{"id":16315,"date":"2025-07-17T12:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T12:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/16315\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T12:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T12:11:07","slug":"4-summer-mysteries-test-your-killer-instinct-and-tickle-your-funny-bone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/16315\/","title":{"rendered":"4 summer mysteries test your killer instinct and tickle your funny bone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pop quiz: Which of the following professions can help you jump-start your life as a crime solver?<\/p>\n

\u2022 TV detective<\/p>\n

\u2022 Magazine fact-checker<\/p>\n

Why We Wrote This<\/p>\n

Mysteries follow a reassuring pattern, with the perpetrators eventually brought to justice. Throw in quirky characters and well-designed plots, and you\u2019ve got some diverting summer reads.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Retired nurse<\/p>\n

\u2022 Reclusive lawyer<\/p>\n

\u2022 Ex-cop<\/p>\n

\u2022 Crossword puzzlemeister<\/p>\n

Answer: All of the above, at least in the literary world. Let\u2019s also not forget all those bakers and cat owners \u2013 and cat-owning bakers \u2013 who are out there at 4 a.m. restoring order to lawless societies before the rest of us roll out of bed.<\/p>\n

Before we get to the written portion of our exam, I want to direct your attention, Gentle Reader, to a pair of new mystery series streaming on BritBox. One is delightfully fizzy, the other deliciously clever. Both feature excellent actors clearly having a marvelous time. In \u201cDeath Valley,\u201d Timothy Spall and Gwyneth Keyworth play, respectively, a retired TV actor and the fangirl detective who has memorized every episode of his old show. (Imagine if David Suchet took up detecting in Wales after \u201cPoirot\u201d went off the air.) In addition to the gloriously oddball pairing, there are lush landscapes, the Welsh language, and a cat named Alan. The comic joy never fails in \u201cDeath Valley\u201d; the mysteries are perhaps slightly less rigorously plotted.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not the case with the well-crafted \u201cLudwig,\u201d starring David Mitchell and Anna Maxwell Martin. The premise, it must be said, is absurd: A reclusive puzzle setter (as opposed to the extroverted sort) has to impersonate his missing twin, a police detective who disappeared while investigating a case. He is hapless enough that he keeps ending up at crime scenes surrounded by the police detectives he is lying to, and brilliant enough that he keeps spotting patterns and solving cases. Just go with it \u2013 you\u2019ll be glad you did.<\/p>\n

Barrister-turned-investigator \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"\/<\/p>\n

In Sally Smith\u2019s \u201cA Case of Mice and Murder,\u201d barrister Gabriel Ward shares little with Horace Rumpole of \u201cRumpole of the Bailey\u201d fame, other than a commitment to British law. But Gabriel hails from the same tradition pioneered by John Mortimer, Rumpole\u2019s creator, and is, in the words of the Old Bailey hack, assuredly an \u201cold sweetheart.\u201d Shy Gabriel loves his quiet life in the Inner Temple, surrounded by his books and the routines that his colleagues set their watches by. Then the lord chief justice of England ends up dead \u2013 and barefoot \u2013 on Gabriel\u2019s doorstep. Gabriel is strong-armed into conducting a little \u201cgentle questioning\u201d rather than let the police overrun the august halls of the Temple. The mouse in question is a literary one: Gabriel is defending the publisher of a runaway children\u2019s bestseller, \u201cMillie the Temple Church Mouse,\u201d in a copyright case. The setting of the Inner Temple, which operated like Vatican City, is ingenious; Gabriel and his constable helper Maurice Wright are affable; and Smith carries off the interlinking plots with aplomb.<\/p>\n

She bakes cakes \u2013 and solves murders\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Many dominoes fall in \u201cA Murder for Miss Hortense,\u201d the debut novel of Mel Pennant, as old injustices stalk the Jamaican immigrant community of Bigglesweigh in west central England. Unable to access banks in the 1960s, the community set up a partnership in which members took turns investing money. Unable to access justice from the police, they took to investigating crimes themselves. Miss Hortense and her Black Cake Investigations were at the center of both endeavors. Then people started dying, and Miss Hortense was exiled from the community she had helped in so many ways. Decades later, people start dying again, and Miss Hortense has to step back in. This time, she has help: her nephew Gregory, who disregarded her advice and joined the police. The retired nurse and her black bag of useful items are formidable, as is her ability to diagnose at a glance if a person is lying or hiding something. Aside from their shared honorific and love of gardening, Miss Hortense and Miss Marple share two other characteristics: They have no problem believing the worst of small communities, and in their world they are almost always right.<\/p>\n

Maori crime fighter<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Family, history, and the traditions and language of the Maori people are always at the center of Michael Bennett\u2019s excellent Hana Westerman series. The third, \u201cCarved in Blood,\u201d is not the place to begin, but fans of the first two books will be highly invested in the stakes, which include two characters \u2013 both dear to Hana \u2013 in peril. The novel takes Hana full circle from \u201cBetter the Blood,\u201d when she quit her beloved job as a detective senior sergeant after a case revealed how policing had damaged her and harmed her people. Now she\u2019s back in her small New Zealand town helping the young people of her tribe find their way. What should be a time of celebrating her daughter\u2019s engagement turns to horror when her ex-husband \u2013 a high-ranking detective \u2013 is gunned down during a convenience store robbery. To help solve his shooting, Hana finds herself being sworn back in as a low-ranking deputy. (Note: Everything I know about New Zealand policing comes from \u201cBrokenwood Mysteries,\u201d but surely the ethics that govern conflicts of interest can\u2019t be that different in Auckland?) \u201cCarved in Blood\u201d also ends on a cliffhanger, so if those do not fill you with glee, perhaps wait for Book 4. But Hana; her dad, Eru; her daughter, Addison; and their extended family remain compelling reasons to read.<\/p>\n

Fact-checker meets imperious detective<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"\/<\/p>\n

Liza Tully\u2019s \u201cThe World\u2019s Greatest Detective and Her Just Okay Assistant\u201d just about manages to live up to its irresistible title. Fact-checker Olivia Blunt trades journalism for life as assistant to the imperious, elegant Aubrey Merritt. Despite an inauspicious interview, Olivia gets the job by pointing out that she managed to track the 60-something detective to her home. \u201cJust a quarter turn of the dial would turn fact-checking into fact-finding,\u201d Olivia posits. Her English degree and reporting skills come in handy as she plays Watson to Aubrey\u2019s Holmes. Their first case takes them to a family-owned luxury lodge in Vermont, where Victoria Summersworth supposedly threw herself off her balcony after her 65th birthday party, leaving the requisite note … and plans for lunch with her family the next day. While trying to figure out whether it was murder or suicide, Aubrey and Olivia uncover decades\u2019 worth of familial pain. \u201cThe World\u2019s Greatest Detective\u201d is a promising start to the series, but several secondary characters \u2013 including Olivia\u2019s fianc\u00e9 \u2013 barely register.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pop quiz: Which of the following professions can help you jump-start your life as a crime solver? \u2022…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-16315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}