8 mystery books to get comfy with this holiday season from The Next Chapter's mystery book panel
Canadian authors Angela Misri and Sam Wiebe recommend their favourite mystery novels
Mystery writers Angela Misri and Sam Wiebe both grew up reading the genre and have the recommendations to prove it.
Misri, based in Toronto, is the author of the Portia Adams Adventure series, including The Detective and the Spy, and Vancouver-based Wiebe wrote the Wakeland detective series, featuring Sunset and Jericho.
On this week's episode of The Next Chapter, they share eight books that mystery fans will enjoy this holiday season.
Village Hall Vendetta by Jonathan Whitelaw
Angela Misri: "It's the second book in the series The Bingo Hall Detectives.
"The mysteries are interesting. There's a murder. You get to chase it down. It's really interesting from that perspective. But what you're going to love about this and the series is Jason Brazel, who's a journalist. (They call him a 'hapless journalist' on the back cover. I don't like the term 'hapless journalist.' I do not take that well.) And his partner-in-crime or solving crime is his mother-in-law Amita.
There's a murder. You get to chase it down. It's really interesting from that perspective.- Angela Misri
"What I found when I first read the first book, I was like, 'Well, I'm Jason. I'm like the "hapless journalist" who just falls into a mystery and then has to solve it.' But it turns out I'm more Amita. It turns out I'm the mother-in-law who just gets her fingers in everything.
"Really cool energy between these two. Small town, chase down the murderer, hilarity ensues."
Code of the Hills by Chris Offutt
Sam Wiebe: "It's the third book in a series about Mick Hardin, who is a military investigator who comes back to his hometown in the Kentucky Hill Country, where his sister Linda is the sheriff.
The way that he depicts violence is very honest, it's never over the top.- Sam Wiebe
"The two of them have this real 'push and pull' where people will talk to Mick; he's not law enforcement. He's from this very tight-knit and very old community where people know several generations of each other's families. Everybody's business is kind of the community business.
"I just love the way that Offut writes. The way that he depicts violence is very honest, it's never over the top. It's really a great book about community and looking at what that means in 2023."
The Golden Gate by Amy Chua
Misri: "This book is set in 1944. It's a bit of a 'noir meets a mystery' and I love that about it. But again, I'm very hooked on detectives. Al Sullivan is mixed-race: half-Mexican, half-Irish Catholic.
"He took his mom's name and he's one of those guys who passes for looking like a white person. And because I am also one of those humans who passes — despite the fact I am a South Asian woman and that all my family is South Asian. I feel a lot of that tension that he sits within, which is that he knows he's getting rights and abilities in 1944, which he wouldn't usually as a Mexican.
It's a bit of a 'noir meets a mystery' and I love that about it.- Angela Misri
"He's navigating that while actually being part of those conversations, which I very much relate to — people will say things around me thinking I am white, not brown. That is a really good centre for how he does his detective work because he has that code-switching ability as a detective.
"So the mystery of this is there's a murder of a presidential candidate in a hotel, which relates to a murder from a decade ago that also happened at that hotel. So you have the main character who's this homicide detective, Al Sullivan. Then you also have the second narrator that comes through interviews as she is brought in to be talking about this murder. Her name is Genevieve Bainbridge, an older grand lady, and she is quite a different voice from his. And it's an interesting way to balance out what is happening in this murder mystery.
"I was surprised all the way to the end, which is hard to do with me. I usually don't get surprised, but I think that that depth of knowing in 1944 what this guy would have been up against and what he's dealing with and the insight he has is a fascinating part of the story."
Hard Rain by Samantha Jayne Allen
Wiebe: "Her first novel, Pay Dirt Road won the Tony Hillerman Prize and the Dashiell Hammett Award. So Hard Rain is the second book in the series featuring a third-generation private investigator named Annie McIntyre.
