Mysteries

I always enjoy reading a good mystery.  These days it seems like thrillers tend to be more popular than straight mysteries among most readers.  I've already written a post on some of my favorite thrillers, and some of the books listed in that post definitely fall into the mystery category as well.  It can be hard to define the exact difference between mysteries and thrillers, but I'd say it's that in many thrillers, especially the psychological kind, the mystery tends to be more just for the reader - figuring out exactly what is happening, what characters' secrets or motivations were, etc., while in a more traditional mystery there is generally a crime, and either a police officer or a private investigator (though occasionally a private person) is investigating what happened.

In my teenage years, mysteries were one of the genres I read the most, working my way through many an author - I think I may have actually read every book Agatha Christie wrote, as well as many of the books by Dick Francis, Mary Higgins Clark, Lillian Jackson Braun, Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, etc.  But for the purposes of this post, I'll concentrate more on more recent mysteries that are a little fresher in my mind.

Here are some of my favorites:

Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series - Tana French is one of my most favorite authors, period.  She is also my favorite current mystery writer.  And as I mentioned in my post on best series, I consider this series to be one of the best series ever too.   Her books are just so amazing - the mysteries are great and suspenseful, but the character work and the writing are just superlative as well.  There are six books in her Dublin Murder Squad series so far.   They're not exactly sequels to each other, as each one has a different main character, though all are in the titular detective squad, and thus the characters continue to pop up in the other books.  5 of the 6 books made my top 10 favorites lists, and 3 I gave 5 out of 5 stars.  And I loved all of them.  If you like mysteries and haven't previously read her books, go pick up the first book, "In the Woods," and work your way from there.  Tana French has her first standalone book, called "Witch Elm," coming out this October, which I'm very excited for.

Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series - Though perhaps most famous for her non-mystery book "Life After Life" (which I also loved), Kate Atkinson also wrote 4 literary mystery books featuring the private investigator Jackson Brodie.  2 of the 4 made my Top 10 lists; my favorite is the first one, "Case Histories."

Susie Steiner - Susie Steiner has only written two mysteries so far - "Missing Presumed" and "Persons Unknown" - but they were both fantastic.  Both are set in England and feature the same prickly female detective as she investigates matters both work-related and personal.  Like Tana French and Kate Atkinson, both books combine great mysteries with terrific character work, so if you've already read and loved Tana French and Kate Atkinson, definitely check out Susie Steiner.  "Missing Presumed" made my 2016 10 favorite list and "Persons Unkown" just missed the cut for 2017.

The Dry - Jane Harper - Apparently my favorite kind of mysteries are literary mysteries set in other countries.  "The Dry" is not set in the UK like the 3 previous entries on my list, but in Australia.  This book made my 2017 Top 10 list (perhaps edging out the second Susie Steiner?).  It's set in a small farming town in Australia, where a federal police investigator who left town as a teenager returns many years later for the funeral of his teenage best friend, who has died in an apparent murder-suicide, and stays in town to try to figure out what happened.  The sequel, "Force of Nature," came out earlier this year, and I just got it off the library wait list so I'll be reading it soon.

The Wrong Mother - Sophie Hannah - This one haunted me back when I read it in 2011, and made my 2011 Top 10 list.  I didn't realize when I read it that it was the 3rd book in a series, and I have always meant to go back and read the rest of the series (now up to 10 books!) but somehow I haven't gotten around to it.  Sophie Hannah has also written some standalone books, and was also appointed a few agos as the offical writer of new Agatha Christie books.  She is highly recommended by my reading partner in crime Sarah, so I'm sure I'll get around to reading her other stuff eventually.

Everything You Want Me To Be - Mindy Mejia - This mystery is about a teenage girl named Hattie who is murdered, told from the perspective of the detective (and family friend) investigating the murder, and from the perspectives of Hattie and her English teacher in the year leading up to the murder.  Mindy Mejia also has a new book coming out this fall, "Leave No Trace."

The Broken Girls - Simone St. James - I read this one earlier this year, and with a 4.5 star review, it's in the running as a possible contender for this year's top 10 list.  A very suspenseful and atmospheric gothic mystery with a historical and present day story. In the 1950s, we go between the perspective of 4 roommates at a creepy and possible haunted girls' boarding in Vermont called Idlewild.  In 2014, the story is told from the perspective of a journalist named Fiona, whose older sister's dead body was found on the by-then abandoned Idlewild grounds many years before. When a new buyer starts construction at Idlewild, Fiona starts investigating both what happened with her sister and what happened back in the 1950s at Idlewild.

The Last Day of Emily Lindsay - Nic Joseph  - Another 4.5 star contender for this year's 10 best list.  Detective Steven Paul, who has suffered through a horrible recurring nightmare all his life, is called to a crime scene because a woman named Emily Lindsay has been found in a state of catatonic shock, covered in someone else's blood and has a piece of paper in her pocket with his name on it - and she later draws a mysterious symbol that appears in his nightmare. Interspersed with this are chapters set in a weird cult-like environment. So, there are 3 mysteries - what happened to Emily, what's her connection to Steven, and what does any of this have to do with the cult scenes?  I also really liked Nic Joseph's first book, "Boy 9, Missing," which I mentioned in my thrillers post, so I will definitely be reading whatever she writes next.