Mystery Books of 2021

When the charred remains of a body turn up in the Santa Monica Mountains, Eve Ronin, the youngest homicide detective in LA, and her soon-to-retire partner are assigned to the case. Six years ago, the woman disappeared. But what really happened?

In this twisty second story in the Eve Ronin series, Eve can’t trust anyone but herself as she tries to right the wrongs against the forgotten dead.

Lisa Gardner’s latest focuses on what happens after the police stop looking. After everyone stops looking. That’s where Frankie Elkin steps in.

Frankie is the kind of broken protagonist readers love. Rough reputation. Recovering alcoholic. And she’s on the case, trying to find out what happened to Angelique Badeau, a missing teenager. But every question Frankie asks leads her deeper into a place where there might not be any answers.

When Emma’s kindergarten-aged son, Josh, is diagnosed with cancer she makes the breaking-bad decision to sell opioids to pay for his treatment. But her plans come crashing down when a buyer ends up dead, and the police detective leading the chase for the killer is Nate, Emma’s own husband.

An emotional whirlwind and page-turner to the end.

Jon Land fills very large shoes. Developing the Robert Brixton character a little more, Land is able to continue the narrative and show readers that this P.I. still has what it takes, especially when stumbling upon a massive secret that could leave many dead across the United States. Fans of the series will enjoy this one, as well as any reader who enjoys an intense mystery with a peppering of international intrigue.

Jamie Conklin has a secret: he can learn the unlearnable and see the unseeable. No one knows about the ability, thanks to his mother’s pleas to keep the secret. No one except an NYPD detective who recruits Jamie to help find a killer who has threatened murder from the other side of death.

It’s the story of secrets, innocence, and evil, and everything we expect from the King.

The men who kidnapped Win’s cousin and stole valuables from his family are still at large, more than twenty years after the crimes. The cold case goes hot when a recluse is murdered in an Upper West Side penthouse, and the FBI recovers some of what went missing. But Win isn’t interested in things. He’s interested in justice. And he has the means, the money, and the motive to get it done.

What would you do if you learned that, for years, your mother had been secretly writing to a serial killer? And now your mother is dead. Suicide, they say. But the killer, the “Red Wolf” is behind bars—still protesting his innocence—so it couldn’t have been him. Unless, of course, the police locked up the wrong man.