As mystery fans across the country find themselves in quarantine conditions because of the novel coronavirus, they can enjoy reading about detectives in similar situations. Pandemics don't stop murderers or sleuths—or authors' imaginations. For example, Lydia Kang's Beautiful Poison is set in New York during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Young socialite Allene begins to suspect poison, and not the flu, is responsible for her social circle's spike in deaths, all accompanied by mysterious notes. She recruits friends Jasper, an apprentice medical examiner, and Birdie, a woman of fragile health, to investigate. As deaths and suspicions mount, they must race to find the culprit before one of them becomes the next victim. In Black Death, author M.J Trow re-imagines playwright Christopher Marlowe as a Tudor-era sleuth. In the midst of a plague outbreak in 16th century London, Marlowe feels duty-bound to investigate the baffling death of a former Cambridge scholar who sent him a desperate letter before dying. S.D. Sykes' Plague Land also uses the plague as part of its mystery landscape, but this time the setting is Medieval Kent. After the plague deaths of his father and two older brothers, 17-year-old Oswald de Lacy is called back from childhood exile in a monastery to take on the role of Lord of Somerhill Manor, a place transformed by pestilence and neglect. But before he can move forward, he is confronted by the shocking death of a young woman whom the village priest claims was killed by demonic dog-headed men. Oswald must deal with political intrigue and family secrets, and the death of second women, before he finds the truth. Jumping back to modern Texas, Quarantined, by Joe McKinney, imagines that a deadly flu outbreak has caused the military to completely quarantine San Antonio, Texas. While working on burial statistics at San Antonio's mass graveyard, Detective Lily Harris finds a murder victim hidden among the plague dead and soon also discovers a corrupt local government conspiracy to hide the truth of a new deadly flu strain. She must lead her family through rioting streets and beyond the quarantine walls with news that might save the rest of society. For more fiction with disease/virus motifs, see https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/19535.Best_Fiction_Books_About_Diseases_or_Viruses
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