Category Archives: Mysteries

My Brother Michael

Nothing ever happens to me. That is the opening line of My Brother Michael. A young Englishwoman—the narrator, Camilla Haven, on holiday in Greece—is sitting in a cafe in Athens, writing a letter back home, and feeling a bit sorry … Continue reading

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The Bookman’s Tale

When grieving widower Peter Byerly pulls an old book off a shelf in a secondhand bookstore, he discovers a loose sheet of paper, four inches square, tucked into its pages. He turns the paper over, and nearly collapses in the … Continue reading

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Trixie Belden

With all of my psychic energy tied up in the U.S. election for the past few weeks, I just haven’t had the time or attention for anything new or challenging. I’m going on a nostalgia trip today; hope you don’t … Continue reading

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Snow Falling on Cedars

The time: December 1954. The place: a courtroom in a small town on an island in Puget Sound. Kabuo Miaymoto, the American-born son of Japanese immigrants, is on trial for the murder of Carl Heine, an American of European descent. … Continue reading

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The Case of the Missing Kitchen

Suzie Emmett is having a bad week. It starts when she puts her hand through a window and needs stitches. It gets worse when her detective boyfriend takes her to a place she refuses to name, but that starts with … Continue reading

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Before the Fall

One summer evening a private jet takes off from Martha’s Vineyard, en route to New York City. There are ten people aboard: seven passengers and three crew. Among the passengers are the Bateman family: father David, mother Maggie, daughter Sarah, … Continue reading

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Fallen Into the Pit

Before there was Brother Cadfael, there was Inspector Felse. Ellis Peters is well known for her series of historical mysteries featuring the Welsh monk, Brother Cadfael. She began writing those in the late 1970s, but she honed her skills on … Continue reading

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Witch

The old house is perfect. Ellen March falls in love on first sight with the pre-Revolution farmhouse, sitting in a clearing surrounded by lilacs, apple trees, dogwoods, oaks, and maples. It doesn’t matter to her that the locals say the … Continue reading

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Have His Carcase

What would you do if you came across the body of a man with his throat cut, so recently dead that the still-liquid blood is running in a glistening stream down the side of the rock he is lying on? … Continue reading

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Matters Arising from the Identification of the Body

In Matters Arising from the Identification of the Body by New Zealand-born author Simon Petrie, hard science fiction intersects with another of my favourite genres, crime fiction. In a mining colony on Titan, Saturn’s moon, a young woman, Tanja Morgenstein, … Continue reading

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