Category: Unusual Suspects

This is actually my current read! It’s great for readers of YA mysteries where many girls have been going missing, or been murdered, over time along with delving into mental illness and grief. Luca lives on an island town and is dealing with a lot including a new family moving into her dead best friend’s home. Now, after a night out, her sister has not returned and the police show up saying they think they’ve found her body. After years of believing a curse keeps killing girls, Luca decides to find out once and for all who is behind the killings…

(The author kindly provides TWs at the opening of the book.)

Easily one of my favorite books this year! First, if you listen to audiobooks, absolutely 100% go pick up that format—parts of this are interviews and a podcast and it is so good that I actually would forget this was a novel and not a podcast.

You get a mystery and a family drama in one! Famous magician Violet Volk disappeared a decade ago causing all kinds of speculation. Now for the ten year anniversary of the disappearance, a podcast is focusing on interviewing everyone who knew her, looking at the news reports, and digging into all the fan theories. But Violet’s sister, Sasha, doesn’t want anything to do with the podcast—no matter how much she’s hounded—or any of the theories, especially since she’s always been part of some of the theories. Between Sasha’s current life and the podcast transcripts, we get to know both sisters in a collision course of who they were and possibly what may have happened.

(TW mentions past teacher physical abuse of child/ brief recount gropping assault/ brief mention domestic abuse case/ brief mention past suicide attempt, detail/ past mother with terminal illness, not graphic)

This is labeled as a standalone, but is a continuation with the character from Beijing Payback. Victor Li is a wanted man who has taken on a job of breaking into storage units that belong to recently deported people. That’s where he finds a rare gem that to him can change his life with its value. But this is a crime book, so really he’s about to find a lot of trouble.

Patrick Radden Keefe has two fantastic true crime books: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland and Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty. Now he’s put out a collection of his writings, 12 articles previously published in The New Yorker, that tell a range of crime stories. We start with The Jefferson Bottles–which I have renamed The 1% Are Insufferable–which takes a look at rare wine, collectors, and the elaborate con of selling Thomas Jefferson’s wine bottles. There are stories on international arms brokers, a sister who lives in hiding after testifying against her brother, financial scams, an unsolved plane bombing, mass shooting, El Chapo and more. The stories will take you around the world and into very different criminal activity. It’s a great collection you can pick up and put down easily depending on your reading mood and that allows you to bounce around depending on the crime you’re interested in. Also great if you like reading books that will have you playing the “Hey, did you know?” game. Bonus: the audiobook is read by the author.

I love translated mysteries. I love Japanese mysteries. I love seeing the classics from other countries. I love mysteries set on remote islands. All those reasons, and more, make me so glad that Pushkin Vertigo is translating this series–don’t worry about the series number, they read as standalones and have actually been translated out of order. Detective Kosuke Kindaichi not only comes to Gokumon Island with news of a man’s death, but also that his dying words were a warning that his three step-sisters were now in danger.

Ruth Galloway fans can cheer for a new entry in this long running mystery series! Ruth is clearing out her mother’s London home a few years after her mom passed away and discovers a photo that opens a mystery she must solve. Now back in Norfolk, she finds new roadblocks to her detecting as COVID-19 lockdowns have begun. Add to that a possible serial killer plot that DCI Harry Nelson is investigating…

Louise Lloyd is back in the sequel to Dead Dead Girls, a great historical mystery series set during the Harlem Renaissance. Starting after the events of the first book’s conclusion (no spoilers here) we’re in Harlem, 1927 and Louise has a visitor from her past: one of the girl’s who had been kidnapped with her when she was a teen. But their reunion is cut short when she’s found dead and Louise’s girlfriend becomes the suspect…

I’m currently listening to this audiobook and if you’re a fan of John le Carré, spy thrillers, moles, and people who won’t let go of an investigation, this is narrative nonfiction you’ll like. It starts with a boat found out in the water with no owner on board. But things pointing to the CIA are found, just not the CIA officer they belong to. From there things begin to unravel, things don’t line up, things are questioned, accused–what exactly is going on?

For fans of contemporary social mysteries! Katia Willet is killed by an off-duty police officer who claims she was breaking and entering but her younger sister Beau knows that can’t be true. She’s certain she can prove it since Katia’s boyfriend was a witness, but he’s gone missing. So she and a friend use social media to get anonymous tips and start trying to solve what really happened to her sister…

For historical mystery fans (recent, under-the-radar history) this is a great series that has followed Vera Kelly from her start as a government spy to a private investigator. Now she may have her most important case: after visiting her girlfriend Max’s estranged family in LA, Max goes missing. Will Vera find the answers she needs traveling across California to find her? If you’d like to start at the beginning pick up Who Is Vera Kelly?

