#murder mystery book

[detectivereads]

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath

5/5

This post is for fan entertainment, I am not paid.

Hi everyone

Ok this was a little different from what I normally would have gone with. I don’t really like excessive gore, but I feel this comic was a bit different. Now this comic has violence and gore, so readers have been warned.  Oh, I won’t spoil the culprit.

When I first read this, I did think “oh how cute, the art is adorable.” But reading more of the comic, the dark turn was shocking.

Our main character is named Samatha Strong. She is a brown bear; at first glance she seems to be the model citizen in her sleepy little town. She owns the hardware store that was handed down by her parents. Sam seems to be one of the pillars of the towns.  But small-town life can be boring, nothing ever really happens, even a festival or parade can be seen as groundbreaking.

Sam is a bit different from the rest of the citizens of Woodbrook, occasionally she leaves Woodbrook to head to the nearby city to have a break from Woodbrook.

What makes Sam so different is she a serial killer. Over the years she has set herself rules to live by when she is doing her excursions to the city.

Sam would never use Woodbrook as her hunting ground. The small-town life is nice to have for a cover, but if people start dying, then the town would be on alert and Sam could be caught.

Don’t have a pattern. Never pick the same type of person.

Another rule is to keep things tidy. In her Woodbrook life and her city life.

Samatha has been doing this for many years, she has it down to science.  Now during this time there was parade for Woodbrook. Everyone was excited about the parade and even Sam closed the shop to go see the parade.

However, what is to be a joyous occasion goes downhill.

One of the biggest floats comes by a ship that was built by Bertie the turtle (tortoise?), however some rigging that was holding the sail up snaps and on the mast of the ship nailed is the body of Martin, he is the old librarian of Woodbrook who is retired because he has dementia.

Martin is well known and well liked in the town and his death has shaken everything in Woodbrook. To the point where the local pain has made her suspicious known, Cherry Gherkins (She is a pig and she has a temper, I have heard that pigs are mean, and I guess it fits).

Cherry is the self-important type where she will block traffic if she can’t find a parking spot, cuts in line and physical and verbal violence towards others. Cherry believes that Bertie was the one that killed Martin since he was found on his float. You can guess she is the next victim. Cherry’s body was found at the school she was decapitated.

 Cherry was a good character, when meeting first she was mean and rude that you can’t help but think she is a pain. The only thing I felt bad about was Cherry’s husband, an owl named Howard Gherkins, who is the opposite of Cherry but seeing how lovely-dovey they were I felt super bad for Howard because he really cared for Cherry.

The town turns into a ghost town, Sam has some leads to follow up on which introduces some interesting characters.

Now the ending of the story is epic, we find out who the killer is, and they tried to do some sneaky stuff and blame Sam for the deaths, but Sam has been doing this for a long time and the attempts of what the new killer did was amateurish. There were interesting psychological scenes that were very interesting, and the portrayal of internal struggle was well executed. But Sam brings the hammer down full circle.

Final thoughts:

(Please note I do not condone what Sam, or the other killer is doing whatsoever.)

Samatha is a smart serial killer. When going against a new serial killer she dons the detective hat and seek out clues and suspects.

When the final confrontation between the new serial killer, she had play them like a cheap fiddle. Since the new killer had made so many mistakes, taken pictures of the deeds, and n trying to frame a pro.

I did have questions on why the new killer cut Martin’s body the way they did, his hand/arm were spilt down the middle. Which is rather gruesome but I’m trying to think what it meant.

I love this series since it reminded me so much of a book series that I love, Shady Hollow by Juneua Black, but Shady Hollow is less gory but there is still death. I highly recommend this series if you like Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees. I can’t wait for the sequel.

[jessread-s]

hello I just wanted to ask if you have any good book recommendations that are thriller ,suspense and murder mystery for example the inheritance games or haunting adeline if you do know any books like these two please tell me thank you 😊.

Hello @lila-216 ! Thank you so much for your ask! 🫶📖✨🌷 I LOVE giving recommendations. If you need more individualized recommendations (ex: by trope) please let me know and I'd be happy to fulfill your request!

