Books Read in 2025: Three-Star Mystery and Thriller

First day back at work after the Christmas holidays. I thought re-entry was going to be really unpleasant, given how time-shifted I was. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night but I got more than I expected to, and got up early enough that I didn't have to rush around like an idiot. And it was nice to see the kids.

It is snowing. Again. The day Eve got home we checked the weather and it looked like it was about to start raining for the next several days. We were complaining and Matt said it was better than snow and we said not for Christmas. He said Angus had to fly home and I said "well we don't actually control the weather with our minds, hon", and then it snowed for the next six days and I was worried we had controlled the weather with our minds. There was also a really bad freezing rain event, but both Angus's flight on the 27th and Eve's train on the 30th got out with no issues. 

 Little Comfort (Hester Thursby #1) by Edwin Hill:Synopsis from Goodreads:  In a brilliantly twisted debut set among Boston's elite, Edwin Hill introduces unforgettable sleuth Hester Thursby--and a missing persons case that uncovers a trail of vicious Harvard librarian Hester Thursby knows that even in the digital age, people still need help finding things. Using her research skills, Hester runs a side business tracking down the lost. Usually, she's hired to find long-ago prom dates or to reunite adopted children and birth parents. Her new case is finding the handsome and charismatic Sam Blaine.

Sam has no desire to be found. As a teenager, he fled his small New Hampshire town with his friend, Gabe, after a haunting incident. For a dozen years, Sam and Gabe have traveled the country, reinventing themselves as they move from one mark to another. Sam has learned how trusting wealthy people can be--especially the lonely ones--as he expertly manipulates his way into their lives and homes. In Wendy Richards, the beautiful, fabulously rich daughter of one of Boston's most influential families, he's found the perfect way to infiltrate the milieu in which he knows he belongs--a world of Brooks Brothers suits, Nantucket summers, and effortless glamour.

As Hester's investigation closes in on their brutal truth, the bond between Sam and Gabe is tested and Hester unknowingly jeopardizes her own safety. While Gabe has pinned all his desperate hopes of a normal life on Hester, Sam wants her out of the way for good. And Gabe has always done what Sam asked...

-”Hester glanced at her phone. It was nearly six-thirty already, right when Morgan had said he’d be leaving work. “I don’t want to go home,’ she said, realizing, suddenly, that it was true, realizing that this whole case, every part of it, had been about finding herself in a world that was feeling smaller and more constricted and less in her control by the day. It wasn’t that she wanted to leave Morgan or Kate or Waffles, but tonight, this night, she wanted her life to be about herself again, if only for a moment.”

Maybe 3.5. There wasn't a lot of narrative tension, it was pretty obvious early on what was happening, but it was interesting watching it play out, and there was some nuance in the characters of the bad actors. I've never been a fan of the Columbo style of mystery, where you know who did it and the question is why and how the detective will figure it out. Hester was odd - it was sort of refreshing how difficult it was to predict her behaviour, but also, did she ever actually go work in the library? Because I was promised a librarian but I didn't see a lot of library-ing. She made some really questionable choices, although her backstory goes some way to explaining them. This also made me wonder how many people are really terrible about home security. Considering the number of times my husband is away and I have to go downstairs with a baseball bat and investigate the workroom and storage space and furnace room before I can sleep I'm pretty sure I would know if someone was lurking in my walk-in closet with nefarious intentions (or even benign ones, although that's difficult to imagine). Unsure if I'll pursue further entries in the series, although I probably will because a) I have no self control and 2) it is likely I will see another book by this author and forget that I have already read one.

The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf: Synopsis from Goodreads: A woman receives an unexpected visitor during a deadly snowstorm in this chilling thriller from New York Times bestselling author Heather Gudenkauf. She thought she was alone…

True crime writer Wylie Lark doesn’t mind being snowed in at the isolated farmhouse where she’s retreated to write her new book. A cozy fire, complete silence. It would be perfect, if not for the fact that decades earlier, at this very house, two people were murdered in cold blood and a girl disappeared without a trace.

As the storm worsens, Wylie finds herself trapped inside the house, haunted by the secrets contained within its walls—haunted by secrets of her own. Then she discovers a small child in the snow just outside. After bringing the child inside for warmth and safety, she begins to search for answers. But soon it becomes clear that the farmhouse isn’t as isolated as she thought, and someone is willing to do anything to find them.

-”By the time Wylie was halfway up the lane, she was breathing hard and sweating beneath her coat" (she is sweating beneath her coat every half hour in this book. Get a lighter coat.)

This was perfectly serviceable - there's just something about the writing that sort of rubs me the wrong way. Clearly many others disagree, which is fine. I believe I read one previous book by this author and it was much the same - a few disparate storylines coming together (a device I typically like) and then a bit of a sentimental denouement that wraps things up a bit too neatly (alternately, if you're not a curmudgeonly stone-hearted monster, it's kind of a nice coming-together of the past in the future). I understand that a protagonist making a few questionable decisions is necessary to advance the plot, but there is a line, and I think it was crossed here - there is questionable and there is mind-bogglingly stupid, and, well...I will call it a draw and move on from this author.

