Episodes

In Castle Shade, Laurie R. King’s 17th Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes crime fiction novel, the couple is asked by Queen Marie of Romania to investigate a threat made against her daughter, which requires Russell and Holmes to travel to Castle Bran in Transylvania. What could go wrong?

Early in Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot, protagonist Jacob Finch Bonner encounters a student in his writing class who claims he has a can’t-miss story. The student was right—sort of. Upon learning of the student’s death—and determining that the book was never written—Jacob, um, appropriates the plot. What could be the harm of using an... Read more »

Being a professional thief with a skill set that includes safecracking and lock picking does not preclude you from being a patriot, or so protagonist Ellie McDonnell finds out in Ashley Weaver’s A Peculiar Combination, when she’s asked to ply her trade for Britain’s war effort in World War Two Photo of Ashley Weaver ©Amelia... Read more »

All the World’s a Stage in Death of a Showman, Mariah Fredericks’ fourth installment of her series featuring lady’s maid Jane Prescott. After returning from what can only be called a working trip to Europe with her employers Louise and William Tyler, Jane finds that being involved with a new theatrical production with former beau... Read more »

In The Consequences of Fear, the 16th installment of Jacqueline Winspear’s addictive series featuring detective and frequent intelligence asset Maisie Dobbs, it’s October 1941: Europe has succumbed to Nazi occupation and the outcome of Maisie’s new case, involving a murder that a 12-year-old message-runner witnesses, has the potential to upend the British war effort ... Read more »

Sheriff Lily Ross returns in The Stills, the third installment of Jess Montgomery’s series that takes place in 1920s Prohibition Era Southeastern Ohio. Trouble is, um, brewing and Lily couldn’t be busier: violations of the Volstead Act are everywhere—Lily’s best friend has rekindled her still; Lily’s own mother is reconstituting dried grapes and letting them... Read more »

In An Extravagant Death, Charles Finch—who concluded the prequel trilogy of his protagonist Charles Lenox with 2020’s The Last Passenger—returns Lenox to his current timeline of the late 1870s and takes England’s most famous private detective on a road trip (an ocean voyage, actually) to America. There’s a murder and a wealthy denizen of Gilded... Read more »

In Water Memory, Daniel Pyne’s new thriller, in the aftermath of a particularly violent operation in which she sustained a concussion, private security contractor Aubrey Sentro decides to follow a doctor’s advice and go on a cruise. Not just any cruise, but a jaunt down the east coast of the U.S. to South America on... Read more »

In 1943, Sweden’s neutrality came with air quotes and a wary eye on Germany. In The Historians, Cecilia Ekbäck’s recently published historical mystery, Sweden was rife with dangerous crosscurrents that young, well-connected Laura Dalgren gets caught up in when Britta Hallberg—her best friend from university—is found murdered. Did Britta sign her own death warrant with... Read more »

Eve Ronin, the intriguing, engaging protagonist of Lee Goldberg’s new procedural series, is back in Bone Canyon. In the Lost Hills jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Eve is investigating how fire has a way of revealing what might otherwise stay hidden…including murder

The very real unexplained deaths of two women more than 100 years ago in Bombay and the creation of the compelling Anglo-Indian protagonist, Captain Jim Agnihotri, come together in Murder in Old Bombay, Nev March’s debut historical crime fiction novel

They’re Gone, the new thriller by E. A. Aymar, writing as E. A. Barres, takes its two main characters—who on the surface have nothing in common except the recent murders of their husbands—down some very twisty roads, literally and metaphorically. At each turn, there’s a a decision to be made. The wrong choice can be... Read more »

In spite of her first case almost killing her, in Moonflower Murders, Susan Ryeland—the book editor who Anthony Horowitz introduced to readers in his 2017 Magpie Murders—returns to look into the possibility that a young woman, before her sudden disappearance, had discerned the solution to a real-life murder from an Atticus Pünd novel by the late Alan Conway.... Read more »

In The Year of the Gun, H.B. Lyle’s third installment of the continuing story of Wiggins—who, in his youth, was Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregular-in-Chief—the location shifts from London to, first, the Titanic, then Dublin, Ireland and, eventually, New York City. Wiggins is on a quest. Just what that quest is, however—finding a lost love,... Read more »

Isabel Lincoln is gone. Did she leave of her own volition or was she “disappeared” by, maybe, her jerk of a boyfriend? And where’s the labradoodle? That’s what Grayson Sykes, the protagonist in Rachel Howzell Hall’s latest thriller, And Now She’s Gone, is determined to find out

In The Red Horse, Captain Billy Boyle—the inimitable protagonist of James R. Benn’s remarkable series of mysteries set in World War Two Europe—is sent to a secret hospital in the English countryside where he can recover from a psychotic break brought on by an overdose of amphetamines. If only recovery was his only task, because... Read more »

Dr. Lucas Page, the protagonist of Under Pressure, the second in Robert Pobi’s series, is the ultimate hyphenate: An astrophysicist-best-selling author-university professor-former FBI agent and world-class misanthrope. To say Lucas Page does not suffer fools gladly is an understatement of infinite proportions. But someone, or a gaggle of someones, is blowing up parts of New... Read more »

In The Less Dead, Denise Mina’s new crime fiction novel, after the death of the mother who adopted her, Dr. Margo Dunlop wants to find out about her birth mother. It’s possible Margo finds out more than she might want to know. After all, families—either by blood or by choice—are complicated… Photo of... Read more »

Roland Ford returns in THEN SHE VANISHED, the fourth installment in T. Jefferson Parker’s series about the Fallbrook, CA-based private investigator. This time around, Roland is tasked with finding the wife of a California State Assemblyman who has gone missing. But was she taken or did she leave? And then there are the bombings… ... Read more »

A man walks into a bar…in Bar None, the first installment of Cathi Stoler’s “Murder on the Rocks” series, Thomas “Sully” Sullivan is running late getting to his apartment, which is upstairs from Jude Dillane’s Lower East Side bar, to meet his co-worker Ed Molina. Ed ends up dead and Sully and Jude need to... Read more »

If revenge is a dish best served cold, then Michael Elias’s You Can Go Home Now, is indeed the perfect summer treat

In Watch Him Die, Craig Robertson’s latest novel, someone is Los Angeles is dying on a live video stream; someone in Glasgow is watching. Police departments in both cities want to find out where the victim is—and who is watching

World War II-era Los Angeles: In Paul D. Marks’s The Blues Don’t Care, Bobby Saxon, a young white pianist with a secret, wants to join Booker “Boom Boom” Taylor’s band in spite of—or perhaps because—it being all African-American group. But first, because as a caucasian Bobby can go where black men cannot, “Boom Boom” wants... Read more »

It’s nice to see Jane Prescott, Mariah Fredericks’ protagonist, getting a bit of time off in Death of an American Beauty, the third installment of the series about the hardworking lady’s maid that takes place in New York City the second decade of the 20th Century. Of course, Jane may have time off to see... Read more »