Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw has an immediately grabbable premise — Dr. Greta Helsing is a monster doctor — that it uses to show a gripping battle to save the world among some unlikely allies. I really like Greta’s determination to keep her practice going in spite of money issues, time struggles, and difficult but rewarding work. She treats her patients well, and their unique issues are fascinating. I would have been happy just following her around, without the world-threatening […]

The Hostess With the Ghostess is the ninth (!) in the Haunted Guesthouse mystery series by E.J. Copperman, but it’s also an excellent starting point. Particularly since it’s moved to a new publisher (Crooked Lane Books) and is appearing in hardcover for the first time. A new reader can find out everything they need expressed through Copperman’s breezy narration as characters are introduced and events recapped, and a long-time reader will appreciate the reminders, since it has been a couple […]

The first in a new line of Mystery Bookshop mysteries by V.M. Burns, The Plot Is Murder is predictable but good-hearted, a welcome diversion for fans of cozy mysteries. I liked that, while our middle-aged heroine Sam is newly on her own and starting a new business, she wasn’t divorced from a cheating ne’er-do-well (as in so many of these books). She’s been widowed, and she’s opening a mystery bookstore as a way of honoring a dream she shared with […]

The Asperger’s Mystery series by E.J. Copperman and Jeff Cohen continues in fine form with its fourth volume (following The Question of the Felonious Friend). Samuel, a young man on the autism spectrum who runs an investigative business called “Questions Answered”, finds the case in The Question of the Absentee Father more personal than usual. His mother has hired him to find out where his father, long gone from his life, currently lives. The case takes him, and his assistant […]

Mining for Justice is the eighth book in Kathleen Ernst’s Chloe Ellefson mystery series set at a series of Wisconsin historical sites during the 1980s. This time, it’s Pendarvis, a site about the experiences of immigrant lead miners from Cornwall in the 1830s. These skilled miners helped settle the area, since they brought families. (Pendarvis only exists today due to the restoration and preservation efforts of a gay couple in the 1930s, but you won’t hear about that here, although […]

Out next month is Dog Dish of Doom, the first “Agent to the Paws Mystery” starring a theatrical booking agent whose clients are animals. It’s written by E.J. Copperman, who also writes the Asperger’s Mystery series and the Haunted Guesthouse series. Last year, he launched the Mysterious Detective series, in which a mystery writer’s fictional detective shows up at her door. (There are even more under his other name, Jeff Cohen.) This writer knows his mysteries, in other words, and […]

Mystery fans will recognize the plot of Ten Dead Comedians: A Murder Mystery: it’s Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, populated with a gang of stand-up comics. This is Fred Van Lente’s first prose novel after he gained attention from writing such graphic novels as Cowboys & Aliens, Odd Is on Our Side (with Dean Koontz), and Action Philosophers. Famous retired comic Dustin Walker has invited a bunch of comedians to his deserted island mansion. They are: TJ Martinez, […]

It’s a wonderful thing when the third installment of a mystery series is even better than the previous books. Nic and Nigel Martini have returned in A Perfect Manhattan Murder. (They first appeared in Murder With a Twist and took on Hollywood in Killer Cocktail.) This time, they’re back in New York, where Nic used to be a police detective, until a wound put her into retirement, and Nigel knows, as he always does, the rich and snooty. They’re visiting […]