She Lies in Wait (DCI Jonah Sheens #1) by Gytha Lodge: Synopsis from Goodreads: On a scorching July night in 1983, a group of teenagers goes camping in the forest. Bright and brilliant, they are destined for great things, and the youngest of the group—Aurora Jackson—is delighted to be allowed to tag along. The evening starts like any other—they drink, they dance, they fight, they kiss. Some of them slip off into the woods in pairs, others are left jealous and heartbroken. But by morning, Aurora has disappeared. Her friends claim that she was safe the last time they saw her, right before she went to sleep. An exhaustive investigation is launched, but no trace of the teenager is ever found.

 years later, Aurora’s body is unearthed in a hideaway that only the six friends knew about, and Jonah Sheens is put in charge of solving the long-cold case. Back in 1983, as a young cop in their small town, he had known the teenagers—including Aurora—personally, even before taking part in the search. Now he’s determined to finally get to the truth of what happened that night. Sheens’s investigation brings the members of the camping party back to the forest, where they will be confronted once again with the events that left one of them dead, and all of them profoundly changed forever.

I somehow read the fifth entry in this series last year and really liked it. I wasn't even particularly aware that the series was meant to follow the policeman, because I liked the family that was central to the plot so much, and the writing about them, which made them seem funny and loving but not overly sentimental. The people involved in this one were less likable and engaging, in my opinion, which made the story less gripping for me. I will still follow the series, because the last one I read was really really good. 

The Current by Tim Johnston: Synopsis from Goodreads: When two young women leave their college campus in the dead of winter for a 700-mile drive north to Minnesota, they suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives in the icy waters of the Black Root River, just miles from home. One girl’s survival, and the other’s death—murder, actually—stun the citizens of a small Minnesota town, thawing memories of another young woman who lost her life in the same river ten years earlier, and whose killer may yet live among them. One father is forced to relive his agony while another’s greatest desire—to bring a killer to justice—is revitalized . . . and the girl who survived the icy plunge cannot escape the sense that she is connected to that earlier unsolved case by more than a river. Soon enough she’s caught up in an investigation of her own that will unearth long-hidden secrets, and stoke the violence that has long simmered just below the surface of the town. Souls frozen in time, ghosts and demons, the accused and the guilty, all stir to life in this cold northern place where memories, like treachery, run just beneath the ice, and where a young woman can come home but still not be safe.

Brilliantly plotted, unrelentingly suspenseful, and beautifully realized, The Current is a gripping page-turner about how the past holds the key to the future as well as an unbreakable grip on the present.

-”He stood in the open door for a long while, darting the beam here and there, over and over again. Finally he slid the benchseat back and shut the door and peeled the rubber gloves from his hands and stuffed them in his pocket and wiped his slick hands on the sleeves of his jacket. He found his cigarettes and got one lit and, leaning his weight against the front fender, watched the gray door of the bar and the snow that fell red and silent in the light above it.” (overwritten but descriptive?)

3.5 maybe. The last book I read by this author was the same mix of introspective meditation on grief and humanity and thriller, so I can't claim to be surprised. That one worked better for me, but I freely admit that I read it in January and I was angry at almost everything. so that could have something to do with it. Sometimes the long musing passages hit right, and sometimes it just seemed like men saying the same vaguely folksy things in repetitious ways - "I should probably think about that. Yes ma'am, that's a thing I should probably think about". At its worst, it felt like an author that was trying to write a mystery but in a way that makes him superior to 'ordinary' mystery writers. At its best, it was a decent mystery with an annoying number of loose ends left dangling - yes yes, resisting closure is so evolved and sophisticated. Did I just complain a couple of books ago about loose ends being tied up too neatly? Yes, yes, I did. I am infinite, I contain multitudes.

Parents Weekend by Alex Finley: Synopsis from Goodreads: From the bestselling author of If Something Happens to Me, comes one of the year’s most anticipated thrillers. In the glow of their children’s exciting first year of college at a small private school in Northern California, five families plan on a night of dinner and cocktails for the opening festivities of Parents Weekend. As the parents stay out way past their bedtimes, their kids—five residents of Campisi Hall—never show up at dinner.

At first, everyone thinks that they’re just being college students, irresponsibly forgetting about the gathering or skipping out to go to a party. But as the hours click by and another night falls with not so much as a text from the students, panic ensues. Soon, the campus police call in reinforcements. Search parties are formed. Reporters swarm the small enclave. Rumors swirl and questions arise.
Libby, Blane, Mark, Felix, and Stella—The Five, as the podcasters, bloggers, and TikTok sleuths call them—come from five very different families. What led them out on that fateful night? Could it be the sins of their mothers and fathers come to cause them peril or a threat to the friend group from within?
Told through multiple points of view in past and present—and marking the return of FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller from Every Last Fear and The Night Shift—Parents Weekend explores the weight of expectation, family dysfunction, and those exhilarating first days we all remember in the dorms when our friends become our family.

