Brett, Simon. Death in the Dressing Room (A Fethering Mystery #22.) April 1, 2025. 192 pages. Severn.
In Brett’s latest, readers will meet (or be reintroduced to) Carole and Jude. The former is an uptight, former Home Office type now retired, and Jude is a professional “healer” and every bit the former hippie. In this story, the women are investigating the murder a star whose body was found in the local theater. Read more
Lyuzna, Olesya. Glitter in the Dark. April 1, 2025. 360 pages. Mysterious Press. DEBUT
We are taken back to the roaring ’20s, to speakeasys and the Ziegfeld Follies, in this gritty noir with Ginny Dugan as our main character and sleuth. This debut turns back the clock with authentic detail and sharply drawn characters and a strong sense of violence and lawlessness. Read more
Phillips, Maha Khan. The Museum Detective. April 1, 2025. 336 pages. Soho Crime.
A wonderfully compelling crime thriller that takes the reader deep into Pakistan in pursuit of a newly discovered mummy, known as the Persian Princess, and based on a real-life scandal that rocked the antiquities world back in 2000. Read more
Sutanto, Jesse Q. Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man) (A Vera Wong novel #2). April 1, 2025. 336 pages. Berkley.
Many readers will be delighted at the return of Vera Wong, a great cozy hero if there ever was one. Vera comes across a young woman outside the police station who appears quite upset. It turns out that the woman’s boyfriend has recently died, possibly by suicide, and she fears that she may have had a role in his death. That question pushes Vera into a story that’s quite a bit darker than the first book. Read more
Thielman, Mark. The Devil’s Kitchen: A Murder in Yellowstone. April 1, 2025. 310 pages. Severn River Publishing.
A reader may justifiably expect this book to be set in the American west, but this work, a two-novel combination, begins with the French neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David and and the French Revolution. The modern-day mystery is set in Yellowstone National Park, where seasonal ranger and retired Fort Worth cop Clarence Johnson discovers a corpse as an unplanned part of his tour of park history. Read more
Wheeler, Claire Anderson. The Gatsby Gambit. April 1, 2025. 368 pages. Viking.
It takes a lot of guts to write a book based on one of America’s most beloved novels, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. But Wheeler successfully takes the original setting, Jay Gatsby’s mansion in West Egg during the summer, and the same cast of characters and shifts the narrative into a work of crime fiction. Read more
