December
2020
Blanchard, Alice. The Wicked Hour (STM,
26.99) Dec. The discovery of the body of an unknown woman in a small New
England the morning after a debauched Halloween celebration sends Detective
Natalie Lockhart on the search for a killer who may have been responsible for a
series of disappearances of women through the years.
Gilbert, Victoria. A Deadly Edition (CL,
26.99) Dec. Library Director Amy must take time out from wedding preparations
to solve the murder of an art dealer and the disappearance of a rare
illustrated book.
Lindsay, Jeff. Fool Me Twice (Dut, 27.00) Dec. In the second in the new series featuring
master thief Riley Wolfe who is tasked with finding a stolen Faberge Egg in a
suspenseful international romp.
MacRae, Molly. Heather and Homicide (Peg, 24.95)
Dec. Highland bookshop manager Janet Marsh and her group of amateur sleuths
have a new murder to solve when a true crime writer arrives in town to research
a recent murder only to become a murder victim herself.
Ochse, Weston. Bone Chase (SS, 26.00) Dec. A
supernatural thriller that combines history and suspense as a mathematician
stumbles upon a global conspiracy with Biblical roots. For fans of James
Rollins.
Perry, Thomas. Eddie's Boy (Mysterious Press,
26.00). The hired assassin from Perry's first, Edgar-winning novel returns when
contract killers track him to England and make an attempt on his life years
after he has retired, in a thriller that interweaves his past as an apprentice
killer to his present as a man trying to save himself from a new generation of
killers Perry writes literate and intelligent thrillers that are always suspensefully readable.
Tyce, Harriet. The Lies You Told (Hach, 28.00) Dec. In a new psychological thriller, an
attorney recently moved to London after the breakup of her marriage is having
difficulty adjusting because her daughter is unhappy in her new school , but
when one of the mothers befriends her, it may be impacting the high-profile
case she has been assigned. Tice does a wonderful job creating smart female
characters who are seriously flawed.
Wingate, Marty. Murder is a Must (Brk, 26.00) Dec. In the second in this delightfully cozy
series, Golden Age mystery library curator Hayley is planning an exhibition of
the collection with the help of her former boss at the Jane Austen Society, but
when they discover that a first edition copy of a Dorothy Sayers mystery has
gone missing, the hunt for the precious book leads to murder.
New and Forthcoming in Paperback Reprint
Cameron, Marc. Stone Cross (Ken, 9.99) Dec.
Hurwitz, Gregg. Into the Fire (STM, 9.99) Dec.
James,
Miranda. Careless Whiskers (Brk, 7.99) Dec.
New and Forthcoming in Paperback Original
Collins,
Kate. A Big Fat Greek Murder (Ken, 8.99) Dec. In the second in this
lively series, Athena and her family are involved in a wedding rehearsal that
goes off the rails when the groom goes AWOL and then shows up with pair of
scissors in his back.
Conte,
Cate. Whisker of a Doubt (STM, 7.99) Dec. Cat café owner Maddie must
keep Christmas from turning blue for her fellow volunteers at a cat rescue when
one of the leading opponents of a feral cat colony in an upscale neighborhood
is felled by a garden gnome.
Flower,
Amanda. Courting Can Be Killer (Ken, 8.99) Dec. In the second in the
Amish matchmaker series, amateur sleuth Millie Fischer investigates the tragic
death of a young man whose desire to marry a young woman has everyone in the
community up in arms.
Griffo,
J.D. Murder
at Veronica’s Diner (Ken, 8.99) Dec. When the waitress at their
favorite diner in New Jersey is murdered right after handing them a package,
the Ferrara Family realizes that they have a mystery to solve in the latest in
this comic cozy series.
Innis,
Louise R. Death at a Country Mansion (Ken, 8.99) Dec. In the first of a
new series set in a small English village, a hairdresser investigates the death
of a famous opera diva which might have appeared accidental except for the
disappearance of a priceless painting.
