Michelle’s TBR pile for 2024 – and a review of 2023’s stacks

Last year's TBR stack of mysteries [2023]

By Michelle Y. Souliere

I was looking over the blog, and realized that it’s been just over a year (crazy!!!) since I posted my “now reading” and “TBR” stacks of all-mystery titles.  Why not do a review?  I was curious myself as to how many I’d actually read, and was pleasantly surprised.  Here's a rundown of what went on last year.

Previously: Michelle's 2023 "To Be Read" stack:

þ  The Castle of the Demon by Patrick Ruell (aka Reginald Hill)

See post here: “If you put your ear to her heart, you will hear the crashing surf - A Gothic Valentine for book lovers!” 

þ Shady Hollow, Cold Clay, and Mirror Lake by Juneau Black (UK covers)

This, like the Bannalec series I love so much, started out with a read of one of the books to see how much I liked it, before committing to the full shebang.  I’ll do a full post about these soon.

þ  The Fleur de Sel Murders by Jean-Luc Bannalec

I will definitely be continuing this series.  But I think perhaps this one might be my favorite so far.

þ Death on a Winter Stroll by Francine Mathews

Super-fun!  I’ll be looking for more from this author.

þ Agatha Christie's Complete Secret Notebooks: Stories & Secrets of Murder in the Making by John Curran

I’m still working my way through this – hoping to make it last as long as possible.

þ The Cloisters by Katy Hays

Well-written, an atmospheric slow burn, but just not my thing.

þ The Angel Maker by Alex North

This was a real ripper.  Great characters, fascinating mysteries, and chilling villainry.  I’ll be reading more Alex North in the future!   

See post here: "The divine retribution of Alex North's The Angel Maker"

þ The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman

#3 in the fabulous Tuesday Murder Club series, and another fun romp... now onto #4, The Last Devil to Die.

þ  White Horse by Erika T. Wurth

This was a real dark horse – new-to-me author, intriguing plot.  And MAN WAS IT GOOD.  I’ll be looking forward to more!

þ Hokolua Road by Elizabeth Hand

I started this and began devouring it, loving its mysteriousness, and then got derailed by some horrible events in my own life.  I’m looking forward to finishing it off soon!

The below titles all fall under FAIL!  Still on the TBR pile.  Arghh!  But honestly, a much shorter list than I was expecting to be left over.  Ha!

--> Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

-->  Guilty Creatures: A Menagerie of Mysteries ed by Martin Edwards 

--> Blood Sugar by Daniel Kraus

-->  Standing by the Wall by Mick Herron

So what books are on my Now-Reading and TBR mystery lists for 2024?  I’ve already chewed through a few!

Michelle’s “Now Reading” Stack 2024:

 

I devoured several books in 2023 that don’t appear above, but will probably appear in posts later on, so stay tuned for those.  Right now I’m already in the middle of several books, some which I started in 2023, others which I’m just diving into now:

 
Nemesis by Agatha Christie – This is a real classic, and there is a 90% probability that I read it when I was in my teens or twenties, but I always like to have at least one Christie title ready-to-hand!  This one in particular focuses on Miss Marple, and her formidable powers of deduction and drive for justice.  Plus this Fontana (UK) copy has yet another weirdly wonderful Tom Adams painting for its cover art.

Trouble Is My Business by Raymond Chandler – A collection of 5 stories which follow his private investigators through another wild run of cases, full of twists and turns, dames and cads.  “It was very still in the room for a little while.  Eddies of smoke drifted towards the skylight, filmy gray, pale in the afternoon sun.  I heard the surf booming in the distance.”  What can I say?  I love Chandler’s prose, and his adept depositing of readers in a definite place and moment.  And he frequently surprises me.  He is a master in a way few others are.

Thrice the Brindled Cat Hath Mewed by Alan Bradley – This is #8 in the Flavia De Luce mystery series, an example of my habit of picking up a book because of its title.  Also because the series has been recommended to me repeatedly!  We’ll see if it grows on me enough that I decide to start the series in earnest and backtrack to #1.

 

The House Opposite by J. Jefferson Farjeon – This is one of the lovely little Collins Crime Club (aka “The Detective Story Club”) reprints of vintage mysteries.  Delightful packaging, classic stories/authors, and kind of like opening a time capsule into a world gone by.  I really enjoyed the salty old vagrant who narrates a large part of this book.  Some might call his garrulous but no-nonsense description of events cartoonish, but frankly it’s a bit of fresh air to me.  This particular story sports a fair bit of intrigue, shadowy figures engaged in malarkey, and an appreciation for a good wedge of cheese.  I’ve read other Farjeon titles before, and they’re always fun and atmospheric!