I loved the first book by this author, with the same female police detective. I haven't liked any of the subsequent ones as much, and I'm not sure if I was an easier audience for the first or if I'm being tougher on the these ones - they're fine, they just don't seem as complex or well-written. Part of it is that I enjoy cold cases, and this was a recent one. I think there were more characters in play here, which spreads the descriptions a little thin. I kept trying to convince myself that I was enjoying it just as much, and I was not - it was fine, but only fine.

If Something Happens to Me by Alex Finlay: For the past five years, Ryan Richardson has relived that terrible night. The car door ripping open. The crushing blow to the head. The hands yanking him from the vehicle. His girlfriend Ali’s piercing scream as she is taken.With no trace of Ali or the car, a cloud of suspicion hangs over Ryan. But with no proof and a good lawyer, he’s never charged, though that doesn’t matter to the podcasters and internet trolls. Now, Ryan has changed his last name, and entered law school. He's put his past behind him.

Until, on a summer trip abroad to Italy with his law-school classmates, Ryan gets a call from his father: Ali's car has finally been found, submerged in a lake in his hometown. Inside are two dead men and a cryptic note with five words written on the envelope in Ali’s handwriting: If something happens to me…
Then, halfway around the world, the unthinkable happens: Ryan sees the man who has haunted his dreams since that night.

As Ryan races from the rolling hills of Tuscany, to a rural village in the UK, to the glittering streets of Paris in search of the truth, he has no idea that his salvation may lie with a young sheriff’s deputy in Kansas working her first case, and a mobster in Philadelphia who’s experienced tragedy of his own.

In classic Alex Finlay form, If Something Happens to Me is told from several distinct, compelling characters whose paths intersect, detonating into a story of twist after pulse-pounding twist. The story cements Finlay as one of the leading thriller writers today.

This thing keeps happening where I read an author's first book and it is amazing, and then subsequent books seems lacking. Was I just in a more tolerant mood with the first book? Am I misremembering? Am I recycling all the things I said in the previous review? I would say that in my defense, I read them a month apart, but that's a crap defense really, because why did I keep trying? The first couple of chapters here were fascinating - particularly the surprise at the end of one, which literally made me say WHAT? After that? A lot of short, punchy chapters with more action than exposition. I think I need more exposition, more characterization. All of Finlay's books would make really good films or tv series. I believe all of them have been optioned, so I should probably just wait for future books to be dramatized. But do check out Every Last Fear, because it was amazing, unless I was tripping or something and completely wrong. 

Cover of Snow by Jenny Milchman: Synopsis from Goodreads: Waking up one wintry morning in her old farmhouse nestled in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, Nora Hamilton instantly knows that something is wrong. When her fog of sleep clears, she finds her world is suddenly, irretrievably shattered: Her husband, Brendan, has committed suicide. The first few hours following Nora’s devastating discovery pass for her in a blur of numbness and disbelief. Then, a disturbing awareness slowly settles in: Brendan left no note and gave no indication that he was contemplating taking his own life. Why would a rock-solid police officer with unwavering affection for his wife, job, and quaint hometown suddenly choose to end it all? Having spent a lifetime avoiding hard truths, Nora must now start facing them.

Unraveling her late husband’s final days, Nora searches for an explanation—but finds a bewildering resistance from Brendan’s best friend and partner, his fellow police officers, and his brittle mother. It quickly becomes clear to Nora that she is asking questions no one wants to answer. For beneath the soft cover of snow lies a powerful conspiracy that will stop at nothing to keep its presence unknown . . . and its darkest secrets hidden.

-”It was brutally cold out, with occasional harsh blasts of wind that penetrated even the thickest coat, like the hidden, deep cells of a lake you swam out to in summer, sudden reminders that warmth wasn’t ever the true condition of the north woods.”

The middle of three fairly mediocre thrillers featuring a winter setting that I borrowed from the library. This was probably the best of the three. It's a first novel, and it predictably suffers from some overwriting, and a pretty cringeworthy use of pet names between a man and his wife and former girlfriend that form a major plot point. The small town setting was pretty effective and believable (literally everyone is corrupt? Does that stress my belief? No, not really). There was a fairly egregious misuse of an 'autistic' character, which really pisses me off and I'm agog that authors are still doing that (okay, it was actually written in 2013, which in some ways is quite a while ago. Still! I will never forgive Stephen King for Douglas ("Duddits") in Dreamcatcher, which was a crap book anyway. The storyline involving Nora having to overcome a lack of curiosity was actually pretty cool, and her inner monologue got better as the book went on.

Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi: Synopsis from Goodreads: There are rules for murder mysteries. There must be a victim. A suspect. A detective. The rest is just shuffling the sequence. Expanding the permutations. Grant McAllister, a professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked them all out – calculating the different orders and possibilities of a mystery into seven perfect detective stories he quietly published. But that was thirty years ago. Now Grant lives in seclusion on a remote Mediterranean island, counting the rest of his days.

