Bloody Thrilling - Recent Mystery and Thriller Reads

The first month of working at the murder mystery bookshop Hammett behind me, I naturally have been focusing on reading thrillers and mysteries, since my new colleagues have lots of good recommendations and I too need to have a few good books up my sleeve to recommend to customers. It is both similar and very different to working in Otherland as the reading habits of crime fiction readers are quite something else. For instance, there's no such thing as second reading in this genre. Once you know who the murder is it's done, you neither need to re-read nor really own that book anymore. Serializing crime stories for Netflix and other streaming platforms interestingly works against this genre, since, here too, once you know how the story ends, you don't really need to read it anymore. That's completely the opposite for Science Fiction and Fantasy, as once an SF/F story is filmed, that's where it grabs the audience's attention. After the first episode they come to bookstores in masses and want to read the book to the film. For example, the Otherland has been selling Frank Herbert's Dune like hot cakes for months, you could as well build a tunnel from cinemas to bookstores, it's that popular right now. Interesting dynamics. Unfortunately no such thing for murder mysteries...

Nevertheless, I have been enjoying reading the genre, hope you enjoy the reviews!

The Honjin Murders (Detective Kosuke Kindaichi, #1) by Seishi Yokomizo

One of Hammett's specialties are Japanese murder mysteries as it's one of owner Christian's special interests. The Honjin Murders is the introductory work to one of Japan's greatest classics, the Detective Kosuke Kindaichi series.

The year is 1937, and the small village of Okamura is buzzing with the joy and preparations over the wedding of one son of the famous Ichiyanagi family. On the wedding night, the household is woken by a scream and the sound of music; both the groom and the bride have been brutally killed. Does the mysterious stranger with three fingers have something to do with it?

Kosuke Kindaichi, the chaotic looking, stuttering "amateur" detective, impresses despite his disheveled appearance with his knowledge of Western and Oriental murder mysteries, enchanting the reader with the fascination about locked room murders. That's not all, though: from little guest houses called Honjins to the burial rituals for house cats, Yokomizo fills the reader in with all sorts of fascinating notions about Japan.

The language is as simple and stripped as the case is complicated and gnarled - I personally wasn't able to solve it on my own, but I'm confident I can do better and I'm already thinking of reading the next installments of the series.

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

It is both Solstice night and the grand opening of The Manor, a new hotel/wellness retreat for very distinguished guests in Dorset. Its glamorous owner Francesca Meadows is a woman of many talents and she's got this event under tight control, or so she thinks. Throwing in various POV's such as that of her architect husband Owen's and Bella's, a guest from the past, diary entries and wild time jumps, Foley unfolds the highly complex story featuring dashing characters and eerie local traditions.

I love Lucy Foley, but this one? Nah.

After hitting the reader with far-fetched twists left and right, the finale offered is neither clever nor satisfactory, but closes the story with an almost embarrassingly clichéd and blunt message. I know it's harsh but I'm a little bit disappointed, honestly.

The Fury by Alex Michaelides

For sure, Alex Michaelides, as an author, has the skill to grab you from the get go, nothing less. In little stories about troubled people, their ambitions, their desires, their fears, relatable people, he again and again showcases this skill, which for me is comparable to Stephen King's character work; you're glued to these people within only a couple of pages.

The Fury is no different, we follow actor and unreliable narrator Elliot Chase, who recounts the course of events that led to the murder of his friend, retired actress and recluse Lana Farrar on her own private Greek island. No more info on this, the less the more yada yada.

I had access to an advanced listening copy from Libro.fm and just wanted to listen in a little, just in case it's something I'd like to review and I was done in two sittings (hadn't I been as exhausted as I was when starting, I could have easily finished it in one).

My one critique point with Michaelides is that the main motivation for murder is almost always some love interest. I'd really like to read something less banal, a little more complex in its nature than “I loved him/her but they didn't love me back”, which seems to be almost always the case in his books. Other than that I have nothing to complain about – I also enjoyed the little references to his other books, they're small details but lots of fun to notice.

An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good (Äldre dam #1) by Helene Tursten

Maud is an unremarkable older Swedish lady who, thanks to a strike of luck, lives in her family’s spacious apartment in downtown Gothenburg rent-free. She's utterly alone, but also easily irritable and when someone annoys her... she murders. She likes it that way.

In this first installment, she fends off a local celebrity who has her eyes on her apartment, saves her former lover from an unfortunate marriage, and gets rid of pesky neighbors.

I think it was in Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead where the main character makes use of the sad phenomenon that women get invisible as they get older, and does things for which being invisible is an advantage. So does Maude in these short stories by Swedish author Helene Tursten.

Because the structure of the title and each chapter's title "An Elderly Lady does so and so", I imagined the main character as an older version of Arya Stark aka "A Girl Has No Name". It did work well.

Das Baumhaus by Vera Buck

Sweden again! It's probably not very realistic not to expect lots of Nordic works when diving into thrillers, although this one is by German writer Vera Buck, but is set in Norrland.

Marla, Henrik, Nora, Rosa - through the lenses of these four characters we're reading a very exciting story of a young family spending the summer in the secluded the family house in the Nordic woods. Meanwhile the somewhat strange but likable loner Rosa who is obsessed with death and dying animals finds the remnants of a child, triggering investigations of what else lies buried deep in the forest. The story slowly unfolds into a fever dream in which kids get snatched and bullied, timelines merge and slowly but surely things start making sense.

Very enthralling. The plot was cleverly constructed, and keeps the reader guessing and captivated all along. Still, there were too many perspectives for my taste and some jumps in time were incomprehensible. Overall it's a really exciting read.