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Seattle Picks: Mystery and Thriller

Crime fiction, mysteries and thrillers –- there are so many good books published each year that sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. Here is a list of 35 books chosen by our librarians that will keep you up late reading. (Created March 2022.)

The Seattle Public Library

36 items

  • “After a raid on a Manhattan speakeasy in 1926 Harlem, Louise Lloyd is given the opportunity to avoid jail by helping to solve the murders of several local black girls.” -- NoveList
    BookNew York : Berkley Prime Crime, 2021. — MYSTERY AFIA 2021
  • “In Bauer's darkly comic thriller, an elderly widower discovers no good deed goes unpunished when his act of charity goes horribly wrong. A touching crime novel that explores the nature of life and death with heart and soul.” -- Kirkus
    BookNew York : Atlantic Monthly Press, 2021. — FIC BAUER 2021
  • "A wealthy couple who invite successful entrepreneurs to live in their guesthouse -- and then conspire to ruin their life for sport -- meet their match when Demi, a woman who took over another person’s identity, moves in." -- NoveList
    BookNew York : Berkley, [2022] — FIC BRAZIER 2022
  • “A Michigan mystery author and bookshop owner’s trip to England entangles her in a real-life murder. Cozy fans get two mysteries for the price of one: The intuitive heroine finishes her novel and solves a murder.” -- Kirkus
    BookNew York, NY : Kensington Publishing Corp., [2021] — MYSTERY BURNS 2021
  • Researching the history of her historically Black – but swiftly gentrifying – Brooklyn neighborhood, Sydney Green discovers a sinister truth behind the recent displacement of longtime neighborhood residents.
    BookNew York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2020] — FIC COLE 2020
  • “A lean, mean crime story about two bereaved fathers getting their hands bloody.” -- Kirkus
    BookNew York, NY : Flatiron Books, 2021. — FIC COSBY 2021
  • “A suburban Virginia divorcée struggles with that classic dilemma: What should she do when she’s offered a fat paycheck to kill a complete stranger?” -- Kirkus
    BookNew York : Minotaur Books, 2021. — MYSTERY COSIMANO 2021
  • In this geopolitical thriller, a U.S. president facing a contentious reelection campaign must juggle foreign and domestic threats and complex international alliances in an effort to avoid all-out war with China.
    BookNew York : Viking, [2021] — FIC FOLLETT 2021
  • When a prison friend asks recently paroled ex-surgeon Blair Harbour for helping finding her missing daughter, Blair is thrust into a world of gang leaders and corrupt cops, and only LAPD detective Jessica Sanchez – the very woman who put…
    BookNew York : Forge, 2021. — FIC FOX 2021
  • “When her estranged ex–reality-star younger sister turns up shoeless and dead of an overdose on a Bronx playground, Lena Scott has to prove to herself—and everyone else—that it was not an accident.” -- Kirkus
    BookNew York, NY : Mulholland Books : Little, Brown and Company, 2022. — MYSTERY GARRETT 2022
  • “Gregory constructs a clever mash-up of H.G. Wells’s "The Island of Doctor Moreau,” a locked room mystery, and the boy band phenomenon in this zippy but complex tale. Self-aware humor and punchy puns liven up the narrative, resulting in…
    BookNew York, NY : Tordotcom, 2021. — SCI-FIC GREGORY 2021
  • “A vast Cold War space thriller from astronaut Hadfield. Incorporating real-life characters and events, spanning decades and distances both terrestrial and translunar, this NASA-heavy thriller has everything…” -- Kirkus
    BookNew York : Mulholland Books, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, 2021. — FIC HADFIELD 2021
  • Putting together a digital scrapbook for a client with Alzheimer’s, Mickie Lambert discovers what she thinks may be evidence of an historical serial killer and begins to receive anonymous notes telling her to stop digging.
    BookSeattle : Thomas & Mercer, [2021] — FIC HALL 2021
  • Reprint. Insurance investigator Dave Brandstetter looks into the supposed death of a radio personality whose wrecked car was found in a raging river. “A pioneering work of gay fiction featuring one of the most appealing and sympathetic…
    BookNew York : Syndicate books, 2020. — MYSTERY HANSEN 2020
  • “In the Paradox Motel, where ultra-wealthy guests can take 'flights' to the past, head of security January Cole finds her job getting harder when a handful of trillionaires arrive to bid on time-travel technology and there's a murderer on…
    BookNew York : Ballantine Books, [2022] — FIC HART 2022
  • What the Devil Knows

    a Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery

    Harris, C. S.
    “Harris’s excellent 16th Regency-era whodunit pits her aristocratic sleuth, Sebastian St. Cyr, against a killer possibly connected to a notorious real-life series of murders.” -- Publishers Weekly
    BookNew York : Berkley, [2021] — MYSTERY HARRIS 2021
  • “Except for the atrocities of World War II, there hasn’t been a murder on the Channel Island of Alderney from time immemorial. The staging of the Alderney Lit Fest brings that streak to a decided end. The most conventional of Horowitz’s…
    BookNew York, NY : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2021] — MYSTERY HOROWIT 2021
  • Murder and ballet go hand-in-hand in this well-choreographed thriller. "Set in the hothouse world of a Paris ballet academy, [this debut] follows three dancers hiding a very big secret." -- New York Times Book Review
    BookNew York : St. Martin's Press, 2021. — FIC KAPELKE-DA 2021
  • "Recruited by the CIA's Chief of the Russian Division amid rumors of a department mole, former Moscow Field Station handler Lyndsey Duncan teams up with a murdered director's widow to expose a life-threatening web of secrets." -- NoveList
    BookNew York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, [2021] — FIC KATSU 2021
  • Seven psychopaths attend university in Washington, DC, simultaneously undergraduates and participants in a research study on psychopathy. When two of them are murdered, freshman Chloe teams up with two others to find the culprit.
    BookToronto, Ontario : Park Row Books, [2021] — FIC KURIAN 2021