Until Julia Hart, a sharp, ambitious editor knocks on his door. Julia wishes to republish his book, and together they must revisit those old stories: an author hiding from his past, and an editor, keen to understand it. But there are things in the stories that don’t add up. Inconsistencies left by Grant that a sharp-eyed editor begins to suspect are more than mistakes. They may be clues, and Julia finds herself with a mystery of her own to solve.

Okay I lied, this one was slightly better than the first one I read, which is funny because this was the first book.I do hear that sophomore efforts are notoriously difficult with a lot of pressure, I've said, I do like books that play with the conventions of mystery fiction, and the cat-and-mouse game between the author and the editor is nicely paced. The setting was also really cool - the elaborate house in the Mediterranean. Generally I love an unreliable narrator, and a fragmented narrative, if it's done well. 

When She Was Me by Marlee Bush: Synopsis from Goodreads: There's only one way out of these woods…

Ever since that night, twin sisters Cassie and Lenora have been inseparable. As the sole permanent residents of Cabin Two, their refuge on an isolated Tennessee campground, they manage to stay away from prying eyes, probing questions, and true crime junkies. Just the two of them, Cassie and Lenora against the world. The peace and quiet is almost enough to make them forget what happened all those years ago. Almost.
Until a teenage girl camping at the neighboring cabin goes missing, and the memories come rushing back. As the crime becomes ever more recognizable—they know better than anyone that so-called 'happy families' can be anything but—each sister suspects the other knows more than she's letting on….

Trapped in the isolating, claustrophobic wilderness, Cassie and Lenora must piece together the truth of what happened—and the sinister truth lurking in their own pasts—before it's too late.

It's a perfectly serviceable thriller if you haven't already read a thousand thrillers. The twist, that is supposed to be kept a surprise by the chapters in the past not using any names, is visible from a mile away (although the names/pronouns thing has worked on me in the past). 

Broken Places (a Cass Raines Mystery #1) by Tracy Clark: Synopsis from Goodreads: 

Former cop Cass Raines has found the world of private investigation a less stressful way to eke out a living in the Windy City. But when she stumbles across the dead body of a respected member of the community, it's up to her to prove a murderer is on the loose . Cops can make mistakes, even when they're not rookies. If anyone knows that it's Cass Raines, who took a bullet two years ago after an incompetent colleague screwed up a tense confrontation with an armed suspect. Deeply traumatized by the incident, Cass resigned from the Chicago PD, leaving one less female African-American on the force. Now she's the head of a one-woman private investigation agency, taking on just enough work to pay the bills. She spends the rest of her time keeping an eye on the tenants in her little Hyde Park apartment building, biking along the lakefront, and playing chess with the only father figure she's ever known, Father Ray Heaton.

When Father Ray asks Cass to look into a recent spate of vandalism at his church, she readily agrees to handle the case. But only hours later she's horrified to discover his murdered body in the church confessional, a dead gangbanger sprawled out nearby. She knew Pop, as she called him, had ticked off plenty of people, from slumlords to drug dealers and even some parishioners and politicians, with his uncompromising defense of the downtrodden. But a late-night random theft doesn't seem like much of a motive at a cash-strapped parish like Saint Brendan's.

The lead detective assigned to the case is all too ready to dismiss it as an interrupted burglary gone awry, just another statistic in a violent city. But Cass's instincts tell her otherwise, and badge or no badge, she intends to see justice done.

-”I fixed languid, unimpressed eyes on him. ‘I was mugged. I came to report it.’

Farraday grit his teeth. ‘This is homicide, and you damn well know it.’

‘Then I was murdered and came to report it.’”

I read this because I'm always trying to increase my reading diversity. And it was fine, especially for a first novel - better than some. I didn't find anything especially elevated about it, but that's more down to how many of these I'd read. I would say that the bad cop's over-the-top jeering and arrogant incompetence beggars belief but again, I know more about the police service now than I did before, and nothing really seems too far in terms of arrogance or incompetence.

Everyone on This Train is a Suspect (Ernest Cunningham #2) by Benjamin Stevenson: Synopsis from Goodreads: When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn’t pan out.

The program is a who’s who of crime writing royalty:

the debut writer (me!)

the forensic science writer

the blockbuster writer

the legal thriller writer

the literary writer

the psychological suspense writer

But when one of us is murdered, the remaining authors quickly turn into five detectives. Together, we should know how to solve a crime.
Of course, we should also know how to commit one.

How can you find a killer when all the suspects know how to get away with murder?

-”I’d say Van Dine would be rolling in his grave, though that would break one of the general rules about the supernatural. So he’d be lying very still but disappointed all the same.”