My favorite YA mystery/thriller books ₊˚ʚ 🔍₊˚✧ ﾟ.

The Naturals series by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

A Crane Among Wolves by June Hur

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

The Truly Devious series by Maureen Johnson

The Stalking Jack the Ripper Series by Kerri Maniscalco

One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus

Six Months Later by Natalie D. Richards

My favorite Adult mystery/thriller books ₊˚ʚ 🔍₊˚✧ ﾟ.

The Alex Stern series by Leigh Bardugo

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

In the Woods by Tana French

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft

The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager

Lock Every Door by Riley Sager

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

[casperolivervo]

.......... okay but what if I wrote "And Then There Were None" fanfic???? Because being in this play has given me so many ideas 👀

[theimpalatales]

"Without that compass, without a murderer's kindness, I'd never have found this place, and yet I cannot shake the feeling that I've been lured into a trap."

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

(If you use my link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org whose fees support independent bookshops.)

[elliepassmore]

The Tainted Cup review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: fantasy, sci-fi, greenpunk, murder mysteries, powers, disability rep

Big thanks to Netgalley, Del Rey, and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

To start, I'll say I'm not sure whether to classify this book as fantasy or sci-fi since I feel it has elements of both. The world the book is set in is 'greenpunk,' with buildings grown from plants and things like AC from mushrooms, and the characters have powers augmented through some kind of medical procedure. At the same time though, there are leviathans that rise from the ocean depths and threaten the empire. The genre isn't really important, but I will say it isn't super clear-cut and think it could fit easily into both sci-fi and fantasy.

The world in the book is super interesting. As mentioned, the buildings are largely grown from plants, with some more plant-like than others. A lot of the buildings have fernpaper walls, which serve well to keep out the humidity and don't mold, while also being sturdy enough to stand and not too heavy in the case of an earthquake. A couple of buildings are made from a different plant that can be grown in any shape, allowing for a more personalized architecture. Plants are pretty central to life in the book, and are used for additional things like AC, vaccination, medical treatments, and human augmentation. I love all the plant stuff and think the focus on 'green' things is a really interesting worldbuilding piece that isn't used nearly often enough. We get a good background on how the greenery works without going too in-depth, though I honestly could read an encyclopedia on this world and be happy.

In terms of the augmentation, there's a breakdown of the different augments people can have, with grafts being temporary and more for things like increased immunity in humans or faster growing in plants, while suffusions are permanent and change a lot more about a person/plant. If someone is employed by the empire and has a suffusion they're called a Sublime, with Sublimes categorized into how their suffusion works (axioms are good w/ numbers, linguas are good w/ languages, spatiasts are good w/ spatial relations, engravers who memorize everything, cracklers who are superhumanly strong, etc.). It was really interesting to read about the suffusions and the different Sublimes, and I really enjoyed the background info we get on the augmentations. I also thought it was pretty cool how the augmentations seem to be everywhere, including to help plants do different things and to help medications and vaccines be produced against the wide range of issues people might come across.

While this is a SFF story, the bulk of it is the murder mystery. It's twisty and deliberate, but at the same time has moments when it's very fun. Ana reminds me at times of Benoit Blanc from Knives Out and I really enjoyed her method to solving mysteries. There's a good mix of humor and seriousness here, and I think Bennett struck a good balance between the two.

Din is a Sublime engraver recently assigned to be Ana's investigative assistant. He's a rule follower and so his and Ana's approaches clash at times, though never majorly. Din is very clearly dyslexic, which gave him trouble in training, and at times he runs up against needing to read things during the investigation, but he's figured out a work around using his engraving skills which I found to be a really smart way of going about it. He's clever and a good observer, and is able to put the pieces of things together quickly even though he's new to investigating. I liked seeing things through his eyes and and way he would meticulously go through a scene to find evidence. It was particularly interesting how he interviewed people because Din seems to have a knack for knowing how to circle a conversation around to what he really wants to know without being too obvious about it, thus putting the interviewee at ease and getting them to open up. It was wonderfully subtle the way he got people to open up.

