Mystery Recs

Mysteries I loved!

Updated August 19, 2023
S
St. Lucie County Library System
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The Twyford code : a novel
Hallett, Janice
Paper Book
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER "[A] delicious premise and clever execution....with a bravura final section." --The New York Times The mysterious connection between a teacher's disappearance and an unsolved code in a children's book is explored in this new novel...

This is a great puzzle-type mystery, with so many twists and turns I lost count. If you like epistolary novels & mysteries, this is for you. The main character is endearing, and as he reveals his past he becomes even more sympathetic. I'm not the only one who loved it--the book got starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly, BookPage, and Booklist.

L.A. requiem
Crais, Robert
Paper Book
Los Angeles is a city of perpetual reinvention. Inviting, with a promise of infinite hope, it can also be a glittering landscape of debilitating isolation. The city's lost souls take comfort in its promise--the notion that tomorrow could be the day to start all over again, to transform oneself into...

This is the best of the excellent Elvis Cole series. The books are noir detective stories set in L.A., with a savvy, smart-mouthed private detective, and his sidekick, the enigmatic Joe Pike. The plot in this one is fabulous, and the character development has real depth. It's a great place to start this famous series.

Still life
Penny, Louise.
Paper Book
Winner of the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a...
Curiosity killed the cat sitter : the first Dixie Hemingway mystery
Clement, Blaize.
Paper Book
Until three years ago, Dixie Hemingway was a deputy with the Sarasota County Sherriff's Department in southwest Florida. Then came a tragic accident. Now Dixie's a pet-sitter on Siesta Key, a lush, exotic barrier island where the people tend to be rich, suntanned, and tolerant of one another's...
"A" is for alibi : a Kinsey Millhone mystery
Grafton, Sue.
Paper Book
A tough-talking former cop, private investigator Kinsey Millhone has set up a modest detective agency in a quiet corner of Santa Teresa, California. A twice-divorced loner with few personal possessions and fewer personal attachments, she's got a soft spot for underdogs and lost causes. Eight years...
Death by cashmere : a seaside knitters mystery
Goldenbaum, Sally.
Paper Book
Not long after Isabel "Izzy" Chambers opens up a knitting shop in the sleepy fishing town of Sea Harbor, Massachusetts, a diverse group of women begins congregating each week to form the Seaside Knitters. Izzy raises some eyebrows when she rents the apartment above her shop to Angie Archer, whose...
The black echo
Connelly, Michael
Paper Book
An LAPD homicide detective must choose between justice and vengeance as he teams up with the FBI in the first novel of the "thrilling" Harry Bosch series (New York Times Book Review). For maverick LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, the body in the drainpipe at...
Open season
Box, C. J.
Paper Book
Few first mysteries have been welcomed as enthusiastically as Open Season, or with better cause. "When a high-powered bullet hits living flesh, it makes a distinctive -pow-WHOP-sound that is unmistakable even at tremendous distance." And so it begins for Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden who, with...
Magpie murders
Horowitz, Anthony
Paper Book
"Magpie Murders is a double puzzle for puzzle fans, who don't often get the classicism they want from contemporary thrillers." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times New York Times bestseller | Winner of the Macavity Award for Best Novel | NPR best book of the Year | Washington...

This book is a marvelous tour de force with not one but *two* separate murders to solve. A British book editor receives the latest manuscript from her best-selling mystery writer, who is subsequently murdered. She is motivated to investigate when she realizes that the last chapter of the manuscript is missing. This is a story-within-a-story format, where the manuscript is also presented. Part of the brilliance of this book is the distinctive styles of each of the two narratives, both with wonderful, twisty plots and interesting characters.


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