Mystery Book Reviews

The best mystery book reviews. Mysteries are typically crime stories in which readers follows a detective or amateur sleuth attempting to solve a criminal puzzle. Compared with “crime thrillers,” mysteries often feature less graphic violence and shocking subject matter.

The Best Lucy Foley Books in Order (Updated!)

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Looking for a list of Lucy Foley books in recommended reading order? You’ve come to the right place. Bestselling British author Lucy Foley is a favorite among fans of contemporary mystery and crime fiction and critics alike. She also writes historical fiction. Recently, Foley was officially commissioned by the Agatha Christie estate to write Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, a new mystery featuring Agatha

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Death in Durango, a Highly Recommended Murder Mystery by James E. Merriman

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The Bottom Line: A twisty, atmospheric murder mystery set against the cinematic beauty of Colorado’s high country. Highly recommended. Death in Durango opens on the night of a murder. Seventy-eight-year-old Mike Driscoll has traded New York business life for a working ranch outside Durango, but the move West has hardly made his life simpler. His marriage to the much younger Misty is deteriorating, his daughter

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The Dark Lottery

The Dark Lottery, a Wickedly Funny Murder Mystery by Mike Stetz

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The Bottom Line: Wickedly funny and emotionally raw, The Dark Lottery is a murder mystery with a hero you’ll be quoting long after the last page. As The Dark Lottery opens, twentysomething San Diego house painter Connie Keen is staring at the ruined Ocean Beach pier. Twenty years earlier, his much older brother Kenny went over the railing after sneaking onto the closed pier to

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Blue Ridge, a High-Stakes Crime Thriller by James Foley

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The Bottom Line: The kind of second series book that fans expect: bigger stakes, harder questions and much more to lose. The second book in James Foley’s Lisa Owens series moves its protagonist from Miami homicide work into an FBI investigation stretching between Washington, D.C., and North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Foley begins with a massacre whose consequences will echo for half a century, opening

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GLORIA, a Tender and Terrifying Psychological Thriller by Howard Seaborne

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The Bottom Line: Small town noir that is as tender as it is terrifying, GLORIA mesmerizes while asking whether the greatest mysteries live not in the world, but in our minds. GLORIA begins in small-town Wisconsin as Henry Halder, a boy on the cusp of adolescence, loses both legs in a tragic accident. What exactly happened is elusive. While in and out of consciousness across many surgeries, he’s told

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Silver or Lead, a Darkly Comic Crime Thriller by James Cox

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The Bottom Line: A darkly comic blast of crime fiction where every old wound has a motive and every revelation feels fresh. Lucy Foley fans will adore Silver or Lead.  As Silver or Lead opens, struggling actor Ben Rooker is sitting with his best friend, Teddy Dabrowski, at their regular Pasadena bookstore café. As tension builds between Teddy and a woman seated nearby, the café

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The Boy on the Deck, a Deliciously Eerie Domestic Thriller by A.J. McCarthy

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The Bottom Line: Deliciously eerie, The Boy on the Dock is about the danger only one woman can see, and the doubt that may destroy her. Highly recommended.  As The Boy on the Dock opens, bereaved mother Julie Hampton is alone at a rented lake cottage on Vancouver Island, trying to keep herself sane through a morning routine that consists of coffee, work and kayaking.

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Avalon Moon, a Compelling New Murder Mystery by Michael Amos Cody

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The Bottom Line: With wolves across the river and murder in the high meadow, Avalon Moon knows exactly how to raise the hair on your neck. Move it to the top of your book queue. Gabriel Tanner, editor of a weekly newspaper in the North Carolina mountain town of Runion, expects little excitement from an early March county meeting. Instead, local Spellman Anderson IV explains his controversial plan

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The Lightning People Play, a Big-Hearted YA Novel by Tim Cummings

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The Bottom Line: A big-hearted YA novel that transforms fear and family fracture into something thrilling, strange and beautiful.  Kirby Daniel Renton’s family has been destabilized by the departure of one of his fathers, who he calls Pop. Kirby is convinced that his younger brother Baxter’s seizures are the result of Pop’s disappearance, reading the illness through the raw logic of grief rather than medicine. Curiously, during his seizures, Baxter claims to see mysterious

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