Modern Takes on the Golden Age Mystery Novel

a will to kill by R. V. Raman

Aging and wheelchair-bound patriarch Bhaskar Fernandez has finally reclaimed his family property after a bitter legal battle. Now wishing to reunite his aggrieved relatives, he invites them to remote Greybrooke Manor, the location of several sudden deaths; a colonial edifice that stands alone in a misty valley said to be haunted by the ghost of an Englishman. But Bhaskar has other, more practical problems to deal with. He knows that his family is waiting for him to die to regain the family fortune, and to safeguard himself against violence during the house party, he writes two conflicting wills. Which one of them comes into force depends on how he dies. Into this tinderbox, he brings Harith Athreya, a seasoned investigator. When a landslide occurs, temporarily isolating them all at the mansion, and resulting in a murder, Athreya finds that murder is not the only thing the mist conceals.

a talent for murder by Andrew Wilson

Discover the real-life mystery centered on the queen of crime herself. In this tantalizing new novel, Agatha Christie's mysterious ten-day disappearance serves as the starting point in which Christie herself is pulled into a case of blackmail and murder. In London to visit her literary agent, Christie is boarding a train, preoccupied with the devastating knowledge that her husband is having an affair. She feels a light touch on her back, causing her to lose her balance, then a sense of someone pulling her to safety from the rush of the incoming train. So begins a terrifying sequence of events, for her rescuer is no guardian angel, he is a blackmailer of the most insidious, manipulative kind. Writing about murder is a far cry from committing a crime, and Agatha must use every ounce of her cleverness and resourcefulness to thwart an adversary determined to exploit her expertise and knowledge about the act of murder to kill on his behalf. This book ingeniously explores Agatha Christie's odd real-life ten-day disappearance in 1926 and weaves an utterly compelling and convincing story around this still unsolved mystery involving the world's bestselling novelist.

the decagon house murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

The members of a university mystery club decide to visit an island which was the site of a grisly, unsolved multiple murder the year before. They're looking forward to investigating the crime, putting their passion for solving mysteries to practical use, but before long there is a fresh murder, and soon the club-members realize they are being picked off one-by-one. The remaining amateur sleuths will have to use all of their murder-mystery expertise to find the killer before they end up dead too.

death in the family by Tessa Wegert

Thirteen months ago, former NYPD detective Shana Merchant barely survived being abducted by a serial killer. Now hoping to leave grisly murder cases behind, she's taken a job in her fiancé's sleepy hometown in Upstate New York. But as a nor'easter bears down on her new territory, Shana and fellow investigator Tim Wellington receive a call about a man missing on a private island. Shana and Tim travel to the isolated island owned by the wealthy Sinclair family to question the witnesses. They arrive to find blood on the scene and a house full of Sinclair family and friends on edge. While Tim guesses they're dealing with a runaway case, Shana is convinced that they have a murder on their hands. As the gale intensifies outside, she starts conducting interviews and discovers the Sinclairs and their guests are crawling with dark and dangerous secrets. Trapped on the island by the raging storm with only Tim, whose reliability is thrown into question, the increasingly restless suspects, and her own trauma-fueled flashbacks for company, Shana will have to trust the one person her abduction destroyed her faith in -- herself. But time is ticking down, because if Shana's right, a killer is in their midst and as the pressure mounts, so do the odds that they'll strike again

the woman in cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. At first, Lo's stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for--and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo's desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

shiver by Allie Reynolds

When Milla accepts an off-season invitation to a cozy ski resort in the French Alps, she's expecting an intimate weekend of catching up with four old friends. It might have been a decade since she saw them last, but she's never forgotten the bond they forged on this very mountain during a winter spent fiercely training for an elite snowboarding competition. Yet no sooner do Milla and the others arrive for the reunion than they realize something is horribly wrong. The resort is deserted. The cable cars that delivered them to the mountaintop stop working. Their cell phones go missing. And inside the hotel, detailed instructions await them: an icebreaker game, designed to draw out their secrets. A game meant to remind them of Saskia, the enigmatic sixth member of their group, who vanished the morning of the competition years before and has long been presumed dead. Stranded in the resort, Milla's not sure what's worse: the increasingly sinister things happening around her or the looming snowstorm that's making escape even more impossible. All she knows is that there's no one on the mountain she can trust. Because someone has gathered them there to find out the truth about Saskia...someone who will stop at nothing to get answers. And if Milla's not careful, she could be the next to disappear..

