Best Books of 2022: Mystery!

Oddly enough, grisly murder too made a wonderful escape from the ugly realities of the world – every bit as much as romance, only with a higher body-count. Savants have analyzed this seeming contradiction for well over a century, but the simplest answers have probably always been the right ones: that the misfortunes happen to somebody other than the reader, and that injustices tend to have solid, logical rightings. Whatever the reason, mystery novels were a wonderful relief all year long, and these were the best of them:

10 Showstopper (Peter Diamond) by Peter Lovesey (Soho Crime) – It’s a sure-fire recipe for a terrific start to a Best Mystery list to mix the salt-of-the-earth wisdom and insight of Peter Diamond’s star sleuth, police chief Peter Diamond with the glitz and fakery of big-budget TV, and that’s what happens in Lovesey’s latest: Diamond must solve a series of ominous happenings on the set of a popular TV show, with the threat of his own job’s termination looming over his efforts. Lovesey always sparkles; this latest wonderfully upholds this streak.

9 To Kill a Troubadour by Martin Walker (Knopf) – Walker’s latest procedural starring police chief Bruno strays far more deeply into volatile real-world politics than this author usually does, in this case simmering tensions between Catalonia and the Spanish government. This brings an array of grander forces to bear on Bruno’s investigation of a sniper threat; suddenly our stalwart hero is dealing with national governments instead of merely the usual recalcitrant locals. And the combination works wonderfully – and makes Bruno more interesting than ever.

8 Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead (Mysterious Press) – This historical murder mystery is set in 1930s London and is kicked off with a classic locked room mystery: a well-known psychiatrist is found dead in his study – no witnesses, no evidence, no clues of any kind, a seemingly magical tragedy that prompts Scotland Yard to consult an actual stage magician, Joseph Spector. The winning simplicity of this conceit is paired wonderfully with the nuts-and-bolts details of the police procedural world; it’s a combination that works to perfection.

7 Hatchet Island by Paul Doiron (Mike Bowditch) (Minotaur Books) – Maine game warden Mike Bowditch returns in this reliably terrific series, this time in the wild equivalent of a locked room: an isolated research station well off the coast, where a tight-knit scientists are being stalked and terrorized by a mysterious marauder. Bowditch is there on the island with his girlfriend Stacey, and they’re both caught up in the escalating violence. Doiron writes these Bowditch mysteries with a gripping, straightforward lack of fuss that makes them propulsive reading, particularly in the second half of each book, when the action and the red herrings increase to a frantic pitch.

6 When Blood Lies by CS Harris (Berkley) – This historical series starring Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, is equally reliable; this latest is the seventeenth installment in the series and every bit as inviting and energetic as all the earlier volumes. This latest adventure is more personal than most Devlin adventures, hinging in its early section on the sudden murder of Devlin’s mother, the Countess of Hendon, in the France of 1815. In the middle of his confusion and grief, Devlin must focus on trying to find the killer, and as usual with this series, Harris does a masterful job combining narrative tension with plenty of historical detail.

5 A Sunlit Weapon by Jacqueline Winspear (Harper) – This is likewise an adventure late in the fictional career of its protagonist, in this case Jacqueline Winspear’s popular intrepid sleuth Maisie Dobbs. This latest installment is set in October of 1942 and finds Maisie dealing not only with a series of mysterious attacks on ferry pilots flying over British soil but also with the visit of Eleanor Roosevelt, who’s naturally being targeted by covert German agents. Readers of this series will know already to expect that no situation can exceed our heroine’s capabilities, but they also know how fantastically readable every adventure is.

4 Give Unto Others by Donna Leon (Atlantic Monthly Press) – Venetian Commissario Brunetti returns in this latest installment from Donna Leon (twice as venerable as most of the other series on this list), in which he’s asked for help by an acquaintance and at first tries to handle the matter unofficially. The acquaintance’s accountant son-in-law feels certain he’s in danger, and true to form, the plot thickens until both Brunetti and his police colleagues are drawn into a far darker mystery than they first suspected. Leon is by now an old hand at creating these kinds of entertainments, and once again it’s Brunetti’s understated humanity that makes each novel such a winning read.

3 The Mitford Vanishing by Jessica Fellowes (Minotaur Books) – Most of the items on this iist this year are very much known quantities, the latest installments in long-running series, and although these mysteries by Jessica Fellowes featuring the famous Mitford sisters is comparatively young in such company, the novels have long since felt like old friends. In this latest one, Nancy Mitford asks the family’s former maid Louisa Cannon to look into the disappearance of Jessica Mitford, and Fellowes skillfully melds sparkling wit with atmospheric tension.

2 The Burglar Who Met Fredric Brown by Lawrence Block (LB Productions) – This year’s science fiction & fantasy list had the utter delight of an eighty-something old master, Michael Moorcock, writing a new adventure of his signature character, and the mystery list does likewise: Lawrence Block gives readers a new adventure by his antiquarian bookseller and gentleman thief, Berni Rhodenbarr, and the reading here is nothing less than exquisite – all the fizzle and pop of the classic earlier adventures, but seasoned to perfection by age and craft, particularly with Bernie facing the high-tech bafflements of the modern era.

1 The Bangalore Detectives Club by Harini Nagendra (Pegasus) – The best mystery of 2022 kicks off a new series that introduces a smart and logical young woman named Kaveri, married to an ambitious young doctor in Bangalore. Happenstance ensares Kaveri in a murder, and suddenly she’s realizing that she enjoys the challenges of private detection at least as much as she might have enjoyed the sedate life of a doctor’s wife. What follows is a mystery yarn full of well-drawn characters and rich atmosphere, a vividly memorable evocation of Bangalore and a fantastically inviting introduction to a new series.