Klein,
Libby. Wine Tastings are Murder (Ken, 8.99) Dec. B&B owner Poppy
must find a murderer with a lethal case of sour grapes when an unpleasant guest
at a wine tasting she hosts is poisoned by a glass of a killer vintage.
Ross,
Rosemarie. Finished off in Fondant (Ken, 8.99) Dec. Chef and cooking-show
host Courtney is hosting a television season focusing on weddings at a swanky
Poconos resort, but when her co-host is found next to the body of a woman
fallen into a wedding cake, she knows that she must hunt for clues through
layers of deception.
New and Forthcoming in Quality Paperback
Barber,
Kathleen. Follow Me (SS, 16.00) Dec. A very creepy story that will make
you rethink how much of your life you want to share online about a woman whose
Instagram account inspires an obsessive fan who is determined to get to know
her more deeply, and who finds a way to insert himself into her life.
Dorsey,
Tim. Naked
Came the Florida Man (Mor, 16.99) Dec. While
on a tour of famous Florida cemeteries, Serge and Coleman come across the
legend of a man haunting the sugar cane fields and decide to “investigate.” If
you enjoy comic anarchy, you will love this series.
Fleischmann,
Raymond. How Quickly She Disappears (Brk,
16.00) Dec. In a novel of obsession, a woman who lives in a remote area of
Alaska is willing to risk her family and her life to discover what happened to
her sister who disappeared when they were both children.
Harding,
Robyn. The Arrangement (SS, 16.99) Dec. A struggling NYC art student
is persuaded by a friend to become an escort, but she finds herself becoming
obsessed with the successful older man she is seeing in a twisty tale of
adultery, dark desires, and murder. I really liked this.
Hyde, Katherine Bolger. Death with Dostoevsky
(SH, 17.95) Dec. Professor Emily Cavanaugh helps a young male student who
becomes the chief suspect when a predatory female academic is found murdered,
and unfortunately for him he has no alibi and no memory of the night of her
death.
Kelly, Mary. The Spoilt Kill (PP, 14.99) Dec. In
the second in this classic mystery series, Inspector Nicholson must investigate
when a body is found in the clay tanks of a Staffordshire pottery factory in a
case of industrial espionage and murder.
Kessler, Kate. Call of Vultures (LB, 16.99) Dec. PI
Killian Delaney is hired to track down two missing sisters who have been
indoctrinated into a high-profile cult and are living in a commune in upstate
New York—and one of them refuses to leave.
Maldonado, Isabella. The Cipher (T&M, 15.95) Nov. In
the first of a new series, an FBI special agent who escaped from a serial
killer as a teenager is featured in a video years later that incites the killer
to hunt for her again by committing a grisly murder to pull her into the investigation.
Melinek,
Judy M.D. and T.J. Mitchell. First Cut (HC, 17.99) Dec. A San
Francisco medical examiner investigates when a suspected overdose case suggests
an underworld plot, even though her superiors encourage her to drop it, but
soon more bodies show up.
Moore,
Liz. Long
Bright River (Png, 17.00) Dec. A policewoman
in Philadelphia investigates when her drug-addicted sister goes missing at the
same time as a series of murders rocks the city.
Myers,
Tamar. Puddin’ on the Blitz (SH,
17.95). When a guest at the PennDutch Inn is poisoned
by a chocolate torte from a newly-opened restaurant, Magdalena vows to find the
killer, because her husband may have been the intended victim.
Nellums,
Eliza. All That’s Bright and Gone (CL, 17.99) Dec. A debut mystery
about a six-year-old girl who decides to find out who murdered her brother so
that her mother will come home from the hospital—a charmingly unreliable
narrator.
Perry,
Thomas. A Small Town (Mys, 16.00) Dec. After
a prison break that leads to 1000 prisoners rampaging through a small Colorado
town, a police detective whose lover was killed in the violence learns that the
twelve ringleaders are still at large and sets out to kill them with the secret
backing of the town officials.
