Staff Picks Category: Detectives

Summertime Guests by Wendy Francis [Book]

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Wendy Francis centers her latest at the recently restored and reopened (fictional) Seafarer hotel in Boston, with its impressive history of important guests and air of glamour making it a destination for special occasions and events. The novel follows a handful of customers who intersect one fateful afternoon, and presents through flashbacks the stories of how they arrived at that moment. When a woman falls (or does she jump?) to her death from her room’s balcony on to the restaurant patio, her story ends, and the stories of the other players begin to unfold. Jean-Paul is a French expatriate juggling the management of the hotel and life as a new father. Riley is a bride-to-be attending a tasting as she, her fiance, and his mother consider wedding venues. Claire is a recent widow hoping to reconnect with the one who got away. Jason is a troubled grad student on a weekend getaway with his girlfriend. Who is the dead woman, and what happened? This engaging tale maintains a pleasant level of suspense throughout, and a satisfying conclusion of the mystery that will still leave readers with some things to think about.

Add this to your arsenal of beach reads along with Elin Hilderbrand, Nancy Thayer, and Dorothea Benton Frank.

Broken Ice by Matt Goldman [Book]

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Private detective Nils Shapiro is back! Fans of Goldman’s Gone To Dust (2017) will not be disappointed. Some time has passed since the last book; Nils’s buddy Ellegard has joined him as a private investigator and taken over the business end of operations. Nils and Ellie are called in to look for a missing teen who never returned from a high school championship hockey game. When the teen’s friend is also found dead, the case intensifies, not least because Nils is near-fatally shot with an arrow at the crime scene. The action moves from Minneapolis to small-town Warroad and back again as Nils and Ellie uncover more secrets than suspects. Like all good private eyes, they nominally cooperate with law enforcement officials while pursuing avenues of discovery unavailable to official channels. Nils continues to be brilliant and flawed, Ellie his eminently practical foil, and Minneapolis itself a major character. A darkness in the story not immediately evident to the reader or principals lends weight to the reading experience. In the midst of a compelling mystery, Goldman gradually introduces vivid supporting characters, such as medical examiner Char Northagen, with a finesse built on his background in stand-up and television writing, promising a long and enjoyable series. Recommended for fans of clever mysteries and witty detectives such as Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone.

Gone to Dust by Matt Goldman [Book]

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A murder scene obscured with the dust from hundreds of vacuum cleaner bags opens this clever and compelling mystery set in a Minnesota January. Nils Shapiro is a private eye hired by his former police academy classmate, now a detective in the suburban Minneapolis police department ill equipped to solve this particular crime. The victim was a divorcee with no enemies and a boyfriend too self-involved to kill her. Political aspirations, a mystery woman, an FBI investigation, the frozen landscape, and pursuit of red herrings all interfere with the aggregation of clues as Nils befriends an array of characters and suspects, and manages his beautiful ex-wife. The resolution of the murder surprises and satisfies. Matt Goldman’s experience as a stand-up comic, playwright, and TV writer show to advantage in this debut novel’s wit, the story’s pace, and his hero’s charm. There is second Nils Shapiro mystery to look forward to in 2018.

If you like chilly Scandinavian noir and classic gumshoes like Philip Marlowe, this is for you.

Two Crafty Criminals! and How They Were Captured by the Daring Detectives of the New Cut Gang by Philip Pullman [Book]

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Master storyteller Philip Pullman’s rollicking and humorous tale of Benny Kaminsky, Thunderbolt Dobney, and their gang—out to solve crime.