Category: Unusual Suspects

For fans of procedurals, partnered detectives, and cases that feel ripped from the headlines!

The series follows two great characters in Colorado: Detective Inaya Rahman, who is sent to places with high complaints against officers and has a tight-knit family; and her boss, Lieutenant Waqas Seif, who is raising his two younger brothers and, unlike Rahman, keeps his culture/ethnicity to himself. This time around, two separate incidents that involved officer shootings led to protests across the Blackwater Falls community, leading Rahman and Seif to have to dig deep to get to the heart of these cases.

If you want to start at the beginning (you do! It’s a great series!), pick up Blackwater Falls. And if you’re a lover of “completed” backlist series, absolutely read Ausma Zehanat Khan’s previous procedural series that starts with The Unquiet Dead.

For fans of reluctant amateur sleuths, humor, and space settings!

Mallory Viridian literally went to live on a space station to get away from the fact that on Earth, people kept dying around her, and she kept having to solve the murders. Surely (don’t call me Shirley!) you can see where this is going. The murders follow her to space, too! This time around, her past has followed her from Earth, including the agent who was always after her…

If you want to start at the beginning of this very fun series, pick up Station Eternity!

For fans of cozy food mysteries and travel, looking for tropical weather!

Miriam Quiñone already has her to-do list full — as a mother with another child on the way and a food anthropologist with a popular cooking show — when she finds herself in multiple mysteries! When visiting her parents’ rental properties in Punta Cana, she discovers someone is damaging their property. In Puerto Rico, filming a special episode of her show, she travels around the island until the host of her rental is attacked! There are lots of mysteries to solve between cooking and eating delicious food!

If you want to start at the beginning, pick up Mango, Mambo, and Murder!

For readers of true crime memoirs.

In the ’90s, Daphne Caruana Galizia became Malta’s first woman newspaper columnist, and her focus became the massive corruption of the government. Nothing ever made her back down, even challenging the Maltese government, “Do your worst, you bastards, until the only option left to you is to take out a contract on my life.” After years of threats to her and her family and attempts on their lives, Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated by explosives in her car.

Paul Caruana Galizia, one of her three sons, recounts his childhood, his mother’s life, her career, legacy, assassination, and the family’s continued fight for justice in this true crime memoir. He also narrates the audiobook.

For fans of procedurals, archeologist leads, and MCs returning home to solve a mystery!

Syd Walker studied forensic anthropology but works instead for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Rhode Island branch, trying to preserve Indigenous history. She doesn’t return home often, having left behind her parents, a sister with addiction issues, and her childhood, where she witnessed her childhood friend and parents’ murders. But she has to leave her pregnant wife and head back to Oklahoma when an old badge of hers is found in a skull, and her sister is now missing.

This is a great procedural––with a strong character voice right from the start––about being haunted by the past, struggling with the present, and the history of real atrocities towards Indigenous people, especially Indigenous women and Two-Spirit.

I really enjoyed the audiobook, narrated by Carolina Hoyos and Erin Tripp, and will absolutely read any future books if this becomes a series.

(TW addiction, past survived overdose/ mentions past child abuse/ graphic child harm)

For fans of satire, a-hole women on a killing spree of men, and readers who maybe want a gender-swapped American Psycho!

Tiffany isn’t winning any kind of decent human award: she grew up being awful to her younger sister, is awful to her sorority sisters, and is basically spoiled and behaving as such. And now she’s found something to actually make her feel something and open her appetite: killing men! Quickly realizing––and even checking with a lawyer for advice––that she’ll quickly be suspected if she continues killing frat guys, she expands her killing spree to random prey. But satisfying her murderous desires isn’t enough when copycat killers begin. The boyfriend she’s trying to make “the one” won’t stop grieving, and the relationship starts to show cracks…

(TW fatphobia, diet culture, eating disorders, disordered eating/ mentions past parent cancer death/ date raper, drink drugging/ hidden camera to record sex/ domestic abuse)

For fans of thrillers, series, fictional serial killers, and procedurals that equally focus on the detective’s personal life!

Senior Inspector Arnav Singh Rajput disappoints his family by missing his teen daughter’s dance performance when he’s called to a brutal crime scene: a dismembered man found on the steps of a Mumbai temple. It’s an intense case that forces Arnav to try and stop a serial killer, all while trying to also care for his pregnant wife and daughter.

If you want to start at the beginning of the series, pick up The Blue Bar.

For fans of fun holiday murder mysteries, lawyer MCs, epistolary novels, and a theater setting!

In Janice Hallett’s The Appeal, we met two law school students who were given case files to go through for an appeal and ended up sifting through tons of emails and texts to help with the case. Now, the same lawyers are back and once again looking at The Fairway Players––and sifting through emails and police transcripts––in order to solve a murder during the production of Jack and the Beanstalk.

For fans of historical mysteries and theater-set mysteries!

Armchair travel to England in the early 1800s, where an abolition bill is pending, and Lady Abigail Worthing is married to an older lord who is mostly away. To distract her from her marital issues and a recent break-in, Lady Worthing is at the Drury Lane theater watching A Bold Stroke for a Wife. Except her recent trip to the theater is not all acting, at least not when the playwright is murdered. Now Lady Worthing will find herself once again putting on her amateur sleuth hat!

For fans of “returning home to face the past” mysteries and PIs!

