Category: Unusual Suspects

Hi mystery fans! I’ve got a bunch of round-ups and articles, adaptation news, a trailer, and two great (technically 3) Kindle ebook deals to help get your mystery solving game on.

From Book Riot And Around The Internet

Rincey and Katie talk about a new Megan Abbott book, Unsolved Mysteries, cold cases, and more on the latest Read or Dead!

Pick a Fashion Statement and Find Your Next True Crime Read

Cozy Mysteries New Releases: How to Keep Track?

Tirzah talks about two great backlist books, including mysteries that feature unsettling childhood memories on All The Backlist!

And Liberty and Tirzah talk new releases, including Denise Mina’s The Less Dead, on All The Books!

J. L. Brown, author of the Jade Harrington mystery novels, is interviewed by Robert Justice on the latest Crime Writers of Color podcast. (The first in the series, Don’t Speak, is .99cents on Kindle right now!)

Michelle Bowdler’s superb book Is Rape a Crime? questions the conventions of the ‘rape story’

What’s in a Page: Inside the Tommy Orange and Louise Erdrich-approved own voices thriller Winter Counts

Get an Exclusive First Look at the Prep School Murder Mystery ‘They Wish They Were Us’

Excellent adaptation news: Roxane Gay’s Graphic Novel The Banks to Receive Film Adaptation

Elisabeth Moss to star in Blumhouse psychological thriller Mrs. March

We have a trailer for the Netflix adaptation of Donald Ray Pollock’s The Devil All the Time

Enter to Win $50 to Your Favorite Independent Bookstore!

Win a 1-year subscription to Kindle Unlimited!

Kindle Deals

For a life-long jewel thief memoir (I love her so much!): Diamond Doris: The True Story of the World’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief by Zelda Lockhart is $2.99! (Review) (TW domestic abuse/ elder abuse)

If you’re looking for an is-her-ex-a-serial-killer mystery: The Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard is $1.99! (Review) (TW panic attack on page/ stalking on page)

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See 2020 upcoming releases and 2021. An Unusual Suspects Pinterest board. Get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hello mystery fans! I have something a bit different for you this week. Sometimes while waiting for an author I love’s next book I will go in search of what they’ve announced and discover that they’re working on something completely different. Like a TV show. Getting to watch a show or film an author has written (not necessarily an adaptation of their work) feels like bonus content. Plus, for anyone struggling to read during the absolute garbage fire that is 2020, this may offer you some viewing options. Or maybe you’ve seen one of these shows/films and didn’t know one of the writers had great novels, and now you have even more to add to your TBR. Either way, here are some of my favorite dual writers of novels and TV/Film.

Let’s start with Attica Locke, who I discovered was one of the writers for Empire (Cookie!) after having read her Jay Porter legal series and standalone The Cutting Season and needed more of her writing. Since then her TV writing credits have only grown! Not only is Locke one of our best crime writers today (run to read Bluebird, Bluebird if you’ve yet to), she also wrote on Ava DuVernay’s Netflix mini-series When They See Us (trailer) based on the true crime case of the Central Park Five. And she wrote on Hulu’s adaptation of Celeste Ng’s novel Little Fires Everywhere (trailer) starring Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon. So you have five novels, a network show, and two streaming mini-series to marathon. Make popcorn.

Megan Abbott writes about girls and women in a way that always gets under my skin and stays (in a brilliant way) while writing about all the complexities of being a teenager and woman. And her novels usually have an obsession or unique “community” like gymnastics in You Will Know Me and a research lab studying premenstrual dysphoric disorder in Give Me Your Hand. She also wrote great noir novels in which she went all feminist on the genre: my favorite stood-up-and-clapped-when-I-finished being Queenpin. While you may already know that she wrote on her own USA Network series adaptation of her cheerleading crime novel Dare Me (trailer), you may not know that she was also story editor for HBO’s The Deuce (trailer), set in set in ’70s/80s New York City, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Franco. Which means you have 9 novels, a crime graphic novel (Normandy Gold), and two shows to marathon.

Deacon King Kong is not only one of my top crime reads this year, but it’s one of my favorite reads period, which sent me on a mission to read more James McBride. And that’s how I discovered that one of his previous novels, The Good Lord Bird, is a Showtime limited series that will premiere in October starring Ethan Hawke–and for fans of Daveed Diggs, he plays Frederick Douglass (trailer). The story is set right before the Civil War and follows a young slave and a group of abolitionist soldiers. Lucky for readers McBride has an extensive catalog of novels, nonfiction, and memoir to dive into.

