Author: Jamie Canaves

I love Walter Mosley and am glad he has a new crime series — his backlist is extensive and in all genres! This series is for fans of PIs, and old school detectives looking for a modern story.

Joe King Oliver lives in a world where people owe each other favors and no one is all good or all bad. He used to work for the NYPD until he was framed and ended up in Rikers. Now he’s a PI with his daughter helping out in the office, even if he’s trying very hard to dissuade her from this line of business. He ends up with two jobs, both really uncomfortable: a family friend needs him to look into a white nationalist arrested for murder who is being hidden in the prison system; and his ex-wife needs help for her wealthy husband. As usual King is going to find himself down very dangerous rabbit holes…

You can jump in here, but if you’re a completionist pick up Down the River Unto the Sea.

The audiobook is narrated by Dion Graham who is always an automatic listen for me.

(TW brief suicide mention, detail)

This is one of my favorite reads of the year. It has so much of my catnip: university setting, return to past school, a past murder mystery being reexamined, and a true crime podcast host. It also dives into the way rape culture has always existed but the difference in language and understanding through generations, the spectrum of predators, and the way victims are exploited in the true crime genre.

Bodie Kane is a well known podcaster with two young children and a marriage-on-paper-only when she’s asked to return to Granby School, the boarding school in New England she once attended, to teach a film class. She accepts, even though she never really enjoyed her time there and her roommate was murdered. Now one of her students decides to take on the assignment Kane gives with a focus on her roommate’s murder. The case was solved, the athletic trainer found guilty, but the student is convinced it was all wrong. Now Kane has a front row seat to the students digging into the case, a flood of her own memories, and a world where it feels like everyone has an online opinion for true crime cases.

The audiobook is a great production, mostly narrated by Julia Whelan with a bit narrated by JD Jackson. More audiobook productions should follow this lead.

(TW brief mention past drug overdose, brief mention past addiction and death unknown if suicide, detail/ brief mention past domestic abuse/ mentions sexual assault case/ eating disorder/ rumors of statutory student teacher/ past memory possible suicide attempt/ recounts past groping/ mentions suicide cases, method mentioned/ mentions of terminal cancer diagnosis and death)

For fans of elite private schools and “fixers”! Hana Yang Lerner goes to an elite school in Washington, D.C. where she’s basically the school fixer — students hire her for whatever mess they need resolved, or disappeared. Her only problem is that her father, a senator, is in a car accident that almost kills a woman and has him arrested. It leads to Hana losing her friends, standing, and reputation and her fixer skills are no match for the situation. It’s why she takes a job from an anonymous person with the job of following her ex-best friend. What could wrong?!

For fans of PIs, family drama, and decades old unsolved murder cases. Billie Levine lives in New Jersey with her mom, brother, and now grandfather who is a retired cop/PI, that moved to Florida but has returned since Billie’s mom has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. Her mom’s condition is why Billie has decided to take over her grandfather’s private PI firm — it’ll hopefully pay some bills and have flexible hours so her mom isn’t left alone at home. But what she thinks is a simple case — a boyfriend looking for his girlfriend — ends up getting very complicated quickly. The missing girl had a true crime podcast, and she was focused on an unsolved murdered woman case that Billie’s grandfather has files on, and connects to the Jewish mob Billie knows. And Billie is having to reckon with her own past — an ex connected to the Jewish mob — and her emotional state is thinking that she will inherit her mom’s diagnosis.

(TW addiction/ mom with early onset Alzheimer’s / mentions assumption of partner abuse/ alludes to past attempted sexual assault, no details/ alcoholism/ transphobia, transgender reveal used as a “twist”/ antisemitism)

For armchair travelers and PI fans! Emma Djan works for a PI firm in Accra, Ghana. Her current case is a bit tricky since it comes from a friend of her boss: his daughter recently graduated from high school and disappeared from her home one night. The parents blame the boyfriend she suddenly was spending all her time with. But it’s not long into Emma’s investigation that she finds the boyfriend murdered, discovering he was a sex trafficker. Now she needs to find her missing woman and figure out who murdered her boyfriend…

If you want to start at the beginning, pick up The Missing American. And if you want a completed procedural series, pick up Quartey’s Wife of the Gods.

For fans of CIA agents, historical fic (’90s!), and inserted chapters from the killers point of view. Melvina Donleavy is able to recognize anyone she’s ever seen because her brain will put together things people don’t notice like the shape of the back of their head. This is why the CIA thinks she’s an asset. And why they send her on her first mission to Soviet Belarus. She’s undercover and with a team, but even her own team doesn’t know why she’s really there. And complicating things is that women have been disappearing, and being murdered, in Minsk. Because some of the victims have been sex workers, no one seems concerned to look for the possible serial killer. But Melvina wants to know and starts to ask a few questions, leading to a woman who spoke to her to be murdered. Melvina is already in enough danger with her assignment, and now she’s added to that and potentially placed the entire team in even more danger…

I chose the audiobook format, which I enjoyed, narrated by Eva Kaminsky. I liked the balance between character focus and intensity and could see this being adapted into a limited series.

