Excellent Mystery Trilogy, Classics Worth The Read, + New Mysteries & News!

For fans of procedurals, family drama, best-of-the-year mysteries, and completed trilogies!

First, a series note: You can start here and read it as a standalone because Locke does a great job of giving you the information you need to situate readers. But this is an excellent trilogy, so if you want to read all the twists and drama as they unfold, unspoiled, pick up Bluebird, Bluebird.

Texas Ranger Darren Matthews is truly trying to live a peaceful life on his land and hoping his girlfriend will join him. But he has the threat of an indictment looming over his head, he’s drinking too much, and his estranged mother—who he hates—is back in his life. The latter comes with a case that he is absolutely not supposed to look into, and that will force him to deal with his family issues: a Black sorority girl has disappeared. Her white sorority sisters say she moved out, but Matthews’ mom says that makes no sense when her belongings are out in the dumpster. Unable to leave it alone, he starts to look into the young woman’s life and instead finds himself in a town where he’s not welcome and nothing seems to fit, including the missing woman’s family.

I am sad to see a wonderful series come to an end and say goodbye to Darren Matthews, but am being equally thrilled that this is such a great story from beginning to end. I will forever pick up any book Attica Locke writes!

Bonus: J. D. Jackson, who is always excellent and has the loveliest voice, narrates the audiobooks!

Locke also has a great back catalog, so if you’re a fan of standalone novels, pick up The Cutting Season, and if you want a duology with a lawyer lead, pick up Black Water Rising.

For fans of PIs, art, and a mix of mystery genres and tropes!

This book is a mystery fan’s catnip—and includes a small town, snowed in murder mystery, art theft, and a murder mystery weekend hotel theme—that also has an opening that sounds like a “walks into a bar” joke with “a vicar, an army major…” PI Jackson is snowed-in during a murder-mystery-themed hotel weekend, while two unrelated painting thefts come into focus for him. Surely, it can’t be a coincidence that both valuable paintings are suspected to have been stolen by a housekeeper and a carer?

If you want to start at the beginning, pick up Case Histories. And if you want a standalone historical spy mystery, pick up Transcription.

For fans of detective novels, a doctor assisting the police in sleuthing, and 1930s Harlem.

Frimbo, an African immigrant mystic living and working in Harlem, is found dead by two local friends. Not knowing what to do, Bubber Brown and Jinx Jenkins call Dr. John Archer, who ends up assisting Harlem detective Perry Dart on the murder investigation. You get a good mystery, setting, characters, and I was really interested in seeing where forensics (fingerprints!) and medicine was in the ’30s.

And once again, one of my all-time favorite narrators, JD Jackson, narrates the audiobook!

(TW: brief mentions of domestic abuse/colorism and ableism in banter between 2 characters throughout)

For fans of remote, snowed-in horror!

This is the kind of book that many people have already read while many people who have never read it feel like they did because of the famous adaptation starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall, and how embedded in our pop culture it is—“Here’s Johnny!” still gets quoted, and the blood elevator gif gets used a lot by some once a month.

But if you haven’t read it or are due for a reread, now’s a great time. Newly sober Jack Torrance has lost his teaching job after an altercation with a student, so he takes his wife and young son to live at an old hotel as the caretaker—during the off-season of course. His plan is to write, but weird things start to happen around the hotel, and he becomes obsessed with its history, and the more claustrophobic the setting feels, the more he starts to lash out at his wife and kid. The latter who appears to have a special gift.

(TW, I only noted the big ones—alcoholism, domestic and child abuse, racial slurs, suicidal thoughts—I think other things get mentioned in past stories.)