Books shelved under “Mystery”

I swear I’ve read some of these before, but they’re the type of books that are made of the same mould. Marcus Didius Falco is a “private informer” in the first-century Roman empire. Recently back from a stint in Britain on the emperor’s business, Falco finds himself in jail for crossing the emperor’s chief spy. Thanks to his mother and his girlfriend, he gets his freedom—and a new apartment—and immediately sets about acquiring a new…

In everyone’s life there is always at least one door. You know the door I mean. It’s the one that you’ve never opened, even though you’ve always wanted to. It could be the front door of the creepy, abandoned house at the end of your street. It could be the strange door at the top of the stairs in your school, the one that doesn’t lead to the roof and probably leads to a boring…

“Humans were dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that.”

That is perhaps how Dickens might have begun Saturn’s Children, if Dickens had somehow conceived of a near-future world in which humanity is extinct but its human-like robot servitors have kept on going. Charles Stross isn’t quite so economical in explaining this underlying fact, but he’s almost there. Through references to “pink goo” and “green goo” and the lack of prokaryotes…

Have you made a deal with the devil? Worried about how your soul will be conveyed to its eternal torment upon the expiry of that deal? Not sure you can trust the Grim Reaper with so important a task? Never fear: the Collectors are here! And they are going to take you straight to Hell.

Chris F. Holm mashes up the concept of the damned, human soul collector with the tradition of noir pulp fiction.…

So you solved Hell’s labour problems, foiled a fake kidnapping plot, and have successfully become a crimefighting superhero with the help of a demon. Oh, and you got the girl! What’s next? Try stopping your mother’s new lover from bringing about the end of the world (and the start of a new one) by writing the next draft of the book that is our lives! Costume Not Included hews pretty closely to its predecessor, The…

Harry Dresden is back, baby!

Seriously, I’m going to drop major spoilers about halfway through this review. I’m not kidding around here.

After dying (or nearly dying) and solving his own murder as a ghost, Harry has returned to find his body in the care of Mab. Harry has not escaped his obligations as her new Winter Knight, and so Cold Days opens with a montage of his physical therapy—Mab trying to kill him in…

If you were an investment banker before the 2008 recession, and you had just begun your first vacation in four years prior to moving from New York to a cushy new position in London, would you take on a job unpacking and cataloguing an ancient library for an elusive, eccentric, and extremely wealthy British couple who also happen to be nobility? That’s what Edward Wozny does in Codex, and it changes everything. On the…

I’m not a connoisseur of Coen Brothers films, but there are two I love: Fargo and Burn After Reading. Both of these bleak-yet-comic films have in common their stellar ensemble casts and strong, interwoven stories. Neither has a single, clear protagonist following a simple, linear plot. That would be boring! Instead, each film presents a complicated set of narratives in which everyone is the protagonist of their own life even as they antagonize others.

…

I wish I could give Use of Weapons more stars and the appreciation some people are able to heap upon it. I understand where they’re coming from, but I just wasn’t able to focus enough on some of the details of this novel to grasp it. I need to read it again—and probably try reading the Roman numeral chapters backwards, since I didn’t realize they were chronologically reversed—to appreciate it more. For now, though, all…

I read Pretty Little Dead Things with shivers down my spine. It’s that kind of book: Gary McMahon creates suspense and no small amount of dread as he introduces us to Thomas Usher, a sometime private investigator who sees dead people. Usher becomes mixed up in a series of grisly murders that all point to something much more sinister going down (yes, more sinister than murder). And he isn’t the only one who is slinging…

Empire State is a frenetic concoction of noir mystery, Prohibition-era gangster-style criminal conspiracy, and Golden Age superhero fiction. Reading it is like sitting in a bare room, concrete walls and a single steel table with an uncomfortable chair, as the clock above the door ticks steadily towards 3 AM. It’s minimalist and rough, sometimes surreal and always uncomfortable. Just when I thought I had it figured out, Adam Christopher changes gears and leaves me in…

The robot apocalypse pops up all the time in science fiction, and with good reason. Humans are generally bad at getting along with each other; sharing this planet with intelligent life of an entirely different variety would probably not go down well. Isaac Asimov, of course, famously developed three laws of robotics that were designed to avoid android armageddon. All of them were designed to sanctify human life, to make it inviolable in the eyes…

This is the second work of historical fiction I’ve read in a month that has a colour in its title and features art as a significant component of its story. The other, Sacré Bleu, was an irreverent “comedy d’art” by Christopher Moore. My Name is Red definitely isn’t that. Good thing I like to read widely!

My Name is Red opens with the voice of a dead man. Elegant Effendi describes the sensations of…

Emissaries from the Dead hits a lot of sweet spots for me. First, of course, there’s AI. Second, it’s a mystery novel. Third, the protagonist is essentially a government agent with diplomatic immunity (though not in this case). Fourth, she’s messed up but not too messed up. The resulting cocktail is a heady mix indeed. Although I found it slow going at first, Emissaries from the Dead quickly grew on me; by the end, Adam-Troy…

Fans of Christopher Moore may be shocked by this book. Exclamations of “Sacré bleu!” followed by monocles popping out from eyes and spilled cups of tea are probably going to be the norm. For, you see, I enjoyed this book thoroughly. It was an excellent supernatural mystery set in Paris and involving great artists and their muses. But it is not very funny, or at least, it doesn’t have the same, non-stop humorous dialogue and…

From the other reviews here on Goodreads, I am relieved to see that I am not the only one whose dominant feeling while reading Cast in Shadow was one of confusion. Michelle Sagara has clearly come up with a creative, perhaps even compelling world. It’s populated by all sorts of fascinating species: the immortal Barrani and Dragons and Tha'lani, the mortal humans and Leontine and Aerians. Elantra is a city like many others in fantasy,…

I don’t know a lot about Moscow, or even Russia in general. If I had more free time, I would devote some of it to feeling guilty for this gap in my knowledge. Some day I might even get around to rectifying it by reading some informative books on the subject, rather than fantasy (which, I’m given to understand, is not always 100% factual—odd, that). But not today! No, today I’ll talk about The Secret…

I grabbed Polaris on a whim at the used bookstore. It looked like an interesting mystery set in the future—a future where humanity has spread to other planets, where entire civilizations have risen and fallen over a few millennia. With all this history between Alex Benedict and life back here on Earth, there are bound to be so many cool mysteries to explore. But when Alex and his partner, Chase Kolpath, begin investigating the sixty-year-old…

I imagine being a detective is difficult enough without specializing in the supernatural. It probably helps that in Justin Gustainis’ alternative world, the existence of supernatural beings from vampires to ghouls to witches has been public knowledge since after World War II. So at least you don’t run into the common problem of everyone thinking you’re crazy. Still, solving mysteries is difficult enough when you don’t have to worry about failure meaning the end of…

Living in space is hard. Like, really hard. Like, super almost-impossibly-crazy-stupid hard. Leviathan Wakes has some great moments that illustrate the various hazards of living in space, and it underscores the importance of Earth’s continued existence to the otherwise estranged colonies and stations. Yet even it has a fairly optimistic outlook on our ability to harness the solar system for our needs. Containment, on the other hand, makes even starting up a colony on…