Author: Jamie Canaves

These types of setups always get my full attention: Sarah Ellis passes out in a bar bathroom so Saraswati “Sara” Bhaduri, who works in the bar, helps her into a rideshare only to discover later that they got into the wrong cars and were taken to the other’s home. Which would be an annoying drunk inconvenience but this is a crime book, so Sarah Ellis ends up murdered where Sara Bhaduri lives and that’s gotta put Bhaduri on edge…

I love remote mysteries! And this one is a whole family meeting up for Nana’s 80th birthday, stuck on an island, and one by one they start to die– mwahahaha. For me remote mysteries need a good balance of being invested enough in the characters to want to read and not enough that you “care” that they’re gonna probably all die, and Feeney pulled that off. We get to watch the family and all their drama and secrets as someone is murdering them–can you figure out who and why before there possibly isn’t anyone left? I found this fun, and also love that I think half of readers are going to enjoy the ending and the other half are going to be mad (not for problematic reasons). Stephanie Racine does a great narration if you need an audiobook to get sucked into.

(TW brief fatphobia/ past child abuse/ drugging without consent/ vet mentions stories of animals in cruel conditions/ statutory kiss, gropping/ mentions past suicide/ mentions past accidental child death/ suicide)

Amaya no longer lives in her home country, Sri Lanka, but she sure is going back when she learns that her ex best friend is marrying her ex boyfriend. Her mission, which she chooses to accept: stop the wedding. The problem? The bride to be goes missing and Amaya is a suspect…

(TW brief self-harm, cutting scene/ recounts partner abuse/ mentions past statutory)

Sequel to Pieces of Her! We’ve got an unsolved murder mystery from the ’80s: Emily Vaughn ends up dead on prom night because of a secret. Now US Marshal Andrea Oliver is sent to protect a judge receiving death threats, but really she’s thinking about solving Vaughn’s murder…

A new historical (Regency-era) mystery series! Lady Abigail Worthing and Stapleton Henderson are fighting neighbors until Abigail finds Juliet, Stapleton’s wife, dead on her property. Which is a problem on its own but Abigail has enough against her to know this will lead to finger pointing at her. And while she has an alibi, it’s one she cannot give since it would cause her too much trouble. So when Stapleton offers her another alibi, it makes sense that the two with the most to lose may find a way to work together to figure out what happened.

If you’re looking for a page-turning procedural series, this one is for you. It’s the second book in the series and it starts at the end of the first book dealing with the aftermath (so if you like to not have a book spoiled pick up Gone For Good). If you don’t however care about that, you can start here and not be lost — you’re given all the info you need. Annalisa Vega is a detective, daughter of a retired cop, and not in many people’s good graces. Her ex-husband is also currently her partner — they don’t hate each other, and I love this dynamic. A new case is assigned to them which is just baffling: a cop was murdered in his sleep with his own gun while his wife was there but she was unharmed and can’t identify the person because they were in scuba gear. It sounds too far fetched to be real and Vega has her work cut out for her. If you like messy personal lives of detectives you root for and fast paced mysteries, here you go. Bonus: I enjoyed the audiobook narrator, Kelsey Navarro.

(TW domestic violence/ mentions past suicide, no detail/ parent with Parkinson’s/ sexual harassment and stalking stories)

For fans of past mystery and coming of age stories! Anna Xu is a university freshman so school and everything related should be taking up all her time, except seven years ago her childhood babysitter went missing as a sophomore at the same university. So naturally she’s going to solve the case! Which is difficult enough but she has way more stress on her plate considering her parents’ bakery now has competition and the son of the competing bakery is also in school with her. How will he fit in with everything already going on in her life?!

(TW sexual assault) This is one of those books with a setup that immediately hooked me: Twenty-three year old Cassie Quinn gets a phone call that her younger brother Billy has been arrested for raping his girlfriend. Quinn immediately knows it’s a lie. Not because she doesn’t believe that our rape culture exists (she does), but because she’s certain Billy is the exception. She hates his girlfriend and believes they’ve had a volatile relationship so she returns home to be there for Billy, her parents, her other brother, and help with the trial. From there we get to know this wealthy family, the lawyers taking on the case, and even the accuser–all through Cassie’s eyes. This is both an exploration of our rape culture and a family drama, with a good dose of legal mystery. I inhaled the audiobook which has a great narrator, Marin Ireland.