Olivia Welles left her small town in Kansas for a life in Venice, California, where she’s now a PI. Bonnie Ray-Murphy, who survived the car accident that killed Olivia’s mother, calls her out of the blue asking for help––she’s incarcerated on charges of killing her child. Olivia returns home ready to look into whether Bonnie is the monster the town accuses her of being or if there is a bigger mystery to solve…

For fans of translated crime, psychological, and lawyer MCs!

This is my current audiobook listen, and it definitely feels like fans of literary crime and dives into questioning memory would enjoy this.

Marie NDiaye (Maître Susane), a 42-year-old lawyer in Bordeaux, doesn’t seem that happy in her life. In her personal life, she’s hired a housekeeper, Sharon, after a man at a dinner party spoke with disregard about her. Marie becomes intent on helping Sharon become a legal citizen of France, along with her husband and children. But Sharon continues to fail to provide the marriage certificate Marie asks her for, and Marie continues to clean her own home, uncomfortable by making Sharon do it.

In her professional life, she’s asked to take on the case of a woman, Marlyne, who murdered her young children. Marlyne’s husband, Gilles Principaux, has brought the case to Marie. She recognizes him from her childhood or thinks she does, thinking he may be the teen who encouraged her intelligence. But when she brings up the memory to her parents, her father is upset that the teen must have taken advantage of Marie, leading Marie to break off from her parents for assuming the worst.

Between her personal life and her professional one, Marie slowly starts to unravel, grasping at what is happening and what did happen…

For fans of short story collections!

Short story collections are a great way to find new-to-you authors and also really help with getting in some reading time when you’re schedule doesn’t allow you to sit down for long stretches of time with a long book.

You’ll get stories from loved and widely known authors like Silvia Moreno-­Garcia, S.A. Cosby, Walter Mosley…and also maybe new-to-you authors (whose work I’ve loved) like William Boyle and Faye Snowden.

For fans of historical mysteries (Philadelphia, 1875), amateur sleuths, and doctor leads!

Dr. Lydia Weston has her schedule full as she helped create a low-cost clinic for the working class where she treats patients, and she’s also a teacher for future doctors at the Woman’s Medical College. After a patient of Weston’s goes missing, and an unidentifiable body with the patient’s diary is found, Weston ends up assisting with the autopsy and then the detectives on the case. But will what she knows about her patient help solve the case, and do they, in fact, have the correct body?

For readers of forensic science, cold cases, and true crime.

Norton is the host of the podcast The Fall Line, which focuses on cases that haven’t gotten much attention, centering minority communities in Georgia. In Lay Me To Rest, she takes a deep dive not only into cold cases, but into the unidentified dead cold cases specifically, and the forensic science/tools for identification throughout history up until the newest generation of the science.

For fans of family cozy mysteries with delicious recipes!

Lila Macapagal’s life revolves around the cafe she runs with two of her friends. But now her godmothers–the Calendar Crew, which consists of April, Mae, and June–are opening up a laundromat, and many in town are not happy. Plus, April’s niece, Divina de los Santos, is visiting from the Philippines, and Lila isn’t enamored with her. Throw in the laundromat being vandalized and a murder, and Lila is back to baking and solving crimes!

If you want to start at the beginning of the series, pick up Arsenic and Adobo.

For fans of L.A. settings and elderly PI series!

Al Pupik, a legendary late-night comedian, has been murdered in his L.A. home, which becomes Jewish PI Amos Parisman’s new case. The police are looking at this case with the comedian’s best friend, Benny Wolf, as the suspect, hence why Benny hires Amos. Not only are Benny’s recent memory issues complicating the case, but it also overlaps with Amos’ personal life, where he’s recently had to put his wife in a care facility because of her dementia.

If you want to start at the beginning of the series, pick up An Old Man’s Game.

For fans of spy organizations and prequel stories!

While this is the second book to be released in this series, after Undercover Latina, it’s a prequel and can be read as a standalone.

At 15, Amani Kendall’s entire life is upended when her family goes on the run: her mom is being pursued by a stalker, and her scientist father is missing. This leads to her being moved from a wealthy, all-white school to an underfunded school where her fellow classmates look like her. With everything going on in her life, she’s worried about who is after her family, how much danger they are in, and how easy it may be to find them. But her mom isn’t giving her satisfactory answers, so she decides to investigate herself…

I recently wrote a Reading Pathways to reading Aya de León if you’re looking for where to start with her work.

For fans of modern historical fiction and ex-cops turned PI!

Andy Mills is now a PI in San Francisco during the early 1950s. But business is certainly not booming for a few reasons, including that many people in the queer community aren’t signing up to trust a former cop. This is why he feels he has to take a case from an old flame—plus, how hard can a simple blackmail case be? Ha, it’s a PI novel, so of course, it’s going to get complicated. And for Andy, that means getting drawn back into the world of the Navy.

If you want to start at the beginning, pick up Lavender House!

For fans of new amateur sleuth series with older protagonists!

Glory lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, and works as a bookie after church services at a coffee shop. When local officer Beau Landry is called to the scene of a crime, Glory learns that her best friend, a local nun, is dead and tags along with him. The police are quick to rule it a suicide, but Glory won’t accept that, so she teams up with a NY lawyer, her daughter, to find out exactly what is going on.

For fans of past mysteries, small towns, and multiple POVs!

Fifteen years ago, Ashley Hay showed up at Liss Kehoe’s doorstep with her infant and then disappeared. Liss has since raised Callan, always fearing Ashley would return at any moment for her son. But instead, Callan is in an accident that unearths Ashley’s car and body, opening an investigation into the murder and casting suspicion on those from her life years ago…