Here’s the author that started this whole fall down this rabbit hole: Gillian Flynn. Yes, she’s known for the did-you-see-that-coming novel and screenplay film adaptation of Gone Girl. But she also adapted Lynda La Plante’s novel Widows (trailer) with Steve McQueen into an awesome heist film starring Viola Davis. And it turns out Flynn’s latest project is Utopia (trailer), a conspiracy thriller series starring John Cusack, Rainn Wilson, and Sasha Lane, coming soon to Amazon Prime. So if you’ve been waiting for her next novel, which she briefly hinted at a while back, you can at least watch some of her stuff in the meantime. If you’ve yet to read Flynn’s before-Gone-Girl work, Dark Places is one of the only crime novels I’ve read where I didn’t figure out the solve.

And here’s some TV show writing overlap: Lisa Lutz, who wrote the great dark comedy PI series The Spellmans, was also on the writing team for HBO’s The Deuce and USA Network’s Dare Me. So if you’ve yet to discover Izzy Spellman, the PI working at her parents’ firm, you have six novels to marathon.

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See 2020 upcoming releases and 2021. An Unusual Suspects Pinterest board. Get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hi mystery fans! I have great adaptation news for you this week, roundup lists, and a bunch of great Kindle ebook deals!

From Book Riot And Around The Internet

7 Postmodern Murder Mysteries

6 Murder Mysteries with Classical Music

Liberty and Vanessa discuss Blacktop Wasteland and more on All The Books!

In the Study, with a Typewriter: 100 Years of Agatha Christie Novels

The Less Dead author Denise Mina breaks down her newest crime thriller

The library invites all of San Francisco to read Channel Miller’s Know My Name in 2021

20 Books Like Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries, From The Third Rainbow Girl To Hell In The Heartland

Paper Gods will be adapted to TV by John Legend, Sony Pictures, and Nia Long, with Long starring

Hulu is Turning Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic Into a Series

Enter to Win $50 to Your Favorite Independent Bookstore!

 

Kindle Deals

For fans of Sadie: A Prayer for Travelers by Ruchika Tomar is $5.99! (Review) (TW sexual assault on page/ terminal illness/ past child abuse/ talk of suicide with some details)

For a uniquely set whodunnit: The Black Jersey by Jorge Zepeda Patterson, Achy Obejas is $4.99! (Review)

For a Japanese mystery: Newcomer by Keigo Higashino, Giles Murray is $2.99! (Review)

For an Italian trilogy procedural start: Flowers Over the Inferno by Ilaria Tuti, Ekin Oklap is $1.99! (Review) (TW child abuse)

For a thriller: The Banker’s Wife by Cristina Alger is $1.99! (Review) (TW rape/ suicide)

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See 2020 upcoming releases and 2021. An Unusual Suspects Pinterest board. Get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hi mystery fans! I have a great addition to the not-like-the-others spy stories and a Regency mystery that is delightful.

A Spy in the Struggle by Aya de León: Remember on Friday when I said I was looking forward to reading this over the weekend? Well, I ended up reading the first half in one sitting Friday night—until that pesky thing of needing sleep happened—and finishing it Saturday morning, hence why I’m starting my raving about a December book in August. It’s very good and worth the pre-buy and letting your library know you want them to have it.

Aya de León never fails to create excellent characters while bringing communities, and their different voices and complexities, to life. Yolanda Vance is a Type A personality who has done nothing but focus on school and work until she finds herself handing in evidence during a raid of her law firm and becoming a pariah in the legal field. With that path blown up, she ends up hired by the FBI as a lawyer. Before she can settle in, she’s given an undercover assignment she has no training for—because she’s all they have in the form of a young Black agent who can relate to teens. She isn’t that confident about her ability to blend in seeing as she’s never felt she fit in anywhere; but she has a positive-thinking-book’s lessons always at the ready and never quits, so off she goes from NY to California.

The assignment is to bug the center of Red, Black, and Green!, a teen activist group the FBI has labeled as extremist, while volunteering for the group and reporting back what she learns. While she struggles to keep her opinions to herself—that anyone who doesn’t like their situation can just work hard enough to change it—she also learns a few interesting things: that a recent overdose isn’t believed by the community to be an OD, that the informant who came before her was murdered, that she may not be as anti-love as she thought, and that many of her beliefs are about to be challenged.