(TW date rape case, past attempted assault/ recounts alcoholic parents/ grooming, statutory)

This is a ripped-from-the-headlines type story that doesn’t aim for thriller entertainment but rather the real life ways being a part of an industry steeped in rape culture sneaks up on you. Sarah Lai went from up-and-coming producer to teaching film at a small college. It’s not the life she had wanted for herself but she’s left Hollywood and it is what it is — until a journalist asks to speak to her. He’s interviewing everyone who’s worked with a particular film producer over allegations of sexual assault. Lai is hesitant to speak but meets with him telling pieces of her story, revealing to the reader what it was like to be an assistant and then producer in an industry that celebrates the “boy’s club”. If you like going deep into a business (how films get made from start to finish), this is a well done look at rape culture that keeps the majority of things off page, focusing instead on the way we’re intentionally taught to not notice the red flags around us. The audiobook is narrated by Katie Leung and really made me feel like I was listening to Lai tell me the story of her time in film production.

(TW conversations about teen with eating disorder/ attempted sexual assault on page/ rumors, accusations, assumptions of sexual assault)

Here’s a fun thriller tipping its hat at horror tropes without being a horror novel. It’s also for fans of a story inside a story. Adele Rafferty ran away from her home in Ireland to L.A. hoping to put a bad filming experience behind her. But a call to replace an actress in a movie set to start filming right now makes her think this could be her final chance to be a star. So back home she goes to a film set in the middle of the woods to film a horror film. But from the start, things don’t feel right and she doesn’t know who to trust and she’s out in the middle of nowhere…

(TW sexual harassment, groping / attempted murder suicide)

I’ve mentioned quite a few times over the years how translated mysteries usually don’t get translated in order that they were originally published in their country. And here we are again. Bullet Train came out last year (and is currently an adapted film starring Brad Pitt) and now we are getting the previous book in the series. The good news, if you’re confused, is it doesn’t really matter unless your brain screams at you for reading out of order because they read as standalones. Here we have a revenge novel. Suzuki’s wife was murdered so he decides to infiltrate the gang responsible for her murder. Except he’ll be up against three assassins with unique killing methods… My goal continues to be to read as many translated crime books as I can.

And a new cozy mystery series! Jay Allan and Cindy Cooper were once married and stars, until they publicly came out and lost their careers. Now they’re divorced, best friends, and running a movie memorabilia business. So it’s a dream–and a very needed win for their flailing business–when a former star is now ready to sell her huge collection. But they’re not the only buyers in line and their competition ends up dead with Jay and Cindy the suspects… If you love going into subcultures (film buffs, memorabilia collectors) and love a pair of sleuths, this one is for you.

If you’re in the mood for something unique, darkly funny, and with some chapters narrated by ravens, Amina Akhtar has got you covered. Ronnie Khan is not an aim-for-the-stars type of person and she’s a New Yorker who always imagines herself being a New Yorker, so it’s a huge surprise that Marley Dewhurst changes that. Suddenly Ronnie is in Sedona, Arizona and doing things like hiking, yoga, and cleansing. But when gurus start being murdered, maybe the wellness industry isn’t as well as is advertised?…

For fans of delightful Regency era murder mysteries, Lily Adler is back! Widow Lily Adler is excited to get out of London on a trip with friends to Hampshire. But peace is not in her future as it turns out there’s rumors of a ghost at Belleford manor — which Adler of course immediately wants to go seek out. Except she’s met with the news that the lady of the house has been murdered…If you want to start at the beginning of this entertaining series, grab The Body in the Garden.

This is one of my favorite covers of the year—you better believe I judge books by their covers. On the inside it’s about Minerva Gutiérrez who has quite a few things stacked against her at the moment: she hates her job at an ice cream shop, her boss is scum, her mother is ill, she’s been kicked out of school for fighting, and she needs money. So when the shop is robbed, with her and other employees inside, she’s not going to be a hero and fight. But afterwards she learns that there is a rumor that money is hidden on the property. So naturally she teams up with her neighbor friend CeCe to find and steal the money—bonus: revenge on her boss. What could go wrong?! I’m currently reading it and absolutely love Minerva’s voice from the start and think I’m going to switch formats over to the audiobook because it’s narrated by Frankie Corzo, who narrated Mexican Gothic.

