The great thing about reading a mystery is that you know things will get tied up at the end; whether the book is a whodunit or a why-did-they-do-it, you’re going to get answers. And that makes mysteries perfect reading for an anxiety-ridden election season. Here are some of the best ones that have come out this year.
The Unwedding by Ally Condie (Grand Central, June 4): Condie, known as the author of bestselling books for children and young adults, including the dystopian Matched Trilogy, is now making her adult debut. Recently divorced Ellery Wainwright checks into a luxury Big Sur resort for the vacation she and her ex-husband had planned to celebrate their 20th anniversary. That turns out to be a big mistake even before Ellery finds a man floating facedown in the pool—a man who was supposed to get married the day before but never showed up for his wedding. Then there’s a big storm, and Ellery’s got an Agatha Christie–like locked-room mystery on her hands. “A gorgeous murder mystery that explores what it means to be human—the pain and the love,” says our starred review.
It’s Elementary by Elise Bryant (Berkley, July 9): Another YA novelist making her adult debut, Bryant sets her book at a Southern California elementary school. Single mother Mavis Miller—one of the school’s only Black parents—doesn’t really want to serve on the PTA’s DEI committee, but she does, which is why she’s at the meeting where the principal and the PTA president get into a heated fight. Then the principal goes missing, and Mavis remembers that she saw the president dragging trash bags from the school to her car. Our starred review says Mavis’ “narration evinces a razor-sharp wit, complementing the clever, twist-riddled plot.”
Death in the Air by Ram Murali (Harper, June 18): Like The Unwedding, Murali’s debut novel is set at a glamorous resort: Indian American jet-setter Ro Krishna is vacationing at an Ayurvedic spa in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas when a guest is murdered. There’s a local detective, and there also happens to be a CIA agent at the resort, but Ro, of course, feels the need to lend a hand. “The easy rapport of the people at the spa creates a lovely foundation for the psychological intrigue of the mystery,” according to our starred review.
Death in the Details by Katie Tietjen (Crooked Lane, April 9): In another debut novel, we’re introduced to Mabel “Maple” Bishop, a lawyer who’s been widowed by World War II. She’d moved to Vermont with her late husband, a doctor, and finds herself still regarded as an outsider, especially since no one wants a female lawyer. Her hobby of creating highly detailed dollhouses turns into a means of supporting herself—and then leads to detective work when she finds her first customer’s husband dead in their barn. Drawing on the life of Frances Glessner Lee, a real-life pioneer of forensic science, “Tietjen gives all of her characters rich, full inner lives as they interact in ways that are both aesthetically and morally complex,” according to our starred review.
Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.
