Mystery & Thriller – Puzzles with Consequences

Even the most dogged detectives deserve to rest and retire, but such is not the fate awaiting Hercule Poirot, on-duty until his last heartbeat. In Death on the Nile, one of Agatha Christie's most celebrated novels, we follow the now-retired detective as he gets pulled back into the thick of a murder while vacationing in Egypt and sailing down the Nile river. What's worse, the murderer has no intention of stopping, and as the bodies keep piling up, so does the pressure on Poirot to solve the impossible scenario before him.

Amy Tintera has, until now, been largely known for writing superb young adult novels, many of which have become bestsellers and earned her prizes. With her latest novel, Listen for the Lie, she decided to leave her comfort zone and go into adult territory by penning a murder mystery. It follows a young woman, Lucy, who is forced to uncover the truth behind her best friend's murder. The catch is that everyone, including Lucy herself, believe she's the one responsible for it.

Alistair MacLean is perhaps one of the more cinematic authors out there, with his novels always being evocative and, as has been proven on numerous occasions, great for movie adaptations. The Guns of Navarone is arguably one of his better-known works across both literature and cinema, and it tells the story of a small group of saboteurs tasked with the seemingly pointless and impossible mission of destroying an artillery installation preventing the evacuation of 1200 British soldiers.

Donna Tartt may not be the most prolific author out there, but her works have always carried profound meaning, and for many, The Secret History served as an introduction to a criminally-underrated writer. The story following Richard Papen, a young man who ends up in a liberal arts college and drawn to an exclusive group of classics students, eventually thrusting him dead-centre into a murderous scheme.

Joel Dicker has a real knack for coming up with unusual and enthralling mysteries for modern readers, and he does so once again with The Enigma of Room 622. The slightly metafictional story follows a writer named Joel, who retreats to a luxury resort in the Swiss Alps in hopes of healing and recovering from recent ordeals. Unfortunately for him, an old murder rearing its head all but thwarts his plan to finally get some much-needed peace and quiet.

Gabino Iglesias has recently become a must-read author for many people for his unusual and poignant storytelling abilities. In his most recent novel, The Devil Takes You Home, he tells the tale of Mario, a man forced to become a hit man due the expensive treatments required by his ill daughter. One day, tragedy strikes, and Mario decides to take on one last and lethal job: to hijack a cartel's money shipment.

Anthony Horowitz came up with one of the more creative literary ideas in recent memory with A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series, inserting himself as a main character in his own novels. In the fourth book, The Twist of a Knife, Anthony Horowitz finds himself falsely accused of murder, forcing him to turn to Detective Hawthorne for help, despite the two being newly-estranged.

Deanna Raybourn does tend to stick to the historical genre for the most part, but her forays outside of it often bear some remarkable fruits, as is the case with Killers of a Certain Age. The novel tells the story of Billie, Mary Alice, Helen and Natalie, four assassins with over forty years of experience behind their backs. In a world where no one values their skills anymore, they find themselves targeted for termination by their own order, but needless to say, it turns out to be a huge mistake.

Louise Penny is something of a modern Agatha Christie, and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache her Montreal-based Poirot. In the seventh book of the series, titled A Trick of the Light, we follow Gamache as he heads out to a tiny village in Quebec to investigate the murder of a reviled art critic. Minds from all over the art world are gathered there, guaranteeing only one thing: nothing is as it seems.

Joseph Knox has taken the world of thrillers by storm with the first novel of the Aidan Waits Thriller series, and with True Crime Story he takes a side-step to write a standalone story. It follows the investigation conducted by a crime writer, the author himself, into a woman named Evenly Mitchell, who became obsessed with the disappearance of Zoe Nolan who, in 2011, walked out of her dorm room never to be seen again.

Anthony Horowitz has solved some serious crimes as Daniel Hawthorne's sidekick in A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery series, and in the third book, A Line to Kill, they get embroiled in a murder mystery with a classic setup. The story has Daniel and Anthony staying at guests on an idyllic island off the coast of England for a literary festival, one harbouring a cold-blooded killer ready to set his plan in motion.

Brian O'Sullivan has put Quint Adler through three cases already, but only in this fourth one, titled Nine Days in Vegas, does he finally take up the official mantle of private investigator. His first case has him travelling to Sin City in search of Emmy Peters, a missing showgirl from a rich family, who also happened to be an aspiring novelist.

Louise Penny has defied time and time again any doubters as to her proficiency for coming up with more original mysteries for Chief Inspector Gamache to solve, and in the sixth book of the series, Bury Your Dead, he finds himself pushed to his limits. Recovering from a horribly-failed police operation, Gamache is drawn into the murder investigation surrounding a historical society in Quebec, and most surprisingly, Samuel de Champlain himself.