Ana is the main investigator on the case and is not the sort of investigator you'd expect. She prefers to stay in her house (or later on, in her borrowed rooms) rather than going outside to investigate on her own, and when she does leave the comfort of her accommodations, it's with a blindfold on. I suspected she was autistic throughout the book, and then toward the end she basically comes out and says it (without saying it since...you know...this is a SFF novel not set in our world with our terminology). She's quick to make deductive leaps and is often several steps ahead of everyone else involved. It was fun to read as she snapped through deduction after deduction, using the evidence Din collected, and coming to a conclusion that made sense but you didn't always see coming. Ana is also pretty funny and I enjoyed the humor she brought to the book.

There are a bunch of side characters who come in and out of the story as needed, and I found them to be pretty well fleshed out. It definitely felt like each character had their own lives and concerns and didn't just cease to exist once they left Din's presence. Miljin is the side character who's probably around the most, he's one of the investigators working the case with Ana and Din. At first his demeanor was pretty gruff and unwelcoming, so I didn't think I'd like him much, but over the course of the book his character grew on me and I actually ended up liking him a lot. He's just the kind of person that doesn't immediately warm up to people, but once he does he's got quite the quick brain and lots of humor and advice to go around.

As mentioned, the main point of this book is the mystery. At the beginning, Ana was making all sorts of leaps that I just took her word for, but as the story continued, I began being able to make guesses of my own. Some of the stuff I was able to guess correctly, sometimes in a surprising way, but other times I was still puzzling it out when Ana and the others came to their conclusions. There are so many moving pieces and different elements to the mystery going on in this book, I enjoyed trying to figure out the solution myself as well as seeing what the actual solution was.

Overall I greatly enjoyed this book and I'm definitely looking forward to the next book in the series. This is the kind of book that makes me want more SFF backgrounds for mystery books, it added a really interesting layer to things that I enjoyed.

[prongsfoot1028]

Escape from harsh reality

Good books for me are an escape from reality and into other ppl’s( who r now my ppl) drama. I laugh with them I cry with them even though sometimes they leave me staring at the wall because of some random plot twist I did not see coming. As far book recs go, many are often unappreciated heavily. You may or may not have heard these before but I personally will never stop recommending these istg.

•Harry Potter- JK Rowling- These books were my childhood

Fourth Wing - Rebecca Yarrows- absolutely slow burn 🔥 just read for 13+ * has smut scenes *

Percy Jackson- Pure childhood stuff bro absolute best friends to lovers anyone who hasn’t read this I will shove Medusa’s face into ur face (maybe via mail…)

Throne of Glass - Sarah J Mass-I’ve heard it’s amazing I haven’t actually read it completely yet

Legendborn- Tracy Denonn - Great book! Harry Potter fans will love it many references to other books best friends to lovers troupe

Shatter me- Tahreh Mari- these were recommended to me by a friend and I absolutely fell in love #Aaronforlove #kenjiisallweneed

Powerless-Lauren Roberts- amazing book overall must read if u want good ‘hunter’ ‘hunted’ type enemies to lovers

The Cruel Prince- Holly Black- first enemies to lovers I’ve ever read and it got me addicted to it ever since. 9+ good book

Twilight - Stephanie Meyer- honestly was so surprised when my parents bought this books for me but it’s true love that makes you yearn for your own Edward

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder-Holly Jackson- a beautiful murder mystery. Mature 11 year olds can handle it. My first mystery series( that was not not Enid ablution) book that I ever read and I fell in love with Ravi

Divergent-Veronica Roth- The first 2 books of the three were pretty decent but then I hated the ending of the third book which kinda ruined the series for me but still a great book

Twin Crowns- Katherine Weber and Catherine Doyle- amazing book it’s about witchcraft probably mature 11 year old + few hot scenes but none too spicy

