Mystery Book Reviews

The first book in the Karina Cardinal Mystery series, Isabella’s Painting introduces a highly entertaining protagonist who navigates this mystery thriller with wit and gritty determination.

Karina Cardinal is smart, hardworking and, to her dismay, a good girlfriend, who instead of spending quality time with her boyfriend, is putting on airs at her in-laws annual holiday party. It is her attendance at this party that sets the story into motion when she catches a glimpse of a Vermeer painting in her father-in-law’s possession. Caught between contacting the police, which would inevitably lead to her boyfriend’s family’s demise, Cardinal makes the […]

Writer Pat Muir shows us that missing person cases are rarely what they seem in the compelling police procedural, What Happened to Flynn.

A divorced real estate agent and avid fisherman, Art had been reported missing by his broker ten days earlier. His missing person case lands on Detective Shanisa (Shane) Notfarg’s desk in October, 2008. A seasoned ten-year veteran with San Diego’s homicide division, Shane’s investigation is ordinary – until Art’s vehicle turns up trashed and she subsequently discovers that he was a whistleblower in a money laundering scheme. Shane becomes determined to get to the bottom of […]

Moriarty Meets His Match by Anna Castle is a mystery novel woven and detangled by Sherlock Holmes’ famous nemesis, James Moriarty, and his complicated love, Angelina Gould.

In this who-done-it, Professor James Moriarty wraps himself up in an investigation that revolves around burglary and murder, initially to save his own skin, but as he comes to know the beautiful and mysteriously complicated Angelina Gould, he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

Fans of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock may be surprised to find a kindhearted and heroic Moriarty at the heart of this first novel of Castle’s […]

Ronnie Lake is a fifty-something divorcee, starting out as a private investigator. When she’s invited to her wealthy friends’ party, a thief is murdered. The mystery then begins: not only who killed him, but what he was trying to steal. This leads Ronnie deep into the world of antique book collecting, where there’s a lot of money involved, and a lot of potential suspects, in this fun cozy mystery.

The mystery of Searching for Gatsby is two-fold: of course there’s a murder to solve, but also Ronnie Lake has to uncover the business of rare book collecting, with fascinating detail […]