Mysteries to Read Before Summer Officially Ends

Summer is coming to a close, so set aside time for a few mystery indulgences before back-to-school and back-to-work. I'm betting on some proven favorites. One is a book I missed at the end of last year: Tana French's The Witch Elm. After happy-go-lucky Toby surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead, he retreats to the family ancestral home to recover from his injuries and care for a dying uncle. But then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree, detectives arrive, and Toby's beliefs about the past are challenged. As a fan of Karin Slaughter, I want to read her latest The Last Widow, too: First a scientist for the Center for Disease Control is abducted and then bombs blast the Atlanta neighborhood of the FBI and CDC. Medical examiner Sara Linton and investigator Will Trent are unraveling a deadly conspiracy when Sara is abducted, and Will must go undercover to save her and thousands of innocent lives. Plus, I'm putting the reliable Jo Nesbo on my list with the latest installment in his Harry Hole series, Knife, which plunges Harry, even though relegated to cold cases, into new danger. A new author I'd like to try is Ruth Ware. Ware's Turn of the Key is about a young woman who takes a live-in nanny post with an ideal family at a luxurious home in the Scottish Highlands, only to find herself in a nightmare that ends with a child dead and herself on trial for murder. For a very different locale, the reviewer-lauded Into the Jungle by Erica Ferencik takes readers to Bolivia, where a heroine running from her past arrives to take a teaching gig that falls through. She ends up following her lover into the depths of the jungle--and a fight for survival. For a different kind of primal confrontation, there's Daniela Petrova's Her Daughter's Mother. Lana meets and befriends her daughter's anonymous egg donor Katya in New York City. When Katya suddenly disappears, Lana begins to dig obsessively into her past, drawing the suspicion of police and unearthing shocking secrets. Meanwhile, parallel stories twist in a deadly knot in the opioid-plagued rural Kansas town of Laura McHugh's The Wolf Wants In as Sadie Keller tries to find out how her brother died, 18-year-old Henley Pettit desperately seeks to escape her family's crimes, and the police keep finding bones in the woods. For more ideas, see https://crimereads.com/the-most-anticipated-crime-books-of-summer/

After the Election, My Mystery Shopping Deluge

I'm not much of a holiday shopping fanatic, but I need something pleasant to anticipate after the end of this awful election season. So I'm beginning to put together my holiday book list for mystery lovers. Courtesy of Publishers Weekly, here are some ideas: I like the look of Steven Price's By Gaslight, about two men combing London's 1885 underworld to find the master criminal responsible for a woman's dismembered body; you can't beat foggy streets, smoky opium dens, and Victorian seance halls described with "literary sophistication." For anyone who likes the moody mystery of Edward Hopper's paintings, In Sunlight or in Shadow is a fascinating idea for a crime fiction anthology, with top authors like Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Stephen King, and Joyce Carol Oates each penning stories inspired by Hopper's art. I'm a big fan of Canadian Louise Penny, and the 12th mystery in her Armand Gamache series, titled A Great Reckoning, has the former Quebec Chief of Homicide back in the village of Three Pines and following an old map into a dangerous web involving police cadets, a murdered professor and a stained glass window with terrible secrets. I'm also a fan of Caleb Carr's The Alienist about a psychologist investigating crime in 19th century New York City, so I'm piqued by a new entry from Carr called Surrender, New York, about a psychologist and a DNA expert solving present-day crimes in upstate New York. Also set in New York City is best-seller J.D. Robb's 43rd Eve Dallas thriller, Apprentice in Death, which starts with three ice skaters shot dead on Wollman Rink in Central Park. Plus, best-selling favorite Karin Slaughter has debuted another novel featuring Georgia Bureau of Investigation's Will Trent and medical examiner Dr. Sara Litton; in The Kept Woman, the pair of lovers investigate the death of a dirty retired Atlanta cop. For more fiction and nonfiction options, see http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/71628-holiday-gift-guide-2016-all-our-coverage.html

Once a Rare Breed, Female Sleuths Proliferate

Ever since Nancy Drew, I've liked female sleuths in mystery fiction, especially because they were once a relatively rare breed. Now women mystery-solvers--police detectives, medical examiners, journalists, psychiatrists and detecting psychics--proliferate in publishing. In fact, the 2015 Edgar Award nominees included two good examples. Karin Slaughter, known for her Will Trent crime-solving bestsellers, was nominated for her first stand-alone effort, Coptown, about two disparate police women, one defying her privileged background by entering the force and one out to prove herself to a family with a police background. They become uneasy partners in 1974 Atlanta on the hunt for a serial killer targeting cops. Another finalist for the 2015 Edgar, as well as the Mary Higgins Clark Award, was Invisible City, a debut work by Julia Dahl. Protagonist Rebekah Roberts, whose mother abandoned her as an infant to return to her Hasidic faith, moves to New York to pursue a journalism career, also putting her near Brooklyn's Hasidic community, where her mother might still be living Covering the story of a murdered Hasidic woman, Rebekah ends up immersing herself in her secretive, unwelcoming world to get at the truth. Of course, I put both books on my bookshelf, but, as I did so, I noticed titles featuring favorite female detectives of the past. I think they're worth a visit from modern mystery fans. I mean, who doesn't love Agatha Christie's sharp-eyed old spinster Miss Marple? Join the village gossips in A Murder Is Announced, a deftly plotted piece of misdirection, to appreciate her. While you're "across the pond," drop in on Harriet Vane, the mystery novelist extraordinaire paired with dashing Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night, sometimes called "the first feminist mystery novel." And of course, re-read P.D. James' An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, where England's mystery queen championed her first woman detective way back in the 1970s. To see the other 2015 Edgar Award nominees and winners, go to http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html