I was kind of intrigued and impressed that Stevenson was continuing the schtick from the first book, but I probably could have been intrigued and impressed and not actually read the book. I am quite sure it will find a robust audience. For me the humorous elements here just kind of came across as cheesy for me, and the cast of characters was difficult to differentiate enough. The satirizing of the publishing industry was very well done. The first book was cool because of the newness of the technique, and even with that one I felt like his grasp on the tone was not firm. Here it veers even more to the slapstick, which is tough to pull off when people are dropping dead - you either have to care about the characters not at all or the tone is jarring unless you're a sociopath. The plot of Murder on the Orient Express was clever, but Agatha Christie's gift was never deep and nuanced characterization, and I do kind of expect that from modern mystery authors. I think I might be done with this author unless he comes out with something new - I say that, but it's more likely I will keep reading the books and sort of liking them while still complaining.

The Pact by Sharon J. Bolton: Synopsis from Goodreads: 'The Secret History for Millennials' Belinda Bauer

A golden summer, and six talented teenagers are looking forward to the brightest of futures - until a daredevil game goes horribly wrong, leaving three strangers dead.
18-year-old Megan takes the blame for the crime, leaving her friends to get on with their lives. In return, they each agree to a 'favour', payable on her release from prison.
Twenty years later Megan is free.
It is payback time.
And her friends start disappearing, one by one . . .Richard & Judy bestseller Sharon Bolton is back, with her twistiest thriller yet.

–”’We raised our daughter to judge people on their merits.’ Barnaby Slater spoke at last and it wasn’t lost on Talitha that he did so to speak for himself, rather than his child.”

Do you trust any sources for book reviews? My own hierarchy would probably be book publications like Publishers Weekly, then friends, then other reviewers on Goodreads, then other authors who blurb the book, by which I mean I trust the author blurbs not at all. I totally get it, you get asked to provide a blurb, you're busy, you don't want to crush up-and-coming new authors or piss off colleagues. This one, for example - 'The Secret History for Millennials', says Belinda Bauer. Belinda Bauer, who writes dark, deep, layered British mysteries found this... oh hang on, I didn't really like The Secret History. Is B.B. doing something sly here? Or am I over-thinking. 

Okay, anyway. I started reading Sharon Bolton when she was S.J. Bolton, and I am pissed for her that she had to debut with ambiguous initials and stoked for her that she is now well known enough that she can be an obviously female author. And if every few books there's a bobble, what of it? Nobody's perfect all the time. 

Never Flinch (Holly Gibney #4) by Stephen King: Synopsis from Goodreads: From master storyteller Stephen King comes an extraordinary new novel with intertwining storylines—one about a killer on a diabolical revenge mission, and another about a vigilante targeting a feminist celebrity speaker—featuring the beloved Holly Gibney and a dynamic new cast of characters.

When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to “kill thirteen innocents and one guilty” in “an act of atonement for the needless death of an innocent man,” Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea what to think. Are fourteen citizens about to be slaughtered in an unhinged act of retribution? As the investigation unfolds, Izzy realizes that the letter writer is deadly serious, and she turns to her friend Holly Gibney for help.

Meanwhile, controversial and outspoken women’s rights activist Kate McKay is embarking on a multi-state lecture tour, drawing packed venues of both fans and detractors. Someone who vehemently opposes Kate’s message of female empowerment is targeting her and disrupting her events. At first, no one is hurt, but the stalker is growing bolder, and Holly is hired to be Kate’s bodyguard—a challenging task with a headstrong employer and a determined adversary driven by wrath and his belief in his own righteousness. Featuring a riveting cast of characters both old and new, including world-famous gospel singer Sista Bessie and an unforgettable villain addicted to murder, these twinned narratives converge in a chilling and spectacular conclusion—a feat of storytelling only Stephen King could pull off.

Thrilling, wildly fun, and outrageously engrossing, Never Flinch is one of King’s richest and most propulsive novels.

“He’s mildly amazed. He stepped over the line, and guess what? The other side of the line is no different. The idea is both terrible and comforting.”

I do not love Stephen King doing straight thrillers. When authors blurb other authors with 'Stephen King vibes' (which I wouldn't believe anyway, obviously) they do not mean it's a good thriller, they mean killer clown and evil alien and haunted hotel and deadly prom vibes (okay, Misery was really good, and so was Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption and DAMMIT, sometimes I just make no damned sense, there, I said it!). Holly Gibney is a wonderful character, and this was a solid thriller, but I HAVE people for solid thrillers. Is it bad of me that now that Holly Gibney is no longer damaged and has grown into a badass that I... am getting slightly bored of her? Side note, I avoided the TV series of Mr. Mercedes for quite a while because I liked the first and second books of the trilogy but I hated the third, but the third season goes in a completely different direction from the books and I really enjoyed it. For what that's worth (as much as an author blurbing another author's book, probably).

The Dark Hours by Amy Jordan:  Synopsis from Goodreads: For fans of Tana French and Jane Harper, this debut crime thriller follows a retired police detective who must face down a vicious killer and the memories that haunt her—thirty years after bringing down one of Ireland’s most prolific serial killers.

