Mystery and True Crime

One night, two teenage girls in the Red Hook neighborhood in Brooklyn venture onto the river on an inflatable raft, but the next morning, only one is found, unconscious, with no memory of what happened. As the mystery unfolds, Pochoda focuses on how the disappearance affects the neighborhood and its various residents, elevating what could have been a simple whodunit into a deep, complex, and literary mystery that lingered in my mind for days after finishing it.    

There is a group of mystery readers out there who fervently believe that Irish crime fiction will soon be as hot as Scandinavian crime fiction. Count me among them. I am obsessed with Adrian McKinty’s smart, atmospheric, and darkly witty mysteries, particularly his Sean Duffy trilogy, which takes place in Belfast during the Irish Troubles. In the Morning I’ll Be Gone is the concluding volume of that trilogy, and it features a locked-room mystery. I can’t wait. 

This is a fascinating British police procedural that sheds light on many aspects of the system that were unfamiliar to this American. The suspenseful plot feels somewhere between a Sara Paretsky novel and an episode of Luther, with a little bit of Kathy Reichs thrown in. Her protagonist, Detective Chief Inspector Louisa Smith, is very compelling, the villainy is unsettlingly realistic, and the plot is page-turning. Plus, there’s a bit of sexy fun thrown in.