Rayne,
Sarah. Music Macabre (SH, 17.95) Dec. London music researcher Phineas
Fox goes to a newly-reopened restaurant that had been a music hall in the late
nineteenth century as part of his research into the life of a notorious
music-hall dancer who had been one of the loves of Franz Liszt, but his
research puts him in danger.
Robinson,
Peter. Many Rivers to Cross (HC, 16.99) Dec. Inspector Banks has to
deal with two cases: the death of a heroin addict and the murder of an
unidentified Muslim boy whose body was probably moved.
Tobey,
Danny. The God Game (STM, 17.99) JNov A
techno-thriller about five high-school boys who become involved with a video
game that won’t let them quit. Tobey does an excellent job at creating a sense
of horror and dread.
Walters,
Damien Angelica. The Dead Girls Club (CL, 16.99) Dec. A supernatural thriller
about two girls whose scary stories become all too real, leading to the death
of one and a horror that follows the other into adulthood.
Wegert,
Tessa. The Dead Season (Brk, 17.00) Dec.
NYPD special investigator Shana Merchant finds that her move to a small town in
upstate New York has not helped her escape her demons—or the serial killer who
abducted her.
New and Forthcoming in International Mysteries
Aimaq, Jasmine. The Opium Prince (Soho, 27.95) Dec. A debut novel set in Afghanistan in the
1970s featuring a half-Afghan, half-American head of a US foreign aid agency
dedicated to stopping the poppy trade, who accidentally kills a young nomad
girl and who is later blackmailed by a drug lord.
Gilbers, Harald. Germania (STM, 28.99) Dec. A
prizewinning mystery by a German writer set in Berlin in 944 and featuring a
Jewish homicide detective who is forced by the Gestapo to help find a killer
who is murdering women and laying their mutilated bodies on the bases of war
memorials-a killer who has been described as a loyal Nazi.
Keplar, Lars. Lazarus (Knopf, 28.95) Dec. Joona Linna finds that his latest
case has become personal when a killer targeting Europe’s worst criminals—human
traffickers, drug lords, and murderers—turns his attention to seemingly
innocent people.
Quartey, Kwei. The Missing American (Soho, 16.95) Dec. In the first of a new series set in
Ghana, a young private investigator is hired by an American to find his missing
father who came to Ghana to visit his online girlfriend to whom he has sent
thousands of dollars in a case of Internet scams and fetish priests.
Roslund & Hellström,
Three
Hours (Quer, 26.99) Dec. Piet Hoffmann has
infiltrated a Nigerian trafficking ring, but he must get out as soon as
possible or he may not survive in the third in this international crime
trilogy.
Tsao,
Tiffany. The Majesties (SS, 17.00) Dec. After one of the daughters of a
fabulously wealthy Chinese-Indonesian family poisons everyone during a family
celebration, her sole surviving sister thinks back on her sister and the family
secrets that bind them together as she fights for her life.
Tursten,
Helene. Snow Drift (Soho, 27.95) Dec. When a
well-known gangster is found shot dead in a guest house in rural Sweden DI
Embla Nystrom believes that the death may be tied to the disappearance of her
best friend fourteen years ago.
New and Forthcoming in Historical Mysteries
Arlen,
Tessa. Poppy Redfern and the Fatal Flyers (Brk,
16.00) Dec. In autumn of 1942, Poppy is working as a scriptwriter for a film
unit producing short films for British civilians when two of the female pilots
working to transport goods from factories to military airfields die in
suspicious accidents.
Bell,
Richard. Stolen (SS, 17.00) Dec. The true story of five boys who were
kidnapped from their homes in Philadelphia in 1825 and sold into slavery in the
South and their ordeal to escape and their attempt to bring the slave traders
to justice—a heartrending story of bravery in the face of a cruel and immoral
system.
Griffiths, Elly. Now You See Them (HMH,
15.95) Dec. The swinging sixties have arrived in Brighton and with it comes the
disappearance of members of a group of girls, and while DI Edgar Stephens and
Max Mephisto investigate, Emma, now Edgar’s wife and
a mother, starts an investigation of her own. This is an excellent series.