Julia Harte has found the perfect place to disappear: Cuan Beag, a secluded coastal village on the east coast of Ireland. Home to less than one thousand residents, a popular daytrip for tourists, it has proven to be a scenic corner in which to erase a life. This corner of the world is so peaceful, at times it feels uninhabited; that’s why she chose to disappear here. But Julia knows anything is possible in the dark hours.

Thirty years ago, Julia helped to bring down the most prolific serial killer Ireland had ever seen, and while that case spurred a successful career and a bestselling book, it's also the reason she's in hiding now, all alone and haunted by the things tha happened all those years ago, without the husband she had depended upon. When a copycat killer strikes, Julia is called back to active duty, but this time, she's not the young, naive officer she was then. She knows killers like this one, who hunt for sport, and she's determined to put a stop to his plans--or die trying.

I do love a good dark-mystery-in-the-present with echoes of a dark-mystery-from-the-past tale. This wasn't bad, it just reads very much like a debut novel and didn't have the extra spark that is needed at this point after many, many mysteries and police procedurals (I just came across the term 'thriller saturation').I also had a bit of an issue with the husband being so intolerant of the wife's police work. I understand that there's a different between knowing and experiencing the reality of it, but he seemed shocked and angry all out of proportion. Julia's constant 'rushing headlong' into things without thinking while constantly declaring that she really has to stop doing this exact thing got a little old too. This might have been to create a sharper contrast to the present, when I did enjoy her take-no-shit attitude from the male cop who didn't want to be working with her.

Wonderland by Jennifer Hillier:  Synopsis from Goodreads: Fans of Chelsea Cain and Lisa Gardner will devour this edgy thriller about the gruesome secrets hidden beneath a small-town amusement park. From the author of Creep, Freak, and The Butcher, Jennifer Hillier’s “fine knack for creating hideous killers” (Booklist) is vividly on display.

Welcome to Wonderland.

 By day, it’s a magical place boasting a certain retro charm. Excited children, hands sticky with cotton candy, run frenetically from the Giant Octopus ride to the Spinning Sombrero, while the tinkling carnival music of the giant Wonder Wheel—the oldest Ferris wheel in the Pacific Northwest—fills the air. But before daybreak, an eerie feeling descends. Maybe it’s the Clown Museum, home to creepy wax replicas of movie stars and a massive collection of antique porcelain dolls. Or maybe it’s the terrifyingly real House of Horrors. Or…maybe it’s the dead, decaying body left in the midway for all the Wonder Workers to see.

Vanessa Castro’s first day as deputy police chief of Seaside, Washington, is off to a bang. The unidentifiable homeless man rotting inside the tiny town’s main tourist attraction is strange enough, but now a teenage employee—whose defiant picture at the top of the Wonder Wheel went viral that same morning—is missing. As the clues in those seemingly disparate crimes lead her down a mysterious shared path of missing persons that goes back decades, she suspects the seedy rumors surrounding the amusement park’s dark history might just be true. She moved to Seaside to escape her own scandalous past, but has she brought her family to the center of an insidious killer’s twisted game? Acclaimed author Jennifer Hillier’s bone-chilling thriller is masterful and fast-paced, hurtling toward a shocking, bloody conclusion.

-”From fourteen stories up, he could see everything. Morning had broken and the sun was now over the horizon. Everything looked warm and gold, and with the early rays of sunshine on his face, he felt like Superman. The world was always beautiful if you could just climb high enough.”

This author is a bit of an uneven one for me - there is often a solid story with some heart, alongside the frightening part. The family story was okay here, but the scary story was a little derivative. I guess feminism points for the gross pervy CEO being a woman instead of a man? 

This is Not a Game by Kelly Mullen: Synopsis from Goodreads: A unique locked-room debut with a memorable intergenerational relationship and gaming angle, about a grandmother and granddaughter who are snowed in at a lavish party at a mansion where the host has been murdered, and the unlikely sleuthing pair must draw on a unique skillset to navigate a dangerous game together Widow Mimi lives on idyllic Mackinac Island where cars are not allowed and a Gibson with three onions at the witching hour is compulsory. Her granddaughter, Addie, is getting over the heartbreak of her fiancé, Brian, dumping her and cutting her out of the deal for the brilliantly successful video game, Murderscape, they invented together (with Addie doing most of the heavy lifting).

-”’What’s peculiar about that?’

‘I smelled her too. She was wearing her everyday bespoke signature scent. It is an intoxicating jasmine with a tonka bean dry-down. I designed all three of her signature scents: everyday, special occasions, and feral.’

‘So you mean…’

‘Olfactory habituation. An evolutionary trait we all possess, for survival. Matthew had not been spending much time with her. She smelled like new to him.’ She ground out her cigarette on the picture frame. ‘I guess she did not think tonight merited special occasions or feral.’”

