Our Favorite Books Read in 2023: Jeanne's Mysteries

Mysteries are my favorite genre, so I have a lot of those to list.  On another post, I’ll list favorite non-mysteries.  Don’t worry—that list is a LOT shorter.  Several of these were already reviewed on our blog.

 A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton:  Kinsey Milhone is a private detective in Los Angeles in the 1980s.  Strong plots, strong sense of place, and a wonderful protagonist in Kinsey, this is a series to savor.

Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen: Hiaasen has an off-beat sense of humor and I really like the Florida setting—especially when it’s cold and dreary outside my window.  His books are always a wild ride!

War and Peas by Jill Churchill: Jane Jeffries is a single mother who ends up solving mysteries along with her friend Shelly.  Both are sensible but also very funny, and certainly not prone to rushing into danger. 

Fatal Glow by Valerie Wilson Wesley: Odessa Jones, a widow working in a real estate office and trying to make some extra money catering.  She also sees “glimmers” or auras around people that give her slight clues. She’s not only sensible, but kind and compassionate. The supernatural aspects don’t dominate and don’t solve the mystery. 

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch: Another entry in the Rivers of London series about Peter Grant, a young police officer who is also an apprentice magician.  Packed with historical tidbits about London, dark plots, fantastical characters and leavened with humor, these are addictive.   They definitely need to be read in order.  

Finlay Donovan Is Killing It by Elle Cosimano:  Finlay is a divorced mother of two small children who is trying to hold it all together and not doing very well—and then someone mistakes her for a hitwoman.  It’s fast-paced and very funny, but with high stakes

 Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman:  The residents of an English retirement village are about to have their way of life  disrupted by a developer.  When he turns up dead, the residents decide to investigate.   

Mrs. Malory's Shortest Journey by Hazel Holt: Another older series (started in the 1990s) but for me did not seem dated at all.  Mrs. Malory is a widow and literary critic with a keen eye for observation.  The characters are well developed and the plots are interesting, and the British setting is a plus.

 

Honorable Mentions:

 

See Something: A Witch City Mystery by Carol J Perry:   Lee is a TV reporter in Salem, Massachusetts who has some psychic abilities but they don’t overwhelm the story. . I really like the characters in this one, especially O’Ryan, a witch’s cat who is probably more than an ordinary cat, and Lee’s Aunt Ibby who is a librarian. 

On the Spine of Death by Tamara Berry: this series gave me Finlay Donovan vibes a bit. The main character is a best selling thriller author who has a rebellious teenage daughter.  I particularly liked  that the author character would meet someone and immediately start mentally writing the person as a character in her book, giving a new background, motivations, etc.  This is the second title and I felt Berry really hit her stride here, though first one was good. 

Shady Hollow by Juneau Black:  This entertaining first in series books features anthropomorphic animals in a village mystery.  If you don't like animals sipping tea and chatting, avoid this book.

Nevermore: Deep Dark Descending, Christmas Hope, Raven Rock, Triple Agent,

Reported by Kristin

The Deep Dark Descending by Allen Eskens took a Nevermore reader on a thrilling and most enjoyable ride.  Homicide detective Max Rupert has a tragic past, losing his wife in a hit-and-run accident.  While still grieving, Max dedicates himself to his job, but what happens when he learns that the accident that took Jenni’s life was not actually an accident, but murder?  Retreating to a frozen lake near the Canadian border, Max must come to terms with the past as he seeks out the person who killed his wife.

Another reader had enjoyed Anne Perry’s No Graves As Yet and found it to be a good murder mystery.  In the spirit of the season, she picked up Perry’s A Christmas Hope, and was somewhat disappointed.  In Victorian England, Claudine Burroughs is unhappily married, but finds purpose in volunteering for a clinic for downtrodden women.  Of course her husband doesn’t approve of this, especially as Claudine is quickly drawn into the murder of a young prostitute during the Christmas season.  Our reader didn’t find much closure in the book, and much preferred Perry’s more vigorous mysteries.

Thinking back to her time working in the United States government, a reader just had to check out Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die by Garrett M. Graff.  Beginning during the Cold War, officials carefully laid plans in order to evacuate many individuals, from the President down to smaller but still important government employees, in the event of a terrorist or nuclear attack on the Capitol.  Using thousands of formerly classified documents and interviewing many current and former employees in the Continuity of Government (COG) program, Graff has plumbed the depths of governmental secrecy and paranoia, and laid it out for the public to see.

The Triple Agent: The Al-Qaeda Mole Who Infiltrated the CIA by Joby Warrick made another reader think deeply about the wars in the Middle East.  Jordanian spy Humam Khalil al-Balawi managed to make his way to a very high level of al-Qaeda.  Turning to the CIA, he then provided intelligence on the terrorist organization, but eventually betrayed the United States by detonating a thirty-pound suicide bomb, killing seven CIA agents.  Our reader was disturbed by the massive loss of life and so much hate on all sides.

Finally, our last reader enjoyed The Unquiet Grave by Sharyn McCrumb.  The author retells a story based on historical fact, that of young Zona Heaster who was murdered by her new husband, Erasmus Trout Shue.  Set in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, the Greenbrier ghost has been passed down as a folktale.  While Zona’s death is first deemed caused by a fall down the stairs, Zona appears to her mother Mary Jane and tells her that her death was no accident.  Our reader said that as always, McCrumb researched her story meticulously and told the story so beautifully.

Nevermore: Mingo County, Ebola, The Reader, Almost Sisters, Catching the Wind

Reported by Kristin

Our first reader took on a social history of a poor Appalachian community:  They’ll Cut Off Your Project: A Mingo County Chronicle by Huey Perry.  When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a “war on poverty” in the 1960’s, Perry was a young history teacher recruited to the Mingo County Economic Opportunity Commission project in southern West Virginia.  Our reader was intrigued by the local history, although wondered at how much infighting happened over the allocation of resources.

The same reader turned next to Inferno: A Doctor’s Ebola Story by Steven Hatch, MD.  When the Liberian ebola epidemic began in 2014, Hatch knew that he had to go help.  After he arrived, it took him a while to figure out how to help in the middle of such desperation.  More of a memoir, Hatch writes about many of the people he met and treated in Liberia.  When he returned to the United States, he found that the ebola epidemic was a political football and people were quarantined over the fear of transmitting the disease.

Our next reader was inspired by The Reader by Bernhard Schlink to ask the question: “How do you take the past and go forward, when the history was so horrible?”  In postwar Germany, fifteen year old Michael falls into an affair with an older woman.  When he goes to university, he is assigned to watch a Nazi war criminal trial, where to finds to his horror that his lover Hanna is being tried.  Readers discussed Germany’s past, as well as the Confederate experience of the southern United States, and how they both affect the present.

Next was The Almost Sisters, by Joshilyn Jackson, a favorite author of our reader.  Leah Birch Briggs is a graphic novel artist who is blindsided by a call home to Alabama to help Birchie, her grandmother who has suddenly shown signs of dementia—unfortunately in full view of half the town in church one Sunday morning.  As Leah attempts handle her own changing circumstances as well as care for her grandmother, old bones and racial differences in the Deep South emerge in a way that will change her life and the lives of her family forever.

Catching the Wind by Melanie Dobson was another postwar novel enjoyed by a reader.  Daniel Knight and his younger sister Brigitte escaped when their parents were arrested by Gestapo agents, but were then separated from each other when they reached safety in England.  Seventy years later, Daniel hopes to reunite with his sister.  Our reader found this to be an interesting book, but said that in the end everything was tied up in such a neat package that it didn’t seem very realistic.