If you want a procedural trilogy pick up Kent’s The Dime.

(TW sexual assault/ mentions terminal cancer diagnosis/ mentions suicidal plan/ mentions past child abuse/ faked suicide, brief detail/ brief mention animal cruelty)

For fans of murder mysteries, past secrets, and family dramas. Markus Peña is an activist and musician with plenty of enemies when he’s murdered. His estranged sisters, Melinda and Emily, know Markus wasn’t a good person but they still need to find out who killed him and why. The problem is they’re not without their own problems and secrets, including one being a vigilante…

The series is called “pie before guys” and that makes this an automatic win for me. Also, I enjoyed the first book in the series: Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies. You get a lady assassin, with a smidge of magic, on the cozy mystery line. This time around Daisy Ellery — who bakes special deadly pies for awful men — has entered a baking contest like GBBO. That means her secret murder life will meet her public baking life when the man she’s going to deliver a deadly pie to ends up dead before she feeds him — and he turns out to be one of the baking contest’s judges. Oh my!

I have the audiobook, narrated by Tanya Eby, high on my TBR for when I need a fun book.

For fans of historical fiction! The series started with Annalee Spain working as a theologian at a Chicago Bible college returning home to help her estranged father. Now a year later, in 1924, Annalee finds herself in a relationship with a pastor and embroiled in another mystery. She’s the suspect in a murdered man’s case when the handkerchief she lent a crying woman is found on the woman’s dead husband’s body. Hope she finds the clues she needs to exonerate herself in Estes Park, Colorado now that her boyfriend has also gone missing…

If you want to start at the beginning, pick up All That Is Secret.

For fans of family drama, zany characters, words, and middle grade novels. It’s also a great, fun read for fans of the mansion murder mystery mixed with The Mysterious Benedict Society (for the characters, not the SFF). In the Swift family, children get their name by family tradition and family dictionary: the day they are born, the family dictionary is used for their name with the belief that they will grow into the word’s definition. This is something that Shenanigan Swift is currently wrestling with: are they really destined to be the name they were given or is there room for them to be someone else? But this takes a slight backseat to the family reunion: Shenanigan is excited to learn about her family members. Except the family reunion soon becomes a murder mystery and Shenanigan, her sisters Phenomena and Felicity, and her cousin Erf will have to figure out what exactly is happening.

The audiobook narrator, Nikki Patel, is delightful!

For fans of dark academia, murder mystery, multiple suspects, multiple POV, and full cast audiobooks.

The Urban Promise Prep School is an all boys charter school in Washington, D.C. that may pride itself in education but is really just a cruel place that thinks students need to be broken, constantly threatened with punishment, and not even allowed to talk while walking the hallways. Now their strict principal, Kenneth Moore, has been shot and killed. Three students are the suspects: Trey, the basketball player living with his uncle, trying to get looked at by scouts, who threatened the principal before his death; Ramón, who has no plans on going the route of his cousin in joining a gang, makes pupusas every day to sell for needed money even though it’s against the rules, and whose hair brush was found at the scene; and J.B., who’s sick of all the rules, just got his dream girl to be his girlfriend, and who somehow has the principal’s blood on him.

We get the story by following the boys now and right before the shooting, along with a whole cast of characters from J.B.’s girlfriend and Ramón’s Abuela to people living in the community. We see opinions and rumors vs the life each boy is living from their point of view until what really happened is revealed…

The audiobook has a great full cast and is really well produced including adding, without distraction, atmospheric sounds. It felt like a lot of care and attention went into the production. The narrators are Alfred Vines, Anthony Lopez, Brad Sanders, Christopher Hampton, Eliana Marianes, Hannah Church, Henriette Zoutomou, Jaime Lincoln Smith, Maria Liatis, Renier Cortes, Suehyla El-Attar, and Xenia Willacey.

(TW child abuse/ mentions alcoholism)

For fans of fun crime books, witty dialogue, and a good amount of ridiculous situations.

This is the third book in the series and you can jump in here, you won’t be lost in that who/what you need to know is given to you, but lots of the stories are snowballs starting from the first book, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It.

Finlay Donovan is an author who always either has writers block or is trying to actually make a deadline. While she herself may not be a disaster, the circumstances and situations she ends up in make her one a lot. She has two little kids, an ex-husband, and Vero, the babysitter who at this point is probably her only friend and her business partner. Once again her and Vero find themselves in various dangerous situations that also crank up the humor, ones that involve the mob and the two women playing undercover at police academy training. What could wrong?! Literally everything, creating comedy gold for readers.

The audiobook is narrated by Angela Dawe, one of the few narrators I’ve encountered who doesn’t do annoying child voices, and who really nails the timing of the humor in this novel. How she manages to not make herself laugh, I will never know.