When Mimi gets an invitation from local socialite Jane Ireland--a seventysomething narcissist who is having an affair with her son-in-law--to a charity auction, it is the perfect excuse to get Addie to join her for the weekend. What Mimi isn’t telling Addie is that a blackmail threat from Jane looms over the party’s invitation. In case the scene wasn’t already set for a turbulent weekend, a big storm rolls in, trapping everyone in the mansion. And then, Jane’s body is found. Soon Mimi and Addie are caught in a dangerous game, relying on their skills (Mimi loves a crossword puzzle, and Addie is a brilliant game designer, after all) to narrow down the suspects. When another body turns up, the sleuthing pair realize someone else is playing a deadly game, and they might not survive the night. . . 

This sounded so promising, and I loved the island setting, the execution was just a little... off. Sometimes an author seems to want to use a classic template and then doesn't quite seem to know how to pull it off. The grandmother/granddaughter combo is genius when it works, but Mimi often comes off kind of mean and bitchy where it seems like she's supposed to come off as humorously crusty. There is a big cast of characters, and a few of the men, particularly, aren't different enough to avoid confusion. The tone was strange - it didn't feel quite light-hearted enough to be a farce or weighty enough to be a serious mystery.

Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall: Synopsis from Goodreads: From the internationally award-winning creator of Broadchurch comes a brilliant new detective story following one man’s death and the secrets that unravel in a coastal English village. Nothing keeps a village together like secrets

The villagers of Fleetcombe like to think of it as one of the most picturesque spots on England’s seaside.
But now, it’s a crime scene.
A man is found dead, tied to a chair in the middle of the road, with a stag’s antler’s on his head. The gruesome scene stuns the town, especially when they learn that it is Jim Tiernan, owner of the White Hart pub, who has been found murdered.
Is it a personal vendetta, or something more macabre? Tierney’s pub is at the center of village life and he knew everyone’s secrets.
Detective Nicola Bridge grew up in Fleetcombe, and has been craving a juicy case ever since she moved back from the big city. DC Harry Ward is ten years younger, and their partnership is somehow stronger, and more satisfying even than her marriage. Together, they are determined to crack the storybook façade to find out just what the people of Fleetcombe have to hide.

And now, in the town she thought she knew so well, Detective Nicola Bridge is asking questions. Is she ready for what she’s about to find?

3.5. Chibnall is a television writer who created Broadchurch, which I loved. I liked the story of the detective moving back home and trying to establish herself and her relationship with her partner. A nice examination of village life and the conflicts and secrets. Not quite to the level of Broadchurch, but I'll probably check out another book if there is one. 

The Red Queen (Richard Jury Mysteries #26) by Martha Grimes: Synopsis from Goodreads: A sudden murder in an English village pub sets off the twenty-sixth novel in the bestselling series starring superintendent Richard Jury, from bestselling author Martha Grimes, still “one of the most fascinating mystery writers today” (Houston Chronicle)

One calm night in Twickenham, a businessman named Tom Treadnor is shot off his barstool at The Queen pub. Superintendent Richard Jury is called in to investigate, and quickly realizes that everyone in Treadnor’s life – from his widow, Alice, to the staff at his manor, to his business partner had differing opinions of him. And to complicate things further, Jury has just happened upon a photo in a newspaper of a man in the United States, who is a dead ringer for Treadnor.

Meanwhile, Wiggins, Jury’s partner at New Scotland Yard, becomes sidetracked by an investigation of his His sister, missing for years and presumed dead, has just sent a postcard to their mother. When Wiggins takes off in search of his sister, the two investigations begin to converge.Funny, eccentric, and fueled by Richard Jury’s talent for seeing clues in the most unlikely places, The Red Queen is a welcome return to a classic character and an exciting addition to a series that has been called “delightful, surprising, even magical” (Washington Post).

I discovered this series in grad school and used to buy all the entries I could find at the used bookstore. Richard Jury is a great character, and I finally stopped hoping the author would let him find love and not just keep him stoic and lonely. The surrounding cast is possibly even better - Melrose Plant and his butler, and his bitchy aunt Agatha. It felt like all the usual elements were present in this one, but the connective tissue was much sparser than usual, and some of the elements were a little cock-eyed. I read another review that said they suspected it was a ghost-writer, and as soon as I read that I thought that's exactly what it sounded like. Or Chat GPT. Sometimes the concept of a series is worn out by this point, or maybe the author is just sick of it. The first one came out in 1981 and this one was after a six-year gap, so...

One Dark Night by Hannah Richell: Synopsis from Goodreads: When a body is found the day after Halloween, a small British community must reckon with its past and the dangers lurking in its present in this spine-tingling novel from “not to be missed” (Hayley Scrivener, author of Dirt Creek) author Hannah Richell. On Halloween, a group of teenage students meet in the woods near Sally in the Wood, a road steeped in local lore and rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a murdered girl. By the end of the night, one student will be dead.

Rachel, the school guidance counselor, is trying to keep a handle on her increasingly distant teenaged daughter, Ellie, while students and parents panic and mourn. Her ex-husband and detective Ben, dealing with a personal crisis of his own, has concerns about his daughter’s safety as he investigates the death of one of her classmates. Meanwhile, Ellie is keeping secrets from both her parents, including one about where she was that night.