Here’s a new release for fans of psychological suspense. Cleo Li wakes up with amnesia having no idea why she’s on the side of the highway in British Columbia. Her parents are also missing, with the added WTF that her mother had just won millions in the lottery…

This is for fans of small communities and past-and-present mysteries. D.I. Elise King has just finished treatment for breast cancer and is desperate to get back to work. So when a mystery of a missing man presents itself, she can’t help but look into it. Told from the point of view of various characters in a small community, it’s the kind of book that has you invested in everyone’s lives as you wait for all the secrets to start coming out. For fans of multicast audiobooks, you’ll want to pick up that format narrated by Gabrielle Glaister, Jayne Entwistle, Nicholas Guy Smith.

(TW character is recovering from cancer treatment/ teen drug overdoses/ past work sexual assault attempt recounted/ recounts parent with drug addiction/ alcoholism, death)

I’ve really enjoyed all of Lydia Kang‘s novels and am so glad she has a new release. It’s a historical mystery set in 1942 Brooklyn, and follows brother and sister Maggie and Will Scripps. They find a mysterious woman hiding beneath their back stairs but with the war raging in Europe, the first atomic bomb being created, and the mystery woman’s obsession with poisons, should Maggie and Will fear this woman?

I inhaled this audiobook, which has an excellent narration by Inés del Castillo and Yareli Arizmendi. In present day, Cassie Bowman has a true crime blog but wants to finally stop struggling to pay the bills. She decides to write a true crime book on a case from the ’80s by interviewing the woman at the center: Lore Rivera was married in Laredo, Texas to one man and in Mexico City to another until one husband was arrested for murdering the other.

This book tackles a lot (the ethics of true crime journalism, the effects of economic crisis, motherhood, marriage, family, one foot in two countries, what we owe others, can we ever really know a person…) while keeping the reader hooked not only in each woman’s life now and then, but also in their tug and pull with each other and their families.

(TW domestic abuse/ maternal mortality / mentions miscarriages, infertility/ ableism/ earthquake that killed many/ alcoholism)

(TW child sex trafficking) This is a new true crime memoir where Sara Kruzan tells her story. After following her home when she was 11, a man named GG befriended Kruzan and groomed her, with the abuse only ending when she shot him dead at age 16. Rather than being treated as a victim who killed her abuser in self-defense, she was given life in prison without parole. In 2013 thanks to activists’ tireless work, she was released from prison after 20 years. She has since dedicated herself to fighting for and helping sex trafficking victims. In this book she recounts her abuse, sentencing, and imprisonment, including the people and system that failed her but also those who helped her.

Here’s a middle grade mystery that follows twelve-year-old twin sleuths solving the mystery of their missing older sister at a horror themed water park. Billed as “part Scooby Doo, part A Series of Unfortunate Events,” I am 100% in and already queued up the audiobook!

If you like character-driven crime and have ever wondered how the counterfeit handbag world works. this one’s for you. It’s mostly told from Ava Wong’s perspective as she pleads her case to the police telling the entire story of how she, a married mother of a toddler, ended up in the illegal world of counterfeit designer handbags after Winnie Fang, who she hadn’t seen since college, entered her life and pulled her into it. I love being plunged into someone’s life–a mother struggling with a toddler in full tantrum mode, having given up her career, with a husband now working nonstop to be the only income earner who’s never available. I was fascinated by the con in this (Chinese factories and US boutiques), loved the ending, and I always love seeing cultures and immigrant characters (all so different with various views on looking back or forward, having one foot in two different worlds etc). The audiobook is narrated by Catherine Ho and I really enjoyed the time I spent listening.

For historical mystery fans looking to armchair sleuth and travel to a speakeasy in the Jazz age, this one is set in 1924 in Prohibition-era New York. Vivian Kelly doesn’t find much excitement living with her sister and working as a seamstress, so she finds her thrills at the speakeasy The Nightingale—until a bootlegger’s body is found and Vivian is believed to know more than she does…

Okay, so this book did publish in 2016 buuuuuuut I’m so excited that it finally has an audiobook edition! It’s a great start to a still running series that gives you a team of PIs (Review, including TWs). The audiobook is narrated by Stephanie Weeks who is also listed as narrating books 2-4 in the series, so far.

For fans of I Know What You Did Last Summer. A tight group of friends who spent summers together at a lake house experienced a tragedy where one of them died in a house fire. Now a year has passed and the remaining friends have gathered at the rebuilt lake house. What could go wrong?! Maybe some eerie things and ghost visions…

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