John Dunning has recently written a few mysteries revolving around books with a flair for the genre few can match. More precisely, he penned the Cliff Janeway Novels, and in the third entry in the series, The Bookman's Promise, a complex mystery is afoot involving an old and lost collection of rare books, as well as a killer quite intent on letting secrets remain in the deep past.

Theodore Roszak was a significant literary figure in his heyday, publishing quite a few materials relating to the counterculture revolution. He also dabbled quite selectively in the realm of fiction, with Flicker being one of his more unique and outstanding works. It takes us into the now-forgotten realm of underground cinema before the advent of modern technology, following a movie buff's search for a forgotten genius of the silver screen.

Louise Penny has created an unforgettable protagonist through A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery series, and in The Brutal Telling, the fifth book, the titular inspector returns to his favourite idyllic village of Three Pines. Yet another murder has shaken the community, this time the victim being a complete stranger found on the floor of the local bistro. The stories presented to the inspector are full of holes, and he soon finds himself wrapped in a spiderweb of mystery.

Louise Penny seems determined never to give Chief Inspector Gamache a moment of respite, and in the fourth book of the series, titled A Rule Against Murder, he finds himself drawn into an investigation while celebrating his wedding anniversary with Reine-Marie. The isolated manor they're staying at is also host to family reunion, one which leaves a dead body behind in the wake of a storm.

Louise Penny has certainly drawn the little community of Three Pines from its relative forgotten obscurity in A Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery series, and the third entry, The Cruelest Month, brings it right back to the foreground of Quebec news. Celebrating Easter, the people of Three Pines decide to hold a seance to clear the evil spirits, when one of them dies of fright. Foul play is nowhere to be found, but Gamache's experience tells him otherwise.

John Dunning has become known in recent years for his ability as an author to integrate his love for books into his stories as pivotal plot elements. In The Bookman's Wake, the second entry in the Cliff Janeway Novels series, we follow the cop-turned-bookdealer on his adventure to reign in a fugitive from Denver, one who possibly stole a priceless edition of Poe's “The Raven”. To find the mysterious woman, he'll have to delve deep into the strange past surrounding the book.

Louise Penny has brought the quaint streets of Quebec to the forefront of the literary world with her Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery series, and it was in large part due to the second novel, A Fatal Grace, winner of the 2007 Agatha Award for Best Novel. Following Chief Inspector Gamache once again, we are treated to his investigation into macabre Christmas murder in a picturesque Quebecois village.

Louise Penny, back in 2008, began something I'm sure even she had trouble anticipating, creating the first novel in the Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery series (now with sixteen entries and counting), titled Still Life. For his first time out under the sun, the inspector is tasked with a deceitful case, appearing like an open-and-shut tragic accident. Gamache, however, can feel there's something dark and rotten hiding in the remote woods of Three Pines.

John Dunning has been working on his award-winning book-centred mystery series, the Cliff Janeway novels, for over two decades at this point, offering a taste of something unique in a sea of thrillers. The first novel which started it all, Booked to Die, introduces us to the Cliff Janeway as he first loses his badge by taking a bit of revenge on a murder suspect, and then opens a small bookshop while still searching for evidence to take the man down for good... and this is when more bodies start appearing.

Lucy Foley has decided to treat us to yet another instant classic, this time drawing inspiration from the timeless works of Agatha Christie in her latest novel titled The Guest List. A whodunit murder mystery at heart, it takes us to a remote wedding celebration between a rising television star and a magazine publisher. Everything seemed slated for perfection, until a body suddenly turns up, sparing none from the lens of suspicion.

Anthony Horowitz has decided to take us back to a simpler time for straightforward murder mysteries with his Detective Daniel Hawthorne series, with the second book having seen the light of day recently, titled The Sentence is Death. In it, we follow the detective on another curious case, this time involving the murder of a celebrity-divorce lawyer, Richard Pryce, via a bottle of wine worth three thousand pounds.

Anthony Horowitz is one of the busiest and most inventive writers in his country, constantly trying the push the boundaries of literary techniques for our amusement. In The Word is Murder he once again takes a unique path, writing himself into his own novel as the sidekick and chronicler of disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne. Together, they try to unravel the peculiar case of a woman who is found dead six hours after arranging her own funeral service.

Luanne Rice has been pumping out quality novels since the mid-80s at a staggering rate, but it certainly hasn't dulled her edge as we can see in her latest work, titled Last Day. Taking us to a small seaside community, we follow a detective who failed to keep his promise. Twenty years ago, he swore to protect two sisters whose mother was taken, along with a famous Moonlight painting. Now, one of them has been murdered, and the painting has gone missing yet again.

Brian O'Sullivan is further and further stretching his writing arm in the thriller genre, moving away from political topics to give us a more classic crime story in his latest book, Revenge at Sea. Following a small-time reporter by the name of Quint Adler, the story takes us on a wild chase as he becomes a suspect in some gruesome murders and is forced to finish the search for truth he foolishly started in hopes of moving up in life.