Told from multiple perspectives and with Hannah Richell’s distinct “atmospheric and ever-twisting” (Emylia Hall, author of the Shell House Detective Mysteries) prose, One Dark Night is a white-knuckled and suspenseful thriller about urban legends, privilege, and how the past continues to haunt us.

Great setting - autumn in the community surrounding a school, a forest with a legend about a dead girl. The divorced mother's shaky relationship with her teenaged daughter and police detective ex-husband is realistic as well. 

The Search Party by Hannah Richell: Synopsis from Goodreads: A spellbinding locked-room mystery about a glamping trip gone horribly wrong when a powerful storm leaves the participants stranded and forced to confront long-held secrets and a shocking disappearance. Max and Annie Kingsley have left the London rat race with their twelve-year-old son to set up a glamping site in the wilds of Cornwall. Eager for a dry run ahead of their opening, they invite three old university friends and their families for a long-needed reunion. But the festivities soon go awry as tensions arise between the children (and subsequently their parents), explosive secrets come to light, and a sudden storm moves in, cutting them off from help as one in the group disappears.

Moving between the police investigation, a hospital room, and the catastrophic weekend, The Search Party is a propulsive and twisty destination thriller about the tenuous bonds of friendship and the lengths parents will go to protect their children—perfect for fans of Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley.

-”She wonders if she can understand the sweet agony, the love and the terror, that comes with parenthood. Wonders if she can have any idea what caring for a kid like Kip, with his own unique set of challenges, can bring. Mothering, she’s learned, is a constant blade twisting in the heart.”

-”But then his arms had snaked around her waist, pulling her back into him and their lips had met again, this time his tongue gently probing her mouth.” (His TONGUE gently PROBING her MOUTH?)

Quick read on a sick day. This is my second by this author and they were both fine, but I don't think I will read more. The plotting is solid but the characterization is rote and shallow. It also falls under the same category of groups of supposed friends who have been close for decades and yet seem to dislike each other intensely and be ready to throw down at the slightest provocation. I guess a tight-knit group of friends who never fight would not a gripping mystery make, but I would appreciate a little more attention to backstory and justification for why these people keep getting together when they hate each other. They are all just types - the vain, arrogant tv presenter, the unscrupulous mistress-turned-trophy-wife, the emasculated house-husband, the career woman who just wants love etc. It's serviceable, but I like a little more depth.

The Fake Wife by Sharon J. Bolton: Synopsis from Goodreads: Olive Anderson is dining alone at a hotel when a glamourous stranger joins her table, pretending to be her wife. What starts as a thrilling game quickly turns into something dangerous. But as much as the fake wife has her secrets, Olive just might have more . . .

3;25 stars, partly because Dead Woman Walking really impressed me quite recently. This had a good collection of struggling characters and delayed reveals. I really liked the gardening-obsessed, mother-hassled traffic cop, but I am a sucker for an eccentric cop who ends up succeeding against absolutely mind-boggling odds (yeah it's unrealistic, but so is any cop who is actually interested in the truth and solving crime so *shrug*). I was a bit perplexed that the 'fake wife' of the whole thing only lasts for a chapter or two and the mystery at the heart of it was less complex than the one in DWW.

A Killer Motive by Hannah Mary McKinnon: Synopsis from Goodreads:You never know who’s listening.

To Stella Dixon, sneaking her teenage brother out of their parents’ house for a beach party was harmless fun—until Max disappeared without a trace.

Six years later, Stella’s family is still broken, and she can’t let go of her guilt. The only thing that keeps her going is helping other families find closure through A Killer Motive, her true crime podcast.
In a bid to find new sponsors and keep making episodes, Stella goes on a local radio show. But when she says on air that if she had just one clue, she’d find Max and bring whoever hurt him to justice, someone takes it as a challenge.
A mysterious invitation to play a game arrives, with the promise that if Stella wins, she’ll get information about what happened to Max. Stella thinks it’s a sick joke…until Max’s best friend vanishes. And she’s given new instructions: tell nobody or people will die.
Desperate and unable to trust anyone, Stella agrees. But beating a twisted, invisible enemy seems impossible when they make all the rules…

-”Unease and dread scaled my calves, slid into my stomach, and dug in with their sharp claws, refusing to let go.”

-”Panic set in, its thick fingers creeping up my legs, wrapping themselves around my torso and squeezing so hard I thought I’d suffocate.” (Emotions creep up her legs a lot.)

You now I'm always up for a podcast mystery. It was fine. She freely states in her afterword that she begins with plot, and it is definitely plot driven. Solely because I've read a shit ton of thrillers, the resolution was foreseeable. The way the main character is trapped in a tightening spiral of bad decisions is credible, I am just a little over the gleefully deranged sadistic game-player villain. A lot of people really liked it and the author seems like a sweetheart in her afterword so I am good with her selling a lot of books.