This book is a walk-in closet bursting with bananapants. It’s the kind of nonfiction that focuses on very specific things that happened decades ago but that sadly are very much being repeated now (with the all the book banning, for example). The book takes you into how the ’70s book Go Ask Alice–a published diary about a drug addicted teen–became a hit, contrary to all the massive red flags about its publication. It’s about how publishing is an honor system with no real punishment for fraud unlike other products. It’s about the history of LSD. It’s the drug panics—the fear that people were lacing drugs in things for children based on absolutely nothing— and how people didn’t want to accept the reality of increasing middle class young white male suicides so blaming it on satan worship became the go-to. You watch journalist after journalist not do their very basic job and just repeat without question the most ludicrous theories until things like the game Dungeons & Dragons were being banned because people thought it was kids worshiping satan. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so true, and happening again right now in different movements built on creating a fear (panic) without any evidence. I highly recommend the audiobook (narrated by Gabra Zackman) and getting a reading buddy or someone you can shout “YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS” at.

Now that’s my review for the book, and then I hit the author’s note at the end of the audiobook where he basically says he debated adding pages of sources and then just decided not to because the reader could just look up the stuff themselves. And exSQUEEZE me?! My dude, the book about the issues with fraud in publishing and the honor system should end with pages of sourcing. That’s how this works.

The whole story would make a great docuseries on something like HBO Max.

(TW suicide and everything related/ mentions rape cases and Manson cases/ mentions past baby death/ made up animal cruelty for satanic panic/ student abuse at school)

I loved this book! It’s perfect for fans of mystery books with a lead that works on cases in a job that goes to every crime scene. Rita Todacheene is an overworked crime scene photographer and her ability to see the dead sometimes helps in that she can get the info needed to know what really happened to the victim. However, as she’s been warned her entire life, seeing the dead comes with a very dangerous possibility of harm which she’s about to experience when one victim is hellbent on revenge and not letting Rita live her life in peace until she gets what she wants. I love Rita’s character and especially the back and forth of seeing her present life and watching her grow up with her grandmother on the Navajo reservation, getting to see how she got into photography (her grandmother had a box camera), and watching her grapple with learning that she sees ghosts. It has a mixed tone of being a dark-ish procedural and also a beautiful book about with her relationship with her grandmother. I would absolutely read another book following Rita and also anything else Ramona Emerson writes.

(TW okay I’m just going with everything — not so much because of dark, although it does graphically describe two crime scenes, but because so many cases and things are discussed that at some point it hits everything and this would have been a paragraph of notes.)

For fans of missing persons, small towns full of secrets, and Australian crime novels. Detective Sergeant Sarah Michaels is sent into a small rural town when 12-year-old Esther goes missing after school. From there a shocking arrest is made, fingers are pointed, and a woman tells her friend that the man she married assaulted her when she was a teen. We get to know members of this town as the POV changes from Esther’s friends, family, a Greek chorus, and detectives. Surely, someone must know what happened to Esther? This is a good read if you want to be sunk into a particular time and place as a missing person case is used to explore human nature, violence, trauma, victim blaming, and grief.

(TW discuses case with child predators/ ableism/ homophobia/ recounts past teen gang rape, details on the lead up not much graphic details on the act/ fatphobia/ alcoholism/ domestic abuse/ brief animal abuse recounted)

If you’d like to do some armchair traveling while sleuthing, here’s an amateur sleuth mystery set in Taipei, Taiwan. Jing-nan is the owner of a night market food stall who finds himself a murder suspect after agreeing to help get back lotto earnings from someone who’d promised to split the winnings but didn’t. And that’s just one of the murders! If you’d like to start at the beginning of the Taipei Night Market series, pick up Ghost Month.

For fans of mysteries focused on a neighborhood. Beth is a CIA analyst who his taken off her biggest case and has to move out of her home. Madeline buys the house and moves in and Beth can’t stop watching her, certain she has ties to the case she is no longer on. Being that everyone in the neighborhood is somehow tied to the CIA, it’s a treasure trove of secrets…