Joe Ide has done a magnificent job in fleshing out private investigator Isaiah Quintabe over the course of his IQ Series, getting closer and closer to bringing the man into the realms of popular culture. In the third book of the series, titled Wrecked, we follow Isaiah as he takes on the case of a young artist's missing mother, and unbeknownst to himself, embarks on an irrevocable collision course with his very own nemesis.

Joe Ide summoned an investigative chaos like few others with the creation of his IQ Series, with the second novel, Righteous. The novel follows Isaiah Quintabe's Vegas adventures as he investigates some Chinese gangsters while also trying to unravel the death of his brother.

Simone St. James burst on the literary scene like few others before her, being showered with awards and nominations from her very first novel. Years later she still continues her streak with The Broken Girls, a psychological ghost story centred on a boarding school, split into two narratives following a disappearance in 1950 and a murder decades later.

Joe Ide may have only entered the ranks of published authors in 2017, but he has without a doubt made a good name for himself with the IQ series. The first book titled IQ, which was also nominated for a 2017 Edgar Award, follows a loner citizen in a crime-ridden Los Angeles who just can't sit idly by anymore. Armed with amazing intellect and determination, he takes it upon himself to solve the cases the police won't even look at.

Richard Russo has without a doubt earned his stripes in the world of literature, and he keeps on trudging forward trying to give his readers new and unpredictable literature, something he might have very well succeeded in with his latest novel, Chances Are .... The novel tells a story of three very different and older friends who gather on a vineyard from their older days to reminisce, but most importantly, to try and solve the disappearance of the woman they all fell in love with.

Olga Tokarczuk may not be all too famous in the Western world, but she has certainly earned her stripes over in Europe, earning many prestigious awards along the way. Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead might be one of her more interesting novels, following the trials and tribulations of an older reclusive woman living in a small Polish village where people are turning up dead under strange circumstances. She tries to insert herself into the investigation, certain she knows who the culprit is... but much to the chagrin of new victims, nobody seems interested in her ideas.

Tim Mason has for a long time dedicated his talents to being a playwright, and has only recently made the very welcome transition to fiction novels. His first publication for adults, a historical thriller titled The Darwin Affair, takes us to 1860s London where an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria and the murder of a petty thief lead Chief Detective Inspector Charles Field on the trail of a conspiracy, somehow revolving around Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

Brian O'Sullivan returns to the layered thriller genre with his latest novel The Bartender, bringing to us a complex story of greed, betrayal, and homicide. The story is one of Becca Poe who essentially blackmails a man from her childhood, Austin Jenkins, to help her rob the rich Barry Gant. To do so, they decide to use the barmaid Gant has developed an infatuation for, Olivia Fairbanks. At the outset, the plan is simple, but whenever blood and money are involved, few things end up going according to plan.

James Ellroy has for a long time been a strong pillar in the Noir genre, specifically basing his works around the city of angels. In his recent novel, This Storm, he goes back to what he does best, taking us to 1942 L.A. where an unearthed body jump-starts a veritable underground war defined by self-serving and corrupt figures from all walks of life.

Matthew Iden has never shied away from exposing the macabre and virulent aspects of the world in his writings, and in Birthday Girl he dives yet again into the abyss known as the human mind. In this story, we are presented with a former criminal psychologist, Elliot Nash, living on the streets of Washington after his life went off the rails following the murder of his daughter. Fate does throw him a bone when a woman seeks out his help, believing her child to not only still be alive a year after the abduction, but also part of a series of kidnappings having claimed seven children so far.

Philip Kerr has blessed us with many promising and original adventures in his Bernie Gunther series, taking readers into the rarely-visited world of post-war Germany. In Greeks Bearing Gifts we are once again partnered with Bernie Gunther as he goes undercover to investigate the insurance claims of a retired Wehrmacht soldier. He believes his lost possessions were those of Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz, but before he can confront the old man someone makes a corpse out of him... someone who might very well be the most ruthless and unpunished Nazi assassin to survive the war.

Brian O'Sullivan has a real knack for writing thrilling stories which not only entertain, but also educate and push us to think about various aspects of modern life, namely politics. In The Patsy O'Sullivan returns to the helm to tell the tale of a dying self-made billionaire who concocts a scheme to murder two prominent politicians he deeply despises. However, he gets in a bit over his head when the titular patsy of his plan, a young and extremely skilled shooter by the name of Aidan Gentry starts to come up with some plans of his own.

C. A. Asbrey has introduced us in the first book of The Innocents Mystery Series to the eventful world of Abigail MacKay, Pinkerton Detective, and the leaders of a train-robbing Wild West gang she befriends. In the second volume, titled Innocent as Sin, Abigail reunites by pure chance with Nat and Jake, the leaders of the gang, as they find themselves in a town which has been snowed in with a murderer hiding in the shadows. The three must work together and race against time to find the culprit before he claims any more victims.

