Spring is just around the corner, which means we’re getting lots of rainy days. What better way to enjoy the showers than curling up next to the window with a good book? This week is mystery week, with five new books that hit the shelves recently, ready for you to check out or put on hold!
Up first, we have Wolf Trap by Connor Sullivan. This thriller/mystery tells the story of over three hundred highly-trained agents who operate in the darkest shadows of the country’s covert wars. Plucked from the highest echelons of America’s special mission units, these individuals go through rigorous training by the Agency to perfect the arts of assassination, sabotage, infiltration, and guerrilla warfare.
Another thriller/mystery also hit the shelves this week: Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murders by Jesse Q. Sutano. You see, Vera Wong is a lonely little old lady—or rather, lady of a certain age—who lives above her forgotten tea shop in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Despite living alone, Vera is not needy, oh no. She likes nothing more than sipping on a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy detective work on the Internet about what her Gen-Z son is up to.
Then one morning, Vera trudges downstairs to find a curious thing: a dead man in the middle of her tea shop. In his outstretched hand, a flash drive. Vera doesn’t know what comes over her, but after calling the cops like any good citizen would, she sort of… swipes the flash drive from the body and tucks it safely into the pocket of her apron. Why? Because Vera is sure she would do a better job than the police possibly could, because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands.
Traditional mystery is some of the most popular here at GPL, and the 32nd installment of Donna Leon’s bestselling series Commissario Brunetti, So Shall You Reap is sure to delight. On a November evening, Guido Brunetti and Paola are up late when a call from his colleague Ispettore Vianello arrives, alerting the COmmissario that a hand has been seen in one of Venice’s canals. The body is soon found, and Brunetti is assigned to investigate the murder of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant. Because no official record of the man’s presence in Venice exists, Brunetti is forced to use the city’s far richer sources of information: gossip and the memories of people who knew the victim.
Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour by Mike Lupica is another mystery for your reading list. In this entry in the Sunny Randall series, Melanie Joan Hall is back in Boston, riding high, refusing to have Sunny and Rosie move out. She has a Netflix series about to start shooting in Boston, based on her wildly popular new series of books for girls. Then it turns out that most of her fortune is gone. And her manager, who was in charge of the money, turns up dead. He’s been with her a long time. When Sunny begins to investigate, she discovers that a lot of Melanie Joan’s past is a product of her amazing imagination. And then Sunny’s loyalty to her old friend is challenged by her loyalty to finding the truth.
Last but not least, we have Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado. This thriller, which sold 2 million copies when released in Spain, introduces Antonia Scott, the daughter of a British diplomat and a Spanish mother. Antonia is gifted with a forensic mind, whose ability to reconstruct crimes and solves baffling murders is legendary. But after a personal trauma, she’s refused to continue her work or even leave her apartment.
All book descriptions courtesy of the publisher.