the sanatorium by Sarah Pearse

Half-hidden by forest and overshadowed by looming mountains, Le Sommet luxury hotel has always been a forbidding place. Once a sanatorium treating tuberculosis patients, it was abandoned years ago and had fallen into disrepair. Long plagued by troubling rumors, it has recently been renovated into a lavish hotel. Having received an invitation out of the blue to celebrate her estranged brother's recent engagement, detective Elin Warner felt she had no choice but to accept. Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, something about the hotel makes her nervous - as does her brother, Isaac. When Elin wakes the following the morning to discover Isaac's fiancée Laure has vanished without a trace, Elin's alarm grows. With the storm cutting off access to and from the hotel, the remaining guests start to panic, and another woman goes missing. And she's the only one who could have warned them just how much danger they're all in...

the eighth detective by Alex Pavesi

There are rules for murder mysteries. There must be a victim. A suspect. A detective. The rest is just shuffling the sequence. Thirty years ago, professor of mathematics Grant McAllister worked out all possible permutations - calculating the different possibilities of a mystery into seven perfect detective stories he quietly published. Now Grant lives in retired seclusion on a remote Mediterranean island until sharp, ambitious editor Julia Hart knocks on his door. Julia wishes to republish his book, and together they revisit those old stories: an author hiding from his past, and an editor, keen to understand it. But there are things in the stories that don't add up. Inconsistencies left by Grant that a sharp-eyed editor begins to suspect are more than mistakes. They may be clues, and Julia finds herself with a mystery of her own to solve. This is a cerebral, inventive novel with a modern twist, where nothing is what it seems, and proof that the best mysteries break all the rules.

the night in question by Kathleen Glasgow

Last October, Alice Ogilvie’s ex-best friend was killed--and if it weren’t for Alice’s unlikely alliance with her tutor, Iris Adams, and her library of the complete works of Agatha Christie, the wrong person would almost certainly be sitting in prison for the crime. The Castle Cove police are notorious for not solving crimes. Which is why Alice takes the opportunity to explore Levy Castle--the site of one of Castle Cove’s most infamous deaths, a classic film star who died there almost a century ago, and Alice is pretty sure the police got that investigation wrong, too. But before she can dig deeper, she walks right into the scene of a new crime. A woman lies dead on the ground in a pool of blood, and beside the body is another of Alice’s ex-friends--Helen Park. The Castle Cove Police Department thinks it’s an open-and-shut case, but Alice and Iris are sure it can’t be that simple. Park isn’t a murderer--and the girls know all too well that in life, and in mysteries, things are rarely what they appear to be. To understand the present, sometimes you need to look to the past. Castle Cove is full of secrets, and Alice and Iris are about to uncover one of its biggest--and most dangerous--secrets of all.

nine lives by Peter Swanson

Nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. Nothing else, just a list of names on a single sheet of paper. None of the nine people know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke--until very, very bad things begin happening to people on the list. First, a well-liked old man is drowned on a beach in the small town of Kennewick, Maine. Then, a father is shot in the back while running through his quiet neighborhood in suburban Massachusetts. A frightening pattern is emerging, but what do these nine people have in common? Their professions range from oncology nurse to aspiring actor, and they're located all over the country. So why are they all on the list, and who sent it? FBI agent Jessica Winslow, who is on the list herself, is determined to find out. Could there be some dark secret that binds them all together? Or is this the work of a murderous madman? As the mysterious sender stalks these nine strangers, they find themselves constantly looking over their shoulders, wondering who will be crossed off next...