McAllister,
Greer. The Arctic Fury (SB, 15.99) Dec. A dozen women join an Arctic
expedition in the 1850s sponsored by an eccentric British woman who hires them
to discover what happened to a missing expedition led by her husband, but when
some of them fail to return, one of them is accused of murder in a thriller
based on historical fact.
Moreira,
Peter. Hitman on Haight (SS, 18.00) Dec. A SFPD detective must find
who killed and dismembered the hippie daughter of an industrialist, leaving her
body in Golden Gate Park in the second in the series set in the 1960s in the
Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco.
Patrick, Renee. Script for Scandal (SH,
17.95) Jan. In the third in this series set in 1930s Hollywood, designer Edith
Head works with a friend to clear the name of the friend’s boyfriend, a
policeman who is implicated in a bank robbery ring according to the script of a
new film.
Best Mysteries of 2020
Blake,
James Carlos. The Bones of Wolfe (PGW, 26.00). The Wolfe brothers are ordered
by the family matriarch to track down a performer in a porn film who has a
resemblance to her long-lost sister, but the performer is the favorite of
leader of the Sinaloa cartel who won’t give her up without a fight. I love this
series.
Clark,
Clare. In the Full Light of the Sun (HMH, 16.99). An art-history
mystery set in Weimar-era Berlin and based on a real-life forgery scandal, this
is the story of an art dealer with an impressive collection of van Gogh
paintings, an aging art-expert with a knack for identifying forgeries, and a
Jewish lawyer whose involvement in the scheme reflects the rising threats to
his professional and personal life.
Dewitt,
Jasper. The Patient (HMH, 23.00). In a debut novel of suspense with a
tinge of the paranormal, a young psychiatrist at New England mental facility
becomes fascinated by a patient who has the ability to cause those he
encounters to go mad or to commit suicide.
Elon, Emuna. House on
Endless Waters (SS, 17.00). An Israeli writer travels to Amsterdam
where he is shocked to discover a pre-WWII photograph of his parents in the
National Jewish Museum, leading him to research his mother’s resistance work
during the war, saving Jewish children from the Nazis. I loved this.
Engberg,
Katrine. The Tenant (SS,
16.99). A retired Copenhagen academic is shocked by the murder of her tenant in
a flat two floors below her, especially because the details of the woman’s
death were lifted from the manuscript of a murder mystery that the academic was
writing.
Harris,
Robert. The Second Sleep (Knopf, 16.95) Aug. In a small village in
England, a young priest arrives to officiate at the funeral of the parish
priest who died in a fall, but he discovers that the man’s interest in
collecting all kinds of artefacts may have had sinister—and
heretical—implications in a clever and dark dystopian mystery.
Hendricks,
Greer and Sarah Pekkanen. You Are Not Alone (STM,
27.99) Mar. After a lonely woman witnesses a stranger throwing herself in front
of a Manhattan subway train, she impulsively shows up at the woman’s memorial
service, where she meets her friends, who in turn worry that the victim had
talked to the witness about their vigilante justice system.
Le
Carré, John. Agent
Running in the Field (Vik, 17.00). A veteran of British Intelligence is
asked to take on one last assignment, to take over a ragtag group of spies
whose value has increased with the rise of Putin’s Russia, and soon advocates
for a covert op aimed at a Ukrainian oligarch who has links to the pro-Putin
group in that country in a timely spy thriller.
March,
Nev. Murder
in Old Bombay (STM, 26.99) Nov. A prizewinning debut set in Bombay in
1892 where an Anglo-Indian officer who worships Sherlock Holmes investigates
the deaths of two women from a rich and powerful family.
McGarrity,
Michael. Head Wounds (Norton, 26.95) Nov. In the last of the Kevin Kerney series, Kevin’s son Clayton Istee
investigates the murder of a couple in a Las Cruces motel in a case that is
tied to the Mexican drug cartels. McGarrity never
writes the same book twice and they’re all good.