We get to know Yolanda as she gets to know the FBI team, her new Red, Black, and Green! team, a suitor, and through memories of her childhood with her widowed mother and her years at a prep school and then law school. We also get to know the community fighting against the government-tied corporation that RBG! is protesting and the hilarious, creative, and smart teens making their voices heard, along with the rookie cop who found the OD in question, and adult coordinators of RBG!. I absolutely loved the characters, story, and the bonus of a few shexy-time scenes. Add this to the list of fantastic mold-breaking spy novels like American Spy and the Vera Kelly series. I’m always here for more de León novels and would be thrilled for more Yolanda Vance—this could easily be a series, and I would totally be here for that! (TW drug overdose, talk of addiction/ brief past mention of child-on-child attempted sexual assault)

The Body in the Garden (Lily Adler Mystery #1) by Katharine Schellman: A delightful Regency era murder mystery. Lily Adler is recently widowed and while she chooses to be an independent woman, she in no way wants to be shunned by society. At a ball in London, she’ll get more than she bargained for: she overhears blackmail, a man is murdered, and she discovers the magistrate is bribed to not solve the case. Whatever is a lady to do? Investigate herself, of course! I mean she doesn’t have a plan, nor does she think she knows what she’s doing. But she figures she can’t make the situation worse, so why not? Seriously, I love her.

She won’t be working—secretly on solving a murder—alone, however. And she certainly will not be ignoring all of society’s gender and class rules—maybe just a couple. She has navy captain Jack Hartley, who was her husband’s friend, and nineteen year old West Indies heiress Ofelia Oswald, who has ties to the dead man, to help. And oh are they going to bicker, and question each other, and bicker some more—in the fun, amusing way. There may even be some love in the air? There will definitely be more murder, so they better get their antics under control and solve this quickly! If you need a truly enjoyable start to a new historical murder mystery series, this is your book. Also, the audiobook has a lovely voiced British-born narrator, Henrietta Meire, so highly recommend that format. I can’t wait for the next mystery!

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See 2020 upcoming releases and 2021. An Unusual Suspects Pinterest board. Get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hello mystery fans! I rounded up great giveaways, AH-mazing news, interesting things to read to murder your TBR, and Kindle ebook deals for books further in the series which rarely ever get put on sale!

From Book Riot And Around The Internet

In AMAZING giveaway: We’re giving away 100 audio downloads of When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole to 100 lucky Riot readers! 

In AMAZING news: Megan Abbott has a new novel coming in 2021 (EEP!) and it’s already been sold to be a TV series (Double EEP!). All her books focus on some kind of obsession, or intense field, and this time we get ballet. It is an understatement to say I can’t wait to read this one.

 

In MORE amazing news: Aya de León (Uptown Thief) has a new novel releasing in December about a spy: A Spy in the Struggle! And look at that cover! This is what I’m reading this weekend, because my greedy little hands got an egalley.

Rincey and Katie get excited about adaptations of The Shining Girls and Magpie Murders, and talk about mystery books by Black authors that they’ve recently picked up on the latest Read or Dead!

QUIZ: What Dark Crime Book Should You Read Next?

10 Small-Town Thrillers to Read This Summer

8 Thrillers Told From Multiple Points of View

Reconsidering The Case Of The Crime Genre: a chat with S.A. Cosby, Rachel Howzell Hall, and Walter Mosley.

Sisters in Crime announced the 2020 Crime Fiction Writers of Color Award-winner! All the congrats!

Featured Trailer: THE NOTHING MAN by Catherine Ryan Howard

Win a 1-year subscription to Kindle Unlimited!

Enter to Win $50 to Your Favorite Independent Bookstore!

Watch Now: 20 Murder Mystery Movies That Will Awaken Your Inner Sleuth

Kindle Deals

If you’re making your way through Detective Elouise Norton’s series (you should!) the fourth book is on sale: City of Saviors by Rachel Howzell Hall is $2.99!

And DITTO for Veronica Speedwell: A Dangerous Collaboration (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery Book 4) by Deanna Raybourn is $1.99! (This series is the escape you need right now!)

Every time I see this one I’m going to put it here and tell y’all again to go read it: The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives by Dashka Slater is $2.99!