 

A House of Ghosts by W.C. Ryan --  This was a super-fun romp!  WWI era, a towering estate on a remote island in the Irish Sea, with secret passageways and mysterious murders, not to mention multiple seances.

 

Beneath the Depths by Bruce Robert Coffin – Coffin is a Maine author, so I knew I was going to read him eventually!  Then Sharon recommended this series, and I’m enjoying it so far.  If you’re looking for a police procedural mystery set in Portland, Maine, look no further.

 

The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager – Like my previous experiences with Sager’s books, this is a fun, rapid read, with ample chills and thrills.  Set on a pleasant lake and compulsively readable, this story is related to the reader by yet another of Sager’s appealingly flawed, scarred characters.  She takes us with her down the road of following one’s voyeuristic tendencies just a little too far… perhaps?

 

The Invited by Jennifer McMahon – I’ve been hearing so much about this New England thriller writer that I had to give her a go, and was torn between a few titles to start with (The Winter People was another heavy contender).  I picked up The Invited because it has elements of local historical research (yes please!), set in a small town in Vermont (check! Next best thing to Maine imho), and is rife with reminders that even new buildings may have unexpected histories because of the land they are built on.  I’ve barely cracked into this one, but it has definite Rick Hautala vibes so far.

The Instruments of Darkness by John Connolly – I’ve never met a John Connolly book I didn’t like, and this new Charlie Parker novel, so far, is no exception.  I don’t know how he does it, but right from the start, I am always in it to win it.  There is just something about Charlie Parker’s character and inner dialogue that is like sitting down again with a really good friend you haven’t seen for ages – and feeling like you’re both just picking up where you left off, no matter how long it’s been.  I’m excited to get further into the meat of this story, and be ready to give you a full review for its upcoming May 7^th release (2024). 

What’s Charlie up to in this one?  Well, things have gone very wrong for Colleen Clark, a young mother in Portland, Maine.  Her 5-year-old son has disappeared from his bedroom, and days later his bloodstained blanket is found in the trunk of their car.  Charlie Parker gets called in by her attorney, Moxie Castin, to find out what happened on that fateful night. 

 

The unwinding of The Instruments of Darkness promises ominous twists and turns aplenty, including “a husband too eager to accept his wife’s guilt, a group of fascists arming for war, a disgraced psychic seeking redemption, and an old, twisted house deep in the Maine woods, a house that should never have been built.  --  A house, and what dwells beneath.”  More to come on this as May gets closer, I am sure!

 

Michelle’s “To Be Read” stack:

 

Well, I will admit I have gotten a little carried away.  And this stack doesn’t even include a bunch of titles I’ve been eyeing but have resisted because… well, there are only so many hours in the day and let’s not get more ridiculous than we already are, here!  Ha!!

 

Well, let’s see the trouble we’re in for so far.  You’ll notice a bunch of these are British mysteries, which are rather a weakness with me:

Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death by W.J. Burley – A British series recommended to me, and in my usual backwards style I’m starting with book #16 … because it begins with a dead bookseller, of course!

The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths – A standalone from the author of the wonderful Ruth Galloway series, threaded through with themes of Gothic literature, mysterious notes with book quotes on them, and … murder.

 

The Leaphorn & Chee Series by Tony Hillerman – I read a handful of these decades ago, and after happily rereading The Blessing Way a couple years ago, it’s pretty clear to me that it’s time for re-read, and to catch up on all the titles that came out after my original readthrough.

Ash Dark As Night by Gary Phillips – An upcoming title from Soho that looked interesting.  Set in the 1960s, and featuring a protagonist who works both as a street/crime photographer and private eye.  His work, and his own turn as an unexpected witness with proof, pits him against the LAPD in the era of the Watts riots. (releasing in April 2024)

Murder at La Villette by Cara Black – Another author I’ve heard great things about, so I’m going to jump in with the latest book in her Aimee Leduc private investigator series and see how it treats me.  Concussed and the prime suspect in her ex-husband’s murder, Aimee dives into the Paris underground to save herself.  (releasing in March 2024)

 

The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yen Nee and SJ Rozan – A “swashbuckling series” set in 1920s London, which opens as a killer is targeting Chinese immigrants.  Shy academic Lao She teams up with Judge Dee Ren Jie to solve an increasing pile of murders, each victim having been despatched with a butterfly sword in the hometown of Sherlock Holmes himself.  This will be my introduction to the genre of gong’an crime fiction.  (releasing in April 2024)

 

The White Priory Murders: A Mystery for Christmas by Carter Dickson (aka John Dickson Carr) – This one I’ll probably save until next winter.  Cantankerous amateur sleuth Sir Henry Merrivale arrives at White Priory to solve the Christmas-time murder of a glamorous Hollywood actress.  Footprints in the snow, a gaggle of star-seeking characters, and red herrings galore are promised.