Heroes Of Olympus- I mean it’s a pretty decent continuation of pjo I personally found the first book boring ,cuz guess why -no Percy .( Spoiler alert ahead)( like if u agree )I bond with everyone who cried when Percabeth fell into Tartarus and sorta boycotted the series for 2 years weeks in their memory cuz poor 12 year old me thought they died. Spoiler alert they didn’t. ( end of spoiler alerts)So YAY. If y’all have any recommendations for me too read pls lemme know in the comment

hope at least 1 in 3 Ppl found this useful

[gvldrush13]

don’t talk to me

i’m rereading a good girls guide to murder for the seventh time

[oracleofmadness]

Wow! I love this author. Every time I read a Holly Jackson mystery, I know that no matter how many theories I come up with that the ending will always be a shocker. And, this is just another perfect example of that.

Bel's mom disappeared, or in Bel's mind, abandoned her 16 years ago. Her father is allowing a team of cameramen, etc. to finally make a documentary about the disappearance when Bel is 18. But, when Rachel Price staggers to her home and reappears, Bel questions everything about her.

This story has a romance, a lot of family drama and more twists and turns than I could count. I loved every part of this and definitely recommend it!

Out April 2, 2024!

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!!

[genieinanovel]

Ranking Karen McManus's Books

Now that One of Us is Back is released and I’ve read it, I can finally say I’ve read all of Karen McManus’s books to date! And that means, it’s time for a ranking. I did this a few months ago with the Harry Potter series and ranked the series by my top to least favorites, and I really enjoyed it. So I thought it’d be fun to do more series or just ranking books by authors I’ve read. So here we…

[of-all-things-macabre]

Hi yall back with another review of a book I picked up in January and took longer than expected to finish.

I do want to say that all opinions are entirely my own and sometimes stuff just isn’t for me even if I thought it was. It’s not an attack on the writer and doesn’t mean others won’t find enjoyment in it. These are just the reasons why I personally did not.

Let’s start with the plot of the book and what got me hooked enough to buy it.

It’s about this girl named Jess whose mother was the second victim of a serial killer known as the Magpie Man when she was 7. Now 10 years later she is broadcasting for the world to hear her story and hopefully find the mother’s killer. She’s got 1 month to get people hooked enough to return for 3 more month of filming

This is told in short quick paced chapters to hopefully get the feeling of an action packed mystery.

Which I think is a compelling set up for a mystery, I thought the format in which it would be told was interesting and I wanted to know how the works of social media would interlink between this girl and her mother’s killer.

⚠️⚠️WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD ⚠️⚠️

I will be blunt: I thought it fell short of this goal for a few reasons

1) I felt that the format wasn’t handled well and instead of short exciting chapters I got a lot of chapters describing day to day life, which is fine but many of them could have been consolidated into just longer chapters instead. It made it harder to keep up with the timeline, this was great for the action packed parts but for the slower moments it just made the timeline feel jumbled and a little disconnected

2) The social media aspect felt that it became less and less important as time went on. At first this Jess and she gets 1 day a week for 1 month to get the highest view count compared to the other people involved with this competition. I expected them to play a bigger role in this but about halfway through Jess ends up with the full 3 months and we don’t really hear from the other contestants for this social media show. We hear from some of the producers and directors but that’s about it. And then towards the end she just stopped recording stuff for the show, or what she was recording wasn’t the action packed scenes we as the reader got to witness. It just felt like another element to keep up with

3) 14 Ways to Die indicates that the killer has killed 14 people in different ways leaving other forms of markers that make them a Serial Killer

We don’t get to see that at all in the book. In fact it ends up being 16 murders, because the killer felt like he had to kill more as Hess continued filming. We don’t discover how they die, the victims families are mentioned more like a tool to help Jess overcome her own problems rather than like important characters? There’s a scene where they are all wearing T-shirts with the word “ Alive” on them, like some big statement about the trauma of having a loved one kill, but we meet few of them or even learn about their murders, it just felt unneeded. Did her mother HAVE to be a victim of a serial killer? Not really no

There’s also many plot points that get started but never resolved. Jess is given a few love interests that don’t really go anywhere, which is fine in theory but there’s a ton of set up for it, we are seeing the world through her eyes, and yet. Nothing ??