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See 2020 upcoming releases and 2021. An Unusual Suspects Pinterest board. Get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hi mystery fans! Here’s 3 great reads: a historical mystery, start to a fictional serial killer trilogy, and unsolved murder with an interesting hook.

Opium and Absinthe by Lydia Kang: Kang has quickly become my go-to for great historical mysteries. And bonus points for this feeling she inserts that maybe this will be fantasy without being fantasy. In this case: is it regular murder or vampire murder?! Tillie Pembroke is a young woman in 1899, NY, trying to figure out how to get around the societal pressures and mandates that will keep her from being herself–a delightfully curious woman always seeking to learn more and be independent. Injured from a riding accident, she finds out that her sister has been murdered in the most peculiar way–punctures on her neck and drained of blood.

Now she’s not only devastated by the loss, taking pain killers for her injury, which she is unaware she is addicted to, but her mother and grandmother want to move on from the ugly situation and marry Tillie off. To her murdered sister’s fiance–and this is why I don’t romanticize these times! Anyhoo, Tillie isn’t having any of it and she wants to know who murdered her sister and why–and seeing as she’s just read Dracula, she isn’t ruling out a vampire just yet. Soon, she’s devised ways of sneaking out to meet a newsie for investigating adventures. Which quickly lands her labeled a hysterical woman and with doctor’s orders for more drugs–we don’t want those hysterical women folk anything but placid, basically.

It’ll take all of Tillie’s strength to overcome addiction, her family and doctor’s restrictions, and her grief in order to figure out who is behind her sister’s murder… I love that Kang writes intelligent and spunky women, while plunging me into 1800s/1900s NY, and giving me great mysteries with medical history. If you’ve yet to read her historical mysteries, I also highly recommend A Beautiful Poison (Review) and The Impossible Girl (Review). (TW brief mention of past child abuse, detail/ brief mention of past partner abuse, familial abuse on page/ addiction/ brief mention past suicide; attempted suicide, detail/ attempted rape, on page; alludes to past rape)

The Silence of the White City (Trilogía de la Ciudad Blanca #1) by Eva García Sáenz, Nick Caistor (Translator): If you are looking for an engrossing start to a fictional serial killer trilogy translated from Spain, have I got a great read for you! This, for me, was one of those mystery reads that didn’t break any molds but gave me what I look for in these kinds of mysteries, and added the element of a new setting.

Twenty years ago, Vitoria, the capital city of Basque in Northern Spain, was terrified of a serial killer and his ritualistic killings. Now it seems the murders have started again–which is equally terrifying and baffling seeing as the serial killer is in prison. He was an archaeologist brought forward by his twin brother who had been a police officer at the time of the killings. Dun dun dun! Now Inspector Unai López de Ayala “Kraken” has to figure out if the imprisoned serial killer has a new partner on the outside, or if they got it wrong all those years before…

Come for the twisty serial killer mystery, stay for the tour of Vitoria, Spain. Bonus: García Sáenz has managed to write a sweet spot that I think will appeal to both fans of dark mysteries and not too dark mysteries by writing the content on the dark side, but leaving out the overtly, unnecessary graphic details. Think Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, and The Da Vinci Code. If you’re wondering how much I enjoyed this, I immediately checked to see if my library had the following two installments in Spanish rather than waiting for the English US releases. (TW child murders, not graphic/ attempted suicide and suicide/ partner, child abuse/ nonviable pregnancy/ date rape/ past statutory not on page)

The Less Dead by Denise Mina: My go to rec for overall Tana French comp is Denise Mina. While French is an American-Irish writer and Mina is a Scottish writer, they both have extensive back catalogs of police procedurals and standalones, and write mysteries with a darkish pen that are really explorations of human behavior with layered characters that are different levels of flawed.

And both of Mina’s last standalones have opening hooks I couldn’t resist. In this case, a woman who reaches out to an agency to set up a meeting between her and her birth mother’s sister for the first time, and discovers said aunt is only meeting with her because she found out she’s a doctor and wants access to the database to prove a cop killed her sister all those years ago. Not the family reunion Margot was hoping for.

Margot was already having a rough go. She’s pregnant, but she hasn’t told her boyfriend as they’re in a separation period because he called the police on his brother for a domestic abuse incident. His brother happens to be partnered with Margot’s best friend, and she felt betrayed that he broke her confidence. Her adoptive mother has also just passed and she’s clearing out the house and struggling with grief and questions of why her birth mother placed her up for adoption, months before she was murdered.

