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.

Butterfly Hill, a Captivating Heist Novel by Brendan le Grange

The Bottom Line: An exotic, utterly captivating heist novel featuring one of the genre’s most entertaining detectives. Butterfly Hill opens as fugitive stowaway Hiko Shimizu escapes the lower deck of a rusting fireboat, only to swim through toxic Hong Kong waters to find his father, a legendary bank robber. To say Hiko’s family is dysfunctional would be a vast understatement. Hiko may have plotted to […]

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Fire & Blood: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin

The Bottom Line: For Game of Thrones completionists only. Game of Thrones fans come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from the literary to TV-only crowd. There are no reliable stats as to how many readers the TV-show has generated, but more than a few TV-to-book converts have complained that the epic is about as readable as Moby Dick (not very), and at best, are

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Nine Perfect Strangers, a Hilarious New Mystery by Liane Moriarty

The Bottom Line: Fans of Big Little Lies are already on board with this lighthearted mystery, and you should be too. Nine people gather at a remote health resort. Some are here to lose weight, some are here to get a reboot on life, some are here for reasons they can’t even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they

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Lethal White, a new Cormoran Strike Novel by Robert Galbraith

The Bottom Line: The best of J.K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike series to date. For those not familiar with the series, Strike is a private investigator, ex–Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch investigator and the illegitimate son of famous rock star Johnny Rokeby. Strike lost part of a leg in an attack in Afghanistan. He had previously studied at Oxford, but left in his second year

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The Fisherman’s Daughter, a Mesmerizing FBI Thriller by Robin Barefield

The Bottom Line: A mesmerizing FBI thriller set in the Alaskan wilderness. After the bodies of four murdered women are found on Alaska’s Kodiak Island, FBI Special Agent Nick Morgan flies to Kodiak to aid in the investigation. Morgan’s local contact, Alaska State Trooper Dan Patterson, fears a serial killer is at work. But finding the perpetrator won’t be easy. The victims have very little

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James Swain

The King Tides, a Gripping Crime Thriller by James Swain

The Bottom Line: A delicious book about vigilante justice that will surprise you at every turn. Most of us never have to deal with even a single stalker. What if you had a seemingly endless string of them? In the first book in James Swain’s Lancaster & Daniels series, Nicki Pearl is the perfect daughter. Almost too perfect. Wherever she goes, she’s being watched. Each

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Lily White Lie, a Cozy Mystery by Connie Chappell

The Bottom Line: Fans of cozy mysteries will enjoy this latest Wrenn Grayson series book. The latest entry in the Connie Chappell’s Wrenn Grayson series begins with a family investigation. The twenty-nine-year-old historian is spending Thanksgiving week alone at their rural farmhouse when an uninvited visitor arrives. Bret Kilmore, an old college friend of Wrenn’s boyfriend of seven years, Gideon Junior, claims to have a

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Until Proven Innocent, a Highly Recommended Teen Mystery by Laura Stewart Schmidt

The Bottom Line: A deftly-written, all-American teen mystery deserving of a broad audience. When a Minnesota Alzheimer’s patient implies knowledge about an unsolved death dating back to the 1960s, his 15-year-old granddaughter launches an investigation. Until Proven Innocent begins as a local university is buying the former home of Henry Springs, who disappeared after a fire claimed the lives of his wife and daughter some

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The Girl Next Door, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers

The Bottom Line: One of the year’s best thrillers, The Girl Next Door had me at “donuts and high heels.” This cheeky, stylish and sophisticated novel is a must for anyone who loves unreliable narrators. Lisa Aurello’s The Girl Next Door begins with a murder, then rewinds a few weeks to eavesdrop on a conspiratorial café conversation between her likely killers. But in a clever

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The Moving Blade, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers, by Michael Pronko

The Bottom Line: One of the year’s best thrillers. A string of grisly murders, high stakes geopolitics and the prose of a master craftsman elevate this crime thriller to rarefied air. What do a murdered American diplomat, a set of rare erotic Japanese wood block prints, and an agreement to keep American bases in Japan have in common? That’s the question facing investigators in The

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