The Best Books of 2021: Mystery!

I once again entered the mystery genre in a plague year fearing the worst: that the grim news out in the real world would sap the enjoyment from the pages of invented murder and mayhem. And once again, I was happily wrong – the year's mysteries were every bit as varied and clever and involving as always. These were the best of them:

10 The Mitford Trial by Jessica Fellowes (Minotaur) - I’m as baffled as anybody by the persistent appearance of this particular series on this particular list. This fourth installment in a murder mystery series about the Mitford sisters? Nothing in that sentence should work, and yet, through a sparkling combination of unobtrusive research and lively dialogue, these books continue to win me over.

9 The Return of the Pharaoh by Nicholas Meyer (Minotaur) - This latest Holmes pastiche novel by the master of the art has every element that makes such pastiches enjoyable: precisely spot-on characterizations of our heroes (Watson sojourning in Egypt, Holmes, naturally, already there), terrific atmosphere (the golden age of Victorian Egyptology), and some nifty plot-twists. 

8 What the Devil Knows by CS Harris (Berkley) - A series of gruesome murders in 1814 London remind the intrepid Sebastian St. Cyr of similar murders from three years earlier, and although that earlier perpetrator was caught (and killed himself), St. Cyr is increasingly convinced the same hand is behind the murders in this latest installment in Harris’s endlessly entertaining series.

7 The House of Ashes by Stuart Neville (Soho Crime) - Stuart Neville’s books have always been impressive, but this hard, enormously absorbing novel is the best thing he’s ever written, a complex story of two very different women, separated by sixty years and weirdly united by the same house. There is a long-buried crime in this novel, but there are no easy answers.

6 Bone Rattle by Mark Cameron (Kensington Books) – This new Arliss Cutter novel from Mark Cameron features more gore and more viscerally disturbing stuff than any of the previous novels in this series, and the writing here - especially the characterization of our stalwart hero - is the strongest as well in a very strong series about a US Marshal in Alaska.

5 Road of Bones by James Benn (Soho Crime) - This series, set during World War Two and featuring dauntless US Army investigator Billy Boyle, moves the action to Russia - with terrifically atmospheric results all around, from our hero being far out of his element to all the research Benn incorporates about the USSR of the era, including the legendary Night Witches.

4 The Heron's Cry by Ann Cleeves (Minotaur Books) - Detective Matthew Venn, the hero of this sequel to The Long Call, returns to investigate a murder on the bleakly scenic North Devon coast. Venn quickly discovers, to his surprise, that he’s personally involved with one of the foremost suspects, and Cleeves unfolds every element of both the personal and the whodunit elements of the narrative with smooth skill. 

3 The Broken Spine by Dorothy St. James (Berkley) - The meaning of the series title here - The Beloved Bookroom mysteries - comes from the fact that in this first volume devoted small-town librarian Trudell Becket, fighting the gaudy ‘book-free’ modernization her library, secretly saves all the de-accessed books and creates a book room of her own. When the town politician behind the modernization is found dead, she’s suddenly the #1 suspect in this wonderfully bookish mystery.

2 The Dark Heart of Florence by Tasha Alexander (Minotaur Books) – The great Lady Emily and her husband Colin return in this adventure sparked by a theft in a Florence palazzo - a theft with, predictably enough, deep historical resonances. Tasha Alexander never puts a foot wrong in this 15th installment in a great series. 

1 The Bombay Prince by Sujata Massey (Soho Crime) - The third book in the adventures of pioneering 1920s Indian lawyer Perveen Mistry, the best mystery of 2021, finds our heroine embroiled in the turmoil of nationalistic fervor - spearheaded by a man named Gandhi - as the Prince of Wales tours the country. Half a dozen personal, professional, and national pressures pull at Perveen Mistry, and all of it is captivating reading.