Recently, my book club's monthly selection was a fantasy novel. It's not a genre that I commonly read, and this blog is usually about mystery writing. But it sparked curiosity about the many genre-bending offerings labeled "fantasy mystery," where detectives roam magical worlds and use wizardry, vampire/werewolf powers, alien wiles, ESP, or just extraordinary sleuthing skills to solve crimes. For just a taste of this fare, start with last year's best-selling Recursion by Blake Crouch, in which New York City Detective Barry Sutton sets out to find the truth behind what looks like a disease epidemic driving victims mad with memories of lives they've never lived. Sutton begins to realize that he is facing not a pathogen but a threat to the fabric of time itself, and he will need the help of neuroscientist Helena Smith to unlock the mystery and fight growing chaos. Sutton is an ordinary detective faced with the extraordinary, while Jim Butcher's best-selling Harry Dresden series features an extraordinary detective fit to fight extraordinary powers. Dresden is a wizard-for-hire private investigator in a magical Chicago underworld, and Butcher has just added a 16th entry entitled Peace Talks, in which Dresden takes on a security role for the Supernatural nations' peace negotiations and soon faces dark manipulations that endanger not only the talks but the very existence of his home Chicago. Successful YA "Grishaverse" fantasy author Leigh Bardugo debuted her first adult fantasy mystery last year with The Ninth House: Galaxy "Alex" Stern is a school drop-out and sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide when she is offered a chance to attend prestigious Yale University on a full ride by mysterious benefactors—provided she monitors the activities of Yale secret societies who meet in eight windowless "tombs." As she investigates how the rich and powerful members are tampering with forbidden magic, raising the dead and sometimes preying on the living, she also seeks the motives of her "benefactors." Meanwhile, Charlaine Harris' best-selling Sookie Stackhouse novels offer the Southern gothic charm that inspired HBO's "True Blood" series. We are introduced to Sookie, a Bon Temps, Louisiana, waitress who can read minds, in Dead Until Dark, just as she meets sexy bad-boy vampire Bill and confronts a string of murders. Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union is an original offering, a traditional detective story with fantastical premise and complex layers: Homicide detective Meyer Landsman lives in an imagined federal district in Sitka, Alaska, formed for Jewish refugees after post-Holocaust Israel collapsed in 1948. As the Jewish haven struggles to deal with upcoming reversion to Alaskan control and Landsman faces disaster in his marriage and career, the detective starts to investigate the murder of a chess prodigy neighbor—and must struggle with the forces of faith, obsession, evil, and salvation. For more options, check out http://bestfantasybooks.com/best-fantasy-mystery-books
