Pavesi (The Eighth Detective) impresses with this head-spinning meta-mystery. In 1999, antiques dealer Anatol invites five close friends to celebrate his 30th birthday at his family estate in Witshire. The festivities revolve around a parlor game Anatol has devised called Motive Method Death. Participants draw two names—that of a victim and that of a murderer—from martini glasses, then dream up one another’s deaths in the form of short stories or lurid sketches. Pavesi ups the ante by refusing to differentiate between rounds of Motive Method Death and real life, leaving readers to wonder, for long stretches, about the veracity of a fatal fire or a gruesome car accident or an impalement on a sundial. Meanwhile, the author probes the backstories of Anatol and his “friends,” unearthing incidents of blackmail, backstabbing, and attempted murde. Early on, Anatol acknowledges that his game owes a debt to Agatha Christie’s remote-location classics and the gothic spirit of Shirley Jackson; the novel does justice to the comparisons. With shrewd plotting and a bewitching atmosphere, Pavesi ensures that fans of Anthony Horowitz will delight in staying one step ahead of his befuddled characters. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

A Cinderella Story screenwriter Dunlap debuts with a dishy tale of death and betrayal in the Deep South. In the wealthy Atlanta suburb of Buckhead, Ga., wolfishly charming youth baseball coach and financial adviser Anderson Tupper is found beaten to death in a dugout. Homicide detective LaShay Claypool takes the case, but her efforts are immediately stonewalled by the “Buckhead Betties”: cutthroat baseball moms who seem intent on scrambling the detective’s signals. Among them are lawyer Venita Wiley, femme fatale Sutton Chambers, and YA author Kira Brooks. Gradually, Claypool peels back Buckhead’s many layers, revealing that Anderson mismanaged both his own fortune and the assets of others before his death, that each member of his team had a complicated home life, and that tragedy lies just beneath the surface of the most fearsome Betties’ glittering lives. Dunlap’s gleefully exaggerated characters are a little bit Desperate Housewives, a little bit Jacqueline Susann, and the delicious whiff of camp carries Claypool’s investigation through to its truly surprising conclusion. This is a hoot. Agent: Lesley Sabga, Seymour Agency. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

In Wilson’s disquieting debut, 18-year-old Chloe Hughes gets off to a bumpy start at Dern University when her snobbish roommates bully her for her northern English accent. Her fortune changes when she returns a lost scarf to fellow student Clara Holland. Clara, the daughter of fashion moguls, is an influencer and model who throws lavish parties at her family’s estate. As a thank-you for the scarf, Clara invites Chloe to one such party; from there, their friendship intensifies, and Clara soon asks Chloe to live with her. Together, they plan increasingly extravagant gatherings, to which Clara invites several of her adoring fans. When Vanessa, one of Chloe’s former roommates, apologizes for bullying her, Chloe responds by inviting her to a New Year’s Eve party. Then Vanessa disappears, and Clara begins inviting more girls to live on her estate, where she subjects them to cultlike rules (“No prioritizing outside friends or family over the group”) that make Chloe increasingly uncomfortable. Wilson’s prose is moody and elegant (“I missed lounging in the orangery, the warm dirt and citrus scent of it, the mildewed cushion soft beneath my back”), but she never offers a convincing reason why Chloe would continue her friendship with the increasingly erratic Clara. Still, fans of slow-burn thrillers will find plenty here to admire. Agent: Chloe Seager, Madeleine Milburn Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

Noonan’s meandering second adventure for puzzle-obsessed 65-year-old Oregon librarian Alice Pepper (after Puzzle Me a Murder) suffers from jagged pacing. When former action film star Michelle Chong—now the middle-aged proprietor of a martial arts and dance studio in West Hazel, Ore.—disappears, her husband, temperamental artist Lars Olsen, tells police his wife must have been kidnapped. Alice, meanwhile, finds Lars’s behavior suspicious: he displays little grief over Michelle’s disappearance, and instead exploits the situation to boost publicity for his latest paintings. She decides to investigate with the help of her many friends, including wig retailer Ruby Milliner and senior center manager Stone Donahue. Also joining the hunt is Alice’s sister, Violet, who sincerely believes she has psychic abilities, and her granddaughter, Madison, a rookie cop on the West Hazel force. The crew’s initially breezy investigation takes a dark turn when someone connected to the case turns up dead. Noonan’s rambling plot trips over false leads, red herrings, and interpersonal dramas until it arrives at an unremarkable resolution. This misses the mark. Agent: Robin Rue, Writers House. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

In Gervais’s overlong sequel to The Elias Network, DCS operator Caspian Anderson is on an unsanctioned assassination mission in Nairobi, Kenya, when he thinks he sees his girlfriend, German spy Liesel, on the back of a motorbike. Caspian knows Liesel is supposed to be at home, but he can’t ask her about it, because he told her he was going on a diving trip. Then Caspian’s parents are taken into custody by ATF agents shortly after they dine with him and Liesel, and he realizes something is seriously amiss. Meanwhile, an enemy from Caspian’s past targets Frank LaBelle, CEO of an American space company due to be sold to one of the country’s leading aerospace and defense manufacturers. Gervais churns through a lot of tedious backstory before a strained coincidence links his two main story threads and the plot finally comes to a boil. As in other Gervais novels, the action is the main draw, and the author’s crisp, bone-snapping prose does manage to get the blood pumping. Most readers, however, will wish he spent less time setting things up and more time letting his characters do what they do best: chase, catch, and kill. Agent: Eric Myers, Myers Literary Management. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