Readers are plunged into Margot’s chaotic life. Margot is a character who never did what I wanted her to do, but part of why Mina writes crime novels I enjoy so much is that while the characters don’t behave how I want, they do make sense and force me to understand other people’s struggles and lives. And her aunt Nikki’s, a recent-ish sober woman who takes Margot into her past of teen prostitution and drug use and what it’s like to be the women society doesn’t care about, as Margot’s birth mother’s murder remains unsolved all these years later with Nikki still receiving threatening letters from the killer…

Mina delivers an absorbing mystery, crime novel, and exploration of a grieving woman at an impasse in her life while showing us Glasglow’s drug history. (TW stalking/ suicide mentioned as threat, no detail/ past disordered eating/ domestic abuse/ rape cases, including teen prostitution/ addiction)

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See 2020 upcoming releases and 2021. An Unusual Suspects Pinterest board. Get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hello mystery fans! I have a bunch of links to click, news, Kindle deals, and something just fun and escape-y to watch.

From Book Riot And Around The Internet

Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down will be a graphic novel!

Liberty and Patricia discuss The Silence of the White City by Eva García Sáenz and His & Hers by Alice Feeney on All The Books!

10 of the Most Unique Crime Reads

Kickstarter: NOIR IS THE NEW BLACK, a collection of Noir stories by Black creators

Alex Segura (Peter Fernandez PI series and The Black Ghost) chats with Robert Justice on Crime Writers of Color.

(spoilers) Samantha Downing discusses the twisty sibling dysfunction of He Started It

The Essential Tana French and here’s an entirely different order for reading her series.

Books of My Life: Karin Slaughter reflects on 2 decades of twisty thrillers

Talking character, inspiration with Sujata Massey, author of Moira’s Book Club pick ‘The Widows of Malabar Hill’

8 True Crime Books For Your 2020 TBR

A Guide to Nordic Noir

How Freelance Book Cover Illustrator Rachelle Baker Gets Her Inspiration

News And Adaptations

I want this book yesterday!: Millie Bobby Brown To Star And Produce Netflix’s Adaptation of ‘The Girls I’ve Been’; Jason Bateman’s Aggregate Films Also Producing

Goldman Sachs Reaches $3.9B Settlement With Malaysia Over 1MDB Corruption Case (There’s a nonviolent true crime about Jho Low: Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World)

Reese Witherspoon’s Where the Crawdads Sing Film: What We Know So Far

‘Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries’ To Become Acorn TV Original As AMC Streamer Orders Season 2

Watch Now

On Hulu: For Scooby fans, the film Daphne & Velma, directed by Suzi Yoonessi, is a prequel to the franchise live-action films and focuses on Daphne Blake and Velma Dinkley who are played by Sarah Jeffery (Charmed reboot) and Sarah Gilman (Last Man Standing). Here’s the trailer.

Kindle Deals

If you’re looking to start a legal thriller series: Buying Time (Angela Evans #1) by Pamela Samuels Young is $3.99! She also has another great legal thriller series Every Reasonable Doubt which looks to be $0 right now! (Review)

If you’re looking for a historical mystery with very little violence: A Front Page Affair (Kitty Weeks Mystery #1) by Radha Vatsal is $4.99! (Review)

If you’re looking for a is-he-or-isn’t-he a monster: A Double Life
by Flynn Berry is $4.99! (Review) (TW date rape)

If you like when the mystery genre marries the horror genre: Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand is $1.99! (TW domestic abuse)

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See 2020 upcoming releases and 2021. An Unusual Suspects Pinterest board. Get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hi mystery fans! I have three could-not-be-more-different-from-each-other great reads for you this week: an awesome, super reluctant spy thriller; Friday Night Lights but with murder and horror; a smart cat-and-mouse serial killer novel.

East of Hounslow (Jay Qasim #1) by Khurrum Rahman: You may remember me already shouting about this great thriller back when I read it–before it was out in the U.S. Well now it’s officially out here in paperback, audiobook (great narrator!), and ebook! It’s smart and fun and follows the most reluctant spy ever! Seriously, he’s practically blackmailed by MI5 into working for them.