A great read for fans of YA with high school settings, multiple POV, a twisty mystery, the murder victim’s best friend trying to solve the mystery, and social mysteries (which hits #3 on this year’s Read Harder challenge)! Nova Albright would be celebrating being the first Black homecoming queen in Lovett High’s history, but she’s been murdered. Her best friend Duchess Simmons has absolutely no doubt who the murderer is: Tinsley McArthur, the girl who thinks the crown is rightfully hers because all the women in her family were homecoming queen before her. It was her turn and she was not quiet about her distaste over Nova getting the crown. But Duchess can’t get anyone to actually do something about her certainty, including her father who is a police officer, so she’ll just have to investigate herself. But Tinsley isn’t going down that easily and she swears she’s innocent…

I got fully sucked into these character’s lives and enjoyed the way the story was put together and then unraveled. Will definitely pick up whatever Jumata Emill writes next.

For audiobook fans you get two great narrators — Angel Pean and Erin Spencer — plus, really effective atmospheric sounds. I have not been in school in a very long time and yet I swear I thought I was late to class a few times during this audiobook and almost started hustling when the school bell sounded.

(TW past parent death from cancer/ mentions past suicide/ mentions past date rape, not graphic/ mentions past child molestation, not graphic/ statutory)

New Jane Harper! For fans of Australian crime novels, small towns, past unsolved mystery, and childhood friends who are now adults.

First, you can read this as a standalone and won’t be lost in any way. I love the whole series though and do recommend all three books.

Harper created a character with Falk that I have been rooting for to find his place in the world. He’s basically a workaholic as a financial crimes detective and doesn’t have a personal life. He just focuses on work. Finally he takes some time off to go visit friends for the baptism of their child, who he is the godfather to. So Falk is now in a small town in Australian wine country where a year before he was one of the last people to see Kim Gillespie while visiting a yearly festival. Kim has been missing since, leaving behind her husband, teen daughter, and toddler. Falk is staying with the family who grew up with Kim, related to her ex-husband, and getting to know her teenage daughter as the town tries to use this year’s festival to remind everyone of her disappearance, hoping to finally get enough clues to find out what happened to Kim.

Falk isn’t there as a detective, but he can’t help getting involved and following the threads presented to him and asking questions. As he battles himself for what he needs — human connections beyond work — he also finds himself unable to work on solving what happened to Kim…

I’ve been shouting my love for Jane Harper’s work since her first Aaron Falk book, and will continue to. If you’ve yet to pick up Harper, I highly recommend tucking yourself in with her entire catalog for a wonderful balance of character exploration, small town life, and twisty mysteries.

(TW talk of postpartum depression/ recounts attempted date rape)

For fans of thrillers told through diary, interviews, and social media posts. Amelia Ashley’s disappearance has the world’s attention. She’s an influencer who went missing while in Rome with her boyfriend and blood was found in his suitcase. But as Harper Delgado, a hacker, goes through Amelia’s posts, she wonders if anyone really knows Amelia…

For fans of past mysteries, family reunions, books inside a book, and treasure hunts. Fifty years ago, Nell Churcher’s father published a book with a treasure hunt in it to find the buried jewels around England that were meant to each be a bone of the fairy character. It created a frenzy and an obsessive fandom. Now the family is reuniting with a rerelease of the book, a new treasure hunt, and a film crew to document. But in the first go around, no one ever found one of the “bones” (jewels) and now it gets revealed…

Armchair travel to New Zealand! Hana Westerman is a Māori detective working with the Auckland PD. As a single mother, she’s juggling a lot with her stressful job, which lands her a murder case with very few clues. But soon it’s not the only murder and Hana tries to connect the crime to others, only to find that the past is never really in the past…

The audiobook is narrated by New Zealand actors Miriama McDowell and Richard Te Are.

For fans of past mysteries, unique formatting, and amateur sleuths. Steven Smith has just been released from prison and decides to look into a mystery that happened in his childhood that he can’t quite remember: after finding a book that his teacher confiscated, his teacher disappeared on a field trip. Now Smith is looking into that book — including interviewing people about the author — and getting past students together to figure out what happened to their teacher. But we’re hearing this story based on transcripts made from recordings found on an old iPhone…

The audiobook is narrated by Thomas Judd, who has such a long list of narrated books you’ve certainly heard him before.

If you’re looking to start a brand new cozy mystery series and love a bakery backdrop, here you go! Lyndsay Murray is working hard to open her bakery Spice Isle Bakery in Brooklyn NY. It’s a dream for Murray to open this bakery for her community and get to work with her family. Problem: Claudio Fabrizi, a fellow bakery owner, doesn’t want any competition. Naturally he ends up dead after a fight with Murray, leaving Murray with the task of having to prove her innocence!

For fans of (fictional) missing child cases, insomniac leads, and fictional true crime podcasts. Mason Drake was taken from his crib one night while his parents slept in the room next door. One year later and there are no clues or leads to point to what happened to the toddler. His mother Isabelle, unable to sleep and desperate to get the case moving, agrees to an interview with a true crime podcast host. Except the interview makes Isabelle paranoid about her past and herself and her own memory…

I immediately got the audiobook for this one since I enjoyed Willingham’s previous A Flicker in the Dark.