Mullin,
Caitlin. Please See Us (SS, 16.99) Oct. A moving novel of suspense set
in Atlantic City featuring a boardwalk medium and a woman escaping from
personal/professional setback who join forces to investigate the disappearance
of marginal women, drug users, runaways, escorts, and prostitutes who are the
victims of a serial killer and are calling to be found. I loved this for its
paranormal tinge, for its moving look at the lives of women who are so often
dismissed, and for its look at a place that was destroyed by wealth and glitz
and false glamor.
Osman,
Richard. The Thursday Murder Club (Png, 26.00)
Sept. Four septuagenarian friends at a retirement community in England meet
weekly to discuss unsolved crimes, so when a local developer is found murdered,
they decide to investigate for real in a debut comic cozy. Highly recommended.
Petty,
Karen Reed. True Story (Vik, 26.00) Aug. A woman who works as a ghostwriter
must come to terms with a sexual assault from fifteen years ago when she was in
high school—a sexual assault that she can’t remember in a very twisty novel of
psychological suspense told from multiple points of view. I loved this.
Prescott,
Lara. The Secrets We Kept (Vin, 16.95) June. At the height of the
Cold War, two secretaries from the CIA are tasked with smuggling the manuscript
of Doctor Zhivago
out of the USSR, so that it might be published worldwide in a literary
nail-biter based on fact. Excellent.
Scott,
E.G. In
Case of Emergency (Dut, 27.00) Aug. A woman
who doesn’t know quite how to respond when her mysterious new boyfriend
disappears is surprised when the police ask her to identify a body that turns
out to be that of a woman she’s never met. I really loved this for a wonderful
twist at the end.
Trinchieri,
Camilla. Murder in Chianti (Soho, 27.95) July.
When a former NYPD detective moves to the Tuscan wine country after the death
of his wife, he finds himself pulled into a murder investigation when he
stumbles across the body in the woods in the first of a new series that is a
feast of wine, good food, and murder.
Tuti,
Ilaria. The Sleeping Nymph (Soho, 27.95) Sept. In the second in this Italian police
procedural series, featuring a sixty-something forensic profiler, she
investigates when a painting from the end of WWII contains matter from a human
heart.
Wasserman,
Robin. Mother Daughter Widow Wife (SS, 27.00) July. A powerfully
compelling novel told from the point of view of various characters about a
woman with no memory, the scientists who study her, and the daughter who needs
to understand her. I really liked this.
Of Special Interest
This Tucson mystery bookstore began in 1986 as Footprints of a Gigantic Hound and was
renamed Clues Unlimited in 1996. The
bookstore has been selling the best mysteries and has presented some of the
great writers of the genre for signings and events, including Tony Hillerman, Lee Child, Anne Perry, Laurie R. King, Michael McGarrity, Craig Johnson, and C.J. Box.
I am sorry to tell you that, as of December 31, 2020,
this era is over. Clues Unlimited
will be closing its doors, the victim of the global pandemic and advancing age.
I want to thank you all for your support over the years. You have become more
than customers — you have become friends and allies. I can’t tell you how much
I have enjoyed my time selling the best in mysteries and thrillers to you.
I plan to continue the newsletter in a
much-abbreviated fashion online. If you are interested, please go to the Clues Unlimited website for directions
to sign up. You can continue to reach me at info@cluesunlimited.com.
As part of our shutdown of the store, there will be
specials throughout the store in both new and used books. All new releases will
be 20% off and all used mass market paperbacks will be $2.00, with used trade
paperbacks and hardcovers selling for $5.00. If you have unused gift certificates,
please convert them into books before the end of the year.
If you would like to schedule a time to come and
browse, please give me a call and we can arrange an appointment time. The
schedule for Clues Unlimited until we
close is:
·
Monday-Thursday, December 14-17, 10-3
·
Saturday, December 19, 10-2
·
Monday-Wednesday December 21-23, 10-3
·
Saturday, December 26th
10-4:00.
Thank you for your support through the years.
Chris and Cappy, the cute but grumpy terrier