not because she doesn’t believe that our rape culture exists (she does), but because she’s certain Billy is the exception. She hates his girlfriend and believes they’ve had a volatile relationship so she returns home to be there for Billy, her parents, her other brother, and help with the trial. From there we get to know this wealthy family, the lawyers taking on the case, and even the accuser–all through Cassie’s eyes. This is both an exploration of our rape culture and a family drama, with a good dose of legal mystery. I inhaled the audiobook which has a great narrator, Marin Ireland.

(TW date rape case, past attempted assault/ recounts alcoholic parents/ grooming, statutory)

This is a ripped-from-the-headlines type story that doesn’t aim for thriller entertainment but rather the real life ways being a part of an industry steeped in rape culture sneaks up on you. Sarah Lai went from up-and-coming producer to teaching film at a small college. It’s not the life she had wanted for herself but she’s left Hollywood and it is what it is — until a journalist asks to speak to her. He’s interviewing everyone who’s worked with a particular film producer over allegations of sexual assault. Lai is hesitant to speak but meets with him telling pieces of her story, revealing to the reader what it was like to be an assistant and then producer in an industry that celebrates the “boy’s club”. If you like going deep into a business (how films get made from start to finish), this is a well done look at rape culture that keeps the majority of things off page, focusing instead on the way we’re intentionally taught to not notice the red flags around us. The audiobook is narrated by Katie Leung and really made me feel like I was listening to Lai tell me the story of her time in film production.

(TW conversations about teen with eating disorder/ attempted sexual assault on page/ rumors, accusations, assumptions of sexual assault)

Here’s a fun thriller tipping its hat at horror tropes without being a horror novel. It’s also for fans of a story inside a story. Adele Rafferty ran away from her home in Ireland to L.A. hoping to put a bad filming experience behind her. But a call to replace an actress in a movie set to start filming right now makes her think this could be her final chance to be a star. So back home she goes to a film set in the middle of the woods to film a horror film. But from the start, things don’t feel right and she doesn’t know who to trust and she’s out in the middle of nowhere…

(TW sexual harassment, groping / attempted murder suicide)

I’ve mentioned quite a few times over the years how translated mysteries usually don’t get translated in order that they were originally published in their country. And here we are again. Bullet Train came out last year (and is currently an adapted film starring Brad Pitt) and now we are getting the previous book in the series. The good news, if you’re confused, is it doesn’t really matter unless your brain screams at you for reading out of order because they read as standalones. Here we have a revenge novel. Suzuki’s wife was murdered so he decides to infiltrate the gang responsible for her murder. Except he’ll be up against three assassins with unique killing methods… My goal continues to be to read as many translated crime books as I can.

And a new cozy mystery series! Jay Allan and Cindy Cooper were once married and stars, until they publicly came out and lost their careers. Now they’re divorced, best friends, and running a movie memorabilia business. So it’s a dream–and a very needed win for their flailing business–when a former star is now ready to sell her huge collection. But they’re not the only buyers in line and their competition ends up dead with Jay and Cindy the suspects… If you love going into subcultures (film buffs, memorabilia collectors) and love a pair of sleuths, this one is for you.