"She is somebody who has moved back to her small town home in Garnet, Texas. There's been a flood due to environmental issues that are very relevant today. And in this flood, her client was rescued by a man who was washed away. So Annie's tasked with finding this guy, and she doesn't know if he's alive or dead or how he relates to her client. It's just a fascinating book. I love the private detective genre and I love the history of that genre and I feel like Allen is writing the next generation of that.
I love the private detective genre and I love the history of that genre and I feel like Allen is writing the next generation of that.- Sam Wiebe
"So we've had really tough guy detectives and we've had really tough gal detectives. And Annie is this character who is not superhuman. She's not a super sleuth. But what she is is connected to her community and empathetic and people open up to her and trust her and she's just really dogged. She's just the kind of person who will not ever rest until she has answers. And it's just a fascinating book and it feels very 2023. She herself really embodies a lot of the concerns that young people have about finding their niche in the world."
That Others May Live by Sara Driscoll
Misri: "The book is the eighth book in the series about FBI handler Meg Jennings and her canine partner Hawk. I love a book about a dog. I mean, I love a book about several dogs —and there are several dogs in this book.
"So the main part of the story is about the canine search and rescue unit in Washington, D.C. So a 12-storey condo building has collapsed again — very contemporary — and most of the story is spent trying to find if people can be dug out of that and how they can be saved while the structure could still collapse on them at any moment. So there's a lot of tension there. This all happens in under a week of them digging through trying to find, with the dogs, people to rescue.
I love a book about a dog.- Angela Misri
"But the other part of the story is then why the condo building collapsed and then the manhunt that follows. This story is really well told in terms of architectural stuff. So if you were like a nerd for why things fall down, great story for it. If you're a nerd for understanding how canine units function, again, super detailed in here. It made me go back and read some of the earlier stories, really enjoy them and I would highly recommend this series."
Double Eagle by Thomas King
Wiebe: "It's the seventh book in the Thumps DreadfulWater mystery series. Thomas King, of course, is a great voice of letters, but he's also a guy who just really loves Longmire and Jesse Stone and that kind of 'dad mystery' books.
I just love the hangout feel of these books.- Sam Wiebe
"So the mystery is less important. It takes place at a coin show where there's a very rare double eagle coin that is rumoured to be circulating. But the real star of the book is Thumps and the relationship that he has to the community members in the town of Chinoo, which is in the States but bears a whole lot of similarities to Guelph, Ont.
"I just love the hangout feel of these books. The characters are trying to make sense of the world. The series has this real small town Western feel to them, but it's also you can just see things creeping in like technology and just all this sort of rapid changes that we have to deal with."
Gull Island by Anna Porter
Misri: "I'm going to warn you, you're going to hate everyone in this story. I hated everyone in this story by the end of it, I really did. But it's one of those gothic horror psychological mysteries. The mystery is not the biggest part of it. It's how deep you go into your own psychosis, quite frankly.
"The main character in this story is named Jude. She's the first person point of view and she goes to an island to find her father's will after he dies. She gets trapped on the island, she discovers horrible things, you kind of start to hate her because she's got a lot of issues going on.
I'm going to warn you, you're going to hate everyone in this story.- Angela Misri
"And there's some seriously disturbing descriptions in here, so be very careful if you're not into seriously disturbing descriptions of death. But if you want to hate someone at the end of a story and learn mysteries about how they understand themselves and their relationships with their families, I recommend it."
Deus X by Stephen Mack Jones
Wiebe: "It's the fourth book in his series about August Snow, who is a half Mexican, half Black, ex-marine and ex-cop from Detroit. And he's in a relationship with a woman from Norway.
It has the best first line of any book that I've read this year.- Sam Wiebe
So part of the book takes place in Norway and then part takes place in the Mexican town neighborhood of Detroit.
"It has the best first line of any book that I've read this year. And if you're into that Jack Reacher, Lee Child, 'righter of wrongs' style of crime novel, I think that you're really going to like Deus X."
Comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Corrections
- The correct spelling for author Sam Wiebe has been updated.Dec 09, 2023 8:44 PM ET