Murder and time travel collide in Nishizawa’s charming English-language debut. On New Year’s Eve, Reijiro Fuchigama gathers his descendants at his home, where he plans to reveal who will inherit his fortune. At dinner, he invites two servants to join the pool of potential successors, which he will choose on a whim. Among the hopefuls is narrator Hisataro, Fuchigama’s teenage grandson, who has a condition that forces him to relive random days of his life nine times. As the only person experiencing any given loop, Hisataro “can deliberately alter the course of reality” before the loop ends. When someone kills Fuchigama after his announcement, Hisataro gets caught in one such loop, but his efforts to save the day become complicated when a different culprit kills his grandfather during each repeated day. Nishizawa stitches elements from Clue, Groundhog Day, and Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold into a mischievous tale that stands on its own two feet. This lighthearted whodunit will please anyone who likes their murder mysteries with a dash of whimsy. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

At the start of this propulsive, fairy tale–inspired adult debut from YA author Watson (Blood to Poison), Esmie Lorenzo arrives in Ireland on a mission to identify and exact revenge on the lover whose betrayal transformed her brother, Nico, from golden neuroscience grad student into a drug-addicted shell of a man lying comatose in their unidentified homeland. To start, Esmie heads to the Woodlands, an exclusive enclave outside Dublin where Nico rented a room from New Agey young widow Ceanna. She manages to finagle a job as a temporary cleaner for Ceanna and her two neighbors, and is soon sifting through an embarrassment of dirt on the cul-de-sac’s privileged denizens. At the same time, Esmie ducks a barrage of threatening texts apparently from Nico’s enraged fiancée, Simone, back home. As the time-jumping narrative takes increasingly surprising turns—with adultery, drug-dealing, and murder entering the frame—it soon becomes clear that Esmie is hiding some game-changing secrets of her own. Though several characters never develop beyond glossy soap opera archetypes, Watson’s vivid sense of place and devious plotting make her a writer worth keeping tabs on. It’s a hair-raising good time. Agent: Claire Wilson, RCW Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

If Meyer’s sterling seventh Holmes pastiche (after Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell) is, as he suggests in the acknowledgments, his last, he ends on a high note, serving up his best revamp of the Conan Doyle canon in years. Lady Glendenning, owner of many London properties, is referred to Baker Street by Scotland Yard after her usually reliable tenant, portrait artist Rupert Milestone, vanishes with three months of unpaid rent to his name. When Holmes and Watson accompany Lady Glendenning to Rupert’s residence, the sleuths spot several oddities, including “a kiln with no potting wheel or ceramics, an unfinished Venetian cityscape... an oddly situated portrait of the artist as a young man,” and blood. Their suspicions of foul play are validated when a male corpse is found nearby, gruesomely concealed inside a snowman, and three other dead bodies promptly turn up. Meyer avoids some of the pitfalls of his previous Holmes outings, firmly rooting the plot in Holmes’s investigative acumen instead of his physical derring-do, and he packs the action with devilish surprises. Baker Street regulars will be thrilled. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy, Charlotte Sheedy Literary. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

Johnston (The Dog Sitter Detective) combines the intrigue of fair-play detective fiction with the excitement of a Choose Your Own Adventure book in this entertaining whodunit. Readers are placed in the shoes of a DCI who has been assigned to investigate a murder at Elysium, a luxe wellness retreat. Housing developer Harry Kennedy was found in the retreat’s courtyard, with his head shattered from a fall from the top floor and a gardening fork embedded in his chest. The reader explores the motive and means of several suspects, including the victim’s widow, Flora; Elysium’s manager, Stephen Cheong; and visiting politician Carla Nesbitt. Throughout, readers choose which witnesses to interview and which locations at Elysium to explore, with branching chapters leading to different outcomes. The differences are so significant that they make the book well worth rereading, unlike similarly themed mysteries whose ostensible choices matter little. Crafted with obvious love for its golden age predecessors, this intricate puzzle will delight armchair sleuths of all ages. Here’s hoping Johnston has a sequel up his sleeve. Agent: Catherine Woods, Soho Agency. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink

In Bryant’s exuberant sequel to It’s Elementary, divorced mom Mavis Miller throws herself into an investigation of multilevel marketing schemes. After quitting her job at a teen mentoring nonprofit when her annual review comes without a raise, Mavis flings herself into the joys of being a full-time mom. Before she knows it, her calendar is full again: she’s running her second grader, Pearl, to a host of after-school activities, managing a PTA turf war at Knoll Elementary, and spending time with her new boyfriend, school therapist Jack Cohen. As if that weren’t enough, Pearl’s soccer coach drops dead during a Saturday morning game, and the autopsy reveals he was poisoned. When police set their sights on Mavis’s ex-husband, Corey, who helped prepare the game’s snack table, Mavis decides to uncover the real culprit. Her most promising lead prompts her to take a close look at the “wellness” products being hawked by Knoll moms looking to learn a little extra cash. Mavis’s witty, freewheeling narration is filled with barbs (she notes that the duties of a “team mom” include “sending out surveys about team colors and then choosing what she wanted all along (aquamarine)”), and Bryant stuffs the plot with keen observations about contemporary parenting and school politics. This is a breezy good time. Agent: Taylor Haggerty, Root Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/23/2025 | Details & Permalink