The modern-day Nick-and-Nora-style couple mystery Murder With a Twist has a sequel coming out in early May. Tracy Kiely’s Killer Cocktail sends playboy Nigel and ex-homicide detective Nicole to Hollywood, accompanied by their giant dog Skippy. As with the previous volume, it’s a breezy, light-hearted read. Scenes alternate between now and the 1996 events on set while making a film where the lead, former child star Melanie Summers, unfortunately passed away, presumably from a drug overdose. She was co-starring with […]

Friday Barnes, Girl Detective by R.A. Spratt is an amusing blend of boarding school antics and mystery-solving. Friday, as the overlooked daughter of supersmart academics having to find her own way, reminded me a bit of Meg, from A Wrinkle in Time. Only instead of science fiction, this series is based in detection, starring a pint-size Sherlock. Friday “largely raised herself” and “found it was best to go unnoticed as much as possible.” She reads widely, including detective fiction, and […]

Max Wirestone combines geek culture, Millennial struggles, and the detective genre in The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss. It’s a fun read, with plenty of touch points for a particular generation or type of fan. Dahlia is unemployed and living in friend Charice’s apartment. Charice tends to throw outrageous theme parties, at one of which Dahlia is hired to find the Bejeweled Spear of Infinite Piercing, a digital reward in an MMORPG. Jonah snagged it from his gaming guild after […]

The series of Chloe Ellefson mysteries, which deal with murders taking place during the 80s in various Wisconsin historical sites, expands with this latest volume by Kathleen Ernst. Death on the Prairie ranges further afield, through a series of Midwestern sites associated with Laura Ingalls Wilder and her Little House on the Prairie stories. The books were published from 1932-1943, describing events from her pioneer childhood in the 1870s. I read the books as a kid, of course, and we […]

I had high hopes for The Monet Murders, since it’s a murder mystery set in 1934 Hollywood, but the book by Terry Mort is disappointing. For one thing, there are no real-life characters involved, even tangentially. All the characters are made-up types: the Jewish producer, several gorgeous starlets, a loutish actor, some drunken writers… although one of those is implied to be F. Scott Fitzgerald under a different name. Which feels like wimping out. This kind of novel doesn’t work […]

Out this October is The Question of the Unfamiliar Husband, the sequel to The Question of the Missing Head, a mystery I quite enjoyed. They’re both credited as written by E.J. Copperman and Jeff Cohen, who are the same person with different literary backgrounds: one alias writes mysteries, the other books on parenting children with autism. The protagonist, detective Samuel Hoenig, has Asperger’s Syndrome, and that condition drives his desire to answer questions brought to him. His different view on […]

Murder Is Bad Manners is a wonderful read for anyone who likes English boarding school stories or classic mysteries. Although put out by a young adult imprint, and thus marketed for kids, I also enjoyed reading it. Robin Stevens has captured the antique flavor of a residence for proper young ladies during the 1930s, but with a modern attitude. Our narrator is Hazel Wong, who’s come to the school from Hong Kong, and the Brit girls aren’t above the occasional […]

Since I enjoyed the Chloe Ellefson series of mysteries set at a variety of living history museums, I thought I’d try another one from the same publisher, Midnight Ink. In The Final Reveille by Amanda Flower, out next month, the murder takes place during a Civil War reenactment at a living history farm in Ohio. Kelsey Cambridge has been showing the wealthy donor Cynthia Cherry around for the special weekend events. Cynthia’s unpleasant nephew and heir Maxwell is threatening to […]