Carol Goodman: Our Marriage is Murder

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Our Marriage is Murder centers, appropriately, on the crumbling marriage of Thea and Fred, a duo in writing and in life. The latest in Carol Goodman’s stand alone novels, it has a cozy feel with some of Goodman’s trademark grizzly murders sprinkled in. The married couple are up for an award for their who-done-it series, based on their relationship in the loosest terms, at a mystery convention they’ve attended many times before. Now, partially to honor Thea and Fred, it’s being held in Italy at the new hotel, and former nunnery, Castellarosa. read more

Sarah Lotz: How to Kill a Crime Writer

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I was of two minds on this novel.  I enjoyed the main character, Niamh, who has just lost her mother and who has moved into her mother’s remote cottage in the English countryside.  She has a cat, Brian, but mostly she is (not) dealing with her grief by sofa surfing and playing video games. She is startled out of her “grief journey” (as her stepmother refers to it) by the appearance of the main character in her author mother’s books.  Her mother had written thrillers featuring someone I can only describe as a female Jack Reacher, differing in gender and in that she has a fixed place of abode. read more

MJ Soni: The Masala Chai Mystery Club

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Debut

This charming first mystery may follow several trendy and now familiar tropes, but that didn’t bother me in the least because the telling of the story and the characters in it are simply  delightful.  It’s set in an upscale condo development where the main character, the recently retired and widowed librarian Neeti Shah, lives with her niece Myra and her adorable great nephew, Ved.  The story begins when Neeti hears a scream across the road and hurries over to find her neighbor dead at the foot of his stairs, seemingly killed by a fall, but, surprise, Neeti is not convinced. read more

Robert Thorogood: The Mysterious Affair of Judith Potts

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Marlow Murder Club #5

This charming series inhabits the same universe as Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club books.  The books are intelligent, well observed, occasionally funny – as well as being very clever mysteries.  The “Marlow Murder Club” consists of the intellectual, crossword puzzle loving Judith; dogwalker Suzie; and Becks, the wife of the vicar of Marlow (the vicar plays a very small supporting role).  The unofficial member of the club is Tanika, an actual police officer, who has come to rely on them. read more

S.E. Reed: Black Water Bones

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S.E. Reed’s latest standalone Black Water Bones spends a lot of time in and around water. Heroine Cameron St. Rose has been away from her small hometown,  Chokoloskee Island, Florida, for a long time. Though she’s there to help with the search for body parts that appeared after a big storm, she’s also missed the place and especially her father’s airboat business. Cameron had a good childhood, though she still remembers the dark day her mother disappeared and  found a severed arm at the same time. This is part of the reason she immediately takes off from her fancy job in a spa to help. read more

Traci Hall: Murder at a Scottish Halloween

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Scottish Shire #8

It’s Halloween in Nairn, a small seaside village in northern Scotland, and when teenage Brody Shaw accepts a dare to video the Wraith of Rait Ruins at a local castle, things go seriously wrong. Brody flees the ghost in terror, drops his phone, and returns to face his friends in shame. Worse, when he and mum Paislee return to look for his phone later that night, they find the dead body of a local teen dressed as the wraith. Was her death an accident or was it related to a theft at Cawdor Castle the same night? And who is leaving fliers promoting Scottish independence at crime scenes in the area? read more

Molly MacRae: All Shell Breaks Loose

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Haunted Shell Shop #3

In Molly MacRae’s Haunted Shell Shop series, Maureen Nash runs the Moon Shell shop on Carolina’s Ocracoke Island. Other than selling shells in a lovely island location, Maureen also is part of a mystery solving team with her landlords and friends Glady and Burt Weaver. The two siblings are always ready to bring a flare of theatrics and drama to every investigation, and just everyday life on the island. The final member of their team is an eighteenth-century Welsh pirate, Emrys Lloyd. Only Maureen can hear and see Emrys. read more

Darcie Wilde: The Abduction of Rosalind Thorne

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Rosalind Thorne/Useful Woman #9

The Abduction of Rosalind Thorne is the ninth volume in Darcie Wilde’s Rosalind Thorne/Useful Woman series of Regency mysteries, and I am very glad that the publisher finally recognizes that it’s all the same series.  For a while, they were calling the last few volumes the Useful Woman Mysteries and renumbering them, starting from Book 1.  Rosalind is a gentlewoman who has fallen on hard times after her father, who was deeply in debt, abandoned his family.  She discovers she has a talent for solving people’s problems, and she makes a living by offering her assistance to gentlewomen and aristocrats in difficulty.  Her cases often involve blackmail, scandal, and murder. read more

Marcus X. Figuerola: Magic City Mayhem

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Magic City Mayhem is a fantastic Miami adventure by Marcus X. Figuerola. I should first clarify that this is more of a thriller than a cozy mystery. There is also quite a bit of creative swearing, so for those readers who do not like to read that in their books I would avoid this one. Also, anyone squeamish about corpse descriptions, demons, and necromancy won’t enjoy this adventure to its fullest. For those who enjoy a fantasy story in a modern setting with plenty of lore, world building, and creative use of magic systems and creatures, Magic City Mayhem will entertain. read more

Kemper Donovan: Sweet Spot

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Ghostwriter #3

This is the third book in a series that is strikingly original in many ways.  In the first book, Donovan’s heroine was not even named.  She was just functioning as a ghostwriter (and amateur sleuth) for a Hilary Clinton-esque politician, who had recently lost an election. In the second, after writing about the crime she and the Hilary character solved, she’s a mini celebrity, and she’s asked on a cruise as a writing instructor.  By book two, she has a pen name – Belle Currer – though it’s made very clear it’s not her real name. In book three, Donovan has chosen to model his story on the heartbreaking 2002 abduction of Elizabeth Smart in Utah. read more