Javid “Jay” Qasim is a young man who really has nothing figured out but is at that age where he thinks he does. He lives with his mum in West London, sells pot, and just bought himself his favorite thing ever: a BMW. He thinks everything is great, until MI5 realizes they need him, a young Pakistani Muslim, to infiltrate an extremist group to report information about what the group is planning. You know how people in action/thrillers always seem thrilled to become spies? Jay is the complete opposite of that and wants nothing to do with this, or politics, or whatever is going on in the world. He’s happy doing his own thing, thank you very much. Except he’s gotten himself into trouble with his dealer and lost his BMW, and MI5 uses this to their advantage. And so in Jay goes, pretending to be a radical jihadists…

This is equally a coming-of-age story about a young man forced to make difficult decisions, and a page-turning thriller that you don’t want to miss! (TW mass shootings, terrorist attacks/ child deaths/ past attempted suicides mentioned)

The Bright Lands by John Fram: Imagine if Friday Night Lights was gay in a homophobic town, had murder, horror, and a dash of Stranger Things. Yes, awesome. This also has, hands down, one of the most bananapants endings I’ve ever read. So if you’re looking for a small-town murder mystery that married a horror novel here you go!

Joel Whitley gets a weird message from his younger brother Dylan and returns home to the small town he couldn’t have gotten away fast enough from. It’s a football town, and Dylan is the star quarterback. And he’s missing. Joel is very concerned, but no one else seems to be–at least not at first. Now Joel will not only have to figure out what happened to his brother and what is happening with the town, but also relive his trauma from growing up gay in a homophobic town and what led him to flee and not return until now.

We follow a slew of characters and things get big, and go really out there, but there’s a lot of important questions here with a spotlight on a few things, which I’d love to dive into but you know mysteries and their secrets and spoilers…

(TW homophobia, slurs/ talk of suicide, detail/ brief mentions of domestic abuse case, detail/ fat shaming/ forced nude photos/ statutory)

The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard: There is an essay in Lindy West’s The Witches Are Coming (highly recommend) titled Ted Bundy Was Not Charming–Are You High? and this novel feels like the fictional equivalent to that. Which is to say mediocre white men who murder enough people to qualify as serial killers get grossly obsessed about and elevated as being more than mediocre awful white men by our problematic society’s gross obsession with real life serial killers (and mediocre white men). Howard takes aim at this with this cat-and-mouse thriller that starts with a hell of a hook.

Eve Black was a little girl when she survived the night her family was murdered by a serial killer. No one knows this or who she is. Until now. She’s written a book, which we read, along with the serial killer who is just now discovering who Eve is and that she’s decided to come find him…

Alternating between reading Eve’s chapters in her book and the now “retired” serial killer’s reading of the book–including him going to her book signing!–we get front row seats to a cat-and-mouse game where Eve is determined to figure out his identity, and he’ll stop at nothing to keep that from happening… If you like Irish and dual narrators go with the audiobook! (TW rape/ domestic abuse/ mentions suicide, detail)

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See 2020 upcoming releases and 2021. An Unusual Suspects Pinterest board. Get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hello mystery fans! I have podcasts, roundups, news (!), and Kindle deals to escape into.

From Book Riot And Around The Internet

Rincey and Katie catch up on the news they missed, including lawsuits featuring Dan Brown and the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate, and read some locked room mysteries in honor of not leaving their homes on the latest Read Or Dead.

What Stares Back at Us When We Look Too Hard?: Revisiting THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW While in Quarantine

Liberty and Tirzah chatted about He Started It, along with other new releases, on this week’s All The Books!

12 must-read mysteries and thrillers coming this fall

If you’re looking for a monthly book club focused on thriller/mystery/suspense/horror here’s one hosted by BooksandLala and special guests.

16 Thriller Books That’ll Give You Instant Goosebumps

Black crime fiction writers are ready for change

15 Young Adult Mysteries to Read Now and Later

News And Adaptations

In time traveling serial killer news: Elisabeth Moss to Star in Apple Thriller ‘Shining Girls’

Netflix Commits Largest Budget So Far For ‘The Gray Man’; Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans Star (spy thriller!)

‘Magpie Murders’ Drama Series Adaptation Set On PBS’ Masterpiece

Author loses spot in Top 10 after buying 400 copies of his own book

‘Perry Mason’ Renewed For Season 2 At HBO

Kindle Deals

Travel to Ireland for a cozy mystery with a ghost: Murder in G Major (Gethsemane Brown Mystery #1) by Alexia Gordon is $4.99!

