The Best Traditional Mysteries of 2023

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For me, there are few things more enjoyable than a good, old-fashioned whodunnit. Or a good, new-fashioned whodunnit. I say it a lot on this website, but, to me, the best thing that can happen in a book or a movie is someone crying out: “someone in this house is a murderer!” Or, if that doesn’t happen literally, I’d like that to be the overall vibe of what I’m reading or watching. As such, I was thrilled and honored to get to pick the best traditional mysteries that came out in 2022. The “traditional mystery” is a story in which there is a murder (or a robbery), and an investigator (either an inspector or a plucky amateur) follows a series of clues to find the killer (or the thief). If there is in fact a corpse, the story is not about the trauma of death or the proximity to death—the dead body is a riddle, and nothing more.

These new entrants into the genre are scintillating and intriguing mysteries, featuring a panoply of gutsy amateur sleuths and dogged detectives, twisty plots and logistical puzzles. All are stylish, playful inheritors to this tradition, delicately toying with the history of the category’s expectations and innovations.

 

Richard Osman, The Last Devil to Die
(Pamela Dorman/Viking Books)

REJOICE, for the new Thursday Murder Club book has arrived!! (Actually, I should have said RE-JOYCE). I know I say every time how I’m so excited and “this one” is going the best but I mean it every time, and I mean it now. The Last Devil to Die is a delightful romp taking our four protagonists deep into the worlds of drug dealing, art forgery, and, worst of all, the antiques industry. I’ve been waiting for this book for a whole year and it didn’t let me down. I just wish, as with every installment of the Thursday Murder Club series, that it were about a thousand pages longer –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads and LitHub editor

 

Dan McDorman, West Heart Kill
(Knopf)

With this ultra-clever and teasingly metafictional debut, Dan McDorman has both created a perfect locked room mystery and exploded it. Set in the 70s (or is it so meta as to only have the setting of Now and the character of the Reader?), the story follows a cast of bored, drunken rich people at their elite summer club, where two interlopers have arrived for the weekend: the first Jewish applicant for membership, and a poetically weary private detective who (in my mind at least) definitely pulls off his blonde mustache. After everyone sleeps with everyone else, some murders happen. So yeah, basically The Ice Storm as if written by Borges, then solved by Chandler. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Senior Editor

 

Jesse Q. Sutanto, Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
(Berkley)

Vera Wong is a lonely, bored tea shop owner who can’t seem to connect with her zoomer son, but that all changes when one day she finds a dead body in her shop and takes an important clue for herself before the police can get there. I love a novel featuring a mature woman solving a crime, especially one so confident in her own abilities. –MO

 

Janice Hallett, The Twyford Code
(Atria)

Okay, so this would be a great mystery novel whether or not it featured a community theater group, but the added drama makes The Appeal into a perfect follow-along caper. Told in emails, announcements, and other found texts, The Appeal has a charmingly meta set-up: two law students have been assigned all of these documents to analyze. If they misinterpret them, the wrong person may go to prison for a long time. And you, the reader, can interpret this fair play mystery right alongside them. –MO

 

Femi Kayode, Gaslight
(Mulholland)

Investigative psychologist Philip Taiwo is back in this gripping, splashy mystery about the pastor of a Nigerian megachurch accused of killing his wife. But, as Taiwo knows, as often with religious operations like this, nothing is what it seems. –OR

 

Leonie Swann, The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp
(Soho)

A dead body has been discovered next door to Sunset Hall, an unconventional senior residence in the English countryside. The thing is, the residents of Sunset Hall are also hiding a dead body, themselves. And they realize that if they solve the mystery of this new dead person, they can doctor their own crime scene to pin their killing on the murderer, exonerating themselves. So they get right to work. A true delight.–OR

Nita Prose, The Mystery Guest
(Ballantine)

A meticulous maid in a five star hotel finds herself at the center of a murder mystery when a guest—a world famous author of murder mysteries—dies in the hotel’s very public tea room. Prose sets up a classic mystery with a few deft notes of psychological suspense to create a heady whirlwind of an investigation. –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Editor-in-Chief

 

Tom Mead, The Murder Wheel
(Mysterious Press)

Set within the theater world of 1938 London, this ingenious new novel is packed full with lush period detail, a glittery cast of characters, and a genuinely compelling puzzle at its center. Mead knows his subject and gives the reader a full immersion into this compelling mystery. –DM

 

Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone
(William Morrow)

You know what you should read, this holiday season? My Family Has Killed Someone, Benjamin Stevenson’s smash-hit whimsical murder mystery about coming to terms with who you are (and who you are not). In the novel, our narrator-hero Ernie Cunningham (teacher, crime novel fan, and how-to author) finds himself embroiled in a complicated plot when a family reunion at a ski resort turns into a whodunnit. Could the mysterious events be the work of a serial killer called the Black Tongue? Perhaps. And all this, by the way, takes place three years after Ernie reported his own brother Michael to the police for murder after Michael requested help disposing of a dead body that turned out not to be dead. So, yes folks. I can’t wait for this one. –OR

 

Brendan Slocumb, Symphony of Secrets
(Anchor)

Brendan Slocumb burst onto the scene with the brilliant literary mystery The Violin Conspiracy, and his follow-up is just as good. Split between the present day and 1918, the story slowly reveals how a renowned composer may have stolen all that made his music great from the autistic Black woman who was once his best friend. Like Slocumb’s debut, Symphony of Secrets uses the framework of classic detective fiction to tell a larger story of cultural appropriation and how our unequal society determines who gets to reap the benefits of talent and produce art. –MO

Sarah Penner, The London Seance Society
(Park Row)

 bestselling author Sarah Penner’s book is a canny romp through the Victorian zeitgeist that cemented Conan Doyle’s interests in spiritualism, a world in which science and rationalism clashed with spectacle and illusion and all of those things clashed with a preoccupation with ghosts and the occult. Anyway, it’s about a famed spiritualist and a non-believer who wind up joining forces to solve a murder… and then find themselves embroiled in a crime. Tell me you yourself wouldn’t run through quicksand to acquire this book, and I won’t believe you. –OR

 

Julia Bartz, The Writing Retreat
(Atria)

Julia Bartz’s horror-whodunnit debut is set during a mysterious month-long writing retreat at a famous horror writer’s estate, where the guests are made to complete an entire novel from start to finish, competing for an enormous book deal. (If ever a book synopsis knew how to read the room, it would be this one.) Cutthroat politics and disappearing contestants don’t deter our heroine, an underdog writer named Alex, from trying to win the literary tournament. But it’s not long before she senses that something far more insidious than the promise of prestige seems to be hanging over the whole affair. Part publishing satire, part haunted house tale, part classic mystery, part snowstorm-set thriller, The Writing Retreat promises an ideal cocktail of twisty, spooky, gripping entertainment, as well as hefty catharsis for anyone who’s ever published anything. –OR

 

Danielle Trussoni, The Puzzle Master
(Random House)

Trussoni’s new novel is an absolute joy to dive into. A former football star suffers a brain injury that results in him acquiring extraordinary puzzle solving abilities. His path eventually leads him to a woman in prison drawing mysterious puzzles that seem to connect to the work of a thirteenth-century Jewish mystic. If that sounds like a heady, mesmerizing, exhilarating story, you’d be right, and you’d want to get your hands on this Trussoni gem as soon as possible. –DM

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