Books shelved under “Mystery”

Every so often I run into an author who is good but who doesn’t click for me personally. Sometimes I enjoy specific works of theirs but don’t enjoy others. Sometimes I like their style in general, but their books start feeling very similar and less exciting. In the case of Ann Leckie, it seems like I’m just not all that interested in the stories she has to tell. I appreciated the skill evident in Ancillary…

Apparently 3 years was too long to wait between reading Witchmark and Stormsong because I have forgotten pretty much everything that happened in the first book, oops! As I started Stormsong, I was very confused: who are all these people? Who are the Amaranthines, and why do they care about Aeland or Laneer? What’s going on? Nevertheless, I did my best to forge on and trust that C.L. Polk would do their best to…

I don’t really know what I just read. The Accident Season is a supernatural YA thriller that purports to have a mystery at the heart of it. Yet the deeper we go into the story, the more that mystery unravels into almost a bait-and-switch. Populated by the barest hints of ghosts, fairies, changelings, and other such spirits, this book tugs at your brain in a pleasing way, but I’m not sure, in the end, it…

Empire of Wild is a supernatural thriller that combines the legend of the rogarou with a woman’s search for her missing husband. But it would be a mistake not to recognize that this is also a story about colonialism, about European/settler ideologies clashing with Indigenous ideas of hearth, home, and connection to one’s community and the land. Just as The Marrow Thieves showcases how settlers can go to any length to extract and exploit resources…

This was one of those books where I was afraid it would not live up to the hype, because people I follow on Twitter have not been able to stop talking about it. Fortunately, Cemetery Boys lived up to the hype—perhaps even exceeded it in some ways—and I went from being apprehensive about possibly not liking such a popular book to being really happy I took this chance. It’s great as a trans story, great…

When I learned after finishing this book that Kimberly Unger is a video game designer, much more about this book began to make sense. Nucleation is a science-fiction novel that wants to wow you with its video game–like aesthetic—this is a novel that craves the label of cinematic for its descriptions of how its protagonist virtually manipulates robots in another star system in high-stakes, high-pressure situations. Nevertheless, even if such moments capture your attention (I’m…

From women writing subversive TV now to women inventing time travel! The Psychology of Time Travel is a quirky part mystery, part love story. As the title suggests, Kate Mascarenhas focuses more so on what it would be like to be a time traveller rather than on the social, historical, or future repercussions of mucking about with a timeline. Along with bringing up the usual questions of free will versus determinism, etc., this book seeks…

Just absolutely devastating. But of course, I have come to expect that of Louise O’Neill.

After two brilliant forays into young adult novels, both well worth a read, O’Neill brought her unstinting criticism of patriarchy to her first adult novel Almost Love in the best and most scathing way possible. After the Silence is a more-than-worthy second adult novel. While both have passing similarities—depictions of emotional abuse, gaslighting, male partners treating women poorly—O’Neill looks at…

Ever wondered, “What would Jane Eyre have been like if Jane Eyre had been a serial killer?” That’s the basic premise of Jane Steele, although if I’m being honest, the serial killer aspect was not as intense as I had thought it would be. As a feminist retelling of Jane Eyre this book leaves much to be desired. However, as a kind of mystery/thriller/romance, Jane Steele is a lot of fun. I came to…

Code Name Verity was some of the best WWII fiction I’ve ever read. So I’ve had this prequel on my to-read list for a while. Elizabeth Wein in general seems like an author I should watch, and I finally tackled The Pearl Thief with no small amount of trepidation: how could this possibly measure up to Code Name Verity? Indeed, if that’s your metric, you will necessarily be disappointed. Obviously this book is…

Sometimes the best I can summon up for a book is “competent.” That’s where I’m at with The Justice Project by Michael Betcherman. This young adult/new adult book is an interesting mix of thriller/mystery, but the tone and pacing and characterization leaves me a little confused about who the audience is and which themes Betcherman wants to emphasize.

Matt is finishing up high school, but his dreams of playing college football are over. Instead of…

Having watched many of the Agatha Christie’s Poirot adaptations of these mysteries, sometimes it’s hard to tell if I’m figuring out the ending or just remembering it from the TV show. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Peril at End House. That didn’t diminish my enjoyment of this Poirot mystery, of course. With the weather finally verging on warm, I was yearning to curl up on my deck with a blanket and some tea and…

Time loops. An English country house murder mystery. Shifting identities and allegiances. Yes please. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle has so many things that attract me to a novel. For the most part, Stuart Turton’s execution kept me riveted: I inhaled this book over the course of two days, stopping only because I really did need to sleep.

A man comes to consciousness in the middle of a forest. All he remembers is the…

Sherlock Holmes was, unsurprisingly, my jam when I was a kid. I preferred Poirot, even then (just something about Christie’s writing or the Belgian detective’s emphasis on his “little grey cells”), but Sherlock was cool too. I love reading stories that try to put a new spin on the Conan Doyle adventures, whether it’s transposing them to the 22nd century, hiring Ian McKellen to play a dementia-ridden Holmes, or gender-swapping Holmes and sending her to…

Mmm mmm mmm, yes indeed. I like superhero novels, but they don’t always work for me, and often I find myself more disappointed and critical of them than I want to be considering how avidly I seek them out. I was nervous starting After the Golden Age finally after having it on my to-read list for years. What if I didn’t like it? Should I even bother? I’m glad I did, though, because I thoroughly…

A long time ago I read The Dervish House and commented that it hacked my brain, and that’s what I feel like Hannu Rajaniemi is trying to do with The Quantum Thief. This is posthumanist SF that reimagines the limitations and extent of a human’s personal narrative in a very extreme, mind-bending way. I don’t entirely understand what’s happening here, and that is kind of the point. Rajaniemi walks an extremely fine line between…

I picked this up from my library on a whim because it was on a display and I liked the description of the premise. I know nothing about Pretty Little Liars or Sara Shepard. The Amateurs has a great premise! Unfortunately, the writing, characterization, and even the plot fail to live up to the expectations I had.

Seneca Frazier has spent most of her first year of college on a message board called Case Not…

I learned about Hope Never Dies from Twitter, and am I ever glad I did. I don’t read a lot of spoofs and parodies, but when I do, I like to read ones like Andrew Shaffer’s. It is delightful.

Joe Biden has been out of office for a while now, and while his former friend Barack is living the high celeb life, old Joe is … well, feeling his age. His life gets shaken up…

Dr. Miles Singer is a military psychiatrist treating veterans of Aeland’s war with Laneer. He himself is hiding from his noble family, who would drag him back to use his magical talents as a mere battery and help prop up their power in Aeland. But when a stranger dies in Miles’ arms and begs Miles to find his killer, Miles’ two worlds collide. Soon there won’t be any secrets … but will the price be…

The Woken Gods has a wicked premise: what if the deities of various ancient mythologies were real entities, but at some point in time, for reasons lost to us, they were put asleep or fell asleep? What happens, then, if they wake up and return with a vengeance, and the only people who can stand against them are a shadowy secret society called the Society of the Sun that just happens to have made it…