Travel to Japan for dark crime: Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino is $4.99!

For a modern take on Rebecca: The Winters by Lisa Gabriele is $1.99!

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See 2020 upcoming releases and 2021. An Unusual Suspects Pinterest board. Get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

Hi mystery fans! I have some super exciting crime books for you this week: a best-ever crime novel, a translated true crime about a prisoner who has served his sentence but is not being released, and a page-turning legal thriller.

Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby: Every time I sit down to read a crime novel Blacktop Wasteland is what I’m hoping for but rarely get. Not only is this an exceptional crime novel, it has the best car chase scenes! I’ve seen comps for Ocean’s Eleven meets Drive and that’s fair but also sells this novel short because it’s infinitely more.

Beauregard “Bug” Montage has worked hard for an honest-living life but with the bank calling on his business, his son needing braces, his mom about to be evicted from a nursing home, and his daughter needing college tuition, he’s presented with an opportunity he feels he can’t refuse. And also doesn’t want to. Because Beauregard is the family man, business owner, and honest car mechanic. But Bug is the best wheelman/getaway driver you’ve never met with a crime dad who disappeared in his childhood, and who he’s never been able to shake. So he goes in for one robbery that he plans out to a T, which will solve all his problems and he can continue as Beauregard. It is an understatement to say everything goes wrong…

If you’ve been needing to read an excellent crime novel, here are just some of the amazing things this one does: an opening that went not one bit as I expected; the exploration of nurture vs nature and the ghosts of our past; southern noir; an excellent character voice that snatches you from the opening; the action scenes; our ties: family, friendship, and found family; writing that makes you feel, see, hear, and taste every scene. What I’m saying is run to this novel, clear your schedule, and strap in. Also, this BETTER get adapted into a series or film! (TW parent with cancer/ homophobia, racism, slurs/ fat shaming/ torture)

Magnetized: Conversations with a Serial Killer by Carlos Busqued, Samuel Rutter (Translator): Magnetize is a quick and impactful read that sets out to answer questions about a series of senseless murders in the early ’80s, and it does, but more importantly it leaves you with many important questions. It’s a true crime book unlike the others: For starters it’s a work in translation, which still make up only a small percentage of US books and are basically nonexistent in the true crime genre; it’s narrative nonfiction (feels like a novel); it focuses more on the after the crime than the crime.

Thirty years after Ricardo Melogno was arrested for the 1982 murders of four taxi drivers in Buenos Aires, author Carlos Busqued began visiting him in prison hoping to learn why he’d committed the murders. Here, Melogno recounts his childhood, the murders, his case, sentencing, times in mental hospitals, and prison. He takes readers into a case where doctors didn’t agree and a prison sentence served doesn’t seem to mean anything when no one knows what to do because, at the heart of forgiveness, it seems people need to be given a clear cut why.  (TW recounts past child abuse/ discusses child suicide attempts and thoughts, details/ suicide discussed/ past animal abuse recounted/ talk of threat of prison rape/ prison abuse/ torture recounted)

A Good Marriage by Kimberly McCreight: I am a sucker for the did-he-or-didn’t he mysteries and legal thrillers, so you can imagine my enthusiasm when a book promises both. And delivers!

Lizzie Kitsakis went from being a happily underpaid federal prosecutor to a not so happy defense lawyer at an elite law firm due to debts incurred by her alcoholic husband. She’s trying her best to like her job, work on her marriage, and ignore what she can’t deal with. So let’s add on more, shall we? A past friend from law school calls her from prison, asking for her to take his case; he’s accused of murdering his wife. As much as she tries to get out of it, she ends up representing him and having to poke into his murdered wife’s life of wealthy friends, a sex party that isn’t a sex party but anyone who wants to use the upstairs as such will have no questions asked, an elite school, and more secrets than anyone can count. You get courtroom scenes, family drama, a journal, and secrets upon secrets, all why playing the did-he-or-didn’t-he game?! If you like multi-cast audiobooks 100% go with that format. (TW alcoholic/ past child rape in journal recounted, not graphically detailed/ recounts child abuse, brief detail/ mentions nude photos taken without consent/ side character cancer diagnosis/ attempted suicide mention, detail)

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See 2020 upcoming releases and 2021. An Unusual Suspects Pinterest board. Get Tailored Book Recommendations!

Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.

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