C. A. Asbrey has begun her great foray into literature with The Innocents, marking in great style the debut of The Innocents Mystery Series. In it, she puts her years of research to the test in telling the story of a Pinkerton Detective, Abigail MacKay, as she uses her talents in order to help the ringleaders of a western train-robbing gang find the culprit for the murder of a family friend. Owing her life to them for a previous rescue, Abigail has no choice but to lend her hand to the other side of the law, and who knows how she might come out of it.

Joel Dicker made quite a splash in the world of literature a few years ago when he captured numerous literary prizes, most of them for his novel The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair. This book takes us deep into an investigation led by the protege of a famous author accused of having murdered a girl thirty-three years ago. The reason? Her remains were recently unearthed alongside an old copy of the manuscript which defined the author's career.

Rafael Amadeus Hines has self-admittedly fantasized time and time again about a hero stopping the 9/11 attacks, which he himself witnessed on that fateful day. Ultimately, as a result of his musings he came up with the Sergeant John Bishop character, introducing him to the world in his first novel ever titled Bishop's War. Though he might be a retired special forces operative, it takes very little time for him to get thrust back into the thick of it, fighting terrorism on domestic and foreign fronts alike through a time which changed America for evermore.

John Ellsworth really has made the most of his career as a criminal lawyer, even finding a way to translate his experiences into novel-writing. Amongst many things he has been writing the Michael Gresham series, and in the first book titled Lies She Never Told Me we delve into the protagonist's past and personal life, the heritage he hails from, and the time his dying grandmother asked him to kill a man at her behest.

Brian O'Sullivan is the kind of person who isn't afraid to speak his mind without mincing words, to draw the light to opinions we might want to ignore. Writing has always been a prime method of expression for anyone willing to give themselves to it, and in a novel whose publication he expedited, titled The Puppeteer, he expresses with great vigour his distaste for the toxicity of the current political climate. It's all told through the story of Frank and Evie, two regular people who become embroiled in a plot by a menace aligned with the far-right to take over the country by seizing the true power: control over the president.

Bob Van Laerhoven has always been a very apt author when it comes to weaving complex stories, and few get more intriguing and complicated than his most recent novel, Return to Hiroshima. The book tells the intersecting stories of a Belgian diplomat's son, a police inspector, a Yakuza lord who may or may not be a demon, his potentially-insane daughter, a lowly punk with ultra-nationalistic ideals, and the infamous Japanese Secret Service Unit 731. All of their paths cross in the nuclear past of Hiroshima's war history.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon is the type of author whose imagination expands well beyond the conventions of normalcy and colours the world in shades we never knew existed. His novels often pull us into the world's underbelly, and in Marina we once again dive deep beneath Barcelona's veneer as we follow the story of fifteen-year-old Oscar who vanished from his boarding school for seven days. What he witnessed during that time wasn't meant for his eyes, and his journey begins with a strange cemetery ritual and a rose at an unmarked grave.

For some death is the end, but for the few fortunate ones such as Charlie Miner, it's definitely nothing more than an inconvenience. In Earl Javorsky's Down Solo we are introduced to the afore-mentioned Charlie, a private investigator who wakes up on a slab at the morgue with a bullet hole through his head. Far from letting it dissuade him from his case involving massive fraud and religious extremism, Charlie sets out to connect all the dots, and perhaps later have a look into why and how he came back from the dead.

Though Matthew Sullivan has been a writer for much of his life, we've only recently seen him publish his second work, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. In it, we are introduced to a bookstore clerk by the name of Lydia Smith whose existence is anything but out of the ordinary. However, one day her orderly life is plunged into the throes of chaotic unpredictability when one of her patrons commits suicide in the store's upper room. Quite sadly and surprisingly, Lydia is the one to inherit the poor young man's possessions, and amongst them she finds terribly defaced and mutilated books... containing some sort of a message, one that might hide a terrifying truth.

Cold and isolation are enough to drive anyone mad, and in Matthew Iden's "The Winter Over" forty-four engineers and researchers are faced with nine months of it on a research facility on the South Pole, isolated from the world. Cass Jennings is one of the engineers, and her efforts to rebuild a shattered life are put on hold as someone in the crew is found murdered. From there on, tensions could only rise...

Robert Harris takes us behind closed doors into the secretive world of the Church as we follow the thrilling proceedings of 118 cardinals who must elect a new pope after the last one's death, all while being completely sequestered from the outside world. However, the minds of men are easily distracted and corrupted by other worldly pursuits, and this most holy election turns more and more into a contest of cunning and intelligence. These men of God are, after all, nothing but men, and while the allure of power may drive a few to self-discovery and enlightenment, there are many who become dangerously corrupted by it.