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

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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

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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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The Culinary Art of Murder, a Humorous Mystery by Heather Haven

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The Bottom Line: This cozy mystery has it all – romance, suspense, comedy and a detective you’ll fall hard for. The latest installment in Heather Haven’s Silicon Valley murder series begins as Liana Alverez – better known as Lee, a private investigator for Discretionary Inquiries – takes a call from her distraught uncle. Like every great fictional detective, Lee is just one degree of separation

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The Thin Blue Sliver, a Hardboiled Crime Thriller by Troy Adami

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The Bottom Line: A delicious helping of contemporary noir from an exciting newcomer to the genre. Fans of hardboiled crime fiction legends Dennis Lehane, Jo Nesbo and Raymond Chandler will love The Thin Blue Sliver. Troy Adami’s crime novel opens in a Fort Lauderdale bar circa 2005, as former Miami-Dade Police Department homicide detective John Moss takes up his usual place at the bar. An

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Bring Me Flowers, a Small Town Murder Mystery by D.K. Hood

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The Bottom Line:  Fans of small town murder mysteries may love this intense, under-the-radar gem. Told with the alluring, foreboding darkness of a Dean Koontz novel, this second installment in D.K. Hood’s Kane and Alton series is a perfect entry point for newcomers. Hidden deep in the forest, schoolgirl Felicity Parker is found carefully laid out on a rock with nothing but a freshly picked

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Gate 76, One of the Year’s Best Thrillers, by Andrew Diamond

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The Bottom Line: One of the year’s best thrillers. 34-year-old private detective Freddy Ferguson, a man still largely defined by his former career as a prize fighter, is waiting to board a flight to Washington D.C. when he spots Anna Brook. She is attractive in a hassled sort of way, but it’s her interaction with her male companion – a knucklehead gripping her arm in

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The Bishop Burned the Lady, a Stellar Murder Mystery by Bill Percy

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The Bottom Line: This stellar mountain murder mystery will stick with you long after turning the last page. In Bill Percy’s vivid new novel, a devastating Montana wildfire season has worn out Deputy Andi Pelton and her boyfriend, psychologist Ed Northrup. But there will be no rest anytime soon, as they are tipped off about a mysterious fire in a remote forest clearing. They discover

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Blind Eye, One of the Year’s Best Crime Thrillers

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The Bottom Line: One of the year’s best thrillers so far. The riveting second Jack Bailey novel is a victory for detective fiction fans in search of a clever new series. Following her razor-sharp debut novel, Bailey’s Law, author Meg Lelvis has resurrected detective Jack Bailey for another adventure on the mean streets of Chicago. When popular parochial teacher Sister Anne is found murdered along

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The Man by the Sea, a Highly Recommended Mystery by Jack Benton

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Bottom Line: An absolute feast for noir and paranormal thriller fans alike. Highly recommended. Slim Hardy is a functioning alcoholic who has paid his dues to the military. More recently, he has embarked on a career as a private eye, where he is tasked with figuring out exactly what Ted Douglas is doing in a remote cove every week. What seems like a straightforward marital

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The Escape Artist, a Truly Magical Crime Thriller by D.B. Cooper

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The Bottom Line: Hands down, Brad Meltzer’s best novel. Whether in his novels or in his short-lived TV show, Decoded, Brad Meltzer has always favored using historical events as the basis for implausible but entertaining conspiracy thrillers. In The Escape Artist, Meltzer demonstrates that he can also invent a truly magnificent character that, in virtually all ways, is better than the real-life characters he often

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