the widows of malabar hill by Sujata Massey

Bombay, 1921: Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father's law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. Armed with a law degree from Oxford, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that makes her especially devoted to championing and protecting women's legal rights. Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen is going through the paperwork, she notices something strange: all three of the wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity. What will they live on if they forfeit what their husband left them? Perveen is suspicious, especially since one of the widows has signed her form with an X meaning she probably couldn't even read the document. The Farid widows live in full purdah, in strict seclusion, never leaving the women's quarters or speaking to any men. Are they being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous guardian? Perveen tries to investigate, and realizes her instincts about the will were correct when tensions escalate to murder. Now it is her responsibility to figure out what really happened on Malabar Hill, and to ensure that no innocent women or children are in further danger. Inspired in part by a real woman who made history by becoming India's first female lawyer.

a gentleman's murder by Christopher Huang

In 1924, as Britain races forward into an age of peace and prosperity, London's back alleys are filled with broken soldiers and the lingering horrors of the Great War. Lieutenant Eric Peterkin has just been granted membership in the most prestigious soldiers-only club in London: The Britannia. But when a gentleman's wager ends with a member stabbed to death, the victim's last words echo in the Lieutenant's head: that he would "soon right a great wrong from the past." Eric is certain that one of his fellow members is the murderer, but who? Captain Mortimer Wolfe, the soldier's soldier thrice escaped from German custody? Second Lieutenant Oliver Saxon, the brilliant codebreaker? Or Captain Edward Aldershott, the steely club president whose Savile Row suits hide a frightening mass of mustard gas scars? Eric's investigation will draw him far from the marbled halls of the Britannia, to the shadowy remains of a dilapidated war hospital and into the heroin dens of Limehouse. And as the facade of gentle propriety cracks, Eric faces a Matryoshka doll of murder, vice, and secrets pointing not only to the officers of his own club but the very investigator assigned by Scotland Yard.

an expert in murder by Nicola Upson

First in a series. In 1934, revered mystery writer Josephine Tey is traveling from Scotland to London for the final week of her play with pacifist themes that resonate in a world still haunted by war, which has been the surprise hit of the season. But joy turns to horror when her arrival coincides with the murder of a young woman she had befriended on the train ride-and Tey is plunged into a mystery as puzzling as any in her own works. Detective Inspector Archie Penrose is convinced that the killing is connected to the play, and that Tey herself is in danger of becoming a victim of her own success. In the aftermath of a second murder, the writer and the policeman must join together to stop a ruthless killer who will apparently stop at nothing.

the aosawa murders by Riku Onda

On a stormy summer day the Aosawa family, owners of a prominent local hospital, host a large birthday party. The occasion turns into tragedy when 17 people die from cyanide in their drinks. The only surviving links to what might have happened are a cryptic verse that could be the killer's, and the physician's bewitching blind daughter, Hisako, the only person spared injury. But the youth who emerges as the prime suspect commits suicide that October, effectively sealing his guilt while consigning his motives to mystery. The police are convinced that Hisako had a role in the crime, as are many in the town, including the author of a bestselling book about the murders written a decade after the incident, who was herself a childhood friend of Hisako’ and witness to the discovery of the murders. The truth is revealed through a skilful juggling of testimony by different voices: family members, witnesses and neighbors, police investigators and of course the mesmerizing Hisako herself.

they all fall down by Rachel Howzell Hall

After a difficult confrontation, Miriam enters a reality show contest to win money, fix her life, and prove to her daughter that she is a mother to be proud of. Except, before she reaches the remote island where the show takes place, but after it's too late to turn back, she learns that there is no reality show. Miriam has been duped into spending the weekend on an island with six other strangers and no way to contact the mainland. Surrounded by miles of open water in the gloriously green Sea of Cortez, Miriam is soon shocked to discover that she and the rest of her companions have been brought to the remote island under false pretenses―and all seven strangers harbor a secret. Danger lurks in the lush forest and in the halls and bedrooms of the lonely mansion. Sporadic cell-phone coverage and miles of ocean keeps the group trapped in paradise. And strange accidents stir suspicions, as one by one . . . each guest dies.

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