As well as one of her classmates nearly drinking herself to death at a class retreat which felt entirely random.

[rachel-sylvan-author]

My favorite cozy mystery series this year! "Peg and Rose Solve a Murder" "Peg and Rose Stir Up Trouble" "Peg and Rose Play the Ponies" by Laurien Berenson

Thank you @ilikeoldbooks1213 for introducing us! ❤️

[outofofficejoyu]

Mystery book lovers unite!

[casperolivervo]

I might need a bookshelf for my mystery / whodunnit books and dvds. I wanna show off my multi-year long collection efforts. I'm so proud of it 😭😭😭

[theimpalatales]

"Daniel warned me that each of our hosts thinks differently, but only now do I comprehend the full extent of his meaning."

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

(If you use my link, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org whose fees support independent bookshops.)

[elliepassmore]

A Drop of Corruption review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: murder mystery, locked room mystery, greenpunk, fantasy

Tainted Cup review

Big thanks to Del Rey, Netgalley, and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This book picks up about a year after the events of Tainted Cup. This was a bit confusing for me at first because I thought it was happening soon after but Din kept referencing stuff that had happened that I didn't remember, which led to me realizing there was a decent time jump between the two books. On the one hand, I appreciate this because it meant Din and Ana were more familiar with one another and we get to see them as an established investigative duo. On the other hand, Din in particular seems to have changed a good amount and it was jarring to have had that happen off-page.

Din, I thought, seemed settled in his role as an investigator alongside Ana by the end of Tainted Cup. However, this book opens with him wanting to transfer to a Legions division and to help defend against the leviathans that walk from the sea and wreak havoc every wet season. I was definitely thrown off by this and was kind of turned off by it for a bit as well (why would you want to fight leviathans when you could solve bizarre mysteries?!), but luckily it's not really a big plot point. Overall I felt we got to know more of Din in this one than in the first one. He thinks more about his family, as well as his and Ana's previous mysteries, so we get more insight into who he is as a person.

We also get more insight into Ana, both in terms of who she is as well as what her modifications are. I definitely figured some stuff about Ana out waaaay before Din did, but I also have the advantage of reading what's happening and being able to see the big picture, whereas Din is living it and has so much going on. As before, I liked Ana and thought she brought some nice humor to the book. Her investigative methods are definitely a little odd, but damn if she isn't good at figuring things out. She's a fun character to read, and I liked that she was in this one more than she was in Tainted Cup (or at least it felt like she was in this one more).

The mystery in this book is a locked room murder. A Treasury official disappeared from his hotel room when both the windows and doors were locked, leaving behind only a large bloodstain. From there things only become more complicated as the investigation reveals bigger and more complex mysteries the more it tries to find answers.

The setting was interesting in this one and quite different from what we saw in Tainted Cup. Ana and Din are in a city balancing very carefully between local rule and imperial rule. There are people on both sides who want imperial rule to prevail and also people on both sides who would prefer the empire leave the city well enough alone, despite the empire's reliance on the city's exports. Outside of the city is a dense, deadly jungle rife with smugglers who take aim at both local and imperial goods. The political situation is definitely more tricky than in book 1, but I enjoyed getting a bigger picture of the world and found it interesting to learn about the way augments are processed and created.

I think I figured out the mystery around the 65-75% mark. I did guess the answer in Tainted Cup as well, but there were still parts of it that I didn't know in that book. In this one I had pretty much the entire thing figured out and so was less impressed by the investigative acumen of Din and Ana. I would've preferred it being a little more difficult to figure out so that there would still be some surprises left when things were revealed.

Overall I enjoyed this book and think it's a good addition to the world. Despite solving the mystery with much of the book still left, I still enjoyed following Ana and Din as they tried to tie everything together. I know there's at least a third book, and I'm hoping this gets turned into a longer series with lots of different Ana-Din adventures!

[noodles-and-tea]

Back at it with my enchanted merthur shenanigans