Winter Can Be a Deadly Season

While crime generally proliferates as the temperature climbs, statistically peaking in summer, homicide is a less seasonal crop, a year-round blight on the human condition. Certainly, mystery authors find winter's bleak landscapes and frozen isolation apt settings for murder. And winter does have its own emotionally toxic aspects, such as seasonal affective disorder (SAD) depression and cabin fever, a very real condition per scientists. The isolation, lack of socialization and boredom when bad weather traps people indoors alone or with the same faces can express itself as cabin fever's irritability, restlessness, excessive sleepiness and negative feelings. Documented cases among Arctic and Antarctic scientists and explorers have included attacking each other with hammers, poisoning a colleague to death, and burning a research station to the ground, per a recent Popular Science article. Mystery and thriller authors have used frigid settings for some outstandingly chilly novels, and any list would have to start with Stephen King's The Shining, in which Jack Torrance goes murderously mad as caretaker of a creepy, snow-bound hotel. The Scandinavians naturally dominate wintertime mysteries. Keep hot cocoa handy to offset the chill of Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbo, writer of the Harry Hole detective series, about a surprisingly sympathetic contract killer; Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell, which launched the famed Kurt Wallander series with gruesome murders in a cold, remote farmhouse; and Peter Hoeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow about exotic Smilla's obsessive tracking of murder clues and secrets from Copenhagen to her icy origins in Greenland. Of course, Russia's snowy steppes and oppressive society are perfect for deadly doings, and Martin Cruz Smith's classic Gorky Park is a good example; Soviet detective Arkady Renko investigates three mutilated, frozen corpses in Gorky Park, a Moscow amusement park, and ends up battling both the KGB and ruthless Americans. In the snowy Pyrenees, acclaimed French author Bernard Minier has crafted a haunting tale with The Frozen Dead, in which a charismatic city cop must make connections between a series of gruesome murders, strange doings at an insane asylum, and a tale of madness and revenge from the past. Of course, England has a raft of wintry mysteries from the likes of Agatha Christie and P.D. James, but more recently there's Robert Bryndza's The Girl in the Ice, introducing Detective Erika Foster as she begins to investigate the discovery of a beautiful young socialite's body beneath ice in a South London park--and soon finds the trail of a serial killer. For mysteries debuting this winter, whether they feature frigid temperatures or not, see https://www.bookish.com/articles/winter-2019-must-read-mysteries-thrillers/

Is It Time to Escape on a Foreign Mystery Tour?

As you emerge from winter's grip, it's time to plan for some fun travel -- and there's no cheaper way than a global mystery tour. Enjoy sunny piazzas, pyramids and pagodas with fascinating sleuths for company. If you're already addicted to bleak Scandinavian landscapes by Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series, consider Norway's "Queen of Crime" Karin Fossum and Swedish master Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander series. But then go sip white wine in a Paris café courtesy of one of the world's top-selling mystery writers, the late Georges Simenon, creator of the Commissaire Maigret mysteries. Add Italian zest with mystery fan favorites Andrea Camilleri, creator of Sicilian Inspector Montalbano, and Donna Leon, creator of Venice police detective Guido Brunetti. Best-selling Spanish novelist Arturo Perez-Severte can offer historical flair with his Diego Alatriste, a 17th century sword-wielding sleuth. Next leave Europe and go East. Sample Japanese Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X, a 2012 Edgar Award nominee, and Qiu Xiaolong's series about poetry-spouting Shanghai detective Chen Cao, including Death of a Red Heroine, an Anthony Award winner for first novel. Fly over the Taj Mahal and land with Kishwar Desai's award-winning Witness the Night, featuring Punjab social-worker-cum-crime investigator Simran Singh. Visit Africa with the Botswana-based Detective Kubu series by Michael Stanley (alias of a duo of South African professors). Finally, come back to the Americas and go south with acclaimed psychological thriller The Book of Murder by Argentina's Guillermo Martinez. And that's a very abbreviated world tour of great mysteries! For a much longer list by geography, go to http://www.mysterylovers.com/books/book_clubs/foreign.php