 

The Accidental Medium by Tracy Whitwell – A washed-up TV actress picks up a job at a New Age shop and discovers her mum has been hiding their family’s history of psychic mediumship from her.  As if that wasn’t enough, murder is afoot.

 

Death on the Isle by M.H. Eccleston – An island, a regatta, and a local busybody found floating dead in the harbor.  Who better to solve the case than the local art club?  A cold case of a sailing prodigy disappeared at sea, a grand seafront mansion, and a dead billionaire’s nautical paintings lead our group down a winding seaside path.

 

Silence for the Dead by Simone St. James – A rerelease of an earlier work by one of my favorite cold case/supernatural thriller authors!  Post WWI, a young nurse on the run from her past finds herself at a post in a house-turned-hospital that is more than it seems, giving both Kitty Weekes and her patients suspiciously similar nightmares.

 

The Missing Corpse by Jean-Luc Bannalec – I’m running out of titles in this series, so I’m portioning them out slowly now.  Commissaire Georges Dupin seeks a killer in beautiful Brittany, France, amidst legends of fairies and the devil, and also, where did that pesky corpse get to?

 

The Old Fox Deceiv’d by Martha Grimes – It seemed time to dip back into the Richard Jury series, each of which is named after a British pub tied to the case.  Jury is called from London to a tiny Yorkshire fishing village to solve the mystery of a young fortune-seeking woman, registered under a false name, who turns up dead… but may not have been the intended victim after all.

 

Death of Mr. Dooley by John Ferguson – Another entry in the British Library Crime Classics series, and [gasp!] with a murder set in a bookshop (and wandering through many other London bookstores)!!!  Originally published in 1937.

 

A Cotswold Casebook by Rebecca Tope – I really enjoyed Tope’s “Lake District Mysteries”, and I’m looking forward to trying this series, set in the mellow (but murderous?) lanes of the Cotswold countryside.  For a change of pace, this volume is a collection of short stories, rather than a novel.

 

The Stranger Times and This Charming Man by C.K. McDonnell – These two are set in the world of The Stranger Times, “Manchester’s go-to newspaper for the unexplained and inexplicable.”  How much of what they’ve been reporting is nonsense?  What happens when some of the wildest stories turn out to be real?  Crime, murder, vampires, the fae… the plot twists and turns, and it winds up all being on their beat!

 

Inspector Imanishi Investigates by Seicho Matsumoto – In 1960s Tokyo, a haiku-writing homicide detective finds himself seeking the cause of a mysterious railyard death “from the hip hangouts of avant-garde Tokyo to a spa in rural Honshu.”  And before he knows what’s happening, more bodies join the queue.

 

Grave Expectations by Alice Bell – A 30-something freelance medium arrives at The Cloisters, an old countryhouse where she’s been hired to provide the guests with some intriguing entertainment.  A recent murder cues our medium (plus her ghostly childhood friend) and two of the guests to seek answers while avoiding the unknown murder in the winding halls of the old dark house.

 

The Thirty-One Doors by Kate Hulme – I mean, how could I resist?  “A novel that has the deliciously febrile atmosphere of a silent film.”  Set at Scarpside House, which “looms over the village of Gothbury, and is famed for its eccentric layout, its isolation and its legendary parties.”  A house party of formerly-lucky people, and accidents just waiting to happen… what could possibly go wrong?

 

Beast in the Shadows by Edogawa Rampo – I’ve been wanting to read a novel by Rampo for a while now.  This one is short and sharp.  A crime novelist and his new friend seek the culprit behind creepy letters she has been receiving.  But when they lead to another writer whose mysterious works threaten to become real, the shadows surrounding them become increasingly darker.

 

A Trace of Poison by Colleen Cambridge – Following my reading of two of Cambridge’s fun titles, I’m embarking on a third, returning to Agatha Christie’s estate, where housekeeper Phyllida Bright is about to get embroiled in another murder case.   

You can read my post about Cambridge’s other mystery books here:

“Old friends with a new twist - 2 excellent mysteries!”

 

So that’s 2024, off with a bang, and the flipping of many pages.  I hope your year ahead is filled with good books.  More updates as warranted!