It’s A Mystery: “The last stop before the sea”
/A city in northern England and a remote Scottish island are appropriately bleak settings to launch two impressive new series.
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: “The only way a man learns the true spirit of a rock is to stub his toe on it”
/William Kent Krueger and Steve Hamilton, authors of two critically acclaimed series, have winning new detective novels. Irma Heldman reviews.
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: “Every man has his price”
/Two scalpel-sharp political thrillers that mark the welcome return of the thoroughly winning, charismatic protagonists: Charlie Muffin and Joe DeMarco.
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: “The world is a great honeycombed thing”
/In Nick Harkaway’s altogether remarkable novel Angelmaker, blistering gangster noir meets Rabelaisian comedy
Read MoreIt's a Mystery: A Talent for Deception
/Agatha Christie has received praise from wide and varied corners, and mystery columnist Irma Heldman adds to the chorus with this retrospective on the life and work of the Queen of Crime.
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: “He’s the gray cardinal of the Kremlin”
/The Silent Oligarch is a smashing debut thriller that has Chris Morgan Jones assuming the le Carré mantle in his own very original way
Read MoreIt’s A Mystery: “He had never tried to hide from himself his taste for the hazard of sin.”
/A Death in Summer is the fourth and best addition to the literate, elegant mystery series by Benjamin Black, the pen name of an award-winning author.
Read MoreIt’s A Mystery: “This was either an accident, murder or an act of nature.”
/A promising new series is launched with a thoroughly captivating, quirky mystery set well off the beaten path, in a tiny village in Southern Thailand.
Read MoreIt’s A Mystery: “God was not an intelligence officer.”
/David Ignatius writes superb novels of espionage from the perspective of the consummate insider. The latest is Bloodmoney.
Read MoreIt’s A Mystery: “He’s Satan in the skin of Everyman.”
/In the crowded field of new thrillers, John Verdon’s Shut Your Eyes Tight is right up there with the very best and not to be missed.
Read MoreIt’s A Mystery: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
/The seventh in Craig Johnson’s award-winning Sheriff Walt Longmire series, Hell Is Empty proves that when it comes to putting a contemporary spin on the lore of the old West, few writers do it better.
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: “Time ages a person’s soul”
/Irma Heldman reviews Taylor Stevens' "The Informationist" and concludes that not since "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" has there been a debut novel like it
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: “There’s nothing, nothing on earth as dumb as a teenage boy”
/Dennis Tafoya’s second crime novel, "The Wolves of Fairmount Park," confirms that he is a brilliant new voice with a finely tuned modern noir sensibility.
Read MoreIt’s A Mystery: “Truth is the daughter of time”
/The first two novels of Nicola Upson's highly promising, thoroughly engaging series stars the great mystery writer Josephine Tey as a sleuth she herself might have invented
Read MoreIt’s A Mystery: “His job was to save her life”
/The final book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, leaves no doubt that Lisbeth Salander, his punk hacker protagonist, has no equal in the annals of crime fiction
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: “Three things come unbidden: fear, love, and jealousy”
/In her latest novel, False Mermaid, Erin Hart once again connects an ancient Celtic crime to a thoroughly modern mystery.
Read MoreIt's a Mystery: "A violin is always female"
/There is not a false note in Paganini’s Ghost, Paul Adam’s superbly calibrated mystery that unfolds around the intrigue generated by a priceless instrument and its keepers.
Read MoreIt’s A Mystery: “The deity who kills for pleasure will also heal”
/Louise Penny’s newest novel, The Brutal Telling, plunges Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, the star of the famed homicide department of the Sûreté du Quebec, into the darkest, most disturbing case of his career. Irma Heldman goes north of the border.
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: History Plays for Keeps
/In Dan Fesperman’s meticulously crafted World War II thriller, The Arms Maker of Berlin, he opens up old war chests and lets the genies of the past wreak havoc upon the present. Irma Heldman is on the case.
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: Imaginative Eyes
/It was a year full of fine additions to the genre, but according to regular “It’s a Mystery” columnist Irma Heldman, two among them were decidedly the cream of the crop. One is a first and one a twenty-first!
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