The Best Mystery, Thriller, and True Crime Books Out In May

For fans of the classic Rebecca and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, here’s a new gothic suspense novel. If your father had just been executed as your government was overthrown, would you ignore rumors about a man and his ex-wife’s demise because you need security he can offer you? That’s what Beatriz does, and clearly it’s not going to go great for her…

If you’re always looking for a new legal thriller to get sucked into, today’s your lucky day. And you don’t even have to wait long for the legal setting to start because the book opens with the jury. From there, it is solely focused on everyone involved in trying a case of a man accused of murdering a woman. You follow lawyers and jurors getting to know their past and present and how their experiences shape the way they view cases — plus, plenty of reveals to keep everyone on their toes!

For historical mystery and cozy mystery fans, armchair travel to 1920s Bangalore, where newly married Kaveri ends up at a party that instead turns into a murder mystery. Soon she’s investigating the case herself using her logical brain, talent for mathematics, and the medical expertise of her husband.

If you’re looking to start a new amateur sleuth series, here you go. Myaisha Douglas is a doctor who has joined a writing group only to have a fellow member, who is her friend, end up dead. Douglas, of course, puts herself on solving the case with her years of experience as an armchair detective who has read all the mystery books. But when secrets are revealed and the group is under investigation, will Douglas regret putting on her detective cap?

Love cozy mysteries and home renovation shows? Here’s the start to a new series starring Peter and JP renovating a local Tudor Revival that has been inherited by identical twin brothers Terry and Tom Cash. But things definitely don’t go as planned when Tom is found dead, and the list of suspects only grows…

Want a fictional serial killer, mixed with a police procedural, with a “how’d that time travel happen” twist? Great, because Kelley Armstrong, who writes the awesome Rockton series, has started a new series. Homicide detective, Mallory Atkinson, is in Edinburgh to be beside her dying grandmother. But after a strange night, she suddenly finds herself in Victorian Scotland, which is weird enough, but she’s also in the body of a housemaid named Catriona Mitchell. She’ll soon have a case, being that her employer is a medical examiner and has a murdered woman’s body on his hands.

This is for readers of the new True Crime subgenre that blends memoir with crime. In the mid-nineties, Julie Williams and Lollie Winans were murdered in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park while backpacking. The case, which was handled by the FBI, remains a cold case despite having had an accused suspect. Kathryn Miles, who was a teacher years later at the college Winana attended, not only looks into the case and the women’s lives, but also takes a dive into the safety of National Parks.

I look forward to new releases from Barclay, who has become a consistent popcorn thriller writer for me — i.e. fun, page-turners I inhale. And there’s always an interesting premise: Brie disappeared one day while her husband Andrew was on a fishing trip. So he became suspect number one. Six years later, after Andrew has finally tried to move on from the hell that his life became, Brie reappears screaming where their old home used to be, before promptly disappearing again. What happened to Brie then and now?

A mystery for fans of Pushing Daisies? Yes, please, with a slice of pie on the side! And apparently murder too. There are a few routes one can take after accidentally killing a man with a pie. Daisy Ellery chose to make it a profession. As in, you can hire her to use her pies to kill bad men. Delicious murder anyone?

Fans of past and present storylines and legal thrillers should pick this one up. In the present, Hannah Rokeby lies her way into being a student working on an innocence project at the University of Virginia. She has a plan and needs to be on one of their cases. The past chapters comprise of us getting to read Hannah’s mother’s diary from the ’90s, when she was a cleaning woman in Maine. What has Hannah’s mother told her about her past that has her hellbent on revenge?

This is the third release in this great historical mystery series which follows Perveen Mistry, one of the first female solicitors in India. If you want to start at the beginning, pick up The Widows of Malabar Hill for all the character’s personal life bits, but you won’t be lost starting with the third book. There is unrest before Edward VIII, Prince of Wales’s visit to Bombay to start a four-month tour. A young Parsi college student had sought guidance on a school matter questioning what they could force students to do and not do regarding protests. Now she’s dead. Perveen questions the timing, having just spoken with her on legal matters, so when the coroner rules her death a murder, Perveen offers her legal services to the family.