The inspiration for the murders that take place at the beginning of How It Happened, Michael Koryta’s latest mystery, come from a crime that impacted Michael, first as a teen in his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, and then as a young reporter   One of the delights of the story, though, is how Michael created Rob... Read more »

Writing as Ashley Dyer, Splinter in the Blood, is the debut novel from the crime fiction dream team of award-winning writer Margaret Murphy and forensics expert Helen Pepper                             And the story is a doozy. As former-CSI-turned-police Ruth Lake pursues the Thorn Killer,... Read more »

Baseball in Boston can be murder, and we don’t mean The Green Monster. In The Fens, Pamela Wechsler’s third Abby Endicott legal thriller, catchers are turning up dead and suspicions are flying faster than the star pitcher’s curve ball       Photo of Pamela Wechsler ©Beth White

An engaging pair of police detectives, an exotic locale, and a turbulent time in history all come together in A Necessary Evil, Abir Mukherjee’s second novel featuring Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surrender-not Banerjee of the Calcutta Police Force in the years after World War One

Chaos theory, quantum physics and higher math are all part of a day’s work for many of the characters in The Last Equation of Isaac Severy, Nova Jacobs debut crime fiction novel. But while some of the characters may be geniuses, many of the things they do are far from smart     Photo of... Read more »

Jane Prescott, the protagonist of A Death of No Importance in Mariah Fredericks’ novel, introduces herself to readers as a “Nobody. Less than nobody.” As a lady’s maid in the first decade of the 20th century, she’s not too far off. Regardless of her station in life, though, Jane has a keen eye. Once again, in her... Read more »

In Rip Crew, the third novel in Sebastian Rotella’s series featuring Valentine Pescadore, the global nature of organized crime is brought home—literally and figuratively, as the story travels from New York City’s financial heart to the border between Mexico and Guatemala to Naples, and the lawlessness of Italy’s mafia

Three years after spitballing doomsday scenarios for a U.S. intelligence agency, thriller writer Ian Ludlow—the protagonist of Lee Goldberg’s True Fiction—sees his horrible imaginings become reality. If that wasn’t bad enough, the agency who hired him would now like to clean up after themselves by destroying the evidence of their nefarious actions, and that means eliminating... Read more »

Part psychological thriller, part police procedural, If I Die Tonight, Alison Gaylin’s new crime fiction novel, is a twisty journey through a small town’s secrets, lies and social media     Photo of Alison Gaylin ©Franco Vogt

In Hiroshima Boy, Naomi Hirahara’s seventh—and last—Mas Arai mystery, the American-born Mas travels to Hiroshima, where he lived between the ages of three and eighteen, surviving The Bomb, on a pilgrimage to repatriate the ashes of his best friend. The city of his youth has changed—and not changed—much like its former resident: Mas    ... Read more »